All Questions

I remember reading a story somewhere that a Southerner wrote about one of his life experiences. He mentioned that in the region he lived there was a time of day that cooled off a large amount in less ...

(1) That's a big part of who I am. (2) When that day comes if you don't like who you are, you're done. At first blush, the who's in (1) and (2) seem to be relative words in the fused construction. ...

Traditionally, a clause is defined as consisting of a subject and predicate. In Oxford Dictionary, it is defined as: A unit of grammatical organization next below the sentence in rank and in ...

(1) I regretted [his leaving the firm]. (2) I regretted [him leaving the firm]. (3) I regretted [leaving the firm]. (4) He didn’t bother [giving me a copy]. Regarding the above sentences The ...

Undoubtedly, in our Modern-mind-set, for many the mere utterance of the word "Shark" (more so when in the ocean, swimming) brings a sort of dread or at the least, undesirability to the ...

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Page 329) has a section titled 'Nominals': Intermediate between the noun and the NP we recognise a category of nominals: [3] a. the old man b. that book ...

I am an English native speaker working with non-native English teachers. In one of our texts, we came across the following sentence: ABC Mall has the most comprehensive loyalty rewards program of ...

Here is the definition: to wave off To dismiss or refuse by waving the hand or arm: waved off his invitation to join the group. But can "wave off" also be used for this gesture, ...

A lot of work I've been doing recently has been around the emergence of various gender identities. "Neutrois" recently came to my attention, with more information about it here: https://nonbinary....

Etymonline purports that the adverb 'even' originates from Old English efne [1.] "exactly, just, likewise." Modern adverbial sense (introducing an extreme case of something more generally ...

I've been researching the origin of the term "butch" and noticed that sources tend to be split on whether they mention it originating from Polari. OED, Green's Dictionary of Slang (adj., ...

The "Extra Examples" section in the entry of DARE in the Oxford Learner's dict. shows I hardly dared breathe. Dare here forms its past as a (semi)modal verb, yet the position in the sentence ...

What is a word of phrase which one can use to define someone, or group of people who profited/ became rich by borderline illegal/Immoral/unscrupulous means. I want a term which can relate to below ...

Microsoft® Encarta® 2009 reads as follows Because and for are both used to introduce reasons that justify a statement as distinct from giving a reason for it: You must have forgotten to invite them, ...

I really know that for the levels of studying English language, we had always said that "for" is a coordinator. However, I would like to know what for serves in this sentence For God so loved the ...

Are the words in bold type in the following sentences determiners? One of the books was written by X I want two of those 8 percent of the population has X I ate some of that cake In a treatise ...

I want to write an algorithm to calculate the number of syllables in a word. This process is an automated one that will be run on an entire dictionary so manually counting the number of breaths, chin ...

I was reading Jeremy Harmer's book (how to teach), and i encountered the sentence "it is, therefore, especially important that they are both fully engaged with what is going on and also ready to ...

Asked this on ELL but with no answer: What makes be an intransitive verb? How do we know that the analysis of It is me as transitive by tradtional grammars is incorrect? Take for example: 1. I gave ...

The sentence is: "After a while she got up from where she was and went over the little garden field entire." A quote from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. I want to know if the ...

I was thinking today about the apparent similarities in spelling at the start of the two words: Epigraph Epilogue And the fact they have seemingly opposed semantics. The first appearing at the start ...

Which one is correct: Today, she talks to me by phone from the middle of Italy. What is she doing there? She is working on her novel. In the first sentence, is the tense correct, with the ...

I've had some discussions in the past with TA's who would tell my undergrads "Lab reports are written in the passive voice". Aside from whether or not this is correct (let's come back to that in a ...

I heard someone use the words mistaken as rather than mistaken for. Is this correct? If it is correct then what is the difference between the two? Is it ever wrong to use mistaken as, and if so, why? ...

Consider the following sentences: Get thee hence, lest we too die on your account! Get thee hence, lest we too die on account of you! My intuition is that the two are identical in meaning, the ...

if we consider the sentence birds consume spiders, and spiders consume flies the "opposite" of that sentence is something like is flies <> spiders and spiders <> birds but, more active. ...

This question is related, but is not a duplicate, of Why do some words have "X" as a substitute?. I have noticed that a few nouns can be significantly abbreviated with an "x" at the end. ...

I was wondering if it would be grammatically and idiomatically correct to use to begin with in the sense of used at the end of a sentence to talk about why something was done or whether it ...

I've read (in the Elements of Style) that, while genitives of names ending in ‘s’ may have an additional ‘s’, as in "Ross’s", this oughtn't to be done with ancient names: Exceptions are the ...

In a letter we say "Dear Alexthecampbell," before starting the body. After this, we then captialize the first letter of the next sentence. Since the salutation functions like a header, and ...

In a comment on the question Is there any rule regarding when not to use the pattern "noun phrase + of + possessive pronoun"?, such as "a friend of his", John Lawler writes First ...

In my study of the pronunciation of English (RP), the sources that I happened to use, means of information of a moment and forgotten or permanent ones such as the Longman Pronunciation dictionary (JC ...

In Dorothy Gladys “Dodie” Smith’s 1956 children’s novel, The Hundred and One Dalmatians, the author writes: But though you can call a cook ‘Cook’, the one thing you cannot call a butler is ‘Butler’ ...

I have seen words like "every" and "any", etc. classified both as determiners and pronominal adjectives. Are these just different classifications of the same thing? Or does the ...

I'm a native Arabic speaker -Egyptian- we don't have the V & P sounds natively, I'm fully capable of pronouncing the V sound & telling the difference between it & the F sound perfectly, ...

The Secret Policeman's Ball were a series of benefit shows. However, is the phrase "buying a ticket to the Secret Policeman's Ball" an allusion to paying a bribe?

I'm editing a book with this sentence: 'Viroj, his wife, Pranom, Joan and I were duly ushered into an audience room at Chitralada Palace.' Viroj's wife is Pranom so Pranom is set off with commas as a ...

I just thought that there would be a bunch of errors logged in my system, because it seemed as if two files with the same path and filename were being saved at the same time, conflicting with each ...

We say hungry if someone wants to eat, thirsty if someone wants to drink and sleepy if someone wants to sleep. What's the adjective used to describe the person who has a desire to go urgently to the ...

I came accross sentences like these: "blablabla" says a breathless Mrs Johnson. "Dinosaur Jr. set to release new album mid-2016, says a nervous Lou Barlow" Are breathless and ...

What is the correct phrasal construction "Protect you and yours" or "Protect yourself and yours"? Are they both acceptable? Thank you.

Pricier or Costlier? Which is appropriate and for when? Example sentence: The documentation says "managed disks" are costlier than "un-managed disks" The documentation says "managed disks" are ...

Why do we need the preposition 'in' or 'on'? Can't we simply say "He hit my head."?

While writing a literary criticism essay on Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, I cited another critique that quoted the novel itself. Within the outline I submitted to the teacher, the entire quote ...

"Volume" is commonly used to refer to indefinite and definite (usually large) quantities of data or rates of data throughput (e.g., "The volume of data we delivered on each date is provided in the ...

I have an old catalogue with new prices pasted in over the old prices. These correction slips are small, only covering the prices but leaving the rest of the page as originally published. What are ...

Why do we use the Verb without 's' after 'that' in this case? I've met this one in discord's description. Discord is the easiest way to communicate over voice, video, and text, whether you’re part ...

I'm trying to sum up some rules for myself around "as + adjective + as" and "as many/few/little/much as". This is what I have summed up for myself. Is this correct? If using a plural noun with "as + ...

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Page 410) defines "Fused-head NPs" as follows: Fused-head NPs are those where the head is combined with a dependent function that in ordinary ...

The particular example I am thinking of here is: "This sounds like a noble pursuit." I was wondering if it would be grammatically correct to drop the like: hence, "this sounds a noble pursuit." It ...