Saturday, June 4, 2022

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

When talking about school kids, can we say 'the' kids, or is the article superfluous?

Posted: 04 Jun 2022 08:12 AM PDT

A Russian colleague has insisted my use of an article in a review is incorrect. I feel although it may be superfluous, it isn't incorrect. The sentence reads:

I believe that progressive learning of English is possible through fun interactions with the kids, but I never forget about discipline.

Is the use of the before 'kids' incorrect? Or simply old fashioned/unnecessary?

This phrase is an example of a(n)

Posted: 04 Jun 2022 07:07 AM PDT

The following phrase is an example of which grammatical, literary, or linguistic style, term, or phenomenon?

Good times; have them.

or

Good times: feel them.

For context, I was browsing Wikipedia some time ago and found a page which used one of the exact above phrases (or something very similar to it) as an example of the subject of the article. The article described it as an "old Italian idiom". I can't remember exactly how the phrase was written but it was very similar to the examples I provided. I tried doing a page content search; but that returned hundreds of pages mostly related to a certain television show, which obviously wasn't very useful. I remember finding the article in question from a link on an article about a certain book in New Testament, in which it was mentioned that the author of the book used a lot of these sorts of phrases. Unfortunately I can't remember which book of the Bible I was reading about.

Please help, this is on the tip of my tongue and it's driving me crazy!

Origin of the phrase "to have no truck with"

Posted: 04 Jun 2022 05:44 AM PDT

This phrase "to have no truck with" has bothered me ever since I stumbled upon it, the reason being it makes no logical sense whatsoever even remotely if you go by the lexical meaning of the words in English.

For the benefit of those who aren't aware, this phrase means to have nothing to do with [sthg].

The most popular usage of this phrase is probably in Pablo Neruda's poem Keeping Quiet (read full poem here):

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

I had always wondered if it had foreign origins, but I never found any definitive confirmation online. Now that I am learning French, I found a striking resemblance between this phrase and how the French word "truc" is used.

Truc, in French, is a colloquialism meaning "thing" or "stuff", often used to replace something trivial. It surprises me how this word perfectly complements the meaning of the phrase in question.

This word, as with our English phrase, has negative connotations as well. For example, "On raconte des trucs sur lui," which means, they say some nasty stuff about her.

Owing to the lexical similarity of this word with the phrase, as well as the semantic similarity (to a degree), I draw the theory that this is where the phrase originated.

Is it possible for someone to verify the validity of my hypothesis?

About plural in "vector spaces of dimension(s) 2 or 3"

Posted: 04 Jun 2022 04:13 AM PDT

As in the title, I want to know in the following cases, which one is correct, "dimension" or "dimensions"

  • vector spaces of dimension(s) 1;
  • vector spaces of general dimension(s);
  • vector spaces of dimension(s) 2 or 3.

My personal feeling is that when there is one dimension, I put "dimension"; and when there are more than one, I put "dimensions". Is this criterion justified?

Difference between roaring 20s and raging 20s? [closed]

Posted: 04 Jun 2022 02:54 AM PDT

The Economist use a title named:

From the roaring to the raging 2020s

From Dictionary:

  • roaring means: making or uttering a loud, deep, or harsh prolonged sound
  • raging means: showing violent uncontrollable anger.

Although their meanings differ, they both seem to imply something terrible. "Roaring 20s" is commonly used phrase, but here "raging 2020s" is newly invented. What is the logic here?

get up and running with something

Posted: 04 Jun 2022 12:44 AM PDT

The Cambridge Dictionary defines up and running in the following way:

If something, especially a system or a machine, is up and running it is operating

And gives an example:

The engineer soon got the air-conditioning up and running again.

Given this definition and example is the following sentence correct?

In this lecture we will cover how to get up and running with Julia.

Should not it be like this?

In this lecture we will cover how to get Julia up and running.

I have searched for getting up and running with sth but could not find any definition in any dictionary. Is this way of using up and running a slang/everyday English or?

Please help me understand a joke

Posted: 03 Jun 2022 10:58 PM PDT

I don't quite understand the "Ad Land" cartoon by David T. Jones. Could you explain the meaning to me?

I will attach the screenshot of this cartoon, but you can also find it here: https://news.yahoo.com/blogs/advertising/ad-land-cartoon-most-important-word-advertising-191018989.html.

From what I can see, this cartoon mocks the people for using words with "ish" too often. But why is "ish" called the most important word in advertising? Is it really that common in this industry?

Ad Land cartoon by David T. Jones

What's the word for when someone selectively chooses the statements said to them to take and use deceitfully? [duplicate]

Posted: 04 Jun 2022 03:46 AM PDT

It's when someone selectively chooses the statements said to them to take and use deceitfully.

Example:

  • Person A: You do so and so all the time and it's annoying!
  • Person B: I don't do it all the time

What I'm trying to describe is what Person B did. It's similar to discarded pedantic, paltering, and pettifogging but it's not quite those.

I really need to find this word.

[noun]+of+[noun] vs. [noun]+[noun] [duplicate]

Posted: 03 Jun 2022 10:22 PM PDT

What's the difference between these two structures? For example, take a look at this sentence: "The flow of fuel in an old machine like mine is regulated by a carburetor, which draws fuel into the cylinder by passing the flow of air -- whose speed is regulated by a butterfly valve -- across a narrow opening called a "jet"." Would it be different if it said "The fuel flow" instead? Why?

displaced vs replaced

Posted: 03 Jun 2022 11:06 PM PDT

I generally know the difference between the 2 words.

For example:

The housing project was replaced by a new high-rise

vs.

Residents of the housing project were displaced when developers decided to build a new high-rise.

But I'm having a tough time with this context:

The blueprint process is now obsolete. It was displaced by the whiteprint process.

Is 'displaced (by)' best, or is "It was replaced by the whiteprint process" more appropriate?

Thematic comparison of 'collaborative' vs 'collective' in literature or culture

Posted: 04 Jun 2022 08:06 AM PDT

I'm trying to brand a product with either the word 'collaborative' or 'collective', but I am having trouble imagining what the well known thematic usage is with either word. I've always seen them used interchangeably.

The definitions seem pretty similar:

  • collaborative: produced or conducted by two or more parties working together.

    • "collaborative research"

  • collective: done by people acting as a group.

    • "a collective protest"

My guess is that someone with a literature or world history background would be able to help me parse the difference or nuance I'm trying to identify.

Is the "of" in "a lot of" a preposition?

Posted: 04 Jun 2022 07:33 AM PDT

Is "of" in "a lot of time" a preposition?

I am working on a task about the identification of prepositions and their objects. I am not sure about "a lot of", and for some reason it seems unbreakable.

What does “Obama goes big” mean?

Posted: 04 Jun 2022 05:59 AM PDT

The article of New Yorker (November 21) begins with the following sentence under the title "Obama Goes Big on Immigration":

For a two-term President whom his critics used to call "the speechifier," Barack Obama has given surprisingly few memorable speeches, and none for quite a while. Sometimes his speechwriters over-egg it, and his language seems a bit stilted. -- Thursday night's much-anticipated address on immigration -- was an extended statement rather than a full-blown speech, and it was much better for it. It was direct and to the point and it was relatively short—about fifteen minutes. http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/obama-goes-big-on-immigration?

What does "go big" mean? Did the President make a spectacular speech? What is the single alternative word for it?

Oxford Dictionaries carries 'Go (come) over big" as an idiom, but not "go big," nor Cambridge Dictionaries Online shows "go big."

Google Ngram shows that the usage of "go big" peaked in mid 1930s (0.0000020019 in 1935) and has been dwindling down to 0.0000010228% in 2000.

Where does the idiom “root for something” come from?

Posted: 04 Jun 2022 07:51 AM PDT

I am familiar with the idiom "to root for something" meaning that I am hoping for something to happen or taking the side of something.

But what does this have to do with roots? Does it mean that I am putting my root where somebody else stands?

Where did this idiom originate?
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