Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

What does the phrase "be matched by GitHub" mean? [closed]

Posted: 23 Mar 2022 08:13 AM PDT

You can also sponsor the work of LaTeX team members through the GitHub sponsor program at the moment for Frank, David and Joseph. Your contribution will be matched by GitHub in the first year and goes 100% to the developers.

What does it mean by "be matched by GitHub"?

The reason why a transitive verb does not have an object

Posted: 23 Mar 2022 07:48 AM PDT

I found the following sentence on the internet. "I need money, and money, I need." It is what a young girl was saying. (She was talking to herself.) Her parent put it down in writing.

Since the verb "need" is a transitive verb essentially, the second "need" is supposed to have an object, but it does not. I would like to know why.

Question: Assuming the second "money" is not pronounced strongly, which option is appropriate?

(a) The reason the object is missing is similar to the reason the following lyrics lack objects . (Purpose: To reduce redundancy.)

"I need you I need you I need I need you baby I need I need I need I need I need I need you baby"

Link to the song: https://showlyrics.net/call-me-song-lyrics-2.html

(b) The object moved before the subject < I > for topicalization or something.

(c) Both (a) and (b) are likely.

(d) None of the above.

Thank you.

What does "a tall question" mean?

Posted: 23 Mar 2022 07:49 AM PDT

During a talk, I heard the expression "this is a tall question".

May someone explain what does it mean?

Write a description of Cat Ba National Park, using the facts and figures below [closed]

Posted: 23 Mar 2022 07:01 AM PDT

Cat Ba National Park is a popular tourist destination familiar to both Vietnamese and international tourists. It is situated on Cat Ba Island, which is 120 km from Hanoi and 20 km east of Hai Phong. Especially, Cat Ba National Park is endowed with both tropical forests and coastal waters with white sand beaches abundant natural resources, beautiful landscapes, and many kinds of rare animals and plants. The total area of the park is 15,200 ha. Besides, there are about 300 species of fish, 40 species of animals, 150 species of birds, and 620 species of plants in the park. Moreover, the national park has many special historic features, especially 6000-year-old stone tools made of human bones. Therefore, I hope to have the opportunity to go to Cat Ba National Park one day soon.

Word for the relationship between you and the present-day descendants of one of your past-life incarnations

Posted: 23 Mar 2022 07:36 AM PDT

Although somewhat (maybe very) fictitious, is there a word for the relationship between (a) you and (b) the present-day descendants of one of your past-life incarnations?

"I met my ___ for lunch" would provide some context for the word, although the fictional context I had in mind is somewhat more elaborate. Briefly:

Although correctly addressed, my mail kept getting returned with "undeliverable" stickers. I finally visited a past-life regression hypnotherapist, and discovered that there's no escaping bad karma: In the 1840's I'd been a pony-express rider, killed by belligerent Indians while crossing the Great Plains, thus losing all the mail I'd been carrying. And the company held me responsible, thereby denying my past-life wife and children all my death and pension benefits. So I tracked down their (and sort-of-my) present-day descendants to apologize. But they just spat in my face -- no escaping bad karma.

The word I'm looking for is for the "sort-of-my present-day descendants".

In the Caribbean waters, there are fish of every hue. Since talking about different kinds of fish, should fish be in plural form here?

Posted: 23 Mar 2022 08:02 AM PDT

  • In the Caribbean waters, there are fish of every hue.

Since one is talking about different kinds of fish, should fish be in plural form here?

sign a contract, secure a contract, close a contract

Posted: 23 Mar 2022 08:20 AM PDT

Which verb comes before the noun "contract"?

Are there any differences between their formality or usage?

  • I have secured a contract for my company.

  • I have closed a contract for my company.

Is there any other word choice that we can use?

Long-term or Long Term?

Posted: 23 Mar 2022 01:21 AM PDT

I'm creating signage for "Long-term Ventilation Unit" and am keeping it as how I just wrote it. But when Googling, I became slightly confused on whether it is "Long Term Ventilation Unit" or the way I wrote it is just fine.

What does phrase "mordantly obscure" mean?

Posted: 23 Mar 2022 03:48 AM PDT

David Foster Wallace uses "mordantly obscure" to describe the films of his character James Incandenza in Infinite Jest.

I know what mordant means. I know what obscure means. But I can't figure out what "mordantly obscure" might mean.

What word is more suitable than regret to describe the feeling of lamenting the fact that you will never have a particular experience?

Posted: 23 Mar 2022 12:58 AM PDT

For example, if I were to say "As a man, my greatest regret is that I will never be able to experience pregnancy or birth". It isn't an actual regret, because nothing has happened or could possibly happen, so it isn't a missed opportunity either per se.

What's the word for someone who consistently replies to positive statements in a contrarian manner?

Posted: 22 Mar 2022 09:49 PM PDT

An example of this would be,

"I like [x]."

And, unprompted, the other party replies,

"I don't like [x], I think [y] about it and that's what makes it bad."

They persist to find reasons to malign or belittle whatever it is that's positive. The contrarian aspect is what's stumping me, otherwise, I'd just say contrarian. If this or naysayer are accurate enough, let me know! I just didn't know if they had the right nuance.

Can "scam," "con," and "defraud" be used interchangeably? [closed]

Posted: 23 Mar 2022 07:12 AM PDT

I've been trying to understand the differences between scam, con, and defraud.

Can these words be used interchangeably? If not, then what is the difference between them?

According to Merriam-Webster for learners, their meaning is the following.

Scam: to deceive and take money from (someone)

Con: to deceive or to trick (someone) : to persuade (someone) by telling lies

Defraud: to trick or cheat someone or something in order to get money; to use fraud in order to get money from a person, an organization, etc.

What does the term "leaden drainage" mean in this paragraph?

Posted: 22 Mar 2022 09:46 PM PDT

The landlady of the Daybreak sat behind her little counter among her cloudy bottles of syrups, baskets of cakes, and leaden drainage for glasses, working at her needle.

(Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit, Chapter 11)

What does the term "leaden drainage" mean?

On the American Uses of the Words Congressman, Representative and Senator

Posted: 23 Mar 2022 05:25 AM PDT

From Merriam-Webster:

congressman

a member of a congress
especially : a member of the U.S. House of Representatives

From BallotPedia:

U.S. Senate

Leadership and partisan balance

U.S. Senate leadership

Position Representative Party
President of the Senate Kamala Harris Democratic
Senate Majority Leadership
President pro tempore Patrick Leahy Democratic
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer Democratic
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin Democratic
Senate Minority Leadership
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell Republican
Senate Minority Whip John Thune Republican

Now then.

It seems pretty obvious to me how this should work. Senators work in the Senate, representatives work in the House of Representatives, and as the two houses make up the Congress, they are all congressmen. And yet, inexplicably, it seems that most people won't live by that simple code.

Or is it really inexplicable? In other words, can someone offer some sort of explanation of how this obvious pairing-up has failed to gain a very widespread acceptance?

Cardinal numbers in dates when speaking

Posted: 22 Mar 2022 10:07 PM PDT

I understand that in speaking (if we are talking strictly about formal rules) it is more common to use ordinal numbers and not cardinal numbers. However, it has come to my attention that people these days use cardinal numbers as well (or at least are starting to). For example, in this video from the US National Archives at about 14:01, I can hear him say July 1 (one, not first!)! Again, here is a video from "Talks at Google" where you can hear the exact same phenomenon (May ONE, not FIRST.) Lastly, here is Joe Biden saying May 1 as "one", not "first". I've never thought about it before, but recently, I've been paying attention to some podcasts I listen to, and I can hear cardinal numbers when they announce the date as well! Is the English language changing again? Do you personally use cardinal numbers when speaking the date, and is it wrong to do so?

"Work within a country" v "work in a country"

Posted: 22 Mar 2022 04:43 PM PDT

I am editing an academic text. Although my instinct was to follow the original, I am unsure whether there was any reason to use the following suggestion:

Original: "X is an organization that has worked in over seventy countries in the past X years."

Suggested Edit: "X is an organization that has worked within over seventy countries in the past X years."

Are dashes required for adjectives ending in -ic, -al or -ive used to modify other words that collectively form a phrase modifying a noun?

Posted: 23 Mar 2022 08:34 AM PDT

The following phrases appear in scientific articles without dashes to form compound words within a phrase modifying a noun. Is the grammar correct, or should one or more dashs be used in some or all cases? Definitions for terms are provided in parentheses.

  1. Genetic management strategy (a strategy to manage genetic characteristics of a population)

  2. Adaptive management strategy (a strategy, framework or plan to adapt management actions based on new information)

  3. Strategic adaptive management planning (a strategic approach to planning adaptive management)

  4. Ecological health monitoring framework (a framework for monitoring the health of ecosystems). Is this correct or is punctuation required (e.g. ecological-health-monitoring framework or ecological-health–monitoring framework)?

  5. Ecological monitoring programs (a program to monitor ecosystems)

Sources of examples:

  1. https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/F09-168 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12927077/
  2. https://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/gtr-175/gtr-175-ch7.pdf
  3. https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/csp2.268
  4. https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/-/media/OEH/Corporate-Site/Documents/Parks-reserves-and-protected-areas/Parks-management-other/sturt-national-park-review-environmental-factors-appendix-7-draft-ecological-health-monitoring-framew.pdf?la=en&hash=58D27E302595E6B1A45ABACCD032D43CB68A277C
  5. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1006139412372

"What B" as a shortening of "What word starting with the letter B"

Posted: 22 Mar 2022 04:01 PM PDT

In this Weakest Link episode, there were a few questions of the following form.

(12:09) What B was the name of the first lunatic asylum in Europe and is also a slang word meaning chaos? Bedlam.

(17:34) What D is an animal that traditionally provided rides for children on the beach? Donkey.

Where is the construction "What B" (as a shortening of "What word starting with the letter B") used? (And is there a name/term for this kind of abbreviation?) I have not encountered this usage at all, and am wondering if this is primarily used in the UK. I have only heard things like "What B-word" before.

"Cheat" or "cheater"?

Posted: 23 Mar 2022 06:51 AM PDT

In Australia, most people of my age call someone who cheats in any form (sport, relationships, whatever) a "cheat", not a "cheater".

In American English, I only hear the latter ever.

Why? Is there a difference or nuance that I'm missing?

What's the difference between scam and fraud?

Posted: 23 Mar 2022 02:44 AM PDT

I hear a lot about Sim lim scam but not Sim Lim fraud, as in this story. (Sim Lim is a shopping centre in Singapore.)

So basically a customer signed a very deceptive contract and lost a lot of money.

Is a scam basically a fraud that's technically legal? I tried to find this somewhere on the web and couldn't find it.

In particular I want to know:

  1. Why do many people call the Sim Lim case a scam, instead of fraud? A search in Google for "Sim Lim fraud" yields no results.
  2. Is a fraud always a scam, or the other way around? Which one is bigger?

Why do so many species of fish have an irregular plural?

Posted: 23 Mar 2022 04:52 AM PDT

Several species of fish have names that are both singular and plural form. These include cod, flounder, salmon, and trout, they are used to describe one fish or ten. Does this stem from fish being both singular and plural? Was the irregular plural form passed along to the species of fish?

Difference between “robot”, “machine”, and “automaton” [closed]

Posted: 23 Mar 2022 03:05 AM PDT

What is the difference in meaning between a robot, a machine, and an automaton? I was inspired to ask this because I really can't understand the subtle (or not so subtle) difference in meaning here.

  • I believe that robot is something that can operate on its own with AI (artificial intelligence).
  • An automaton is something like a black box: if we enter A, we know we will receive B (although we have no idea why).
  • Machine is everything mechanical.

What brings all this to my attention, and that maybe my understanding about the meanings of these three words is wrong, is this question.

What's the difference between orthography and spelling?

Posted: 22 Mar 2022 06:43 PM PDT

The terms "spelling" and "orthography" seem to be largely synonymous. What is the difference really? Is it that "orthography" is a more formal or technical term and hence more well-defined? Or is it just a fancy word to make me sound smarter when saying the same thing? (-:

Is it wrong to use the word "codes" in a programming context?

Posted: 23 Mar 2022 03:05 AM PDT

Is it wrong to use the word "codes" in programming context?

I shall use these codes.

A word for the meaning of "over-constrained"

Posted: 23 Mar 2022 03:03 AM PDT

I want to express that I constrained something too much such that it is contradictory now. At first sight, over-constrained seems to fit, but I am not sure whether it is fine to use in a scientific publication. Can you help me?
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