Thursday, January 6, 2022

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Alternative and larger scope of Advertising

Posted: 06 Jan 2022 04:37 AM PST

I'm trying to describe an abstract concept, just like advertising something, but not only for paid advertising, also include other user friendly activities like cross promotion, engage the audience. What is the best word to describe that kind of abstract concept similar to advertising? Is promotion can use like the situations I described? Thanks!

Another word question is about, when during a promotion activity, if in an hour, the employees try hard to call out to sell more, what is the best word to describe this temporary activity? Is hype a bad word? Thanks!

Best Regards, Solomon

Is it correct to use ‘to’ twice in a sentence like this?

Posted: 06 Jan 2022 04:13 AM PST

Here's the sentence;

There are individuals who agree to encourage kids to spend much time at school for their better achievements.

I'm unsure about this part 'agree to encourage kids to spend'.

Future Perfect and Future Perfect Progressive for past assumptions

Posted: 06 Jan 2022 02:25 AM PST

I would greatly appreciate your help with resolving one doubt I have and have been struggling to clear up.

It concerns the Future Perfect's and Future Perfect Progressive's more advanced usage - expressing past assumptions.

According to: https://english.lingolia.com/en/grammar/tenses/future-perfect-simple https://english.lingolia.com/en/grammar/tenses/future-perfect-progressive

Future Perfect - assumptions about something that has probably happened

Example:

He will probably have noticed that his bike is broken.

Future Perfect Progressive - assumptions about what was happening at a certain time in the past.

Example:

There was an accident last week. The driver won't have been paying attention to the road signs.

From the above description, it seems this usage in the simple form is more connected to the present - as in talking about what has happened by now. In the progressive form it appears to refer to any time in the past - also finished events and periods, things which happened before specific points in the past. Would this interpretation of those examples be correct? This seems to be a pretty major and unusual difference of usage between the simple and progressive form. Or perhaps Future Perfect Simple for assumptions could also work with past tenses? Would it be correct to say:

He will probably have noticed that his bike was broken.
He will probably have noticed that his bike was being stolen.

Mind you, the first two examples come from a source and are correct. I'm not looking for alternative, more common or natural, ways to express this - my question is if it would be correct to also use the past tenses with the simple form of Future Perfect to the same effect (assumptions about past events). Many thanks.

Is "the hole where the tooth had been" acceptable

Posted: 06 Jan 2022 01:41 AM PST

The hole where the tooth had been was now filled with cotton ( a dentist had just extracted the tooth.)

I wrote the sentence, but I hesitated using the relative clause, because I suddenly realized it would suggest the tooth had been in a hole, which is apparently not true - there wasn't a hole before the extraction.

Do you native speakers feel the sentence acceptable?

Origin of "the likes of which X has [or have or had] never seen"

Posted: 05 Jan 2022 11:46 PM PST

One of Donald Trump's favorite rhetorical flourishes was (and perhaps still is) the wording "the likes of which X has [or have] never seen." While president, he used it on a number of memorable occasions. For example, in connection with his popular support (spoken at his inauguration in January 2017):

"You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement, the likes of which the world has never seen before."

In connection with North Korea's saber rattling in 2017:

"North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. ... They will be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before."

In connection with protectionism in 2019:

"Because without tariffs, we would be absolutely, outside of something that I won't even mention, we would be absolutely in a competitive disadvantage, the likes of which you've never seen."

And in connection with the prospective election of Joe Biden as president in 2020:

"This election is a choice between a Trump super-recovery and … a Biden Depression. You will have a depression the likes of which we have never seen outside, perhaps, 1929."

Expressions of this form have clearly been around for some time—although, as Peter Shor notes in an answer to the peripherally related question the likes of which has/have, the phrase seems originally to have used the singular like rather than the plural likes. Today, "the likes of which" (red line) appears to be somewhat more common than "the like of which" (blue line) in published works, to judge from the following Ngram chart, although Ngram indicates that the crossover occurred quite recently (in 1993):

I have two questions about this expression:

  1. When did "the like[s] of which X has [or have or had] never seen" first appear in print?

  2. When and under what circumstances did "the likes" appear in place of "the like" in the expression?

I will post the results of my own research as an answer beneath this post.

Meaning of 'with loss'

Posted: 05 Jan 2022 11:45 PM PST

What does the prepositional phrase 'with loss' mean in the below sentence? Does it mean that he suffered loss as a result of scattering the army, or that their army suffered loss as a result of his scattering it?

He scattered their army with loss.

Residual soil or surplus soil

Posted: 06 Jan 2022 05:13 AM PST

What do you call soil from earthwork in construction— soil that may be remaining at some places, and that won't be used even after the construction project is finished?

I have two candidates Residual soil and Surplus soil

Which is the best for describing soil from earthwork in construction?

Or is there any other word?

What does "tethered voice" mean?

Posted: 05 Jan 2022 06:19 PM PST

"Why?" "Who else?" I sat back, away from this. But then he went on, saying in his tethered voice, "Correct me if I'm wrong. Did you ever meet anybody happier than Jennifer? Did you ever hear about anybody happier than Jennifer? More stable? She was, she was sunny." "No you're not wrong, Colonel Tom. But the minute you really go into someone. You and I both know that there's always enough pain."

Can someone please explain what does it mean to speak in a tethered voice? Or better, can someone suggest a synonym?

Unsplit phrasal verbs with two particles?

Posted: 06 Jan 2022 01:00 AM PST

In English, the following phrase would sound unnatural:

-You can change the brightness settings, adjust the volume, and turn on or off functions.

However, if we split the phrase at the end, it sounds better:

-You can change the brightness settings, adjust the volume, and turn functions on or off.

Here's another example:

Turn on and off the TV with the remote.

Turn the TV on and off with the remote.

I can't find a specific rule explaining why we would usually split the phrase in this case. Since phrasal verbs using multiple particles are kind of rare, there aren't many situations where it even becomes an issue. But I currently have to deal with someone insisting that we should write sentences like "Turn up and down the volume of the speakers."

What's the meaning of "jump [direct object]" without a preposition?

Posted: 05 Jan 2022 04:51 PM PST

We usually say jump at a person or jump over a turnstile.

But very often we hear the following:

  • jump a person
  • jump a turnstile

Does this usage have a single specific meaning?

If we assume that it means jump at (from the 1st example), then the 2nd example "jump [at] a turnstile" doesn't make sense, since that one seems to imply "jump over something."

Note: I'm in America.

How to say "I would like you to know..." but begin with "You, who I would like ..."?

Posted: 05 Jan 2022 10:14 PM PST

I would like to say something like "You, who I would like you to know about this". But the second "you" seems wrong. What is the correct way to write this sentence?

Military term for "destroyed" or "not functional" [closed]

Posted: 05 Jan 2022 02:09 PM PST

I'm writing a science fiction story where the pilot's ship has crashed is no longer able to fly. Waht would be a good military term for that?

What is the adjective for when someone is unnecessarily prescriptive?

Posted: 05 Jan 2022 01:48 PM PST

As in, let's say a person is so focused on the exact meaning of something that they lose sight of the malleable quality of things or ideas.

The difference between "departure" and "deviation" [closed]

Posted: 05 Jan 2022 02:40 PM PST

I am writing a technical report that highlights the advantages of 2D (two dimensional) modeling compared with 1D modeling. I would like to mention that the 2D simulations better capture the physics of the studied phenomemon and show the departure/deviation of 1D results from the measurements.

I have seen numerous standard examples where both departure and deviation are used to describe how far something is from an expected result or an accepted norm, but I am not sure which one fits academic context I am interested in.

What is "intangible cultural heritage"? and why does it have 3 million,700 thousand references on Google?

Posted: 06 Jan 2022 01:54 AM PST

The phrase: "patrimonio cultural inmaterial" has 3,750,000 references.

This week I received a GMail message:

Dear María, 670 new papers that match the query "Patrimonio cultural inmaterial" have been added to Academia since you last searched for it.

I have already quite a few papers on this topic copied onto a hard drive file; I have read fifty or more academic papers; as a craftswomens cooperative, we would like to understand what these professionals are talking about.

The writing strikes me as quite opaque and stylized; written for specialized readers.

This is obviously taking up a lot of the time and attention of academic social anthopologists; so we checked to see if "Intangible Cultural Heritage" were a buzz-word in academic/government circles of the USA, as well. Turns out it is: this phrase has almost 4 Google million references.

The papers I have read are turgid and tedious to plow through. None of them have any economic content, in other words the ideas are NOT related to how a culture creator could generate income. In the present economic crisis which began decades ago, anything else is just so much bla-bla-bla.

Maybe the authors are smarter than us and the important points they make are over our heads?

It comes back around to my question: what is "Intangible Cultural Heritage" supposed to mean?

What does the indicated phrase REALLY mean, if there is a difference. Where did this come from?

Is there anything in this that could me meaningful or useful to the Mexican artisans like us?

Rustle up, cook up, google up—what’s up with phrasal verbs?

Posted: 06 Jan 2022 01:27 AM PST

I was reading Why is "rustle up" different from "rustle"? which I came across as I was looking for a duplicate for google up meaning on ELL, and it made me realize how little I know about phrasal verb even though I use them all the time.

The answers and comments talk about phrasal verbs and the exact meaning of these phrases specifically, but I'm wondering about the limits on cooking up phrasal verbs. My understanding is that a phrasal verb is a verb combined with a preposition or adverb (or both) into one semantic unit.

Is there any limit on the types of verbs we can use or is it a science the shit out of it situation where almost anything goes?

I guess that there would be limits to what prepositions or adverbs would combine with different verbs and still "make sense" or not be awkward. I could "google up some answers" but I probably wouldn't "grab some grapes and stomp up some wine". That isn't a very strong example, but I hope it's good enough to figure out what I mean.

Are there any "structural" or other limits when we're whipping up phrasal verbs? I read over Topography of phrasal verbs but I'm not looking for a list; I'm asking if there might be some verbs that are excluded from being used in a phrasal verb for a particular reason.

I realize this may be a little broad due to my ignorance, and realize that not every verb that sidles up to a preposition is necessarily a "phrasal" verb. Maybe the answer is just "you can mash up whatever words you want to if you don't mind the strange looks". I'm hoping it's more interesting than that though.

Is there a term for a child born after the death of its sibling?

Posted: 05 Jan 2022 06:16 PM PST

A couple loses their only child and some time later they have another child. Is there a term for that second child? I once heard a parent use a phrase to describe it, but can't remember anymore.

"had" permissible?

Posted: 06 Jan 2022 12:01 AM PST

Grammar for CAE and Proficiency, Hewings Backdrop: Stephen shares his experience after a job interview.

I admitted __________ (have problems) in the early stages of the work. [his PhD research]

The answers are as follows (I have an issue with the last one)

admitted having problems
admitted having had problems
admitted to having had problems
to them that I had had problems
to them that I had problems

Clearly, early stages of the work are in the past at the moment of speaking and so past perfect should be used in reported speech. Why past simple then?

What is the grammatical construction of the clause "Emotions that Maria had thought were buried deep enough ..."

Posted: 06 Jan 2022 01:00 AM PST

Something in that should have upset Maria, but all she could concentrate on was the pain and anguish that ravished her body. It was like a silent demon had lay dormant inside of her and fed on all the pain that had ever been inflicted on her and those she holds most dear. A demon that knew how to bide its time and unleash its festering anger on anyone that was responsible for its creation. Was the inner demon part of Maria? Or was it separate and just used the woman's body as a place to hibernate? Only Maria could answer those questions, and she was in no condition to consider them. So many emotions fed that silent demon. Emotions that Maria had thought were buried deep enough so they could not betray her at the worst possible moment.

"Emotions that Maria had thought were buried deep enough so they could not betray her at the worst possible moment."

Is Emotions the object of thought? But how do you just "think" emotions? It is ungrammatical.

Or perhaps, that Maria had thought were buried deep enough is just a relative clause modifying Emotions? But this is also ungrammatical, there's no main clause in the sentence now. Is the original sentence grammatically correct in the first place?

Does "I believe as strongly as anyone that" mean "as strongly as the most believing person"?

Posted: 06 Jan 2022 03:00 AM PST

I've always been somewhat confused by this phrase because the tone of the context, which is often refuting someone else, is that they believe in it fully--to the extreme--but the actual words suggest that they mean they are in agreement with the general broad belief of society (which do not usually overlap in these usages).

When to use On/In/At?

Posted: 06 Jan 2022 02:03 AM PST

When should I use On/In/At?

I was In/At School? In/At Home? See you On/In/At Monday? I left the book In/At my parent's house?

Other use cases I cn't think of right now?

And why is there a distinction?

Thanks!

The verb for when someone's "autonomy" is violated

Posted: 05 Jan 2022 06:51 PM PST

They are going to make the decision without telling him. I think they are ---- his autonomy.

What verb to use for the above sentence? Violate? Deprive him from? Harm? ...

Is it proper to use a period after an abbreviation within a sentence?

Posted: 05 Jan 2022 11:00 PM PST

For example in the following list: "Technology Entrepreneurship, and Advanced Leadership" simplified to "Tech Entrepreneurship, and Adv. Leadership"

Origin of 'wee hours'

Posted: 05 Jan 2022 07:57 PM PST

What is the origin of the term wee hours? (Also small hours)

Wee hours the early hours of the morning after midnight. (Oxford Dictionary of English)

I also looked at Merriam, the Free Dictionary and Wiktionary. None offer a etymology of the phrase.

The Times of India claim to, but don't :

Wee hours mean the early hours of a day, or the period immediately after midnight. They are called so because the word 'wee' in present-day English means 'very small or tiny'. As these hours are the beginning of the new day they came to be referred to as the wee hours.

That comment fails to explain why being early should equate to small.

My guess

Hours have not always been consistent lengths of time. A day used to be divided into two twelve hour periods, like today, but unlike today, they were not of even lengths: the day (sunrise to sunset) was twelve hours and the night (sunset to sunrise) was twelve hours.

This meant that in the summer day hours were longer than night hours, and in the winter night hours were longer than day. In the summertime the hours after midnight (the wee/small hours) were smaller than the day hours. However this would mean that wee hours only refers to night in the summer; in the winter wee hours should refer to the daytime.

What's the best way to write nested "and" clauses?

Posted: 05 Jan 2022 11:34 PM PST

Say I have the following sentence:

I went to the store to buy eggs, regular, chocolate and soy milk, apples, and bread.

There are two and clauses here, one that describes the kinds of milk I was buying, and one that describes the other groceries.

One option would be:

I went to the store to buy eggs, regular milk, chocolate milk, soy milk, apples, and bread.

But that seems redundant and wordy. What's best? A big problem with the first one is that it's not immediately clear whether I mean chocolate or chocolate milk, since chocolate can be either a noun or an adjective in this case.

"Or", or "to put it otherwise", which one is better in this paragraph?

Posted: 05 Jan 2022 02:00 PM PST

As Benvensite wrote, the linguistic structure of Greek created the predisposition for the notion "to be" to have a philosophical vocation. To put it otherwise, as I said, to assert solemnly, as Parmenides does, that there're things means admitting that there is what is being, or, more generally, by being, it is. (By Being, It Is, by Nestor Luis Cordero)

I want to know whether "or" could be put in place of "to put it otherwise" to make the sentence more concise?

Writing “the class of 2014” in a résumé?

Posted: 05 Jan 2022 08:45 PM PST

Is "class of 2014" correct?

Is "class of '14" correct?

Assuming the reader is aware of the context, is simply using "'14" correct?
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