Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange |
- Proper formulation of "contribute to" in subordinate sentence
- What is meant by "offence can scarcely be visited on the quantity"
- Use of "put something in" vs "in which to put something"
- Are "condition on" and "requirement on" correct? [closed]
- What do you call a position where one succeeds automatically
- A phrase to describe someone's bad financial record
- Why I hear in a lot of movies the sentence "We was" or "they was"
- fishing term "double" [migrated]
- Bare infinitive or present participle? [closed]
- Hardly/Scarcely...than
- The use of the semicolon [closed]
- What's the meaning of "drop down into your body"? [closed]
- what's the difference in meaning between an adjective and the structure "noun + of + article + noun"?
- How can a "need" (particularly a relativistic one) that isn't utterly imperative (but still necessary) be succinctly expressed?
- Why is "Geography's test was difficult" ungrammatical?
- Get married: act vs ceremony
- What's a phrase for a compromise in which both sides are unhappy?
- Practice and Practise
- Is there a sense of "caravanserai" which includes an elaborate transportation - such as of a circus?
- "In the first instance" ... active in contemporary populations?
- What is the phrase that means a quality that is "constant throughout" a larger thing
- 'Without so much as a call or a letter – he showed up.' Is this grammatically correct?
- Parallelism in clauses?
- Is the “as if” in this sentence correct? I don’t think the right terms were used, it doesn’t sound right to me
- Social, Political, and Economical in One Word?
- Term to express a range of fluctuation
- Non-finite clause complementation of complex transitive verbs
- "Taste" is to "flavor" as "touch" and "sight" are to what?
- Origin of "man!", "(oh) boy!", and "oh brother"
- How do the rules of English inform understanding of one of our language's most disputed sentences?
| Proper formulation of "contribute to" in subordinate sentence Posted: 30 Aug 2021 09:44 AM PDT I am writing a text about our project (say Project A), and I want to say that something which I am talking about (the three dots below), was motivated by requirements of project X, which I didn't talk about before. I want to say that our project A contributed the data to project X and the requirements of project X were a motivation for something I am talking before. I wanted to say it all simply in a subsentence (or subordinate clause or how do you call it). Could it be said like this? :
or like this? :
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| What is meant by "offence can scarcely be visited on the quantity" Posted: 30 Aug 2021 09:44 AM PDT The full text is below.
The Bungalow and The Tent or a Visit to Ceylon (1854) by Edward Sullivan, pg. viii What does it mean by "the offence can scarcely be visited on the quantity"?  |
| Use of "put something in" vs "in which to put something" Posted: 30 Aug 2021 09:12 AM PDT What is the rule or the error involving, for example;
vs
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| Are "condition on" and "requirement on" correct? [closed] Posted: 30 Aug 2021 08:22 AM PDT Suppose we're discussing some object X and we have specified some property this X is supposed to possess. Using various synonyms we could say that we've specified a "restriction/condition/requirement [preposition] X". Now, I'm positive that "on" is correct in the case of "restriction" but in the latter two cases my intuition fails me. My first reaction is to use "on" here as well, and Google finds thousands of such uses in academic literature, but on second thought I'm wondering if this is just people being mislead by other languages... Perhaps, "for" is preferable for "requirement"? The more I think about this, the more confused I become =)  |
| What do you call a position where one succeeds automatically Posted: 30 Aug 2021 08:39 AM PDT Is there a word for a position that one succeeds in as a result of occupying a lower position? E.g., say, a committee has elected a Chair and Vice-Chair for a term of 3 years. The Vice-Chair will become the Chair automatically after 3 years. As a result, the elections are held every 3 years only for the Vice-Chair position. So, if I am elected a Vice-Chair for the term 2021-2024, how do I communicate in my CV that I will also be a Chair starting 2024-2027? Is it correct to say I am the "ex-officio" Chair for 2024-2027? Or should I say I am the "Chair-elect" for 2024-2027? The latter is not accurate because the committee does not elect a Chair. It only elects a Vice-Chair, who becomes Chair after 3 years. -RD  |
| A phrase to describe someone's bad financial record Posted: 30 Aug 2021 07:42 AM PDT Let's assume the context where a woman approaches a bank to secure a loan for her bold but lucrative business idea but she gets turned down because she doesn't have anything for a collateral and her financial record(bank transactions, any previous smaller loans, the CIBIL Score for the requested loan amount and so on) is next to nothing. Overall, the banks don't have anything to proceed with other than the business idea itself. My question is, is there a phrase to describe her lack of financial record? I understand that the question sounded particularly vague but the context would help you better understand it. Edit: "Credit Score" or "CIBIL Score" does fit the context very much. But what I wish to have is a phrase or an idiom. So I have changed the tags now. Sorry for the discrepancy.  |
| Why I hear in a lot of movies the sentence "We was" or "they was" Posted: 30 Aug 2021 06:19 AM PDT Sorry if someone already answered it, but as I could not find it, I decided to post the question. For a while I've been looking movies ( normally USA movies ) and I hear always these statements that sound strange to me:
At the beginning I though that it might be an intended error, but I hear it more and more and I wonder whether this is a correct sentence. Or perhaps is just something only applicable to USA English ? Thank you  |
| fishing term "double" [migrated] Posted: 30 Aug 2021 06:11 AM PDT In fishing tv program, one of the angler sometimes says "Here comes the double.", "We are at the double." right before catching the sight of the fish coming up to the surface. First I thought he caught two fish, but he didn't. Can someone help me to figure out what he means?  |
| Bare infinitive or present participle? [closed] Posted: 30 Aug 2021 04:14 AM PDT Which of the following two sentences is correct? The one that uses the bare infinitive 'hear', or the one that uses the present participle 'hearing'?
Or
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| Posted: 30 Aug 2021 09:43 AM PDT I have been taught that "Hardly...than" doesn't exist. However, I have found many sources like Longman and Merriam-Webster stating otherwise, so I've become very confused. It is true that "hardly" can come with "than" as in:
carrying the same meaning as
 |
| The use of the semicolon [closed] Posted: 30 Aug 2021 02:21 AM PDT So here is a sentence:
Is it grammatically correct with its use of the semicolon? If not, how should it be corrected? On another note, besides the semicolon, are there any other errors with the sentence?  |
| What's the meaning of "drop down into your body"? [closed] Posted: 30 Aug 2021 02:07 AM PDT
Q_ "What does drop down into your body mean in the paragraph above?  |
| Posted: 30 Aug 2021 09:02 AM PDT Example:
Or
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| Posted: 30 Aug 2021 03:15 AM PDT Consider use of 'dietary needs' in following sentence: "I share some of my food with my dog, though in limited quantities since his dietary needs are different."; while domestic dogs do have different dietary needs than humans in the strict sense, the intent is to convey a softer meaning, as there is overlap hence being okay to eat some of the same (atleast in in the dog-to-human direction —and chosen wisely indeed healthier albe more premium and pricey than gourmet dogfood, whereas less purposeful selections of human food not as much). Something connoting a sense of an "optimality requirement" as contrasted with the default of a more severe "must-do requirement" implying dire consequence for failing to adhere or the other direction a desire-sans-need "want" would be ideal. Whereas the default noun "needs" can be thought of as "need-to-haves", the meaning I'm after is approximately "ought-to-haves" (although I'm open to a verb or [re-]phrasal expressions fitting the meaning as well, preferably succinct) while still suggesting some nontrivial degree of necessitation.  |
| Why is "Geography's test was difficult" ungrammatical? Posted: 30 Aug 2021 09:54 AM PDT I've been working on this minimal pair and sentence B is ungrammatical but I don't know the reason so far. I have to give an answer contrasting both sentences but B seems grammatical to me. Does anyone know how can I explain it? Thank you in advance. A. Today's test was difficult.  |
| Posted: 30 Aug 2021 05:19 AM PDT
I don't understand the purported difference in meaning between the act and the ceremony of getting married. Maybe using wedding here would be ambiguous, with a possible interpretation "they didn't like the wedding planner's whole organization"?  |
| What's a phrase for a compromise in which both sides are unhappy? Posted: 30 Aug 2021 06:52 AM PDT I feel like I've heard a phrase like "so-and-so's deal" or "such-and-such agreement" that describes an arrangement/deal/compromise that leaves all sides unhappy. Like "pyrrhic victory", but for agreements. Anyone know anything like this? EDIT: As a fictional example... two people are getting married. One has family in New York, the other in LA. Rather than have one family have to fly across the country while the other stays put, they decide to meet in the middle and hold the wedding in Oscar, Kansas. No one, including the couple, has any connection to Kansas, and no one in the situation is happy. (Nothing against Kansas, but it's not a resolution that satisfies anyone in this situation.)  |
| Posted: 30 Aug 2021 05:58 AM PDT I recall that at school (in the late 1960s/early 1970s) in England I was taught how and when to use Practice and Practise. What I was taught was this:
But what I was taught - about the verb form 1 and 2 - does not seem to be reflected in modern reference works. See, for example https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/practise https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/practise Am I misremembering what I was taught about the two verb forms (1 and 2) with different meanings? Was I wrongly taught? Or was anyone else taught the same? I am aware that there are "c" and "s" variations between British English and American English, and between nouns and verbs, and no doubt spellings may change over time, but what I am interested in is not that but rather where in the same time period and same country different spelling of the verb is used to distinguish between meaning 1 and meaning 2. An example of what I am looking for would be a passage like this "When I visited my father who practises as a doctor he was practicing the piano." A passage like this "When I visited my father who practices as a doctor he was practising the piano." would be equally interesting. This is a bit speculative but, in case it gives anyone any clues, I recall that some time ago on some kind of discussion group someone explained the usage above and that person was based in India. My school was in England and the teacher was of English descent but I suppose that it is not impossible that he grew up in India as he would have been born in the colonial period well before India gained independence and when there was a sizeable English population.  |
| Is there a sense of "caravanserai" which includes an elaborate transportation - such as of a circus? Posted: 30 Aug 2021 06:48 AM PDT The OED lists only one non-metaphorical sense of the word caravanserai - (from caravan - etymology Persian). A kind of inn in Eastern countries where caravans put up, being a large quadrangular building with a spacious court in the middle. This is endorsed by Wikipedia which provides much the same meaning. However I have most often heard caravanserai used to describe a motley transportantion on a number of vehicles - such as of a circus moving from one place to the next. Of course a caravan was originally: A company of merchants, pilgrims, or others, in the East or northern Africa, travelling together for the sake of security, esp. through the desert. So the notion of transportation was inherent to the word's beginnings. Hence I am puzzled by the idea of caravanserai being a fixed building or settlement. Consider the following use - which accords entirely with the way I have most often heard the word used in Britain- from Six Wives: the Queens of Henry VIII by David Starkey (London 2003) p.230. It was in any case a day of upheaval at Court as it was the beginning of the Progress. The whole courtly apparatus of 'portable magnificence' - the tapestries and cushions, jewels and plate, household utensils and the King's own clothes, bedding and travelling library, medicine chest and personal petty-cash - had been packed into their special bags, boxes and chests and loaded on to carts. The carts had been covered with bear hides to protect them against the elements and the great caravanserai of the Court stood ready to depart from Greenwich to the first port of call of the Progress: Waltham Abbey in Essex. This seems to refer, as I would have expected, to the travelling body rather than to anything fixed.  |
| "In the first instance" ... active in contemporary populations? Posted: 30 Aug 2021 07:00 AM PDT On a site I happened to use the phrase "In the first instance" ... (Not that this is relevant, but notice the many upvotes suggesting that presumably it reaches baseline understandability in a typical mixed-language, mixed-age, mixed-continent SE audience.) I was utterly astounded that someone did not know the phrase, Astonishingly, more people had not heard the phrase; my total astonishment / disgust with the Youth Of Today etc. continued when an an otherwise highly literate user figured it may be "regional" or such ...! In particular: there was a (to me, completely bizarre) thought that it is more "descriptive than proscriptive" (or, something?) My questions (here on the "Excellent English SE site") are
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| What is the phrase that means a quality that is "constant throughout" a larger thing Posted: 30 Aug 2021 04:53 AM PDT I'm trying to say: throughout someone's life, hard work was a constant theme and I was going to use:"his whole life was underscored by hard work" but I'm pretty sure that's not what that means at all and it might not even make sense. Does anyone know what phrase I'm looking for?  |
| 'Without so much as a call or a letter – he showed up.' Is this grammatically correct? Posted: 30 Aug 2021 05:01 AM PDT Is the sentence below grammatically correct? Without so much as a call or a letter – he showed up. I know that dashes can be used to emphasize parenthetical information, but I feel as though the parenthetical element typically comes within a set of dashes or after a single dash, not before. After all, dashes typically draw attention to and emphasize what comes after (or within). Therefore, does placing a dash after a parenthetical element still draw attention to the parenthetical element, or does it draw attention to the independent clause? Is it even grammatically correct to use a dash in a sentence with a parenthetical element to emphasize the independent clause rather than the parenthetical? Here's an example of what I'm wondering: He showed up – without so much as a call or a letter. (The emphasis on "without so much..." in this sentence, yes?) Without so much as a call or a letter – he showed up. (The emphasis is on "...he showed up" in this sentence, yes? But is this grammatically appropriate? Stylistically?) Thank you!  |
| Posted: 30 Aug 2021 08:02 AM PDT Is it possible to have different tenses in the contrasting/comparative adverbial clauses and the main clause of the sentence OR do the verbs always have to be parallel according to parallelism? ex: While primary school students used to sit on bulky chairs two decades ago, today students enjoy orthopedic chairs. [contrasting past versus present] ex: Just like I am living with my parents now, I will be living with them 10 years from now. [comparing present with the future]  |
| Posted: 30 Aug 2021 06:01 AM PDT Emotions stay locked away, as if an animal stuck in a barn.  |
| Social, Political, and Economical in One Word? Posted: 30 Aug 2021 05:23 AM PDT As Afro-Eurasia means Africa, Europe, and Asia, what is a similar word for social, political, and economical? Sociopolitical and socioeconomical exist, but is there a way to incorporate all 3? I find myself in need of such a word when writing history papers.
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| Term to express a range of fluctuation Posted: 30 Aug 2021 03:08 AM PDT I am trying to make a term for a function equipped on an image sensor. The term is to express "the upper limit of fluctuation allowance in image size which is specified in %" The value of percentage does not express the ratio of the enlarged image size compared to the original image size, so for example, 150% does not mean that the sensor will only detect a 150% bigger image to the original image. Instead, it is to express the range of percentage of size fluctuation for sensor to accept to detect the shape (image) which makes 150% to mean that the sensor will detect an upscaled original image in all upscaling rate from 101% to 150%, such as a 102%, 117%, or 142% bigger image to the original image. Does any of the followings describe the concept well? If not, what is the problem?
Or,
Or, maybe "percentage" better be "rate"? Also, all of the candidates seem redundant. Any term to combine some words? Thank you in advance.  |
| Non-finite clause complementation of complex transitive verbs Posted: 30 Aug 2021 08:22 AM PDT This question has been bothering me for a while. It came up when I was reading Chapter 16 of "A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language." How to explain the grammatical structure of the following four sentences? "We knew him to be a spy." What category do the four non-finite clauses in boldface fall into? They do not seem to fall into any of relative, nominal, comparative and adverbial clauses.  |
| "Taste" is to "flavor" as "touch" and "sight" are to what? Posted: 30 Aug 2021 08:25 AM PDT For the senses, we have:
So one tastes a flavor, smells an aroma, hears a sound, feels a(n) _____, and sees a(n) _____. For the former, part of me wants to say texture, but I feel that is too specific; for the latter, I want to use visual or sight, but but does that make sense, seeing a visual or a sight?  |
| Origin of "man!", "(oh) boy!", and "oh brother" Posted: 30 Aug 2021 07:45 AM PDT Where did these interjections:
come from, and why are they all male? If you don't know their current meanings as interjections, it sounds very strange to say Man! when you are disappointed or frustrated, and Oh boy! when you are excited (although people are increasingly using it for other emotional contexts), and Oh brother (well, I'm not even sure of this interjection's usage). Why are they used as interjections, and why are they all male?  |
| How do the rules of English inform understanding of one of our language's most disputed sentences? Posted: 30 Aug 2021 08:36 AM PDT Yes, historical context is important, but forget it for a moment. Taken at face value, what does the text mean?
Is the leading clause an essential modifier or an absolute phrase? This is not a political question! Justify your answer with appeals to rules of English usage. What say you, grammarians?  |
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