Hot answers tagged word-usage
18
Two words: WET PAINT. Not all paint is water-based.
Also, we can consult a dictionary:
wet (adj.) moistened, covered, saturated, etc, with water or some other liquid
(from Collins, emphasis added)
It's very much context-dependent. Many things can be wet with various solutions or solvents during a manufacturing process. For example, this brings back ...
14
Your understanding is already close to the mark. There's a discussion of the synonyms for fatal in the American Heritage Dictionary:
Fatal describes conditions, circumstances, or events that have caused or are destined to cause death or dire consequences: a fatal illness.
Deadly means capable of killing: a deadly poison.
Mortal describes a condition ...
9
Technically speaking
Wetting:
Wetting is the ability of a liquid to maintain contact with a solid surface, resulting from intermolecular interactions when the two are brought together. The degree of wetting (wettability) is determined by a force balance between adhesive and cohesive forces.
No need for the liquid to be water:
...
8
For what its worth, this native speaker has never heard of it. I am obviously biased because I am a biologist but to my mind RNA can only stand for ribonucleic acid.
As for general usage, this Google Ngram shows that R.N.A.'s popularity peaked in the mid 60s which would imply it is indeed most often used for ribonucleic given the timeline of RNA biology's ...
7
Using "would" in place of "used to" when talking about actions done multiple times in the past is exceedingly common in everyday speech. That's been true for me living in the western half of the United States. The British Broadcasting Company also seems to consider it very common.
As a matter of personal taste, I actually prefer "would" in many situations, ...
7
What I would say is I like cycling, or I like riding bikes. (I could say I like bicycling, but I probably wouldn't, unless I'd just been talking to somebody who only rides tricycles).
Or, if you didn't really want the like in there: I cycle. In context (if it is already established that we're talking about bikes) I'd say I ride.
I wouldn't usually say I ...
6
OED has no entry for gravity as a verb. Dictionaries document usage, so it takes some time for them to catch up with a word's appearance, especially for a particular technical term.
Now that Google's Ngrams can analyse parts of speech, it's possible to see that gravity_VERB does appear in their database, although at a far lower incidence than gravitate. ...
6
There is some confusion among learners on how to use: again and anymore but specifically more so with: anymore. Perhaps the first being its orthography, anymore can also be written formally as: any more. Only recently has the one word version gained acceptance. Secondly, in some parts of the US it is found in positive sentences such as :"Anymore we watch ...
5
All your examples are all acceptable: it is not normal practice to use leading zeros.
I would, however, suggest prefixing (or suffixing) all of them with AD before (or after) the digits (especially so where you omit "the year"). I believe (but have not confirmed) that it is conventional to include "AD" for years of less than 4 digits (unless it is obvious ...
5
Paraphernalia has a slight negative connotation in some circles because of its association with criminal possession of drug paraphernalia. Otherwise, it's a good, whimsical word. I personally wouldn't worry about it, but if you have concerns, consider potpourri instead, especially if you're posting about trivia or other diverse topics.
5
Yes, it is a proper use of respectively, although it's a monster paragraph. Respectively can certainly refer to more than two things, and each list is just married up.
respectively adverb
separately or individually and in the order already mentioned (used when enumerating two or more items or facts that refer back to a previous statement)
...
5
The will in can and will is not the epistemic ("expected future") will, but rather the deontic ("be willing to") will, the one that shows up in hypothetical clauses (where you were probably told in school that you "can't use the future tense").
If he will hand in his homework, I will correct it.
The first will is deontic only; the second could be either ...
5
I'm going to do what it says not to do and post my opinions, but I think a Master's in Linguistics entitles me to some latitude...
"jerk" is someone who acts without regard for others. Generally, his/her bad behavior is the result of self-involvement or minor malice, but a jerk usually offends without trying to, simply because s/he can't help it.
"That ...
5
Germanic languages often form compound words like designtime, so the meaning is readily understandable. As a matter of convention, however, English writers typically write them as separate words except for very common compounds:
As a member of the Germanic family of languages, English is special in that compound words are usually written in their ...
4
Verbing nouns is a well-established practice in the English language, but some verbings are better accepted than others.
Sometimes the results are ridiculous—notably when verbs are minted from nouns which were formed from verbs in the first place. To say “Let’s conference” instead of “Let’s confer” . . . makes the speaker seem either ignorant or ...
4
Umpty is a rare word and does not have a well-established meaning. The vast majority of uses in the Google corpus are as a nonsense word or placeholder (e.g., “Mr. Umpty Ump.”). The Online Etymology Dictionary notes the placeholder sense “of an indefinite number” (1905) and how it relates to umpteen (1917, WWI army slang). This latter word did catch on, with ...
4
“Is this sentence right?” can be interpreted in several ways: Is it true? Is it grammatical? Is it meaningful? Is it a good sentence?
Because the question does not provide any context for the sentence, we can't tell if it's true. It appears to be grammatically correct, with righteous serving as a predicate adjective. It appears to be semantically ...
3
Chemists apply the term to water in an unusual way: water can make other liquids wet.
The other liquids are usually organic solvents. One of the reasons for these solvents is that the presence of water is a bad thing for whatever the chemist is trying to do. A wet solvent is usually a bad thing, and the term is used even if the amount of water is very ...
3
Have is mostly used in English as an auxiliary verb for the perfect construction, and it's normally contracted and frequently elided completely in speech. There is also a common (though often only metaphoric) lexical sense of 'possess' for the verb have, but its auxiliary and idiomatic uses are far more frequent.
The uncontracted verb have participates in ...
3
When you want to tell someone to do something for you, you can have them do that thing for you. For example, if I can't type my own emails (because I have injured my hand, for example), I can ask my colleague to do it for me. In other words I can have my colleague type my emails. In addition, suppose my boss knows I can't type, so he/she can say something ...
3
It is correct and acceptable in either case. The use of the word 'of' in that case is not necessary, but when used I believe it to be superfluous.
Note:
Take consideration that TrevorD advises against the use of off of because in British English, since it is neither correct nor acceptable. I am not British so I cannot speak to this, but keep it in mind. I ...
3
I don't like it. We have a perfectly good word channel (here, channeling) that is more euphonious.
Special case: Because of possible ambiguity, channelize is probably better for the practice of constructing a specific channel for an otherwise wide or meandering waterway. Not relevant to this example.
3
I found this sentence in World Wide Words "Besides the pleasant, dewy petrichor of the post-rain afternoon, I see no hope or way out of a four-hour ride with the enigmatic mumbler." http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-pet2.htm
3
The Ngram Viewer gives this:
However, searching for the phrase "nothing loath" on Google Books returns several results from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that use the phrase. The ones from early in the twentieth century seem legitimate works, but later results seem mostly to be dictionaries or reprints of older works (e.g. the Iliad). The ...
3
You only need to look at one chart to answer the question. Note the variant spellings, which have declined in lockstep over the past century...
But I would also point out that at least some of the "contemporary" instances will actually be citing earlier usages, so the decline is in fact steeper than the chart would suggest.
Having said that, the ...
2
The "core" sense of abide is much bound up with wait (for a thing), withstand, sustain/maintain".
But one specific and relatively common sense today is to suffer, tolerate. Here are dozens of written instances of [Nature] cannot abide a vacuum where that meaning is applied metaphorically.
I therefore don't see any problem with, for example,...
There ...
2
Law is the object of abiding there, not the subject. It’s just like with a gun-carrying populace: the people carry guns, not vice versa. You can see the same thing with other equivalent constructions, like an apple-eating contest or a bridge-building exercise. It all these cases, the first word is the logical object of the participial verb.
2
Hit a nerve or struck a nerve are common in AmE too, as your research shows.
We don't tip people winks in the States though. We do tip someone off when we give them privileged information. Moreover, we may use a surreptitious wink to communicate something private or privileged. In that sense, He tipped me off with a wink sounds natural. (Actually, ...
2
I have scoured through everything I could find, and I am starting to think that such a word simply does not exist.
The words with "self" in it seem to the only solution.
I could see a few ways to phrase it well in that format though.
"The developer said he invented the app to address his own needs. Now his company succeeded and targets a more broad target ...
2
The feeling of incorrectness, in my opinion, stems from the connotation of "accordingly." There are other usage irregularities in this sentence, but to focus on the one in question, I would suggest taking note of the subtle variations in meaning of some possible synonyms or non-synonymous alternatives to "accordingly." First and foremost, "accordingly" ...
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