Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange |
- Please Help: "Audience" usage
- General ideas to write essays on philosophical(or sort of open) topics? [closed]
- What is the correct preposition, they were all (on/at/of) the same view?
- Two different verb tenses that involve “must have.”
- Can leveraging only tense convey that some action is no longer relevant?
- Something that defines or describes bilateral movement/direction
- Hypernym of convergence and divergence
- how direction of a word should be written. for example - word is.... Here if i write 'is' is written right to this word then it is not clear because
- What does demolished mean from "How Green Is Greensburg?"
- What’s the rude way to say “You just said something that I already know”?
- What's the nuances when using "modicum"? Can I say "a modicum of coffee"?
- Word for taking some action hoping it will encourage you to improve your behavior
- Do you smelt ore?
- "the dog I kicked" vs. "the dog that I kicked" [migrated]
- Help with weak phrase construction from repetition - "I'm proud because" [closed]
- Honorific for the dead for use in articles published online [closed]
- Was this subject complement diagrammed correctly?
- "Gentle confines"
- Prepositions for the word "placement" or "clinical placement"
- Differences between "carton" and "box" (Express service)
- "Of" used to say which specific thing belonging to a more general type you are referring to
- A word to describe responses such as "I see" and "Okay"
- Etymology of "If I had my druthers..."
| Posted: 08 Dec 2021 11:10 PM PST I want to write "My whole life, I have been audience to a..." Does that make sense? Should I instead write "been the audience to..." or "been an audience to..." Am I using this correctly? Thank you. People commonly say "given audience to" so I feel like it should work. |
| General ideas to write essays on philosophical(or sort of open) topics? [closed] Posted: 08 Dec 2021 11:03 PM PST I wanted to get some general ideas on how should I approach sort of philosophical or open ended essays. Consider following topics for example.
The requirement is 1200 words. Are there common strategies used(or known) by you that can be applied to such essays? Are there any resources that cover this type of thing. PS: This is not a homework request. The topics are for example purposes. |
| What is the correct preposition, they were all (on/at/of) the same view? Posted: 08 Dec 2021 11:59 PM PST
What is the correct preposition in this example? The meaning of this example is that they have the same opinion, so what is the correct to say ? |
| Two different verb tenses that involve “must have.” Posted: 08 Dec 2021 10:53 PM PST
Are both correct? Certainly, in number 2, I can't just say "must had noticed me tense up" just because it's past tense. I want to know if this "must-have" changes the implication of the verb tense. |
| Can leveraging only tense convey that some action is no longer relevant? Posted: 08 Dec 2021 10:38 PM PST There are two sentences I myself come up with:
Is #2 grammatically correct and idiomatic? Does #2 imply that I didn't check, but I have already checked it (e.g. today). Does #1 imply that I haven't checked yet? Or is it ambiguous? |
| Something that defines or describes bilateral movement/direction Posted: 08 Dec 2021 09:41 PM PST The Hudson River can flow both upwards and downwards. An internet connection allows the download and upload of data. Is there a more suitable or alternate word to bilateral? Thank you. |
| Hypernym of convergence and divergence Posted: 08 Dec 2021 10:21 PM PST Is there a hypernym for convergence and divergence? It might also encompass similar terms, like separation and reunion. Oscillations can be thought of as a succession of convergence and divergence, but I can't find an umbrella term for these antonyms. |
| Posted: 08 Dec 2021 07:31 PM PST How direction of a word should be written. For example - word is.... Here if i write 'is' is written right to this word then it is not clear because right can be upper than the place where this 'is' is written or even below . If i write in front then it is outside the paper so how should I describe the position of this 'is' with respect to this ' words'? |
| What does demolished mean from "How Green Is Greensburg?" Posted: 08 Dec 2021 10:21 PM PST Read these sentences from "How Green Is Greensburg?"
What does demolished mean in the sentences above? A. avoided B. wrecked C. missed D. involved |
| What’s the rude way to say “You just said something that I already know”? Posted: 09 Dec 2021 12:15 AM PST What's the rude way to say "You just said something that I already know"? For example, two people (John and Paul) on a bus are arguing. John says, "You were touching my leg." Paul replies, "I didn't know that." John says, "Now you do." Of course Paul knows that now, because John just told him in his first sentence; so what John says doesn't add any new information to the conversation. It's purely meant to anger Paul. In my native language, there's a rude word to rebuke people when they say such things. It means "what you said is superfluous", "you needn't say that" and "that's what I already know so you wasted your breath" in a rude way. In English I know we can say "needless to say", "it goes without saying" or "you're stating the obvious", but are they rude enough? Is there a ruder way to convey that meaning? Thank you. |
| What's the nuances when using "modicum"? Can I say "a modicum of coffee"? Posted: 08 Dec 2021 06:22 PM PST I came across this word modicum, which seems a fancy way of saying a little bit. I tried searching on the internet, didn't find it around this kind of usage. |
| Word for taking some action hoping it will encourage you to improve your behavior Posted: 08 Dec 2021 09:11 PM PST I'm looking for a word that means taking some action hoping it will encourage their own good behavior. I'm certain this word exists but I can't remember if it's an adverb or adjective. As an example: Alice wants to improve her personal finances. She buys a subscription to You Need a Budget hoping it will encourage her to start using it and get a handle on her spending. The adverb would be, "Alice ___ly purchased You Need a Budget," or the adjective would be, "Alice made a ____ purchase of You Need a Budget" Another example would be someone with a poor diet suddenly purchasing a lot of vegetables hoping that it will spur them into eating healthier. This person either, "___ly purchased vegetables," or "made a ____ purchase." Words that are similar but not quite right:
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| Posted: 08 Dec 2021 04:19 PM PST Or do you smelt metal FROM ore? I can't tell which one (or both) is correct. I looked up the definition but I'm still not 100% sure. |
| "the dog I kicked" vs. "the dog that I kicked" [migrated] Posted: 08 Dec 2021 03:09 PM PST Are both of the following correct? If so, when should each be used?
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| Help with weak phrase construction from repetition - "I'm proud because" [closed] Posted: 08 Dec 2021 08:09 PM PST I'm writing a paper and I have these 3 sentences. "I'm proud of my work in XYZ. XYZ entails ABC. I'm proud of my work in XYZ because DEF" This seems a little weak and naive of a construction, but I'm struggling to find a better construction for this phrase. |
| Honorific for the dead for use in articles published online [closed] Posted: 08 Dec 2021 05:15 PM PST I'm writing an essay that I intend to publish online. The essay is about the Unix operating system, and I'm referencing an article published by a principal author - Dennis M. Ritchie who passed away in 2011. What words or phrases can I use? For example, if I uses "dear old" I'd write something like this:
Except that "dear old" seems like something one'd use only within family members. Post-closure update: At first I thought (and I'd continue to argue that) the word usage problem in this specific scenario wouldn't be primarily opinion based, but it seems not everyone think so. I'd like to have my question migrated to [Writing.SE]. How would moderators consider this request? |
| Was this subject complement diagrammed correctly? Posted: 08 Dec 2021 11:03 PM PST The sentence is the following. I'm focusing on the part in bold:
It's in this book. The author provides the following diagram: And I think it should look like this, a present participle (curved line) modifying the noun time, both forming a compound adjective: |
| Posted: 08 Dec 2021 06:04 PM PST Where does this phrase come from? It's something I use (usually ironically) and something that's "just there" in my lexicon like "fit as a fiddle". However when I Google it, no origin pops up. It is used as early as 1855:
This occurrence is 164 years old. A commenter below has used Google Ngrams to source "the confines_noun" to around 1650, so 369 years old (earlier if you make the search case insensitive). It is obvious what it means. It has become a kind of frequently used phrase, idiomatic expression, trope or formulaic language. In ironic use it refers to a place which is not gentle at all. So a phrase which lends itself to ironic use, like "your humble servant". It would be great if it turned out to be a phrase first used by Shakespeare or the like. |
| Prepositions for the word "placement" or "clinical placement" Posted: 08 Dec 2021 06:07 PM PST Which of these is correct?
Also, is it better to say I went in or I went to? |
| Differences between "carton" and "box" (Express service) Posted: 08 Dec 2021 05:17 PM PST What's the differences between "carton" & "box"? I didn't know which word to choose when using express to send samples. From the Internet, some say that carton is a smaller box, and some say that cartons are made of paper/boxes can be any kinds of materials. I'm confused if these are correct. Please clarify for my reference. Thank you! |
| "Of" used to say which specific thing belonging to a more general type you are referring to Posted: 08 Dec 2021 03:06 PM PST "Of" can be used to describe the relationship between two close things, one thing being kind of an explanatory element. And gerund is frequently used. For example:
But if I apply this principle to certain sentences....
This sounds stretched and kind of unnatural... But I'm not a native speaker, so I thought it better to ask you guys. Are they grammatically wrong? And if yes, why is that? And if no, is it possible to use this characteristic of "of" with every other nouns? |
| A word to describe responses such as "I see" and "Okay" Posted: 08 Dec 2021 03:40 PM PST While conversing, I sometimes find myself, after listening to what my partner has to say, responding with phrases such as "I see" and "Okay" to indicate that I haven't lost interest but I either don't have a point to add, or the other person hasn't finished talking. Is there a word, preferably informal, to describe this kind of response? |
| Etymology of "If I had my druthers..." Posted: 08 Dec 2021 11:52 PM PST I understand the phrase, "If I had my druthers..." to mean, "If I had my way," as in:
EtymologyOnline.com gives the following note for druthers:
But I'm curious how this morphed into, "If I had my druthers." It would seem that the saying would be:
Also, I'm curious as to the etymology / first use of the full phrase, "If I had my druthers..." |
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