Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

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• AS and THAN and clause reduction
• Are there a terms for difference size of log?
• Help me with this sentence from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows [migrated]
• reducing relative clause [closed]
• What does it mean if a subject clause if it can be replaced by an adverb?
• Kindly explain the meaning of this sentence from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
• Is the "the" after "controlled by" necessary?
• Why using -son instead of -daughter? [closed]
• Is it correct to ask "who are you waiting for to come up and clean up your sh!t?" [closed]
• is "can only but" a real English expression?
• Comma after "perhaps" at the end of the sentence
• Antonym of "Crying Wolf too much"
• Do you contract a disease or a virus? Or either?
• Single noun that encompasses both “Buff” and “Nerf” terms as used in video-game slang
• Word or phrase for falling back to the difficult condition of ones earlier life
• Could you help me grammatically figure out this paragraph from All The Pretty Horses by C. McCarthy?
• Predicate Transfer
• Is there a word for insulting yourself before someone else gets a chance to?
• "She was beautiful, she was."
• Is it okay to use 'to name a few' with a colon
• looking for a collection of words that define a taxonomy
• If three nouns are the objects of a verb, do you need the definite article with each?
• Question of condition (sort of)
• What is the correct term to describe literary works that are only partly fictional?
• Meaning and origin of British/Australian slang word 'tut'
• Is there a difference in pronunciation between "wood" and "would"?
• Usage of "we" as plural second-person

AS and THAN and clause reduction Posted: 21 Aug 2021 09:09 AM PDT Under 256, on page no 254 of Practical English Usage by Michael Swan, I found the following sentences: There were a lot of people at the exhibition - more than came last year. [NOT more than they came last year] We have got food for as many people as want it. [NOT as they want it] Now can you please grammatically perse these two sentences? And point out why the alternative versions are incorrect?

Are there a terms for difference size of log? Posted: 21 Aug 2021 07:51 AM PDT I think it somehow comparable, at least there is 2 kinds of a wood trunk. A large full grown tree that could be able to process into lumber. And a small, in the size of branch of the full grown tree, but larger than twig, that would be used as fence or pole or many product as-is without much process I would call the large one as a log, in my opinion if it was thicker than human body it is surely a log. But I got uncomfortable to call the small size ones as a log, especially if it smaller than human arm. But it is still a trunk and not a branch Do english have specific terms for these difference ?

Help me with this sentence from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows [migrated] Posted: 21 Aug 2021 06:51 AM PDT Autumn seemed to arrive suddenly that year. The morning of the first of September was crisp and golden as an apple, and as the little family bobbed across the rumbling road toward the great sooty station, the fumes of car exhausts and the breath of pedestrians sparkled like cobwebs in the cold air. Two large cages rattled on top of the laden trolleys the parents were pushing; the owls inside them hooted indignantly, and the redheaded girl trailed tearfully behind her brothers, clutching her father's arm. What does the phrase "crisp and golden as an apple" mean? If golden meant dry day, why was their cold air? Thanks in advance

reducing relative clause [closed] Posted: 21 Aug 2021 05:34 AM PDT Please get me help with this He sold the horse which belonged to his brother. Reduced: He sold the horse belonged or belonging to his brother? Which is more correct belonged or belonging ?

What does it mean if a subject clause if it can be replaced by an adverb? Posted: 21 Aug 2021 04:27 AM PDT I have this sentence But it would be foolish to judge Euripides chiefly as a playwright; his ruling interest is not dramatic technique but philosophical inquiry and political reform. I think this sentence reduces to 'Don't judge Euripides wrongly'? You can replace the whole of 'but it would be foolish to' with 'don't', which I think is an adverb? It can replace both 'it' and the verb phrase 'would be foolish', does that mean the subject is still 'it'? Or is 'it' not the subject at all?

Kindly explain the meaning of this sentence from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Posted: 21 Aug 2021 03:13 AM PDT He had one, brief glimpse of the stone Pensieve on the desk where he had left it, and then an earsplitting noise made him cry out, thinking of curses and returning Death Eaters and the rebirth of Voldemort — But it was applause. All around the walls, the headmasters and headmistresses of Hogwarts were giving him a standing ovation; they waved their hats and in some cases their wigs, they reached through their frames to grip each other's hands; they danced up and down on the chairs in which they had been painted; Dilys Derwent sobbed unashamedly; Dexter Fortescue was waving his ear-trumpet; and Phineas Nigellus called, in his high, reedy voice, "And let it be noted that Slytherin House played its part! Let our contribution not be forgotten!" I didn't understand the sentence in bold, from the para given above. Grasped each other's hands? Danced on their chair? What did they do, what action was performed over there? Kindly explain. Thanks in advance.

Is the "the" after "controlled by" necessary? Posted: 21 Aug 2021 04:02 AM PDT The rhythm of this Chinese opera is controlled by the drum and clapper

Why using -son instead of -daughter? [closed] Posted: 21 Aug 2021 07:47 AM PDT I am learning English and my teacher taught me a lesson where there was a person named Bill Robertson and his sister's name was Dyna Robertson. So why was her name Dyna Robertson when she is a daughter? Why not Dyna Robertdaughter?

Is it correct to ask "who are you waiting for to come up and clean up your sh!t?" [closed] Posted: 21 Aug 2021 04:10 AM PDT is it grammatically correct to use "to" after "for" like that?

is "can only but" a real English expression? Posted: 20 Aug 2021 10:21 PM PDT I am a native Enlgish speaker and this expression sounds natural to me (somehow), but I am aware it seems very grammatically invalid. I think I read it somewhere before and it has bothered me for a while, it sounds correct in my ears! For example, "The milk is good, which only but increases the quality of the ice cream" To me, it sounds like the combination "only but" is an extra emphasis. I am probably crazy and everyone else thinks this combination is ridiculous and makes no sense.

Comma after "perhaps" at the end of the sentence Posted: 21 Aug 2021 09:26 AM PDT Which one is correct? I. "This is the worst day in this month, perhaps the worst in my life." II. "This is the worst day in this month. Perhaps the worst in my life." Should we offset the adverb perhaps with a comma from the independent sentence preceding it if it bears an emphatic meaning like this?

Antonym of "Crying Wolf too much" Posted: 21 Aug 2021 06:59 AM PDT Not sure if "The Boy who cried wolf" is idiom/phrase/something-else, so that is another question in itself as if the antonym is the correct operator for this context (and that could be another question). While watching episode of Castle TV Series, upon hearing one of his crazy theories, his team members mention "he has been right too often" to not to dismiss his idea. Sounded like what opposite of what "he cried wolf too often" which is used to take away credibility by citing the past. So maybe the correct question to ask should be, what is the phrase/idiom/saying when trying to give credibility to people as opposed to taking it away like "cried wolf too often"?

Do you contract a disease or a virus? Or either? Posted: 21 Aug 2021 08:18 AM PDT You are infected by a virus, not a disease. You can develop a disease, but not a virus (unless you are a virus-developing scientist, I guess -- but you know that's not what I mean). I guess what I'm trying to figure out is if there's any exclusivity between contracting a virus or a disease, or if you can technically contract anything (such as an odor -- although colloquially not very common) and, in this context, "contract" is just fancy for "get" or "catch". Example I contracted COVID-19. vs. I contracted the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Related, but doesn't answer my question: Difference between contract and catch [a disease]

Single noun that encompasses both “Buff” and “Nerf” terms as used in video-game slang Posted: 21 Aug 2021 12:03 AM PDT The words "buff" and "nerf" are used to mean "beneficial modifier/spell/enchantment" and "detrimental modifier/spell/enchantment" respectively in video games. Is there a single noun that represents/categorizes both of these in a concise and precise manner? I know I've introduced the words "modifier", "spell" and "enchantment" as part of this question, but they still seem overly broad to me to be used for the purposes of identifying the "buff+nerf" group. "Modifier" is a very generic word that can mean basically anything, "spells" like a fireball are neither buffs nor nerfs, and I'm not sure enchantment fits too as it also seems to represent something more broad, like "spell" (could even be used as a true synonym of "spell" in that sense). I need to name this concept on a game engine and wanted to find the best term to handle both the positive as well as the negative meanings concisely and in a way to avoid confusion while reading the code.

Word or phrase for falling back to the difficult condition of ones earlier life Posted: 21 Aug 2021 07:16 AM PDT How to refer to one's past days or phase of life where his or her situation (especially financially) was much difficult. The sentence I am trying to frame is an answer for the question "What keeps you motivated everyday?" I am trying to answer along the lines: "The dreadful fear of falling back to the difficult conditions of my past." But this does not truly encompass what I want to express from a adjectival pov and it's very weak in making people resonate with their own similar situation.

Could you help me grammatically figure out this paragraph from All The Pretty Horses by C. McCarthy? Posted: 21 Aug 2021 06:29 AM PDT Leading the horses by hand out through the gate into the road and mounting up and riding the horses side by side up the road with the moon in the west and some dogs barking over toward the shearing sheds and the greyhounds answering back from their pens and him closing the gate and turning and holding his cupped hands for her to step into and lifting her own to the black horses naked back and then untying the stallion from the gate and stepping once onto the gateslat and mounting up all in one motion and turning the horse and them riding side-by-side up the road with the moon in the west like a moon of white line hung from the wires and some dogs barking. From All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy I am an English teacher for quite a long time and lately I've been reading All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. I can figure out what the author tries to say in the above excerpt since I already know the context. However, this single sentence paragraph doesn't seem grammatically alright to me. It starts with a verb in present participle form and is maintained by conjunctions and more present participles following. I've never been to an English-speaking country and am low on colloquial expressions and daily usage of language esp. in local accents. I can see that he utilized some figures of speech and a few contextual terms yet I don't fully get it. Where is the subject/doer? Why are the verbs conjugated in this way? I would appreciate your remarks. Thanks in advance.

Predicate Transfer Posted: 20 Aug 2021 07:39 PM PDT I encountered the term predicate transfer at first in a brief and rather clumsy wikipedia entry, where although the title makes semantic sense, and I would be confident to guess its meaning as a term, the article seemed to only make things more confusing (apologies to its author[s]). Here is the article: Wikipedia: Predicate transfer I also found this article, Academia: Pieces of Predicate Transfer [Edited transcript of talk, 2012] Sadly nowhere else than academia.edu, so I'm not strictly able to cite it using a typical referencing system and am unable to check its provenance. Nonetheless I've had a look through it. It uses the same example as in the wikipedia entry, regarding being "parked", to me the term predicate transfer here appears only to justify the application of esoteric language to the semantic meaning. Example 4 in the article, "the ham sandwich at table 7 is getting restless" sounds like a metonym, and not more. The person at table seven has been substituted for a related characteristic (I'm not sure if the ham sandwich that this person is waiting for quite qualifies as an adjunct). Or does predicate transfer describe a metonym, in the sense that a metonym exemplifies predicate transfer but doesn't describe it. In sort of hypo/hyper-nymic relationship, where x (metonym) is a kind of y (predicate transfer) and y is not strictly a kind of x. Is anybody able to clear this term up, or alert me to something I have missed or am missing? Many thanks, Andrew

Is there a word for insulting yourself before someone else gets a chance to? Posted: 21 Aug 2021 08:27 AM PDT Some of you may have seen the Eminem film 8-mile, where he's in a rap battle, and at some point in the film he wins the rap battle by exhausting all the ammo about himself that his opponent was going to use so the opponent had nothing left to say. I've seen this happen in real life a handful of times too, where a person who knows he's going to be insulted beats the other person to the punch and takes the wind out of their sails by doing so. Is there any terms for this?

"She was beautiful, she was." Posted: 21 Aug 2021 04:56 AM PDT What is the term used to describe sentences such as: They did all they could, they did. It was a gorgeous day, it was. EDIT: Thank you so much to all who helped; you guys are great!

Is it okay to use 'to name a few' with a colon Posted: 21 Aug 2021 04:02 AM PDT Is the following sentence correct? The list had a variety of foodstuffs: oranges, apples, bananas and sardines to name a few. Is it okay to use the phrase 'to name a few' with a colon, and also do I need to put a comma before 'to name a few'?

looking for a collection of words that define a taxonomy Posted: 20 Aug 2021 07:01 PM PDT I'm looking for a set of words that define a logical, hierarchical structure to define a simple 3 level taxonomy, but it needs to comply with the following requirements: The words must be related, like for example category->subcategory or species->subspecies->family are. The words should be very general, so I can apply them to any subject. The hierarchy must be well-defined and acknowledged. I was thinking about something like theme -> topic -> subject, but one could argue that topic and subject are the same thing. Is there another combination I could use? This comes from someone who does programming for a living, where this kind of things are very usual and easy to achieve. Thanks.

If three nouns are the objects of a verb, do you need the definite article with each? Posted: 20 Aug 2021 10:07 PM PDT Does a sentence with multiple objects, the first object taking the definite article, need to have the definite article repeated with each noun. He grabbed the book, the flowers, and the chocolate. Would the following following sentence ever be grammatically correct? He grabbed the book, flowers, and chocolate.

Question of condition (sort of) Posted: 20 Aug 2021 09:09 PM PDT What is the term for someone who causes/allows themselves to experience a similar pain to someone else as a way of empathizing with them or making it up to them? For example a person witnesses the assault of another person, and allows the assaulted person to attack them without resistance; as a way of making it right for the initially assaulted person? I believe there is a medical term for this, but I am not sure.

What is the correct term to describe literary works that are only partly fictional? Posted: 21 Aug 2021 05:11 AM PDT I'm trying to find the correct English word to describe a body of literature that is fiction in essence, but all background like places, circumstances, organizations, etc. is actually borrowed from the real world. Generally, we broadly categorize the work into fiction (such as Harry Potter, LOTR, etc.) and non-fiction (self-help and financial books, psychology, history, etc). However, bordering between the two, there are fictional books that have a background in the real world. Below are two examples: Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code: Brown's fiction generally involve a rich background of art, architecture, history, etc.. of the REAL world and claimed as actual facts in the book itself. In this novel, Brown describes in vivid details, a religious organization called Opus Dei and a secret society called priory of sion that actually exists since the time of Da Vinci. John Grisham's The Testament: Grisham is another author who writes pure fiction, but the background is filled with intricate details about the US legal system and FBI in the real world. Since they are not pure fiction, what is the right term to define these novels? Semi-fiction or part-fiction seems logical, but I don't see them used anywhere. The much popularized term science fiction is good, but doesn't come handy in this situation.

Meaning and origin of British/Australian slang word 'tut' Posted: 21 Aug 2021 07:21 AM PDT About twenty years ago I overheard a girl from the north of England laughingly advise a friend to get ready for a night out by telling her to 'slap some tut on your face'. She clearly meant 'put on some make-up'. I had already heard an Australian informally use the same, or a similar-sounding word, 'tut', to mean 'toilet'. I have also seen it defined on a website of British slang as: 'tut Noun. Rubbish, nonsense. E.g."Whatever he told you about me is just a load of tut." or "I think we need to clear up all this tut before your parents arrive." Are the three meanings of make-up, toilet and rubbish linked by some excremental ur-word, and if so does anyone know the origin?

Is there a difference in pronunciation between "wood" and "would"? Posted: 21 Aug 2021 07:04 AM PDT My friends and I were debating whether would and wood are pronounced differently. Are they?

Usage of "we" as plural second-person Posted: 21 Aug 2021 04:38 AM PDT I often hear people saying phrases of the type "How are we doing over here?" by servers at restaurants, for example. Obviously they mean "How are you (plural) doing?" Where does this type of usage of "we" come from? Is this pronoun misuse a regional thing? Has it entered mainstream American English? Am I wrong in thinking that it is incorrect?

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