47
votes
Accepted
Is "his husband" valid?
The answer to the question “Is ‘his husband’ valid?” (in the English language) is “Yes, yes it is” — although as the OED notes, the word husband was historically...
Used exclusively with reference to ...
- 135k
19
votes
Is "his husband" valid?
In certain jurisdictions (27 countries in June 2018), same-sex marriages have the same legal status as different-sex ones. In these, which include the United Kingdom, in which Cambridge Dictionaries ...
- 12.1k
9
votes
Accepted
WHY do so many people struggle with ‘who’ and ‘whom’?
I think there are a few reasons:
Most people are not great at taking an explicit grammar rule and just adopting it; rather, we're much better at internalizing rules when we also have exposure to ...
- 15.5k
7
votes
Is Waltzing Matilda comprehensible outside of Australia? In Australia?
It was written in 1895, so much of the language which would have been current then would have developed. For example, Robert Burns' poetry is hard to understand now if you haven't had it explained (...
- 7,841
7
votes
"Evil always wins because it stops at nothing": A phrase or expression to reflect that sentiment
How about a converse sentiment described by the aphorism Nice guys finish last.
People who are decent, friendly, and agreeable tend to be unsuccessful because they are outmaneuvered or overwhelmed by ...
- 101
5
votes
Accepted
History of the phrase "strange fruit"
While by no means the result of an exhaustive investigation, my hunch so far is that the second citation in the question from 1567 is a more general application of the figurative sense "an ...
- 22.4k
5
votes
Is Waltzing Matilda comprehensible outside of Australia? In Australia?
I'm Australian and in my mid 50s. To answer your question as to whether modern Australians understand the vocabulary in Waltzing Matilda, anyone who was born or educated in Australia in my age group ...
- 102
5
votes
Accepted
Why was the word "bull" taboo in some dialects of English? What did it mean?
The clue comes in the actual quote:
Word History: In many American regional dialects, the word bull, meaning "adult male bovine," was once highly taboo. When speaking in mixed company, ...
- 42k
5
votes
Why is the intransitive form of "obtain" so common in academic writing and so uncommon elsewhere?
The English word “obtain” derives from the Latin verb obtineo, directly or via French obtenir. In Latin it is usually transitive (“to hold, maintain, acquire”), but it can also be intransitive (“to ...
- 5,541
4
votes
Is Waltzing Matilda comprehensible outside of Australia? In Australia?
It's a folk song which tends to be written using a lot of local dialect words from the area it comes from for example the "The Twa Corbies" from the UK:
As I was walking all alane,
I heard twa ...
- 202
4
votes
Difference between "social" and "societal"
Societal
It appears "societal" was primarily limited to academic circles in the early 20th century and seems to have been popularized by social scientists in the late 1950's. The first use ...
- 22.4k
4
votes
Accepted
When did prodigies stop being evil?
The OED lists five senses of the noun prodigy from Latin prodigium. The date range for the examples given for each of them are shown.
An extraordinary thing or occurrence regarded as an omen; a sign, ...
- 64.7k
4
votes
What is the opposite of reappropriation?
I think pejoration is probably the most accurate possibility.
def 2 from dictionary.com:
Historical Linguistics. semantic change in a word to a lower, less approved, or less respectable meaning.
- 211
4
votes
WHY do so many people struggle with ‘who’ and ‘whom’?
I think a relevant factor is the much more rare use of "whom" compared to "who" in common speech. According to an article in The Economist,
A search of the Spoken category of the Corpus of ...
- 22.4k
4
votes
Accepted
Why is it "to have sex" instead of "to sex?"
In the autumn of 1719, after his wife's death, the wealthy Virginia planter William Byrd II visited London, maintaining the diary he had begun years ago back in the Colonies. He dutifully noted the ...
- 28.1k
4
votes
Are the words Bank (money) and Bank (river) related?
Per Etymonline:
"Bank" as in the side of a river comes ultimately from the Proto-Germanic root *bankon, meaning "slope."
"Bank" as in the financial institution ...
- 18.5k
3
votes
Why is it "to have sex" instead of "to sex?"
The answer to almost all questions about language that start "why" is "because that's how the language is".
Languages happen when people use them. People hardly ever decide "we should say it this ...
- 77.2k
3
votes
Neglecting women in every field
'Chairman,' 'chairwoman,' and 'chairperson' are all acceptable and all in common use. Chairperson is not restricted to use with women, and the AP Stylebook (2013) recommends against it. It instead ...
- 384
3
votes
History of the phrase "strange fruit"
My impression is that "strange fruit" was a neutral metaphor applied to anything that might be considered an unexpected result. One of the examples in the original question cleverly extends a "root" ...
- 1,121
3
votes
Difference between "social" and "societal"
Oh, I already was dizzy from looking at too many answers about this, until I stumbled here in these forums I like. By then I had my mind made up, on what i already knew... So my nearly definitive ...
3
votes
“We have nothing to lose but our aitches”
This is a jocular reference to Marx and Engels' 1848 Communist Manifesto, which ends (in the 1888 translation by Samuel Moore):
Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The ...
- 68.9k
3
votes
Extremism: what’s the cultural history of this word?
The word is a simple construct derived from the adjective extreme and seems unlikely to have a strong cultural development as opposed to filling a linguistic niche for a suitable related noun. ...
- 28.6k
3
votes
"Evil always wins because it stops at nothing": A phrase or expression to reflect that sentiment
A word that fits the description is "opportunism".
(OALD) opportunism The practice of using situations unfairly to gain advantage for yourself without thinking about how your actions will ...
- 21.1k
2
votes
Is there a word that describes the information gap due to a reader's cultural bias across place and time?
This is typically referred to as a culture gap:
A culture gap is any systematic difference between two cultures which hinders mutual understanding or relations. Such differences include the values, ...
- 66.4k
2
votes
“We have nothing to lose but our aitches”
My reading is that he is not talking about the pronunciation of the letter 'h' (correctly pronounced aitch) but the literal dropping (getting rid entirely) of the letter H in working class dialects.
...
- 21
2
votes
Why is 'lavender' used to reference homosexuality?
Lavender, an adjective used to refer to homosexuals is from late 19th century according GDoS
(orig. US) a euph. for homosexual and anything referring to homosexuality; also as n., homosexuality.
[...
- 67.4k
2
votes
Difference between Pragmatics and Sociolinguistics
The study of language in relation to social factors, including differences of regional, class, and occupational dialect, gender differences, and bilingualism This is what we call as Sociolinguistics, ...
- 52
2
votes
Accepted
Again regarding the pronunciation of "multi-": adequateness to certain strata of society
American Pronunciation
The prefixes anti-, multi- and semi- are pronounced by some Americans with the diphthong long i sound, though not necessarily in every environment. As a woman from Indianapolis ...
- 28.1k
2
votes
What is the origin of the idea that the word "able" must refer to a living being?
I do have a certain amount of sympathy with Simon Heffer here.
Saying that a person "is able", or "is unable", suggests (to my mind) that some sort of effort, physical or mental, is involved.
So, ...
- 64.7k
2
votes
What is the origin of the idea that the word "able" must refer to a living being?
Note : I have not (yet) managed to find an instance, before Heffer, of a quibble being voiced regarding the attribution of 'ability' to a non-living thing but I have managed to find an instance, ...
- 24.4k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible