Friday, July 1, 2022

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

How would you describe the sound that flesh does when falling on the floor

Posted: 01 Jul 2022 04:02 PM PDT

I am writing a battle scene. An arm is cut off and I'm trying to describe the sound it makes as it hits the floor.

I'm imagining the flesh is heavy, full of blood, probably squishy. I can imagine the sound it would make in my head, but somehow I can't seem to find the appropriate words to describe it.

How would you describe the sound of an arm falling on the floor?

Single word substitution for a given phrase [closed]

Posted: 01 Jul 2022 11:49 AM PDT

What to call a person who has talents but couldn't express it to others?

I'm looking for a term like "Queen Bee" to describe a gamer who's achieved a high score [closed]

Posted: 01 Jul 2022 11:45 AM PDT

I'm working on a puzzling website, and am hunting for a the perfect title to give players who've achieved a high score. (We can't say "perfect" score because some games are time-based so there's no such thing as perfect.)

The NY Time's game Spelling Bee uses "Queen Bee" for this purpose. Our site, however, needs to have the same title for every single one of our games, so we can't be branded to one game over another.

If it helps, the site is a "secret society of puzzling", so I'm trying to also stay as on-brand and in our "secret society-ness" of all of it.

Options I've considered, but none feel quite right:

  • Elite Puzzler -- it's fine, just not as quippy as something like "Queen Bee"
  • Puzzle Master -- too gendered
  • Legend Status
  • Marquee Puzzler
  • Solver Exemplar
  • Star Solver
  • Savant of Solving
  • Prodigy Puzzler
  • Prodigy of Puzzles
  • Virtuoso
  • Puzzler Au-Fait

Words I'm tossing around, but can't quite combine with anything relating to puzzles:

  • Cognoscente
  • Crackerjack
  • Highest Marks
  • Mark of the ______
  • Specialist
  • Ace
  • Doyen/doyenne
  • Champion
  • Adroit
  • Arbiter

Is there something clever I'm missing? A fun pun? A reference to an old work of fiction that could work here?

Thanks in advance for your very smart brains!

What do you call something that is "new" to someone? (Ex: a newly learned word) [closed]

Posted: 01 Jul 2022 12:39 PM PDT

For example a neologism is a "new word" but I'm trying to describe a word that, decidedly, is not new; but one that I have just learned the meaning/usage of, and had never even heard until today.

What single word could I use to describe something of that nature?

This sentence puzzles me most

Posted: 01 Jul 2022 09:32 AM PDT

I saw this sentence in the CoGEL(Quirk et al).

15.16 Verbless clause: Wall-to-wall carpets in every room is their dream.

Question: Why is this awkward sentence acceptable? It's obvious that it violates the subject-verb agreement.

The book explains that this sentence may be paraphrased by nominal nonfinite existential clauses as below:

Having wall-to-wall carpets in every room is their dream. (This sentence is perfect, but why does the above example exist with no problem?)

Who, whom, free relative clause, to be [closed]

Posted: 01 Jul 2022 03:00 PM PDT

Should we have who or whom here?

He's talking about people who run fast. I run fast. I'm who(m) he's talking about.

I understand that "who(m) he's talking about" is a free relative clause and we'd say "I'm the person whom he's talking about" (so I'd guess "whom"). Wikipedia says "Modern guides to English usage say that the relative pronoun should take the case appropriate to the relative clause, not the function performed by that clause within an external clause." I just wanted to double check that that still applies with "to be" and a free relative clause.

To use or not to use "series" in a book series title? [closed]

Posted: 01 Jul 2022 08:06 AM PDT

I've done research on this and I can't come up with anything conclusive.

If you were to write a back cover blurb or synopsis for a website and the book is in a series, when you include the series name, do you put "series" after it or leave it out?

  • This is the second book in The Ranger's Apprentice.

OR

  • This is the second book in The Ranger's Apprentice series.

I'm leaning toward omitting "series," but I'm not sure. I can't find any info about this from CMoS either.

Add a letter, add 2 syllables [closed]

Posted: 01 Jul 2022 06:52 AM PDT

What English word, when a single extra letter is added to the end, makes a new English word that has 2 more syllables than the original?

What does "cutting in" mean?

Posted: 01 Jul 2022 08:59 AM PDT

Flies, bees, beetles, wasps, and other insects are segmented creatures——head, thorax, and abdomen. where these parts join, there appears to the imaginative eye a "cutting in" of the body.

What does "cutting in" mean in this sentence?

Is "before" also an adjective?

Posted: 01 Jul 2022 10:33 AM PDT

I searched "define before" in Google and found out "before" is not listed as an adjective in most dictionaries.

Only Collins English dictionary (not the Cobuild version) and Merriam Webster's dictionary classifies "before" as also an adjective. Other dictionaries I checked online doesn't.

I'm not a native speaker, but the dictionaries' analysis was contrary to my understanding of the word, so I searched for sentences that seem to use "before" as an adjective. Below are the relevant phrases from (https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/).

  • the pain inspired by the debates from the night before
  • bringing out trash to the curb in the morning instead of the night before
  • to be faster than the day before
  • clears the air from the day before
  • too intoxicated to remember the immediate moments before
  • could not go back to a time before

Am I mis-perceiving the use of "before" in those sentences as an adjective, or is such use so uncommon that most dictionaries decided not to list it as an adjective?

Conversion of tense in interrogative sentence from direct to indirect speech [migrated]

Posted: 01 Jul 2022 05:08 AM PDT

  1. "Can you see a woman seated at a table?" he asked.

A) He asked her if she could see a woman seated at a table.

Since the reported speech is in past tense, the tense of the indirect speech should be in past perfect. But there is no had in it.

Please clarify my doubt. I guess it is in past since the word seated is used

Is "a normal woman" correct? [closed]

Posted: 01 Jul 2022 07:22 AM PDT

Normally, we say "an ordinary woman", but I read an article about Kate Middleton recently, the Duchess of Cambridge, it says she isn't a normal woman. From the article, I can tell that the author means she's extraordinary. But it still surprised me a lot, cause someone told me the difference between "normal" and "common" before.

He said "normal" is used to describe "standard". When it's used to say a person, it more sounds like this person doesn't have a healthy or mental problem rather than ordinary.

But now I was confused about the usage, and the difference between "normal" and "common"

Is starting your sentence with „Which is why..“ grammatically correct?

Posted: 01 Jul 2022 09:52 AM PDT

…our brain is still busy processing all the information coming from the phones. Which is why it is impossible to actually rest this way.

Any words that I can use to describe a person who insults someone by being kind or says something hurtful in a kind, soft tone?

Posted: 01 Jul 2022 03:26 PM PDT

The insult I'm referring to is like how people, in a kind way, admire and insult you by saying "hey man you are so great, intelligent, handsome, we are nothing in front of you" (in a condescending tone).

Are there any words that I can use to describe such people?

What's the meaning of "those Portuguese of the intellect", as shown in "The Grammar of Science" by Karl Pearson

Posted: 01 Jul 2022 08:19 AM PDT

In the page 25 of the 3rd edition, printed in 1911, of "The Grammar of Science", by Karl Pearson, the following sentence is written:

Science cannot give its consent to man's development being some day again checked by the barriers which dogma and myth are ever erecting round territory that science has not yet effectually occupied.

It cannot allow theologian or metaphysician, those Portuguese of the intellect, to establish a right to the foreshore of our present ignorance, and so hinder the settlement in due time of vast and yet unknown continents of thought.

For context, in this book, Pearson, among several things, was trying to separate science from metaphysics, in which only science can be used as a method to understand the real world, whereas metaphysics, as well as theology and philosophy, cannot.

Singular or plural verb with "coupled with"

Posted: 01 Jul 2022 02:04 PM PDT

I believe that up-to-date knowledge and experience, coupled with the motivation of young people, are two assets that make their advice more pivotal.

In this question I want to say "up-to-date knowledge and experience" and "motivation of young people" are two assets. However, if I use "coupled with" I have to use singular verb is. How can I solve that?

Also, is comma ", coupled with the motivation of young people," necessary in the sentence, or I can remove that?

Word that means "free from expectation"?

Posted: 01 Jul 2022 11:46 AM PDT

As in, an expectation-free hug with your partner. Doing something without expecting anything in return, but not necessarily selfless. I hoped "nonexpecting" was a word, but it seems reserved for pregnancy 🙂

EDIT: Thanks for the suggestions! My example may not have been the best. I don't mean necessarily platonic or friendly, because the attitude can apply to anything. I've heard the words "wishless" and "hopeless" in some Buddhist contexts, interestingly, but those seem wonky as well.

Origin of "wannabe" and its precursors

Posted: 01 Jul 2022 02:30 PM PDT

The OED attests wannabe as slang in 1976 as a noun and 1986 as an adjective.

A person who tries to emulate someone else, esp. a celebrity, in appearance and behaviour; a person who wants to belong to and tries to fit in with a particular group of people. Frequently depreciative.

Earliest attestation:

At 38 she had 21 years of racket life behind her. Whereas Joe, that year, was still a Jimmy Cagney wannabe.

  • 1976 - New York 26 July 43/3

But the building-blocks of the term seem to go back much further, and a search of newspaper archives shows "wanna-be" with a hyphen in a larger compound as early as 1936.

Who will be mayor of the Friendly House? That question has been asked time and time again at the settlement during the past week, and will not be answered until election day, tomorrow.

Contestants in the "hot" mayorality race being staged at the settlement are "Wanna-be-Mayor, Mr. Twittlebottom," who really is Paul Sferro, and "Would-be-Mayor, Mr. Flop Always, the Duke of Westinghouse.' who in private life is Steve Gano.

Admittedly, this use of "wanna-be" seems like a one-off, and appearing so much earlier than the attested term, it seems to be unrelated.

However, much earlier we can find "want-to-be" used in an almost identical construction in an article on voting rights during the American Civil War.

The true Union men, although outnumbered by their "erring brethren," are determined to test the legality of certain want-to-be voters.

Is wannabe as defined in the OED and popularly used today an outgrowth of phrases like "want-to-be" as found in much earlier uses, or are these related uses coincidental to the rise of "wannabe?"

What is the difference between "nothing but", "anything but", and "everything but"?

Posted: 01 Jul 2022 10:12 AM PDT

What is the difference between these phrases? When is it valid to use which? Should they be avoided as being ambiguous?
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