Saturday, July 9, 2022

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

What two words would fit in the blank of the question of:"What is your _______ _________ on the purpose of life?"

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 05:19 PM PDT

What two words would fit in the blank of the question of: "What is your _______ _________ on the purpose of life?"? Something like "personal philosophy" or "opinion"?

Gerund vs Participle

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 04:30 PM PDT

When discussing faulty parallelism in Merriam Webster's (1994) Dictionary of English Usage, they use the following sentence to illustrate faulty parallelism, but in doing so they refer to "taking too many drugs" as a participial phrase. Wouldn't the phrase actually be a gerund phrase since "taking too many drugs" is one of the subjects of the sentence?

Here's the sentence: "To drink heavily and taking too many drugs are bad for your health."

Infinitive as direct object

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 04:40 PM PDT

Merriam's dictionary defines "eat" as an intransitive verb and provides the following definition followed by an example: "to bear the expense of : take a loss on" the team was forced to eat the rest of his contract.

Isn't "to eat the rest of his contract" the object of the verb phrase "was forced"? Therefore, wouldn't this be a poor example of "eat" as an intransitive verb since it's functioning as a noun and not a verb at all?

Or is it possible that the entirety of "was forced to eat" is a verb phrase and that "the rest of his contract" is the object of the verb?

Realistic art VS realist art

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 01:51 PM PDT

At least from what I've seen, opinions diverge on this one, but I want to be sure whether it's possible to call a work of art 'realist' instead of 'realistic'. Sounds to me like something that makes sense, but I'm not a native speaker.

Wikipedia provides this bit:

When used as an adverb, "realistic" (usually related to visual appearance) distinguishes itself from "realist" art that concerns subject matter.

Is there a word to describe answers that are completely correct but entirely useless under the circumstances?

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 01:29 PM PDT

Irregular Webcomic No. 1785 says:

Monty: Dad, is there a word to describe answers that are completely correct but entirely useless under the circumstances?

Prof. Jones: Yes, yes there is.

Is that really such a word?

TOEFL ITP Simulation recommendations? [migrated]

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 12:59 PM PDT

I wish to know my TOEFL ITP level before the real test. Are there some simulators that give you the points you reached? I need at least 600 points.

Legal transcript

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 10:02 AM PDT

How would you write the following sentences in legal transcripts:

Mr. Doe, I understand your statement, but the question is, did you drink tea for breakfast?

Do you add a comma after "the question is/was"?

How to best reframe this statement?

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 05:34 AM PDT

A platform where individuals/enterprises can ask anything, at any time from any influencer/expert by paying for their time or effort.

I am confused between "from influencer/expert" or "to influencer/expert"?

"It's not true what they said. They're lying." Why are we using Present Continuous here? They have already lied, so why?

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 02:02 PM PDT

I don't understand why we use Present Continous there, because the action has already ended, "they have already lied".

"As indicated in the attachment" replacement

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 12:36 PM PDT

When you're writing an email, how to emphasize that the reader should find the evidence in the attached files. Is "As indicated in the attachment" correct?

What's the imperial equivalent to "royalty" in the sense of "members of the imperial family"?

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 03:03 PM PDT

Saying "members of the imperial family of Japan" is quite a mouthful, so I'd like something more succinct, like how you say "British royalty". "Imperiality" seems nice, but the only dictionary that lists "imperial person" is Lexico, so I'm not quite sure whether it could be easily understood as "members of the imperial family". Also the definition "imperial person" listed by Lexico is kind of vague, I'm not sure if it means "a member of the imperial family", or "an imperialist" which could be bad.

Sample sentence:

The Okimi no Tsukasa is a government department in charge of attending to members of the imperial family.

Which saying means to sell a part as the whole?

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 02:01 PM PDT

I'm looking for an English (or foreign saying often used in English) which mean that it is made to believe that part of a thing can achieve what the whole thing only can achieve.

Examples :

To sell a wheel as if it was a car. I don't know what a car is but I'm sold its concept (a mean to transport quickly) in the form of one of its part, the wheel. Only later I will realize that I can't do what was claimed without the other parts.
To sell weights as if they were a full gym.
To sell bricks as if they were a house.
To sell a spacesuit as if it was a spaceship.

It's the notion of benefit rather than quantity that is to be expressed.

The real case that brought this question is sellers of online courses (or books) who sell incomplete knowledge to achieve what is claimed. It is different from selling a miracle product.

Placement of “anymore” with respect to other complements, as in "not possible anymore to …"

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 04:00 PM PDT

I often see sentences like this from non-native speakers:

?It is not possible anymore to cross the border without a passport.

To me, this sounds wrong, and I would write this instead:

It is no longer possible to cross the border without a passport.

Or this, which I think is grammatically correct but stylistically bad because it's hard to figure out what "anymore" attaches to:

It is not possible to cross the border without a passport anymore.

(Here "anymore" might be spelled "any more" in some variants of English. The spelling is out of scope of my question.)

On the other hand, I think the following sentences are equally idiomatic:

Crossing the border without a passport is not possible anymore.

Crossing the border without a passport is not possible any longer.

Crossing the border without a passport is no longer possible.

An Ngrams comparison shows that "no longer possible to" is the only common variant, but there are a few hits for the other variants which are not false positives.

I think there's a rule that "anymore" (when it's part of the construction "not … anymore" meaning "no longer") must be at the end of the sentence. Is this an actual grammatical rule? Is "not possible anymore to …" something only non-natives say, something that uneducated native speakers say but educated native speakers consider incorrect, or something rare but idiomatic (perhaps only in certain variants of English)?

Who would use the word "manky"?

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 10:00 AM PDT

Both Google ngram and Cambridge Dictionary tell me that "manky" nowadays used to describe something dirty, as in it's "so old and/or used that it became dirty."

What I am curious about is who you're more likely to hear this word from.

Would a granny who chastises her grandkid to wash his hands use it, or rather a teen describing shabby clothes?

Can we draw any conclusions about the education level and social status of the person using this word?

What is a general name for various kinds of measurements?

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 11:11 AM PDT

Kilometere is a distance measurement unit.

Kilogram is a weight measurement unit.

The Gini index is measuring inequality.

distance, weight and inequality are all ... ?

A word/phrase for someone who changes the world

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 01:56 PM PDT

For a fantasy writing project,1 I am looking for a title or epithet for a character that emphasizes that the character has changed the world. Either a single word, or a phrase that could reasonably be used as an epithet, is what I'm looking for.

The title should also be reasonably neutral as to whether the changes made are good or bad: the emphasis should be on how significantly the world has been changed by their actions, and how impressive that is regardless of what you think of the changes. It should be focused on the accomplishment of such a change; it could apply to someone who changed the world unwittingly.

Lofty, grandiose titles are appropriate, even ideal, and being immediately recognizable is less important than sounding impressive and having the correct meaning.

  1. In particular, the project is a character class for a role-playing game. This title would be the reward for reaching the highest level in the class (and would convey certain benefits, which are not relevant). But this is the reason for the neutrality requirement, since this has to be able to describe any member of the class, rather than a particular character.
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