Timeline for Shortened form of "the fact that she was alive"
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 9, 2019 at 23:58 | history | edited | Graham |
I didn't realize the phrase-requests tag existed when I wrote the question. It's another good tag for the question.
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| Apr 9, 2019 at 23:56 | comment | added | Graham | @HotLicks Oh, I meant to mention it 3 hours ago when I posted it, but I used your comment as the centerpiece for a community wiki answer. | |
| Apr 9, 2019 at 23:49 | comment | added | Graham | @RustyCore I have not tried reading my sentence out loud prior to this moment; good suggestion! The consonants you mention don't really stand out for me. The sentence is a bit of a mouthful, perhaps for the reason you identify, but probably also because it's a bit long (cf. Sam's answer). I will admit I have not extensively studied phonetics. Is there a commonality between those particular consonants that makes them clash? | |
| Apr 9, 2019 at 23:31 | comment | added | Rusty Core | Have you tried reading your sentence out loud? It is full of "d", "t", "k" and such. In particular, I would stay away from "fake" in the past tense. | |
| Apr 9, 2019 at 20:42 | answer | added | Graham | timeline score: 1 | |
| Apr 9, 2019 at 18:49 | comment | added | TrevorD | @HotLicks To me, the word "survival" implies that she was involved in an incident that she may not have survived. But faking her death need not involve any such incident. | |
| Apr 9, 2019 at 18:39 | comment | added | Jim | That she had faked her death was never discovered [until ...] | |
| Apr 9, 2019 at 17:47 | answer | added | Sam | timeline score: 4 | |
| Apr 8, 2019 at 22:05 | comment | added | Philip Wood | Her failure to die? | |
| Apr 8, 2019 at 21:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackEnglish/status/1115358824247042049 | ||
| Apr 8, 2019 at 20:52 | answer | added | Cory Fischer | timeline score: -2 | |
| Apr 8, 2019 at 20:38 | comment | added | Graham | @HotLicks True; I'm probably over-analyzing to no benefit. I think it would be a good answer. | |
| Apr 8, 2019 at 20:35 | comment | added | Hot Licks | @Graham - When one of us old wheezers survives a heart attack it doesn't mean someone else didn't. | |
| Apr 8, 2019 at 20:33 | comment | added | Graham | @HotLicks, This is my favorite, and it's probably what I'll go with, but it may technically present a problem: Merriam Webster defines survival as "the act or fact of living or continuing longer than another person or thing", but what is the alternate person or thing in this case (I guess her hypothetical death?); the second definition of "the continuation of life or existence" seems like it works better, but that I feel like when I've seen that usage, it's more context-dependent than the words of the definition convey. | |
| Apr 8, 2019 at 20:32 | comment | added | Graham | @MarkBeadles Good suggestion. It does suffer from the same context problem as "her being alive", but it's a bit nicer. | |
| Apr 8, 2019 at 20:23 | comment | added | Hot Licks | I might be inclined to say "her survival". | |
| Apr 8, 2019 at 20:20 | comment | added | Mark Beadles | Would you be ok with a slight rewording to use a noun, such as "After she faked her death, she kept her life a secret from the rest of the world."? | |
| Apr 8, 2019 at 20:18 | comment | added | Peter Shor | Modern English unfortunately has evolved so that the fact that ... is an unavoidable ugly phrase. 200 years ago, it would have undoubtedly been phrased differently. See Google Ngrams. | |
| Apr 8, 2019 at 20:10 | review | First posts | |||
| Apr 8, 2019 at 20:24 | |||||
| Apr 8, 2019 at 20:08 | history | asked | Graham | CC BY-SA 4.0 |