Saturday, June 11, 2022

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

"input to your method" or "input for your method"?

Posted: 11 Jun 2022 11:43 AM PDT

Which of the two is correct:

  • "Is this a valid input to your method?"
  • "Is this a valid input for your method?"

In this context, a method is a function with a set of parameters that may or may not return a value. I use the words input and parameter (or a set of parameters) here interchangeably.

The general Wikipedia page for Function lists several sub-pages. In the context of this question, consider this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_(computer_science)

What noun does the 'that' refer to, in a 'noun of noun' subject, first or second noun?

Posted: 11 Jun 2022 11:02 AM PDT

I've seen those two usages of 'that' used to refer the first noun, or the second noun, in some articles.

For example:

  • One of them that is red, is running away from here.

#In this sentence, the 'that' refers to the first noun.

  • There's one of them that are unable to continue.

#Apparently the 'that' in this sentence refers to the second noun.

Which one of usages above is correct? Personally, I consider the first usage is correct. If the second usage is wrong, what approach am I allowed to use to refer the second noun?

What does "One reads with dismay" in this sentence mean?

Posted: 11 Jun 2022 09:23 AM PDT

Here's the original quote, I'm not quite fully understand the first sentence.

  • What does "One reads with dismay" mean?
  • "On the basis of such sketchy data as stock price indices...". Does this mean the presidents were using incomplete data?
  • Are the "stock price indices", "freight car loadings" just for emphasizing the word "sketchy data" or are they actual reality at that time?

One reads with dismay of Presidents Hoover and then Roosevelt designing policies to combat the Great Depression of the 1930's on the basis of such sketchy data as stock price indices, freight car loadings, and incomplete indices of industrial production. The fact was that comprehensive measures of national income and output did not exist at the time. The Depression, and with it the growing role of government in the economy, emphasized the need for such measures and led to the development of a comprehensive set of national income accounts

Richard T. Froyen

Thank you guys.

"to there" or "to...there"

Posted: 11 Jun 2022 05:58 AM PDT

Is it possible to write "to there" instead of the standard "to...there"?

E.g.: "For the walls of the room a blue color was chosen, to there create a cozy atmosphere"

To me it sounds old-english-fashioned and cool, but it also might just be wrong.

"concepto" bancario en inglés [closed]

Posted: 11 Jun 2022 02:55 AM PDT

How is the expression "concept", referring to banking concept, translated into English when you make a bank transfer?

Thank you very much

Use of "ye" in present-day Ireland and specifically Dublin

Posted: 11 Jun 2022 02:45 AM PDT

I wanted to know if "ye" is widely used in Ireland including Dublin area. And more specifically, if it is commonly used by Millennials and younger generations, or rather is becoming less common. Many thanks!

Is there any word or phrase for “which was back then”?

Posted: 11 Jun 2022 12:31 PM PDT

The first time I worked with the Internet was about 30 years ago. I was curious enough to care about something which was back then so new and fascinating.

I kind of remember that there was a word or phrase with the meaning of 'which was back then', but I don't know what it was exactly.

First, maybe we can use only the word 'then' in such a context, can we?

The first time I worked with the Internet was more than 2 decades ago. I was curious enough to care about something then so new and fascinating.

Or, maybe 'back-then' is better, is it?

Another way to go is to go with not such expression:

The first time I worked with the Internet was about 30 years ago. I was curious enough to care about something so new and fascinating.

But if we want to imply that back then it was more new and fascinating compared to nowadays, then maybe that option is not good enough.

Otherwise, what word or phrase best fit in such a context?

What is the most suitable antonym for the word loud?

Posted: 11 Jun 2022 07:54 AM PDT

In terms of talking, what is the opposite of a loud voice?

For example, when someone is talking and I can not hear them properly, how can I say to them that their voice is very "opposite to loud"?

Is "your voice is very low/quiet/soft" correct?

Have experience in/on [migrated]

Posted: 10 Jun 2022 09:12 PM PDT

What's the difference between "have experience in" and "have experience on"?

I have experience in teaching. I have experience on teaching.

I know the first sentence is right but when can I use the preposition "on"?

Word or phrase to describe bashing one's opponents to make oneself look good

Posted: 11 Jun 2022 04:40 AM PDT

Is there a word, phrase or expression that would describe the action of defaming or speaking ill of someone just to raise your own standing or reputation? I'm looking for something like what you would find in a political debate. How political opponents often speak ill of each other in order to make themselves look good in comparison.

Using past tense more than once in one long question [closed]

Posted: 10 Jun 2022 03:25 PM PDT

When I'm asking a question and it's starting with a verb in past tense, I can't use a noun in past tense after that, like "Did it rained today?" I know that.

But what if I have to use the past tense more than once in one phrase? The following has to be, for example:

"Did it rain today? It rained yesterday, it rained a long time." (?)

Is this pronunciation transcript understandable for people who know British English?

Posted: 11 Jun 2022 12:21 AM PDT

I wonder how to write down the pronunciation of words in English without using IPA. Sometimes on the internet I have seen something like this:

It is pronounced like uh-aw-to-muh-tuh

Or

It is pronounced like pruh-nuhn-see-ey-shuhn

Some examples of the use of this notation:

https://www.reddit.com/r/eurovision/comments/lzgzu9/how_to_pronounce_m%C3%A5neskin/ https://www.reddit.com/r/FantasyPL/comments/9ocjb6/how_to_pronounce_doherty/ https://www.reddit.com/r/brandonsanderson/comments/2xvtn7/how_to_pronounce_raoden/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HannibalTV/comments/2268nz/how_to_pronounce_mads_mikkelsen_2_danish_audio/

Searching on google I found this:

Vowels

  • a as in hat
  • aa as in father
  • arr as in marry
  • ar as in bar
  • air as in hair
  • aw as in law
  • ay as in day
  • e as in get
  • err as in merry
  • ee as in meet
  • eer as in deer
  • i as in sit
  • irr as in mirror
  • o as in top
  • orr as in sorry
  • oh as in no
  • oo as in boot
  • oor as in poor
  • or as in corn
  • ow as in now
  • oy as in boy
  • u as in cup
  • uh as in ago / the
  • ur as in fur
  • urr as in hurry
  • uu as in book
  • y as in cry (also igh as in high)
  • oe as in French peu or coeur
  • oey as in French fauteuil
  • ue as in French vu or German fünf

Consonants

  • b as in bat
  • ch or tch as in church
  • d as in day
  • f as in fat
  • g as in get
  • h as in hat
  • hl as in Welsh llan
  • j as in Jack
  • k as in king
  • kh as in Scottish loch or German ich
  • l as in leg
  • m as in man
  • n as in not
  • ng as in sing
  • ng-g as in finger
  • nk as in thank
  • p as in pen
  • r as in red
  • s as in sit
  • sh as in shop
  • t as in top
  • th as in thin
  • dh as in there
  • v as in van
  • w as in will
  • y as in yes
  • z as in zebra
  • zh as in measure

Is this way universally understood at least in the UK? Of course, without using "as in x"

Is Einstein's geodesic a metaphor or an idiom?

Posted: 10 Jun 2022 02:44 PM PDT

Is Einstein's geodesic a metaphor or an idiom?

I am applying semantic theory to physical theory to bridge the two realities and have found the discussion on metaphor and odium illuminates this purpose.

Per vs every when followed by something non singular

Posted: 10 Jun 2022 12:28 PM PDT

In a list of prices, I see:

  • $1.99 per 3 days
  • $49.99 per 3 months
  • $1.99 per day
  • $199.99 per year
  • $9.99 per week

The first 2 seem awkward to me the last 3 seem fine. If I replace per with every, they all seem "normal" and not awkward.

  • $1.99 every 3 days
  • $49.99 every 3 months
  • $1.99 every day
  • $199.99 every year
  • $9.99 every week

Is there some rule that makes per need to be followed by something singular?

Is it possible to make a declarative sentence starting with 'Can'?

Posted: 10 Jun 2022 09:21 PM PDT

everyone As the title shows, is it possible to make a declarative sentence starting with "Can"? For example, 'Please, can we request that you do not accept any proposals from him.' The reason why I ask this question is that I saw the example sentence, which is written in an official document made by a British writer. As you see, there is no question mark (?) at the end of the sentence, so I thought it was a typo at first glance. But it was not.

Number of times vs total number of times

Posted: 10 Jun 2022 04:55 PM PDT

What is the difference between saying "number of times that user accessed the site" vs "total number of times that user accessed the site"?

I feel that they mean the same thing but could not find a resource to support my assumption.

Does "X is prone to Y" imply frequency, or severity, or both/either?

Posted: 10 Jun 2022 05:03 PM PDT

In my understanding, the phrase "X is prone to Y" is used to exclusively express the idea that Y is something that frequently happens to X, or (near-equivalently) that Y is particularly likely to happen to X. For example, if you suggested someone was "accident-prone", that would imply that they frequently suffer from accidents.

Google ("Google's English dictionary is provided by Oxford Languages.") gives the following sample statement for 'prone': "farmed fish are prone to disease". Under the above usage of prone, this would imply that farmed fish are likely to suffer from disease, with emphasis on the 'likely' rather than the 'suffer', i.e. these fish become diseased at a higher rate. (The supplied definition is "Likely or liable to suffer from, do, or experience something unpleasant or regrettable.")

It is clear to me that this sense of "likely" is (at least one) accepted / correct usage for 'prone'.

However, I also see 'prone' being used with a slightly different meaning, whereby "X is prone to Y" is used to express that Y has a particularly devastating effect on X, without regard to its likelihood or frequency of occurrence.

In the above example with the fish, this would be interpreted as "farmed fish are not necessarily more likely to become diseased, but if they do happen to become diseased, they tend to have worse outcomes".

In some cases, as with this fish example, this causes ambiguity because both of the two interpretations are sensible but have distinct meanings. In the case of this fish example, both interpretations can even be true at the same time.

As another example "Racing team X's car is prone to crashes":

  1. It's considered likely to crash, or does crash frequently. (Perhaps the driver is untalented or the car has an unstable/faulty design), OR:
  2. A crash would be especially disastrous. (Perhaps the car is made from less-durable components, or built in a way that repairs are challenging or expensive).

In some situations, the context implies that the second 'severity' meaning is the only valid interpretation, something like the following:

"Buildings made of papier-mâché are prone to earthquakes".

Of course, constructing a building from fragile materials doesn't summon earthquakes to the area. From the context it is clear that the intended meaning is that if an earthquake were to happen then the consequences would be dire, not that the building is more likely to be hit by an earthquake.

However, even if I understand this intention after reading the sentence, it still strikes me as incorrect, or at least clumsy. The possibility of this being a valid usage of 'prone' seems to invite confusion in many contexts, yet I see it being used for this 'severity' meaning fairly frequently. (This is merely something I have recently noticed in my own anecdotal experience of informal or conversational English, I'm not trying to claim the word is being used this way universally or as a wider trend).

So there would be a few possible resolutions, feel free to propose anything else you can think of:

  1. The "papier-mâché" sentence is an incorrect usage of the word 'prone'. The word only refers to the concept of likelihood/frequency. The sentence could be fixed by instead saying "Buildings made of papier-mâché are prone to being damaged in earthquakes", which then correctly refers to the likelihood of the building being damaged given that an earthquake has happened to it.
  2. Both meanings are valid/correct, but stylistically the word should not be used unless the meaning is obvious from the context.
  3. Both meanings are valid/correct, the concept of likelihood/frequency should be taken as the 'default' meaning in cases of ambiguity.
  4. Both meanings are valid/correct, in cases of ambiguity the reader should assume both meanings apply.
  5. Something else?

Use of punctuation in complex list with two sets of appositives

Posted: 10 Jun 2022 07:06 PM PDT

How would you punctuate the sentence below? Is it okay the way it is? I've never seen a sentence that introduced more than one list with a colon. I considered just taking out the colons. I also considered replacing them with commas. I haven't been able to find a clear answer in my research.

Here is the sentence:

We dedicate this work to our spouses: Glenda, Sue, and June; and to our children: Thomas and Reese; Oliver and Sarah; James, Hannah, and Finn.

Is there any difference between "spider-man" and "human spider"?

Posted: 10 Jun 2022 02:03 PM PDT

I am trying to write a review of a text.

I am trying to understand the context of two phrases: "spider-man" and "human spider".

Do they mean different things?

Although these two words were used interchangeably in the movie "Spiderman" (2002), I have a feeling that, grammatically, "spider-man" means "a human with spider properties". On the other hand, "human spider" means "a spider with human properties".

Am I right or wrong?

Biding their time to reveal their hidden depths

Posted: 11 Jun 2022 12:03 PM PDT

Is there a phrase for what a person is or is doing who is underrated by people but then shows themselves to contain hidden depths? Not quite a diamond in the rough. Sort of like dark horse. Hmm? Not sinister hidden depths. Like when my intellectually disabled daughter surprises all who underestimate her by blurting out an insightful comment or clever joke.

Word for whether something is local or remote

Posted: 11 Jun 2022 04:52 AM PDT

I am working on a software application and within that application are what I call actions. An action is an object with a few properties that describes a task that is to be performed or was performed. For example, "delete file X". They are stateful and could be in a new state, in-progress state, failed, successful, etc.. They can also include result data if they were executed.

Some actions happen within my application, and some are handed off to another application (i.e. external, over a network, to another machine). This is the aspect I am trying to capture and describe--the aspect for which I am trying to find a word. Specifically, where the action is executed: locally in my application (or, more generally, the application in which it originated) or externally on a remote machine. An action executed on a remote machine could be (should be) handed back to my application from the remote machine after it was processed, but I want to be able to know at some later time where it was executed, even though where it exists may be different, in a general sense (not the specific machine at which is was executed, just whether it was in my app or another one).

Conceptually, in my head, I think of an action as being a local or remote action, however I need a name to describe this property, this difference. That is, whether or not an action is local or remote, a name for that distinction. For example, "the ____ of the 'delete' action is 'local'" indicates it is executed by my application. I'm looking for a name for the property of an action which indicates whether it is processed locally, by my application, or remotely, by some other application.

My first thought was "locality" but that doesn't seem correct after looking it up. "Domain" seems too vague. "Destination" is probably the closest thing I've come up with, but execution isn't the final resting place for an action. Similarly, "termination" or "terminus" doesn't really fit because the action doesn't necessarily cease to exist after being executed (it might get sent elsewhere after execution).

P.S. If "orientation" indicates whether something was up or down, what is "orientation"? What type of word; what's it called when something describes a property or class or aspect of description of other words? It seems like it would be easier to ask my real question if I could say "I need a ______ that indicates local or remote". My Google-fu apparently isn't good enough for this one.

American wording of "to drop litter"

Posted: 10 Jun 2022 01:43 PM PDT

When I google "drop litter", only results from British websites appear.

What is the typical way in America to warn against littering?

Is it simply "do not litter" or is the verb "drop" also used?

Was found to be or found to be?

Posted: 11 Jun 2022 01:25 AM PDT

Which of the following is correct?

Based on the laboratory experiments, the strength of the sample was found to be 30MPa.

or

Based on the laboratory experiments, the strength of the sample found to be 30MPa.

What single word describes the action of tapping a spoon against a glass?

Posted: 10 Jun 2022 02:25 PM PDT

What is it called when someone taps a glass with a spoon in order to seek attention at a party or at the dining table?

"You did the right thing" Is this sentence idiomatic in English? [closed]

Posted: 11 Jun 2022 11:57 AM PDT

My sister married a man who treated her badly. Her husband didn't respect her at all. After one year , they split up. After hearing that news , I called my sister and said :

Don't worry. I think you'll marry the man who deserves you. I strongly believe that you did the right thing.

Is this sentence idiomatic in English?

Thank you.

Are the cats and dogs of the idiom "it's raining cats and dogs" plural in usage?

Posted: 11 Jun 2022 11:19 AM PDT

I recently heard someone say the following:

It's cats and dogs out there!

As in "it's raining cats and dogs out there." I then thought that person should have said

Those are cats and dogs out there!

because the phrase refers to multiple objects. My hobbyist-linguist friend then said to me that the person was correct because cats and dogs were a compound subject - a result of the idiom itself. I'm inclined to believe my friend, but I'm not sure. I think I may have initially been confused because of the diversion from the format of use of the idiom.

Which is correct?

How does 'X notwithstanding' = 'notwithstanding X'?

Posted: 10 Jun 2022 06:36 PM PDT

Please explain 'notwithstanding', only in terms of the adverb 'not' and the root verb 'withstand'.

[ Grammarist: ] Notwithstanding is mainly a preposition meaning in spite of. Most dictionaries also list it as an adverb meaning nevertheless, but this sense is rarely used in modern English. Notwithstanding is always one word, and this has been the standard spelling for many centuries.

Although notwithstanding usually means exactly the same as in spite of, it is often positioned differently. In spite of always comes before its object—e.g., "In spite of your feedback, I'm not changing anything." But notwithstanding is often postpositive, meaning it comes after its object—e.g., "Your feedback notwithstanding, I'm not changing anything." Of course, it can come before its object as well—e.g., "Notwithstanding your feedback, I'm not changing anything."

This answer substantiates the quote overhead, and explains that:

  1. Notwithstanding X, Y (happens).
  2. = X notwithstanding, Y.
  3. = X canNOT withstand Y.

But why don't 1 and 2 differ in signification? Why doesn't the position of 'notwithstanding' affect its signification?

Is "a half dozen" necessarily 6, or can it be 5-7?

Posted: 10 Jun 2022 01:05 PM PDT

In my answer to a question on the SF & Fantasy stack, I assumed that "half a dozen" is imprecise enough to mean anywhere from 5 to 7. Another user challenged that assumption and stated that since a dozen is 12, a half dozen is necessarily 6 and nothing else.

In the answer to a similar question, it is said that

Dozen is quite flexible when it is pluralized.

Does half count as a pluralisation? Can "half a dozen" mean anywhere from 5 to 7, or can it only be 6?
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