106
votes
Does "pass" mean OK or not OK?
It's ambiguous.
It could mean "these candidates passed our tests".
Or it could mean "We'll pass on these candidates" (not give them offers).
You should ask whoever gave you the folders what the ...
- 4,587
103
votes
Accepted
"She pulled back her fingers a second before they were sliced off." Does she still have all of her fingers?
The one thing that seems to be agreed by the answers so far is that the intended meaning is obvious: she pulled back her hand seconds before her fingers (to use questioner’s own word) could be ...
- 11.3k
77
votes
Accepted
If a ship sinks, what does an airship do?
'Descend,' 'dive,' 'drop,' and 'fall' are all perfectly fine and, in the case of an uncontrolled descent, 'crash' does indeed tend to be the end result (though this refers specifically to what happens ...
- 1,275
60
votes
Accepted
"Why does paper cut so well?", ambiguous question?
This kind of construction has been called an "internal argument as subject" construction, but is more broadly known as a "middle construction," as in between active and passive. It strikes me as not ...
- 4,311
60
votes
Accepted
Does "pass" mean OK or not OK?
I have encountered many people using the term "pass" in recruiting. Each time, the person believed they were making a clear statement. Roughly half of them mean "I don't like this one, pass" (as one ...
- 953
55
votes
Is “I am getting married with my sister” ambiguous?
I would definitely agree there's a difference between getting married "to" someone and getting married "with" someone, but for the latter case, a native speaker might think you just misspoke. Marriage ...
- 14.7k
47
votes
Accepted
How many people are in the sentence "My friend, John, and I went shopping"?
The first example could be a use of parenthetical commas - the commas here act like parentheses (braces), so it's equivalent to
My friend (John) and I went shopping.
So there's still just you ...
- 23.2k
46
votes
Accepted
What is the meaning of "migration" in "Oracle (database) migration"?
It is ambiguous...
On the one hand, it may be about migrating data to Oracle. On the other hand, it may be about migrating data from Oracle. It can also be about migrating to and from Oracle. And ...
- 3,519
41
votes
If a ship sinks, what does an airship do?
Very simple, it crashes.
This word has been used throughout the history of airships. Most famously the Hindenburg.
An airship is just another form of aircraft. It is not a ship of the seas. The ...
- 13.1k
40
votes
Accepted
Two English words to distinguish French words “numéro” and “nombre”
As a software developer, here are a few phrases that I would prefer:
numéro of the current software process
Version of the current software process. A version number is implicitly part of a ...
- 7,786
39
votes
Accepted
Are there any ambiguities created by merging I and J into one letter?
Oh please. We've already been there, before j was invented and English worked just fine then too:
However, there were some (now obsolete) rules to distinguish between vowel and consonant forms. ...
- 67.1k
37
votes
Accepted
Does calling something a 'Novelty Act' bring down its image?
Calling a performer a "novelty act" implies that their primary appeal is their novelty, rather than their actual abilities or talents. As such, it frequently carries a dismissive meaning, ...
- 4,752
36
votes
Accepted
Is “I am getting married with my sister” ambiguous?
In this situation the object of to refers almost exclusively to who the subject is married to.
A Corpus of Contemporary American English search turns up 5778 collocations of "married to," ...
- 41.4k
32
votes
"She pulled back her fingers a second before they were sliced off." Does she still have all of her fingers?
The sentence is grammatically ambiguous, and you have to use common sense about the situation and intent to disambiguate it. If it had been:
She begged for mercy a few seconds before her fingers ...
- 22k
31
votes
Is “I am getting married with my sister” ambiguous?
On hearing the second sentence, I would assume the speaker meant married to and made a mistake.
The reason for thinking that is that there are countless possibilities of expressing being married at ...
- 7,176
30
votes
Is the meaning of "Either latitude or longitude needs to be provided!" exclusive or inclusive?
The OP does not wish to prevent the users of the software from entering both latitude and longitude, and is hesitant whether the error message that includes either conveys that, in view of the fact ...
- 8,779
29
votes
The ambiguity of: "resent your message"
"I have resent your message, I already spoke to him last week". I first thought, OK, he has forwarded the mail.
That is indeed what he meant. This is based on the verb "to resend" (ODO link).
His ...
- 7,786
26
votes
Meaning of "or we have headphones or we don't, so..."
As Yosef commented, this is transcribed speech, so the grammar won't be perfectly correct; it's more like a stream of consciousness or a run-on sentence. Also, I suspect it's slightly mispunctuated. I ...
- 2,734
26
votes
Are there examples of triple entendres in English?
This line from Prince's 1991 song "Cream":
"You got the horn, so why don't you blow it?"
The first interpretation is literally blowing a horn, i.e. playing a musical instrument. ...
- 780
25
votes
25
votes
Accepted
What are "desires of the flesh"?
I think it refers to a broad range of sins (where "flesh" hints at man's mortality and susceptibility to being tempted into doing morally questionable things), including lust, greed, violence, etc. It ...
- 2,495
25
votes
What is the meaning of "migration" in "Oracle (database) migration"?
A fourth interpretation might be that Oracle itself is migrating
Bird migration takes place seasonally
22
votes
Is “I am getting married with my sister” ambiguous?
The correct phrasing for the “with my sister” variant is “I am having a double wedding with my sister”, and the past tense would be “I had a double wedding with my sister”.
Married with sister is ...
- 1,285
22
votes
What’s the long form corresponding to the short form “English Language & Usage”?
The phrase English language and usage is an example of the syntactic phenomenon called Conjunction Reduction, which omits repeated lexical material in conjoined clauses.
Thus,
English language and ...
- 108k
21
votes
If a ship sinks, what does an airship do?
It falls
It's not part of the plan for a ship to sink and it's often due to unfavorable circumstances. An aerial craft in free-fall is the closest equivalent I can think of. On an airship this would ...
- 481
21
votes
Accepted
What do you call a word that has multiple senses or parts of speech in one sentence?
I think you're referring to the term zeugma.
zeugma noun
A figure of speech in which a word applies to two others in different senses (e.g. John and his driving licence expired last week).
- ...
- 38.9k
20
votes
Two English words to distinguish French words “numéro” and “nombre”
In software, index or id is used to denote any unique identifier.
The second case is not as well defined, but you can certainly use count.
- 541
20
votes
Is the meaning of "Either latitude or longitude needs to be provided!" exclusive or inclusive?
I would definitely interpret it as exclusive (corresponding with the accepted answer in the question you linked). I think this would be clear from the context, in any case, as the user either did not ...
- 3,333
19
votes
What are "desires of the flesh"?
According to The Bible, "flesh" refers to the physical nature of human beings. Here, the "unspeakable desires of the flesh" is a figure of speech more probably related to unorthodox and promiscuous ...
- 50.2k
19
votes
Accepted
What is the difference between "a dash" and "a dollop" of cream?
These are not precise measurements, so any answer will be subjective. First, I believe your title is incorrect -- this sentence is not referring to ice cream but (liquid) cream instead. The former ...
- 10.3k
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