58
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What does children mean in “Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.“?
Two thoughts are run together:
Familiarity breeds contempt {knowing people very well lets you see their faults}
Familiarity breeds children {physical familiarity between the sexes leads to children}
...
- 28.4k
55
votes
Accepted
"None of us is" vs "None of us are", Which is Correct?
Semantically, none is neither singular nor plural. It's less than one and much less than many.
So its subject agreement is entirely arbitrary. Plus, negatives are noted for their funny grammar.
...
- 107k
44
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"None of us is" vs "None of us are", Which is Correct?
According to Oxford Online Dictionaries, either is correct:
It is sometimes held that none can only take a singular verb, never a
plural verb: none of them is coming tonight rather than none of ...
- 3,106
44
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Meaning of "I have often seen Essex cheese quick enough"
Heywood is rhyming "thick enough" with "quick enough" and at the same time making a pun.
The word "quick" not only relates to speed, but to the state of being alive.
We still use it in that sense ...
- 2,562
42
votes
Accepted
You have the watches, but we have the time
Several sources I've checked attribute this quote to an Afghan proverb.
The meaning of the second part is clear: time is on our side. But what does the "watches" in the first part refer to?
...
- 612
37
votes
What does children mean in “Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.“?
For those whose first language is not English
What other answers have not explained so far is that the phrase "familiarity breeds contempt" is a very well known proverb in English that came ...
- 37.1k
27
votes
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Perhaps a Hanlon's Razor, but what does it mean?
The sentence you provide, Hasin, is not the same as "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity," which as Gnawme points out, is an adage known as Hanlon's Razor.
...
- 809
23
votes
Accepted
What does it mean to be "sixty-fortied"?
The episode transcript earlier explains
LORELAI: This isn’t a singles bar, Mom. It’s a sixty-forty bar.
EMILY: A what?
LORELAI: Sixty-year-old men hitting on forty-year-old women, divorcees mostly.
...
- 5,427
23
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Perhaps a Hanlon's Razor, but what does it mean?
It's the original Hanlon's Razor
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by
stupidity.
cast in the form of Clarke's Third Law:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is ...
- 40.8k
16
votes
Accepted
What is it called when you change a well known quote to suit your subject?
The word I've heard used for this on the linguistics blog Language Log is snowclone (it's derived from phrases of the format "If Eskimos have N words for snow, X surely have Y words for Z.")
Here's a ...
- 80.4k
16
votes
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Meaning and interpretation of Bilbo's "half as well" quote
I think changing the halves into "many or some" gets past the math. More than half means many and less than half means some. And then the phrase "half as well" is "not as much" or "less than".
Both ...
- 176
15
votes
Accepted
Why is "man" used where a plural might be appropriate, and not "men"?
Man is being used as a singular collective term describing all of humanity.
I believe that the point is that "Gods" and "Kings" would be separate entities (or special distinctions) that would be ...
- 5,220
15
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Is Robert Oppenheimer's phrase “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” grammatical in English?
As modern German, French, and Italian still do today, early modern English formed the perfect tenses of intransitive verbs of directed motion and some changes of state not with a form of to have, but ...
- 28k
12
votes
Accepted
Who first said "We can predict everything, except the future"?
A preliminary digression
Although I want to provide a useful answer to the poster's specific question, I must first point out the inaccuracy of Dougvj's answer. According to that answer, the phrase &...
- 161k
11
votes
What is the exact wordings for “There is a single stupid question in the world ... " in Stephen King's "Under the Dome"?,
The phrase "stupid question" does not appear in Stephen King's Under the Dome. (I checked online.) The following King line (as noted above by Jim) does appear in The Wind Through the Keyhole:
The ...
- 44.6k
11
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"None of us is" vs "None of us are", Which is Correct?
As almost everybody else here mentions (not "mention" :D), none comes from not one, so grammatically, it should be used as a singular (it baffles me how some people conclude the opposite from the same ...
- 322
11
votes
Accepted
Seeking origin and original wording of a quotation attributed to Shakespeare
The line is spoken by Proteus, a villain in Shakespeare's play The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
The saying occurs in act 3, scene 1 of the text, lines 247-8 of the scene. You can see it in an 1838 edition ...
- 39.4k
10
votes
Meaning and interpretation of Bilbo's "half as well" quote
It means I don’t know some of you very well, and a few of you I ought to like better. And he said it that way because he wanted to make it difficult for his guests to quite work out what he was ...
- 134k
10
votes
Origin of the saying "God must love the poor because he made so many of them"
One interesting feature of this quotation is that it began appearing with some regularity, usually attributed to Lincoln, in the middle 1890s, some three decades after Lincoln's death (April 15, 1865)....
- 161k
9
votes
Accepted
Did the phrase "final solution" for a form of genocide first appear with the Canadians?
The 'Indian problem' before 1880: Conquest, relocation, and extinction
Multiple U.S. writers and at least one Canadian writer used the phrase "final solution of our Indian problem" (or ...
- 161k
9
votes
You have the watches, but we have the time
The earliest match I've been able to find for any close variant of "You have the watches, but we have the time" is in testimony by Ambassador William Taylor, identified as "coordinator ...
- 161k
9
votes
Grammar of "No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally–and often far more–worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond"
The essence of C. S. Lewis's quote is "If any book is worth reading when you are 10, then that book is also worth reading (and sometimes even more worth reading) when you are 50 or older."
(...
- 40.5k
8
votes
Are there previous formulations of this quote from George R.R. Martin
The earlier formulation was by William Shakespeare in the play Julius Caesar:
Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.
- 12.9k
8
votes
Accepted
Where does the [sic] go in this sentence?
Place [sic] after the second repetition error.
It would read:
... visitors need to need to [sic] apply for a temporary...
Editorial (your) additions are placed in square brackets.
- 2,469
8
votes
What does "The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier" mean?
GBS was a commentator on society, writing in the early twentieth century, when socialism was emerging and capitalism was under close scrutiny. His cynicism, to a large extent reflects the attitudes of ...
- 64.5k
7
votes
How should I punctuate around quotes where the punctuation required by the quote interferes with the punctuation of the sentence?
I find this entire discussion quite intriguing, to be honest. Assuming that most people will come here looking for guidance on a rather non-complex scale:
The American convention for punctuation of ...
7
votes
Did not get William Shakespeare's quote - "A fool thinks himself to be..."
I believe it relates to this quote by Confucius
“True wisdom is knowing what you don't know”
― Confucius, Sayings of Confucius
The realization that the self is lacking, that there is always ...
- 2,465
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