Monday, August 16, 2021

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

What does "in a corpus of" mean?

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 10:28 AM PDT

Does anybody know what the phrase "in a corpus of" means exactly? Is it equal to "with regard to"?

Is 'The rest is for your imagination' right and natural?

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 09:19 AM PDT

I can only find "I will leave the rest to you" but not "The rest is for your imagination".

Let's say I'm introducing a software which provides a wide range of separate functions. Those functions can work alone, or can be combined to solve a user's problem. The user can freely combine the functions the way they want. After the initial introduction, as the conclusion, I want to say:

The software provides multiple basic functions, the rest is up to you [the user] to combine them, let your imagination fly.

I'm trying to paraphrase the part 'Let your imagination fly' to 'The rest is for your imagination', however I'm not sure if it's right and/or natural.

What is it called when a speaker accidentally merges two words?

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 08:39 AM PDT

There is a word to describe the action of accidentally mixing two words together, such as exclaiming trampede when struggling to explain what cattle do. The speaker tries to say one thing, but a related concept interferes right at the moment of speech, and as a result the word comes out as somewhat garbled. Importantly, however, the garbled speech is understandable and not non-sensical. Referring to the above case, we all instantly see that cattle stampede, and as a result can trample what is in their path.

Several years ago I came across the precise word for this, and I cannot find it again. It is not portmanteau, as that's a word I have known all my life and thus I would not have been pleased to discover this new-- now forgotten-- word. The important distinction between portmanteau and the above concept is its accidental, incorrect nature.

P.S. I understand that technically the words I described might be portmanteaus, in the same sense that squares are rectangles. However, in the identical sense that a person might seek square as a better word to describe rectangles of equal side length, so I search for this.

Using be verb referring to context? [duplicate]

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 07:18 AM PDT

I just watched the movie the King's speech, and I found this interesting usage.

Queen Elizabeth visited Lionel for the first time, and they talked about her husband Bertie, or George VI. Lionel refused to help without Bertie presented in his office, (he didn't know Bertie was the Duke of York). Then Elizabeth said

And what if my husband were the Duke of York

Here, I have two questions

  1. she used were, not is
  2. she used were, not was

My thought is that, the reason she used past tense was because she's referring to the "husband" they talked about in the previous conversation, and the reason why using were plural instead of was was because they talk about her husband in different perspectives.

but I am not sure.

William Shakespeare's original Handwriting [closed]

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 06:24 AM PDT

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_handwriting

Is there original handwriting available for all the Plays written by William Shakespeare?

i.e. Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, Tempest etcenter image description hereenter image description here

Can the verb "to impress someone with something" be used in a negative way?

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 05:39 AM PDT

I am quoting from the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Greek Interpreter by Arthur Conan Doyle:

His visitor, on entering his rooms, had drawn a life-preserver from his sleeve, and had so impressed him with the fear of instant and inevitable death that he had kidnapped him for the second time.

I found this entry for the exact expression in Farlex, but it says :"To please and affect someone by exhibiting a particular skill or manner.", while in the quote, it's clear that the victim (Mr. Melas) is not impressed with something pleasant or nice. It would be a great convenience if you could shed some light.

Transitive verb “avail” [closed]

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 07:04 AM PDT

Fowler reads

Uncontroversial uses of the verb that are common: b) the transitive use, with a personal object, is archaic-sounding, e.g. his good works availed him nothing.

Some marginal constructions: c) transitively with a double object: This has availed Koreans many advantages.

Aren't both paragraphs contradictory?

  1. Uses (that) are common: the transitive use
  2. Marginal constructions: transitively with a double object

Adverb NOTHING: https://oed.com/oed2/00159943

Verb AVAIL: https://oed.com/oed2/00015313

‘If you speak English, please press 9’ [closed]

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 04:52 AM PDT

As a Hungarian, I often hear this English sentence amidst Hungarian options in automated telephone services. To me, this seems absurd as I feel it does not address those who wish to communicate in English but a much broader set made up by those, including me, who have some level of competence in English.

To me, 'For an English-speaking operator, please press 9' feels much more natural and precise. Dear native speakers, is the sentence meaningful to you and if not, what would you use in such a situation? Thank you in advance.

Are the "V-ing" structures in the sentences below correct without "by"? If yes, why? [closed]

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 03:05 AM PDT

  1. To qualify as trade secret, the information must be secret, meaning "not . . . generally known to, and not readily ascertainable" by other persons.

  2. The "reasonable efforts" prong assessed through an economic cost-benefit analysis, comparing the cost of precautions to the value of the secret

Overusing swear words? [closed]

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 03:00 AM PDT

I'm not a native English speaker. Recently moved to New York.

My question is, what is the point of using the word "a*s" whenever you speak anything? What it serves? To a non native speaker, honestly it feels kind of insulting.

Where I work, My colleagues are from various countries, like Japan, Korea, India, France, Poland and Americans. I've noticed a thing when I talk to my American colleagues - They use the swear word "a*s" a lot.

"Get your clumsy a*s back to work"

"He's got some bada*s skills"

"You didn't need to put your a*s in it"

Initially I thought Its just my colleagues. But to my surprise, The girl I was seeing, not even remotely related to my work had same habit - "You smart a* s engineers" she'd say. She was not the only one. Her friends, would also use the slang "a*s" excessively.

Even my neighbor has the same habit - "Sorry man my tired a*s didn't wanted to wake up" - he'd say when he's late for a tennis match.

And this are just few examples. There's nothing much that I can do I feel, because there are so many people around me with this habit.

In my home country, Pulling of a word like this (even in my native language) would be an insult.

Single word for an idea which I have difficulty to describe in words

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 06:16 AM PDT

I am looking for an apt single word to describe the situation I am in right now:

I know a somewhat complex concept in maths, but I cannot describe it in plain english because I have difficulty to put those ideas into words - for example to communicate with others or to write them as answer in a test. I am not able to write a definition because the concept is hard for me to describe in words even though I have a vivid mental construct of it.

I came across ineffable and its synonyms, but that is not what I am looking for as we are not talking about any taboo subject.

edit:

I found the following example for ineffable or inexpressible, but those may not fit into the situation:

"the ineffable Hebrew name that gentiles write as Jehovah".

What I need:

I have an intuitive understanding of the concepts of limits and differentiability, but I cannot easily express or describe them in words. For me, those ideas are __________

Are questions following the pattern "[noun] + how + [adjective] + ...?" correct?

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 09:01 AM PDT

Is the word order "[noun] + how + [adjective] + ...?" in a question acceptable? By that, I mean questions as:

  • An object how big could fit through that hole?
  • Questions how serious may be asked?

Such a pattern seems strangely familiar to a foreigner, but I could not pinpoint any reasonable examples from across the Internet at the moment.

If such an expression is obnoxiously incorrect to native English speakers, can you come up with any elegant paraphrastic constructions? "How big of an object...?" and "How big is an object that...?" seem to be reasonable ones.

Best word to describe lines in a passage [closed]

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 09:02 AM PDT

Why is the answer to question 16 in the reading section "incorrect" (link: https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/sat-practice-test-1.pdf)? I understand why "incorrect" makes sense, but I don't understand why "unreasonable" is wrong?

Unreasonable definition: not guided by or based on good sense.

The gift-givers don't have good sense when they assume that the value of a gift depends on the gift's price. Especially considering that they also are gift recipients sometimes. This is my reasoning, and I am not sure why it is wrong. I would really appreciate it if someone could point out where my thinking is flawed and give other reasons explaining why "unreasonable" is wrong.

16 The passage indicates that the assumption made by gift-givers in lines 41-44 may be

A) insincere.

B) unreasonable.

C) incorrect.

D) substantiated.

Thank you!

What is it called when two words are combined by overlapping each other?

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 08:34 AM PDT

Say I have the word "hotel" and "telephone." I then combine them together to make "hotelephone." Note that there is no truncation in this example. It is not a portmanteau. I have seen multiple examples of this, sometimes when people make very long strings of intermeshed words. I thought of the word for it earlier, but now I've forgot, and I'm totally stumped. It seemed like a question for an English stack exchange.

Is the adverb "of course" capitalized in the title of an article or story?

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 08:24 AM PDT

I have a story that includes "of course" in the middle of its title: "I will be there, of course, when you come home". Should the "of course" be capitalized like this (since "of" is a preposition, and "course" sounds like a noun):

"I Will Be There, of Course, When You Come Home"

This looks weird, so maybe the "Of" and "Course" should both be capitalized, or both left capitalized? I'm looking for the more correct and acceptable version, as I'm submitting the story to a magazine and don't want it to look unprofessional.

An adjective to describe eyes like these?

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 04:44 AM PDT

Some people have eyes that look rather different than most people's, with their whole upper eyelids (*) being very visible. Is there a term or an adjective for eyes like these?

enter image description here

enter image description here

(*) By "eyelid" I meant the part below the eyelid crease (Perhaps that's anatomically wrong)

what's the meaning of context?

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 01:09 AM PDT

I was watching CNN 10 Youtube Video titled: "Looking Back At 2020 | December 18, 2020" , and there is one context which I don't really get.

At the end of the video,

Forget the "halls" ya'll. It's time to "deck the cars".
Where there's a "wheel", there's ways to win the "holiday light wars".
Clark Griswald's bright idea made a house all that it can be but Tyler's (ph) car can make the neighbors "red and green" with envy.
See, haters want to cover it.
They can't get "camaroover" it.
Admirers "allover" it.
There smiles "hover" over it.
He's "strings" along a colorful "carful" of Christmas cheer and hopes he doesn't see "blue lights" behind again this year.

It's a kind of rap, and I think this is kind of playing with words. Could you give me a little help, so I can understand the context?

Etymology of "had better"

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 09:02 AM PDT

Hadn't ought: "ought not —usually used with to ": you really hadn't ought to do that.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hadn%27t%20ought

Is this ''had'' the same as the one in had better? How'd these expressions come to be?

What is the phrase or word for this type organizational useless work [duplicate]

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 02:30 AM PDT

What is the phrase or word for this type organizational useless/pointless work based on either half baked ideas, of just o appease the higher ups.

Example: An organization have three tier management

  1. CEO
  2. Oper. Manager
  3. Dept. Manager

Suppose CEO gives a strategic instruction and fails to followup much of the time. But with a imaginary deadline (within 2-3 days), at the cursory instruction of the CEO, the Oper. Mngr initiates action telling Dept. Manager to work on an assignment based on strategic idea provided by the CEO.

As a result, Dept. Mngr. instructs his staff to start working on the assignment, assigning resources to it, etc ASAP.

Now as the day comes to submit the deliverables, the CEO has initiated a contrasting idea to the initial one. So the work done on the initial one goes to waste.

What is the phrase or word for this type organizational useless work in business setting.I suppose there must be an apt Wikipedia styled phrase for this phenomenon. I searched online for "Redundant work" which is usually used in some articles in passing, but on google, the search prompts for Redundancy rather than redundant work. The point is to read more article (pros, cons, effects, perils) or Wikipedia information on this subject phrase.

List of people including non-restrictive appositive

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 10:08 AM PDT

I'm editing a book with this sentence:

'Viroj, his wife, Pranom, Joan and I were duly ushered into an audience room at Chitralada Palace.'

Viroj's wife is Pranom so Pranom is set off with commas as a non-restrictive appositive (Viroj has only one wife). Thus there are four people going to the palace. However, if you do not know that Viroj's wife is Pranom, then you could read the sentence as there being five people going to the palace.

Should I separate the names with semi-colons as so:

'Viroj; his wife, Pranom; Joan; and I were duly ushered into an audience room at Chitralada Palace.'

It looks a little odd to me but I believe it is correct?

That is what …. . This is what …. Can these be used interchangeably here?

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 04:02 AM PDT

I've been wondering if "That is what….," and "This is what ….," in the following passage (taken from Fieldfish.com) can be used interchangeably.

Imagine you are an unmarried couple who have been trying to conceive for years. With the help of a well-established fertility clinic and donor sperm you undergo IVF treatment, and have your much desired child. In the course of the fertility process you are told both parents need to sign consent forms that once signed will confer on both the biological parent and the non-biological parent, the same rights of parentage without needing to go to court after the birth to get a declaration of parental responsibility, nor adoption orders. Then some months later the clinic calls you to tell you that due to an admin error, the forms were not completed correctly and the non-biological parent is not legally the child's parent, and probably the only solution is to go through the adoption process.

That is what happened to many couples in the UK who have had fertility treatment using donor sperm and eggs. This is what happened to a family in 2013 and it prompted the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (the HFEA) to require all clinics to audit their cases to see whether there were any other failures by clinics of having failed to get the family to sign both consent form or, having lost or misfiled these legal consents.

"That" and "This" here seem to be almost the same. It is my understanding that "that" indicates a previously stated idea and "this" suggests the idea and something new about it. Is that correct? How does that affect how they are being used in the above passage?

Comma after a year question

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 02:03 AM PDT

Would there be a comma after the year here? As this is a series of prepositional phrases, I am uncertain that the comma should be inserted.

The composer was alleged to have said this to his secretary in 1940, about a seasonal song.

placement of descriptive clause in the sentence?

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 06:04 AM PDT

S1. X can be done to handle the unsavory practice by Y, which limits growth.

S2. X can be done to handle the unsavory practice, which limits growth, by Y.

In this sentence the descriptive clause "which limits growth" is supposed to apply to the unsavory practice. Does that mean S1 usage is incorrect?

Question update:

What's the best way to rewrite or express the idea that the non-restrictive clause applies to unsavory practice?

I see both S1 and S2 confusing and not easy to read. Furthermore, this problem seems to be very common whenever some X has both a descriptive thing and a restrictive clause and you want to express it in just one sentence. For example:

John grew up with a brother who worked in construction and was John's only healthy sibling, and another brother who worked in government.

"who worked in construction" is restrictive clause. "John's only health sibling" is non-restrictive.

Another way to rewrite it is:

John grew up with a brother, John's only healthy sibling, who worked in construction, and another brother who worked in government.

Both of these ways to express the idea are clumsy. Any better way?

Quantifiers "most" vs. "most of"

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 03:01 AM PDT

I came across this exercise in one of Oxford books.

Most / Most of flowers bought at airports are safe, about 90%.

Shouldn't we use "most of the" when we are talking about a specific set of something?

I will be grateful for any help you can provide.

words pronounced with their letters reversed

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 08:58 AM PDT

Why are some words pronounced as though their letters were reversed?

For example, why is bible pronounced "buy-bel" and not "bib-lee", or Favre pronounced "far-vuh" and not "fav-rah"?

English generator algorithms [closed]

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 06:42 AM PDT

This may be an odd question for this site, but tonight I've been enjoying myself by creating a small script that produces (is supposed to produce) sample sentences that resemble English, while being total gibberish.

The idea came from reading a question on StackOverflow.com which involved word wrapping of a text. Some people would use the Lorem Ipsum quote to generate a sample text for demonstration purposes. I thought, why this would be a nice use of a random text generator.

The very intriguing Wug test was also at the back of my mind, and the fact that it is relatively easy to read a sentence with scrambled words, as long as beginning and end letters remain the same. For example:

Ocne uopn a mndihgit derary, whlie I peonredd waek and warey oevr mnay a quinat and ciruous vumole of fgtorteon lero,

I have done some research on (concerning English):

Adding some random punctuation and capitalization, it is looking pretty, but I need some simple algorithms to make the words more realistic looking. Here's a sample text:

Ynssdto lcianche ttlkise aaricod oawsepje. Hast tvnvcfaiesont eteoy prae wwecofuothenroo nmtnhglw lmhwefc etlugloe. Ywio odhw, chlt dhpei tiaqirter, sorrdstg aontli kayhut, tnust, berv dosp wrhhys sblfm. Nkttrbfoeret thpit atea aoecwb ctwrhfae oneeot selm teihug ttolgktrwwmc, wwrleil sga, isdeedeo adnrsi, aydhd asroino dhddonn, lrctp gckort ikhcvo. Tvte hzmdosnd wsad a cwfndoac drnsrtsaths

Obviously, words should contain at least one vowel. It might in fact be idea to make vowel insertion a distinct part of the process. Some consonants should not follow each other (e.g. tvnvcf), and should not be too many in a row.

I was looking for a distribution of the last letters in English words, but that may not be applicable, since word endings can be fairly similar (ing, ane, tion, able, etc), and that might add some familiarity to the sentences.

I'm looking for ideas. Links to resources. Rules of thumb. What can I do to make my script spout more legible gibberish?

In short, what are the general rules for building an English-looking word?

"Game server" or "games server"

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 12:57 AM PDT

This question can seem trivial but I'm not a native English speaker. I'm hosting a server which hosts games and I was wondering: is it called a game server or a games server?

Which is correct: "web host" or "web hoster"?

Posted: 16 Aug 2021 12:54 AM PDT

Which is the best way to refer to a company that hosts your website:

My web host supports Ruby.

or

My web hoster supports Ruby.

or

My web hosting service supports Ruby.
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