Saturday, July 9, 2022

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Word meaning to take away the sophistication of something

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 04:45 AM PDT

I've heard a perfect word to describe this before but I was not diligent enough to write it down; never thought I'd actually have a chance to use it. I just remember it was a fairly advanced/academic term to describe simplifying something. I do remember bits and pieces of the original sentence I heard it from, context is how adult hobbyist lego collectors critique certain lego releases:

"I'm not particularly fond of this set, because, as you can see, the build of the car has really been _______. They are clearly trying to make this set more accessible but it's come at the cost of quality and sophistication."

The way the word I'm trying to think of differs from "simplified" is that the word I'm trying to think of has a connotation of being designed for a younger audience, maybe like juniorized but that's not a word nor is it the academic-sounding word I'm sure was used.

A simple question on when to use "these" and when "those" while writing

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 01:25 AM PDT

You will be needing the following three things for your trip:

  1. The first thing.

  2. The second thing.

  3. The third thing.

These/Those (the above ones) are the three things you should bring on your trip.

↑ Which one here is grammatically correct "These" or "Those"?

How can I understand English like my native, Persian? [closed]

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 10:23 PM PDT

I read Persian poetry from 1300 and it totally makes sense, I enjoy it, it's beautiful, eloquent, I feel comfortable with the languages, because I've known it since the first day of my life. The words touch my soul. It's an indescribable psychological state. You know it. Some say I can never achieve that in English, some say that kind of beauty in language hides from strangers, but I want to. I don't accept "NO" for an answer, not even from Shakespeare. I tried "Macbeth", the movie first, I know the meaning of words, I sort of understand it, but I don't feel it, I'm not comfortable. I am so confused, it's not the amount of the words that I know, nor the study of mythology solves my problem, I'm impatient for a way to get it but they don't let me. Do you know a magic trick which has opened the door for you? would you share it with me?

Word to group some interrelated computer programs [closed]

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 09:47 PM PDT

I am looking for a word to group some interrelated computer programs, to name my github repository

The group includes (or github repo) these programs:

dwm — a window manager for unix like operating systems

st — a terminal emulator

dmemu — a program launcher

dwmblocks — a status monitor

First I named it dwmmates, then changed it to dwmset—sounds like set of the specific program dwm of different versions, that's why I want to change it.

I want something which connect them all.

I have a word in mind—constellation but it's too long so short it to con? dwmcon?

Should I use was or is in the following sentence?

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 07:10 PM PDT

In 2015, John bought the world's most expensive baseball card and how much he paid for it is absolutely mind-blowing. The card he bought was a Michale Jordan rookie card and it's one of the rarest cards on the planet.

What is the term for this literary device where a name is replaced by a description?

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 07:47 PM PDT

I remember in school being taught a literary device while studying Beowulf where a name is replaced by a description (wave-rider instead of boat, a weapon being life-ender, etc). I cannot for the life of me remember what it's called.

Question about correct grammar and English usage [closed]

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 06:07 PM PDT

is this grammatically correct: get in the groove of money or: be in the money groove or: earn in the groove

Searching for info on an idiom for expressing extent

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 05:48 PM PDT

I have the impression of an idiom used to express the exaggerated extent of something that follows the pattern "It was (some measure) if it was (other measure)". For example, to express the size of a fish one caught, "It was three feet long if it was a mile!"

I'd like to know more about the origin and usage of this idiom. Unfortunately, I can't find a specific example of it, and it's hard to do a web search for this specific construction.

My questions are,

  1. Is this a real idiom, or am I making it up? If it's regional, it's likely Midwestern or Southern U.S.

  2. If it is real, is there a way to refer to this type of expression that would allow me to search for more info or for examples?

  3. And, if anyone happens to know anything about it in particular, I'd welcome more insight on it. In particular, I'm interested in how it came to be used, since when parsed literally, expressions of this form don't really make any sense.

Thanks in advance!

Direction on using the appropriate conjunctions "and"/"or"/"nor" in a medical setting

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 05:19 PM PDT

Quick background: I'm a medical professional and have a question on the proper use of the conjunctions "and" "or" "nor" when writing patient notes. See examples below:

In a section of a patient note called History of Present Illness (HPI) and Review of Systems (ROS), a health care provider would write something to this extent in the patient note as pertinent to the patient presentation:

HPI

The patient denies having any fever, chills, and/or/nor fatigue. The patient reports having a cough, ear pain, and/or rhinorrhea.

ROS

CONSTITUTIONAL: Negative fever, chills, and/or fatigue.

ENT: Positive cough, ear pain, and/or rhinorrhea.

CARDIAC: Denies chest pain, edema, and/or/nor palpitations.

Could someone help me identify the correct conjunction to be used in the provided examples above: and, or, nor?

Could you also provide reasoning/explanation to the correct use of these conjunctions in the above setup?

This will be very helpful and informative for my colleagues and me.

Thank you!

Idoimatic way of expressing the action to exchange the roles of two objects?

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 02:39 PM PDT

What is the idiomatic way of saying exchange the roles of two objects?

For example, let A play offense and B play defense, and then _____ , let B play offense and A play defense.

-- EDIT --

I thought about using "exchange roles". But it sounds a bit technical. Googling it led me to documentations of Microsoft Exchange Server for some operations about user roles there.

Ideally, I am looking for something expressive enough so that when I write:

For example, let A play offense and B play defense, and then _____.

The reader/audience could infer the "let B play offense and A play defense" part.

Word meaning to aggregate/agglomerate into 2 opposing elements

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 01:20 PM PDT

I am seeking a word describing when a system of many elements agglomerates into two opposing/differing elements.

Similar to dichotomize, polarize, bifurcate, but going from many to 2, not 1 to 2 (or, maybe there is more general terminology for bidirectional).

I don't mind borrowing specialized terminology from some domain - let's hear them!

Does present participle without comma always modifies preceding noun or noun phrase? [migrated]

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 10:25 AM PDT

When reading the newspaper, I came across this sentence:

Then, Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) put out a detailed blog post last week explaining how they believed Hermit was being used to target devices.

I am confused as to whether or not the word explaining is modifying the noun phrase a detailed blog because according to some grammar book I read:

If the VERB-ing modifier (present participle) appears after a clause and without a comma, then it modifies the preceding noun or noun phrase.

But in this case, the syntactic constituent immediately preceding explaining is last week, which is not a noun or noun phrase.

Can a present participial clause modify a more distant noun or noun phrase even without a mandatory written comma? That is what is actually confusing me, because some grammar book also says that when a participial phrase concludes a main clause and modifies a word farther back in the sentence than the last thing, you will need a comma.

But there is no comma in my newspaper's sentence; why not? How can this still be grammatical in the English language without a written comma? Has the newspaper made a mistake in English grammar and created something that it not grammatical?

Is something "sudden" also unexpected?

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 10:10 AM PDT

As I understand the word "sudden" (or "suddenly") it indicates a rapid change, usually without prior notification that the event was about to occur.
I find it hard to find sources for the second half of my statement, but I also find it difficult to create an example without an element of surprise.

Is a sudden event always surprising/unexpected? (The event may have been predictable in general, but not for this specific moment)

Please note if I have a misunderstanding in the following examples, or provide one for either a slow or an expected sudden event if it exists;

Suddenly he walked on the street (instead of indicating and then walking).
It was likely expected that he will cross the street at some point, but not this very instant.

Suddenly he started to rise from the couch.
Obviously he couldn't sit there for all eternity, but there was no indication he would start now (the actual rising might still be slow and "un-sudden").

I don’t suppose you are coming, ARE YOU / AREN’T YOU?

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 07:53 PM PDT

Which one is correct?

  1. I don't suppose you are coming, ARE YOU?
  2. I don't suppose you are coming, AREN'T YOU?

The grammar rules I know say that 2) should be correct, but it feels wrong, because the statement is essentially negative (so there should be a positive question tag).

Thanks!

Is ‘just’ an adjective in ‘just anyone’?

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 04:23 PM PDT

Given this sentence:

Nina wouldn't give her phone number to just anyone.

I've checked several dictionaries (Oxford, Longman, Cambridge, Macmillan) for the word just from the example above. It looks like it is an adjective modifying the pronoun anyone.

However, the meanings provided do not fit the above situation.

Finally, I found that just anyone is listed as an idiom in Merriam-Webster dictionary. As Merriam-Webster is an American dictionary, is just anyone an idiom in American English only? I can't find the entry in the four dictionaries I mentioned.

What is the history of the phrase 'hot button' as in 'hot button issues'?

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 10:53 AM PDT

When we speak of 'hot-button issues', what is the metaphor being implied? Are topics of conversation like 'buttons' at a machine, and sensitive topics likely to burn the broacher?

Any elaboration of the origin and exact meaning of the phrase would be appreciated.

Using upon/despite in a sentence

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 12:09 PM PDT

Recently I came upon this question in an English test:

All the people hated Sally. However, ____ learning that Terry was the defense lawyer in this court case, they were on Sally's side.

The given answer is "upon", but I think that "despite" should also be an acceptable answer, just that it changes the meaning of the sentence. (No additional context was provided to indicate the intended meaning.) Are "upon" and "despite" equally correct answers, considering both grammar and logic?

American vs British English: using 3rd person singular pronoun or person's name?

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 12:32 PM PDT

I grew up in the UK and now have a lot of American friends and colleagues; I tend to notice an almost systematic difference in the way Americans use 3rd person singular pronouns in preference to a person's name in conversation. This is especially noticeable and seemingly impolite to my British ear when the third person is present in the conversation. I'm not sure how to articulate the specific instances when this occurs, other than that when I was growing up, this is exactly the situation that my elders would say "Who's 'she'? The cat's mother?!" to correct me.

E.g.,

She's coming on the trip with us too!
Who's 'she' - the cat's mother?
Sorry, gran is coming with us too.

(Wiktionary)

Interestingly, the Americans I've met generally seem to be completely unperturbed by this, whether speaking, or hearing themselves referred to in this way. It seems completely natural for Americans to do this.

I would like to know if anyone can articulate/describe the specific instances when this (un)contentious switch between 3rd person pronoun and names occurs? And at what point or why this divergence between American and British English occurred?

Can "life" be used in reference to more than one person?

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 09:07 PM PDT

Is it grammatically correct to use the word life in the singular when referring to more than one person?

I found the following sentences in the Corpus of Contemporary American English.

a. we can save the life of many of these patients.

b. Clearly, CPR has been credited for saving the life of many.

Passive causative in relative clauses

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 12:32 AM PDT

Causative is used to say that you arrange for someone else to do a job for you. For example, "John has the car repaired". This is different from "John has repaired the car" because the latter sentence means that John did the work himself.

Now, I would like to merge the following two sentences, using a relative clause: "John has the car repaired" - "Now the car works perfectly".

I mean something like "The car, which John has repaired, now works perfectly". But this sentence is wrong because it means that the car was repaired by John himself. However, I don't know how to get it right. Could you help me out please?

In relation to this question, I began wondering whether there is a way to transform the sentence "John has the car repaired" into passive voice. I know that it is already passive in some sense but it still has an object: the car. So, is it possible to say something like "The car was had/got/gotten repaired by John"?

Origin of the phrase "That's mighty white of you..."

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 07:00 PM PDT

What is the origin of the phrase "that's mighty white of you brother"; is it simply a racist statement as it appears to be, our does it have another, older or obscure derivation? I've always wondered whether the statement was straight up racial superiority idiocy, or if there was another historical origin which might justify its retention in the great bank of English complimentary speech.

What is a single word for a "shared experience"

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 12:03 AM PDT

I'm talking about a large group experience. Depression for example is felt by millions, it's a shared experience that most of us can understand, but I'd like one word to describe the understanding we can feel for what ever the shared experience is because we've all experienced it. Empathetic, prevalent, pervasive, rampant is not really what I'm thinking.

Use of the word 'off' to indicate a quantity

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 12:51 AM PDT

Over the years I've come across people saying things like:

The system has 2 off host and 1 off service connections.

This is nearly a verbatim quote from a technical document that I'm reviewing.

This happens quite a bit in my work place (verbally and written), and in my mind this is simply incorrect, and 'yucky'. I think it comes from people filling in a request sheet where they are after a specific thing from stores... for example:

3x {PART_NO} - specific cable

From here, I can understand that it is a mutation of 'of'...

I'll need 3 of these specific cables.

Regarding the first quote:

  • Is this accepted / proper English?
  • Is this in common usage?
  • Should this be corrected? (It's a public document)

In this scenario I'd rewrite it:

  • Remove 'off'
  • Re-order so that the last item is plural, to match 'connections'

The system has 1 service, and 2 host connections.

woman vs women plurality

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 03:43 AM PDT

I hope this is not ridiculous to ask (and I will try to focus on a question, rather than discussion) but have I missed something regarding the use of the word women to refer to a single person? I have noted of late in reading news articles on respectable sites (like bbc news of all places, where one might expect them to be good with English) increasing occurrences of the word "women" when the context suggests one person. Example here:

"[...] let out hearty cheers and one women jumped to her feet, clapping her hands. The feeling in the auditorium was friendly."

or

"Those allegations involving hitting; one women claimed she'd been choked in the stairwell."

As two relatively recent examples. Did I miss something in connotative usage? Or is this somehow just becoming a common mistake that I hadn't noticed so much before?

Things saving the memory of gone people -- are called?

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 11:13 AM PDT

We all love to save things, collect items, items/things that remind us of departed souls or gone people. They're gone from life, but may or may not be dead. What are those things called?

They might not be expensive, but they are close to the heart. Whenever we see them they remind us of the people they belonged to.

What do we call these things? Do they have any particular name?

Examples:

  • A girl has saved her ex-boyfriend's written letters.
  • A daughter has saved her dead father's watch.

Collective term for data sizes (bytes, kilobytes, megabytes etc.)

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 04:58 PM PDT

As you will probably work out from my profile, I'm a software developer. This is sort of a software development question, but I think this is more suited to English language too.

Feel free to migrate if you think the question does not belong here.

Say I want to refer to the data size, or capacity of something:

  • A floppy disk can hold 1.44 megabytes of data.
  • My flash drive can hold 16 gigabytes of data.
  • My internet connection can operate at a maximum of 50 gigabits per second
  • I have just managed to compress a file from 1 megabyte to just 200 kilobytes.

How do I collectively refer to these units of data size/capacity?

Does "moonlighting" have a negative or neutral connotation?

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 10:14 AM PDT

We all agree that "moonlighting" denotes having a second job. However, Merriam-Webster and Oxford Advanced Learner's don't define it in exactly the same way.

For example, Merriam-Webster attaches a neutral meaning to it:

moonlight (intransitive verb): to work at a second job in addition to your regular job

OALD, on the other hand, suggests a more negative connotation:

moonlight (intransitive verb): to have a second job that you do secretly, usually without paying tax on the extra money that you earn

I don't know if this is a case of British English vs American English.

So I'd like to ask native speakers of English: Do you attach a neutral or negative meaning to the word? For example, would you say that Madonna moonlights as an actress, without implying that she doesn't pay taxes on the extra money she makes?

"Interfere in" vs. "interfere with"

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 03:16 AM PDT

I was taught that when interfere is followed by in, it means to get involved in something that doesn't concern you; when followed by with, it means to prevent something from being done. And this is confirmed by British English speakers on the other sources I have read.

However, when I looked up this word in Dictionary.com, I just found this entry: 2. to take part in the affairs of others; meddle (often followed by with or in ).

Is this a difference between American English and British English? As an American English speaker, will you also use interfere + with (as it says in Dictionary.com) when you are trying to express, for example, "Don't interfere in other people's business"?

What's the name of this kind of act?

Posted: 08 Jul 2022 10:31 PM PDT

What's the name of this kind of act? It is commonly seen between friends. (I mean the act between two people, not necessarily 4 people like this one.)

Or can you describe it with a few words?

Difference between "impel" and "compel"

Posted: 09 Jul 2022 03:32 AM PDT

What is the difference between impel and compel?
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