Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Which quantifier is correct ,much of our cities , most of our cities or many of our cities

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 10:37 AM PDT

Which phrase is correct ,much of our cities , most of our cities or many of our cities

Is 'it doesn't notice' a valid phrase?

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 09:38 AM PDT

There's a phrase that I used in response to a friend, that I didn't give second thought to, which was "it doesn't notice".

Its use is in the context of, for example, someone complaining about a minor wardrobe malfunction or something of that sort, and responding with "oh don't worry, it doesn't notice".

When I said this however, it didn't seem to make any sense to him and now I'm questioning if it's even a real expression; I asked my dad and it's obvious to him that it's a valid English phrase, but I looked various permutations of it up online and nothing relevant appeared.

Interestingly enough, I asked another friend and he said that while he hadn't heard it before, he'd know what it meant. Did this just get created within my family somehow? (for reference: I live in Midlands U.K., but my family is originally from Essex)

If I say my profession is x, does that imply I am employed right now?

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 10:37 AM PDT

I am not employed right now but I'd like to communicate that if I work, I'd work as x.

I don't want them to think I am currently working.

Is there a better phrase than

My profession is x

?

How use the word "surge" properly?

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 09:08 AM PDT

Would it be correct to use the word 'surge' at the very end of a sentence?

For instance:

X has made Y surge.

Or would you rather say

X surged Y?

`

Thanks for your help.

Word for a "local tradition" when not in that place

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 08:30 AM PDT

Is there a word to describe a tradition that is specific to a particular region? Particularly when being described away from that place? If in that place, one would probably say "X is a local tradition that we have here..." would it be correct to say "X is a tradition that is local to ?"

Is there an emerging construction "Have you do something?"

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 10:24 AM PDT

I have been making this mistake for a long time, and gradually I realized that the reason why I make this mistake is to avoid ambiguity. "Have you done something?" sounds like a question asking one if they have finished something. But what I want to ask is whether they have spent time doing something or whether they have tried to do something.

It seems that a constructional distinction is needed, just like "be going to" has been gradually developed into "be going to" and "be gonna" which are in different uses.

It is not only me that use this construction. There are also a plenty of cases on the internet.

My questions are:

1 Is it only a mistake L2 speakers use? or do native English speakers use the construction as well?

2 If the construction exists among native speakers, to what extent does it spread to other verbs other than "do"?

3 If the construction exists among native speakers, to what extent does it spread to other kinds of sentences? such as a declarative sentence "I have do something".

What is a background check? [closed]

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 08:17 AM PDT

I wanna understand the meaning of the background check? Like I don't know how to do one or even get one. I really want to know the purpose of a background check.

Rewriting in an indirect tone: B: "Peer pressure has its benefits as well. Our peers also motivate and inspire us to do better and work hard."

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 08:06 AM PDT

A: "It is difficult to fight against peer pressure."
B: "Peer pressure has its benefits as well."

So shouldn't this be:

A said that it is difficult to fight against peer pressure. To which B replied that peer pressure has its benefits as well.

Or is it:

A said that it was difficult to fight against peer pressure. To which B replied that peer pressure had its benefits as well.

Just making sure that the latter is likely the incorrect one.

Edit: So one of the answers in a similar question 7964 suggested by @StuartF says

... As the authors of the 'Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English' explain: Simple past tense has a special use in reported speech or thought. The original speech or thoughts may have been in present tense, but past tense is usually used for the reports . . . Notice that the circumstances may still be continuing even though past tense is used (My emphasis).

So what if I changed the question slightly to add another sentence.

B: "Peer pressure has its benefits as well. Our peers also motivate and inspire us to do better and work hard."

So would the backshifting be:

... To which B replied that peer pressure had its benefits as well, it motivated and inspired them to do better and work hard.

Or,

... To which B replied that peer pressure had its benefits as well, it motivates and inspires them to do better and work hard.

Would the following sentence also follow the past tense throughout like the first did?

Please help with this sentence structure. It is for my anniversay wish

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 06:59 AM PDT

It's funny how the person who gives you so much headache and provides you comfort is very much the same person.

Omitting a pronoun from a cleft sentence

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 07:03 AM PDT

I believe this is a cleft sentence:

  1. It was 10:18 ᴀᴍ when it happened.

However, I cannot explain why the pronoun when can't be removed when you rewrite that sentence into this one:

  1. When it (=the robbery) happened, it (=the time) was 10:18 ᴀᴍ.

Can someone help me understand the structure of this sentence that explains why when can't be removed from it?

How to say "the health of a system" in a shorter way?

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 08:02 AM PDT

Compound words keep troubling me... I am writing an academic article about detecting the health of a system or a piece of equipment. For example, if a coffee machine works correctly, it means it has a good health, otherwise, a bad health (degraded or faulty). So just to give you the context.

To talk about the health of a system, instead of saying "the health of the system" or "the health of an equipment", can I express it otherwise with compound nouns such as:

  • equipment health
  • system health
  • machinery health

An example sentence would be "We propose this method to monitor the system health".

Or, would it be more correct to use possessive?

  • system's health
  • equipment's health

However, it seems a bit odd to me because I believe 's is for animated subjects only.

Are the three words equivalent? Is one more natural than the others?

Thank you very much in advance!

Meaning of go around in the sentence [closed]

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 01:49 AM PDT

I am trying to understand the meaning of go around in following sentence.

After checking the dictionary, I found 2 possible meanings.

  1. spin
  2. a flight path taken by an aircraft after an aborted approach to landing.

Could you please help me understand its meaning in the sentence below? Please let me know if more information is required.

Sentence

Frustrated, she and her friend found that there were not enough instruments to go around

Screenshot of the full paragraph

enter image description here

Is there a single word for "of varying heights"?

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 09:35 AM PDT

I am trying to find a single word for the phrase "of varying heights", as in "vegetation of varying heights". All I can think of is "multiheighted" (which evidently isn't a word), or "heterogeneous" (which doesn't refer specifically to height). Any ideas?

English equivalent for the Chinese idiom 执迷不悟, to obstinately persist in going about things the wrong way

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 05:17 AM PDT

This means something along the lines of:

To obstinately persist in going about things the wrong way.

This could be translated as just being stubborn but I don't think that's as poetic. Is there a more idiomatic way of saying so?

More formal way of saying "fighting until the end"

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 10:32 AM PDT

I'm currently working on a history essay and said "Saladin choose to declare a truce with the Crusaders in 1192 instead of fighting until the end."

It gets the point across but I think it's a little basic. Looking for a way to rephrase 'fight until the end' to something more fitting of a historical essay assignment.

Why are the names of the four seasons not proper nouns, but the names of the weekdays and months are?

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 05:20 AM PDT

My original question was: Why is summer not capitalized like Monday and June. After some research, my question became the one in the title.

From a shallow google search, I've read that months and weekdays are proper nouns is because the names refer to a specific day of the week or month of the year. This is corroborated by the accepted answer here. However, the answer below has a higher score than the accepted answer...

This answer justifies the weekdays are proper nouns convention with the fact that "they were formed from the names of old pagan gods...". Though, that's only true for most of the days (i.e. not Sunday and Monday).

Doing another shallow google search, I found that the names of the months are also derived from the name gods. This time they were Roman.

From what I have read, the names of seasons don't have the same origin; They appear to come from older base words.

Maybe I've answered my own question, but I would like to open this discussion to everyone so there can be a common consensus.

What is a cynical optimist?

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 05:24 AM PDT

I've been thinking in the past couple of weeks about this concept of a "cynical optimism".

On one hand I can pretty confidently say that I understand what an optimist is. In a nutshell I'd say it's a person that sees the good in the a certain situation. For instance, if a soccer team is 3 points behind another team, and I still strongly believe the former team may win, I can definitely state about myself that I'm an optimist.

I could arguably extend this definition to a more general term, but nevertheless, it wouldn't quite be a "fully" general term, if what I'm saying it makes any sense. For example, I consider myself optimistic about climate change/the world, in spite of all the bad news I'm reading throughout the internet. But I couldn't quite say what a more general term may be.

I can also state, that I have a decent understanding of cynical people. I believe, these are the people that believe that humans, as in themselves and others, are inherently driven by self interest.

On the other hand, I don't really understand how those two can be related. I mean obviously, a person can be optimist, "stuff will go fine in this certain situation", and of course, someone may also be cynical, as in "John is changing jobs, even though if he leaves the company, it will most likely go bankrupt", but I don't really get it how those two are related.

I could as well say I consider myself a clever optimist, or a cynical runner, or even a clever runner, but this doesn't make it an idiom, and definitely not as widely used.

Identify proper label for a concept

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 10:39 AM PDT

I am a psychometrician working on a new project to measure people's beliefs about technology. Our way of measuring people's beliefs is through a set of questions that are supposed to collectively reflect the intended concept.

My problem is as follows: while I have been able to develop a set of statements, I struggle to find the name (or label) that best matches the concepts I want to measure. The concepts are measured using the following statements:

Concept A:

  1. A large part of what can be done with <this system> is beyond my grasp.
  2. I only know a small subset of what I could do with <this system>.
  3. Many of the functionalities offered by <this system> are unknown to me.
  4. I do not know most of what can be done with <this system>.

Concept B:

  1. The great diversity of uses offered by <this system> confuses me.
  2. I cannot get my head around the very different things that can be done with <this system>.
  3. I am confused by the very different ways in which <this system> can be used.
  4. I struggle to wrap my mind around the disparate functionalities of <this system>.

Concept C:

  1. I tend to be confused when I hear about the new ways of using <this system>.
  2. I have difficulties getting a grasp of the new ways of using <this system>.
  3. I tend to be confused when new ways of using <this system> arise.
  4. My understanding of <this system> is disturbed by the new ways of using it.

What would be, in your opinion, the name of the concepts best reflected by these statements? The term "the system" may be replaced by any general consumer technology (social media, communication devices, etc.). I thank you very much in advance for your help in this research project!

Word that describes a person that works with paper and implements of writing

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 07:02 AM PDT

I'm looking for a noun which can generally refer to anyone that uses a writing implement as a primary part of them job, ideally something more specific than "writer".

This could include those that author or scribes books, cartographers, draft designs (like in da Vinci's notebooks), etc.

Draftsman is probably the closest word I've found, but I'm not sure that includes authors and scribes.

Not necessarily looking for a word that describes those that produce paper or writing implements though.

The word can (and even ideally be) an old-fashioned or antiquated word.

It is a noun, so the sample sentence feels a bit unnecessary, but to meet the criteria, a sample would be "authors, scribes, and cartographers are all ".

Word or idiom for suggesting that someone do something that would damage that person if they actually carried out the suggestion

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 08:12 AM PDT

I am looking for a word or short idiom that describes the situation when subliminally suggesting, or even slightly persuading, to someone that they do something that would hurt that person themself. An example of such an act can be found in the TV show House of Cards, where Francis Underwood casually places a razor blade on a bathtub's rim while his colleague Peter Russo takes a bath.

My first idea of a matching phrase was "to hold a pistol to someone's head", but I don't think it properly describes such a situation.

Is there a word for when you don't understand something? [closed]

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 04:48 AM PDT

Is there a word or idiom for when you don't understand something but you cannot exactly pinpoint or explain precisely what you don't understand? Not to understand a word just for usage but to understand an idea at all, for basic description. Here we are missing the tools to describe and as such the means to understand. What term describes this empty nearness to a concept.

'Without so much as a call or a letter – he showed up.' Is this grammatically correct?

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 05:04 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!

How to include a question in a declarative sentence?

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 04:05 AM PDT

Over the years I have gotten used to the following sentences formation:

I know that this is the website but how do I specify for what I am paying?

Instead of:

I know that this is the website but how do I specify for what am I paying?

I want to ask which of the following is correct and is it possible for them both to be correct, one being more formal or something?

I also want to ask what the general rule for such cases is?

What does it mean to be stubborn? [closed]

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 04:41 AM PDT

Most definitions of "stubborn" appear to require the person in mind of being wrong on the matter discussed:

  • "having or showing dogged determination not to change one's attitude or position on something, especially in spite of good reasons to do so."
  • "determined not to change your mind, even when people think you are being unreasonable"

And examples:

  • "They have huge arguments because they're both so stubborn."
  • "He was famed for his stubborn resistance and his refusal to accept defeat."

What I wonder is whether the stubborn person has to know themselves that they are wrong, or whether it is enough that they are wrong from some third-party or objective perspective?

Can a person be stubborn if they are arguing in good faith, or does it require that they are arguing something "they should know better"?

For example, if two people keep arguing a point for too long, must that be because both of them are stubborn, or can it be that just one of them is - the person who is wrong?

Idiom for being stubborn about an opinion

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 03:24 AM PDT

Is there an idiom for the action when someone holds tightly onto his opinion? Like you keep to try convincing that person again and again but he keeps that opinion?

What is the opposite of "free," as in "gluten-free/free of gluten"?

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 07:05 AM PDT

I am looking for a one-word antonym for "free" in the context of "a lack of something." For example: "pain-free/free of pain," "error-free/free of errors," "gluten-free/free of gluten"? To say "full" isn't quite right. If a forty-page text contains 1-2 typos, it is not "error-free," but it is also not "full of errors." What about "gluten"? If a pizza isn't "gluten-free," what is it? Gluten-full? Gluten-regular?

Is it correct to say that English has the dative case?

Posted: 27 Apr 2022 02:46 AM PDT

Is it correct to say that, nowadays, English has the dative case, or was it only present in Old English?
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)