Bob

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	1,058 reputation	bio	website		visits	member for	1 year, 10 months
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Mar 21	comment	Is there a single-word noun for an overwhelming feeling that uses “overwhelm” as its root? to quote an old hymn, "..'Neath the whelming flood...." If you simply say "whelming" it carries the "over" meaning with it. So go to the root: An "overwhelming" feeling is in fact a "flood" of feelings.
Dec 20	comment	How do you define broke and broke into? Just my impression, but I think using the phrase "broke into (x region)" comes not so much from breaking into a physical location as it does the aviation term, "breaking into" as in "We broke into clear air above 4,000 ft..." Like a plane "breaks into" a new stratum, so the speaker "broke into" the six figure stratum...
Sep 6	comment	Use of “good” and “well” @StoneyB I agree. You done good in your comment!
Sep 6	comment	More than 1000 gallons of paint is/are sold each day To say otherwise is to ignore the reality that paint is sold in discrete-unit containers.
Sep 6	comment	More than 1000 gallons of paint is/are sold each day It's true that most liquids, in most contexts, are of infinitely variable quantity. But reference to gallons of paint being sold is a special case. Paint is essentially never sold in variable quantities. It's sold in discrete units, such as spray cans, hobby cans, quart cans, gallons, or five-gallon cans. And the smaller quantities are not additive: If you sold 4 pint-cans and 2 quart-cans of paint today, you wouldn't say, "I sold one gallon of paint today." You'd say, "I sold 4 pint-cans and 2 quart-cans." Because the OBJECTS (the cans of paint) are what we're selling.
Sep 6	comment	More than 1000 gallons of paint is/are sold each day I disagree. Perhaps in the context of paint manufacturing the paint would be a mass noun. But in the selling of paint, a "gallon of paint" is an object, and my local paint store has many of them. Yesterday they may have sold more than 1000 of them
Sep 6	comment	More than 1000 gallons of paint is/are sold each day +1, as I agree to your point that the singularity/plurality depends on the context. But I would point out that the role of the word gallons in fact depends on that context: It's either a modifier of more, or it is a noun, the subject of the sentence.
Sep 6	comment	More than 1000 gallons of paint is/are sold each day I disagree. Perhaps in the context of paint manufacturing the paint would be a mass noun. But in the selling of paint, a "gallon of paint" is an object, and my local paint store has many of them. Yesterday they may have sold more than 1000 of them.
Sep 6	comment	“View data” is to “observance” as “control data” is to what? In this sense I disagree. While "manipulation" in general has a Machiavellian overtone, in the strict sense of computer data, it's merely the corollary to "observe/view". If you take even one step away from the raw data itself, as in "manipulating a report of computer data", then the evil connotation returns. But at the level of setting or reading bits/bytes, "manipulation" is merely the act of setting bits as opposed to reading them.
Aug 20	comment	Curious about the type of humour employed by Twitter's @AntiJokeCat? My personal favorite: The Pope, President Obama, and a boy scout walk into a bar; and the bartender says, "What is this, some kind of joke?"
Aug 20	comment	What's the word for the property of being divisible by a particular number? The word is "even". If x(even) = "true" then x is divisible by 2. (don't know how to do subscripts, use your imagination)
Aug 20	comment	Is there a rule for when contractions are not possible? tchrist, funny you choose this phrase, because it's an excellent example. In this case, choosing the contracted form "I'm" actually changes the nuance of the sentence: The stress for "I'm sure" is the second word, "sure". The message is the choice of the word sure: the best word, the word that I have chosen to describe what I AM is: "Sure." If I spell out the contraction, "I am sure" the message changes ever so slightly. Here the word sure is a given, but what I'm stressing is the state of the sureness: I AM sure. I'm affirming that I really AM sure.
Aug 19	comment	What is the correct use of foundation in / foundation of? I'd write it this way: .."The objective of the lessons is to provide a solid foundation for the science and techniques necessary for that understanding." but the sentence is a bit of a mess. It's not very clear if the foundation is for the science or the techniques, and which of them are necessary for "that understanding" But I'd definitely use "for".
Aug 15	comment	Usage of third person form for first person Fair enough. Perhaps simply "uneducated".
Aug 14	comment	Difference between “fell to the ground” vs. “fell on the ground” No disagreement on the sense of drama; "to the ground" is often used to convey drama. But note that you naturally substituted "to her knees" as equivalent to "to the ground". Whereas falling "on the ground" generally conveys something more like tripping, where you bodily land on the ground.
Aug 14	comment	Why “lemon” for a faulty or defective item? Especially in an ancient context, where they did not enjoy the access that we have to a large variety of fruits from various regions: If I only occasionally had access to a fruit, then a lemon would be my least favorite by far.
Aug 14	comment	What is the difference between “unbeliever” and “disbeliever” Disbeliever is not in common use Agreed. I've never heard of someone being labelled as a "disbeliever".
Aug 12	comment	Contemporary written usage of “whom” in objective case This is precisely the kind of discussion up with which I will not put.
Aug 9	comment	Tea for the Tillerman Reading the lyrics in context, we have rewards for the bringer of the rain, the sun itself, and the "tillerman". What goes with the rain and the sun? The tiller of the soil.
Aug 7	comment	What is the antonym of “luck out”? I'm with Jim. "Striking out" is trying and failing, whereas "Lucking out" is due to, well... luck.