This tag is for questions about the meaning of a longer passage of English.
5
votes
4answers
6k views
Does “notified by [date]” include the end date?
I have read the Rules of a competition. The text of the Rules include a sentence as follows:
As per stated in the Rules the entrants will be notified by May 30th 2010.
Does the sentence above ...
13
votes
3answers
1k views
“to be all but X”
What does "all but" mean in this expression?
Today, under pressure from P2P distribution, optical disc piracy in wealthy countries is "all but eliminated" and profit margins elsewhere are slim.
...
8
votes
2answers
4k views
“All but” idiom has two meanings?
Here's two ways I've seen the "all, but" idiom used:
"Close all tabs but this one" (Any modern application with a number of tabs might have this as an option.) It means "close all the tabs, but not ...
3
votes
3answers
747 views
Specific usage of the word 'but'
The Aesop's Fables translated by George Fyler Townsend book has a line which reads as follows:
... If you had but touched me, my friend, you ...
I've seen the word 'but' used this way a couple ...
2
votes
2answers
197 views
How does negation affect the use and understanding of “or” and “and”
I'm trying to make more sense of how negation effects how a sentence is parsed and understood if and's and or's are used within them.
Pop quiz: You are trapped on a bus with a bomb going 50 MPH. You ...
8
votes
4answers
2k views
What does “I Can't Get No Satisfaction” mean?
This song by The Rolling Stones, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction".
As a non-native speaker, I always wondered what's the exact meaning of this phrase?
Is it "I'm not getting any satisfaction" (this ...
29
votes
1answer
48k views
What does a single letter “J” mean in emailing?
Today is Halloween. After a successful party, many conversations have been going on in my company's email box.
The end of one email said "Till next time J". I had no idea what "J" meant in this ...
8
votes
2answers
1k views
What does “above” mean in this context?
I just read this lady's profile.
The following sentence has drawn my attention:
I'm not above occasionally bending or breaking a grammar rule for good
cause. But I do believe clear, persuasive ...
4
votes
2answers
2k views
Meaning of “last/this/next Monday” [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Which day does “next Tuesday” refer to?
Suppose today is Tuesday. What do last Monday, this Monday and next Monday mean?
2
votes
2answers
8k views
What does “if and when” mean, and is it the same as “when and if”?
Rather than trying to describe my beef with this idiom, I will give a bunch of successively objectionable examples. None of these are taken from real life.
As I see it, if (and when) both "if" and ...
23
votes
7answers
2k views
Does “gay” still include the meaning “merry”?
Dictionary.com lists eight meanings
of gay, with “merry, lively” as
the first entry.
Microsoft banned an
Xbox user for listing Fort
Gay (a real place) as his
hometown:
Xbox Live considered the ...
6
votes
2answers
389 views
Is Wayne's World's (NOT) a modern invention?
Older users of this site may recall the 'Bill & Ted' 'Wayne's World' series of movies of the early 1990s. They were mindless but fairly amusing and their eponymous characters spoke in a unique ...
10
votes
5answers
21k views
Meaning and usage of “bite me”
I often come across the phrase bite me in many TV shows. What does it mean and is there a specific context in which this phrase can be used?
9
votes
5answers
3k views
What does “canonical” mean?
Sometimes I read a sentence containing the word canonical, but I cannot find appropriate meaning of the word.
For example, in this link:
Returns a canonical representation for the string object.
...
8
votes
1answer
2k views
Is “of” instead of “have” correct?
I have noticed a lot of people use of instead of have, for example: "that must of been really annoying". Is this correct?
2
votes
2answers
2k views
What does “waxed rhapsodic” mean?
See context below:
Bloomberg is well known for his malapropisms and mispronunciations:
he's introduced former Yankee manager Joe Torre as "Joe Torres" [and] waxed
rhapsodic about the famous ...
0
votes
2answers
111 views
Meaning of a sentence [closed]
I was reading an article but I don't quite understand the part made bold:
In accordance with the ideals of Kemalism expressed above, education
or school emerged as the most efficient apparatus ...
6
votes
2answers
241 views
His brother “hooked” him up with this bachelor party
I was watching the film "Bachelor Party Las Vegas" and one of the characters utters the phrase:
His brother hooked him up with this bachelor party
(emphasis mine)
When I looked up hooked in the ...
4
votes
4answers
273 views
What does “Japan-lite problems” mean?
It’s pity to learn our own country is viewed as a bad example for other countries not to follow. I found the word “Japan-lite problems” in the article of Time magazine (August 25 issue) titled “Six ...
3
votes
1answer
1k views
What does “Thundering typhoons” mean?
What does "Thundering typhoons" mean?
Actually it was in the 2011 movie The Adventures of Tintin.
3
votes
2answers
2k views
“my friend” vs “a friend of mine”
I always found it weird to hear people say things like "My friend asked me to come" (with no prior mention of said friend), as opposed to "A friend of mine asked me to come". To me it seems as though ...
1
vote
3answers
602 views
Does “generosity”/“generous” - as character quality - imply connotations “giving of your OWN resources, not someone else's”?
The question is about the context attached (or rather not attached) to the term "generosity"/"generous" (defined in Merriam-Webster as "liberal in giving").
The question is, is there a ...
0
votes
2answers
537 views
What does “should something happen” mean?
What is the meaning of should loss occur in the following text?
Backup and recovery procedures protect your database against data loss and reconstruct the data, should loss occur. The ...
-1
votes
1answer
126 views
What is the meaning of “twists and turns” in this sentence? [closed]
The car followed the twists and turns of the mountain road.
30
votes
7answers
54k views
“The Dude abides” — what does “abide” mean in that context?
I'm unfamilar with the word "abide" which is famously used the the movie quote "The Dude abides" (The Big Lebowski).
Looking it up in a German/English dictionary makes me believe it's "The Dude lives ...
25
votes
3answers
1k views
Why is there a “mean” in “Greenwich Mean Time” (GMT)?
What's the meaning of the word "mean" in "Greenwich Mean Time"?
Shouldn't we simply say something like "Greenwich Time"? I don't understand what the word "mean" is doing there.
6
votes
2answers
187 views
Meaning of Jo's dialog in Chapter 16 of Bleak House
A portion of chapter 16 of Dickens' Bleak House is shown below.
Jo attends closely while the words are being spoken; [...] and nods his ragged head.
"I'm fly," says Jo. "But fen larks, you ...
2
votes
5answers
425 views
How does “among” vs “between” affect the meaning of this sentence from the Times?
I realize that this has been discussed elsewhere on the site, but I was interested in the use of the preposition "among" in a sentence from a story in yesterday's New York Times:
Research done by ...
27
votes
2answers
4k views
What does President Obama’s phrase “We don’t need to spike the football” mean?
President Obama made the following statement regarding his decision not to show dead body of Osama bin Laden to the public:
"I think that Americans and people around the world are glad that he is ...
18
votes
9answers
2k views
How should “deceptively” actually be used?
I'm not sure if this is a duplicate question, but I couldn't find anything on here on the topic. I can't seem to figure out what is actually meant when using the word "deceptive," or rather, what is ...
17
votes
7answers
13k views
What is the meaning of “don't mention it” (in response to “thank you”)?
I read at several places that "don't mention it" is equal to "you're welcome". But for me, the word means something like "don't go around talking about this to anyone". So what is the real meaning of ...
13
votes
3answers
2k views
What is a “Hobbesian trap”?
A recent Economist article (see The drug war hits Central America) uses something called a Hobbesian trap like this:
Central America has fallen into a
Hobbesian trap: the better-off make
...
10
votes
6answers
2k views
What did Steve Jobs mean by “Technology married with Liberal Arts” in his last speech?
The Asahi, Japan’s leading newspaper quoted the following famous closing words of Steve Jobs’ in his last speech at the iPad 2 event in March 2011 in its popular editorial column, “Vox populi, vox ...
6
votes
4answers
1k views
Difference between “voters”, “electorates” and “constituents”
I'm reading an English text about politics, and in one paragraph I found "voters," "electorates" and "constituents." Now I would like to know if they are absolutely the same, or if they have slightly ...
6
votes
2answers
510 views
What's the connection between “Holy Grail” and “Killer Rabbit”? [closed]
This article says:
If there's a Holy Grail, there's a Killer Rabbit.
I can understand that to be "even if there's a good solution, there's a catch to it", but what does Killer Rabbit have to ...
6
votes
5answers
16k views
Usage of 'Dear All'
Is it correct to use "Dear All" at the beginning of the e-mail, when you are writing to more than one person?
It seems so informal to me. Is there any better way?
6
votes
2answers
1k views
What does it mean to call something Leviathan in comparison to others?
Wordweb describes Leviathan as:
The largest or most massive thing of its kind
Monstrous sea creature symbolizing evil in the Old Testament
A recent Economist article (see The drug war ...
4
votes
3answers
694 views
What kind of human character or regional trait does the habit of “the g-dropping” represent for?
Further to the question I posted today about the meaning of the expression, “treat somebody pretty ugly,” which appeared in New York Times’ article (September 17) titled “Rick Perry, Uber Texan,” I ...
4
votes
1answer
323 views
What’s the usage of apostrophes in “ ‘Bye, ‘bye ”?
I’d like to know what effect an apostrophe has which is before a word and doesn’t work as an omitter. (Not like C’mon or ‘Course, but like ‘bye, ‘bye.)
I have three questions as follows, but any ...
3
votes
2answers
283 views
Is “put together” an adjectival phrase?
When someone says "He is smarter than I and she put together," what is the function of the phrase "put together"? Is it considered an adjective?
2
votes
3answers
447 views
tailored to someone needs VS tailor-made
I wrote a text about our company's services and added that we also can offer products tailored to the needs of our clients. One of my colleagues insisted that the expression was wrong and I should say ...
1
vote
2answers
120 views
What does one's status being “less a blank check than an equation with multiple variables” mean?
There is the following line in a December 8 New York Times article titled “Clinton’s countless choices hinge on one: 2016”:
“But being Hillary Clinton is never a simple matter, and her next few
...
1
vote
2answers
174 views
How should I understand this “that” clause?
The following sentence is from an article of Harry Frankfurt who is a professor from Princeton University:
It must be part of the point of saying that humbug is "short of lying," that while it has ...
13
votes
5answers
2k views
What does “don’t pave the cow path” mean in this context?
I came across a new phrase while reading description section of a webinar topic on Operational Best Practices in the Cloud here.
Excerpt:
Don’t pave the cow path. Cloud infrastructure is very ...
12
votes
5answers
1k views
Difference between “commit suicide” and “suicide”
One of the examples in my English composition book (for learning to write my language's sentences in English) was "Why he committed suicide under such a good circumstance is an unsolved question.", ...
11
votes
8answers
25k views
What does “double-down” mean when used in a context other than Blackjack?
I saw the phrase “double-down” in the following sentence of the Washington Post article (June 28, 2011) titled “Why Michele Bachmann is no Sarah Palin.”
“Palin is notorious for doubling-down on ...
9
votes
3answers
385 views
What does “Sleep through the Second Coming” mean?
There is the following statement in Jeffery Archer’s fiction “Kane & Abel,” in which William Kane, one of the two heroes looks at his wife sleeping soundly on bed unaware of his big problem:
...
9
votes
1answer
522 views
“You were already having been going to do that!”
From one of the Futurama episodes:
Farnsworth A: You people and your
slight differences disgust me. I'm
going home. Where's that blue box with
our universe in it?
Farnsworth 1: Oh,
...
8
votes
4answers
455 views
“Back up data” or “back data up”?
Which is correct?
To back up data.
To back data up.
The context is the following:
He was careful enough to perform tests and [back up data | back data up] to avoid any problems.
8
votes
4answers
2k views
Meaning of “to get stuffed”
What does the phrase to get stuffed mean in the following passage taken from my IELTS reading exercise?
One of London Zoo’s recent advertisements caused me some irritation,
so patently did it ...
