Generate the answer for a given question. The question requires common knowledge of English. Make sure that the answer is in detail, long, consistent with the context, and requires general knowledge of English. To be less repetitive, please vary your language for each question. Give a proper explanation to answer, and if necessary, provide the definition of various terms. And conclude your answer if it's long. If you have used other resources (e.g., Merriam Webster's.) to answer the question, include citations in your answer. You don't need to paraphrase the context of your resources, but make sure that your answer is consistent and complete.
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Question: Could you tell me some suitable idioms to express this situation: A guy told you a joke, but it's not funny at all. In Japanese, we say 'He slipped' or 'His joke was so cold that the air got frozen,' for that situation. Are there any similar phrases in English?.

Answer: The phrase lame joke is broadly used to describe (idiomatic) An attempt at humor which is perceived to have been used previously to the point of being cliche, or was never funny to begin with. You could use 'His joke was lame', 'His joke was not even funny' or 'His joke was corny.' [Wiktionary, Merriam-Webster Learner's Dicitionary]


Question: What's the difference between 'successive' and 'consecutive'?.

Answer: First note that successive appears as a synonym of consecutive in dictionaries. (see Merriam Webster's entry here). Now compare these examples that I chose at random and extracted from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): Consecutive 'his unprecedented string of consecutive appearances' 'has own the best actor Emmy two consecutive times' 'named person of the year for the second consecutive time' 'account balance remains overdrawn for seven consecutive days' 'the Irish made six consecutive NCAA Tournaments' Successive 'on successive laps, Chris passed three cars' 'analysts say that successive governments failed to' 'dramatic walk-off style in successive victories against the Seattle Mariners' 'simultaneous and successive cognitive processes' 'who have challenged successive military governments' Here is what I observe in the examples (I hope I was lucky in my random choice of them): In the examples that use consecutive, the fact that the events happened in a row without interruption seems to be something that the author wanted to emphasize. However, in the examples that use successive, the fact that the events occur after each other with no interruption seems to play a secondary role. Notice that you can remove successive from some of these sentences and the meaning is not affected too much. If you remove consecutive, the impact is in general higher.


Question: If I were to try to achieve something you could say I 'had a go'. If I tried it multiple times, how would I write that down? I had many goes or I had many go's or I had many gos.

Answer:
The dictionaries I've checked seem to be unanimous that the plural of the noun 'go' is 'goes'. I didn't see one list its plural as 'gos'. However, I didn't check all dictionaries. American Heritage Dictionary: n. pl. goes Collins Dictionary: n, pl goes Merriam-Webster Dictionary: plural goes Cambridge Dictionary: plural goes Random House Unabridged Dictionary (dictionary.com): plural goes Google NGram Viewer does not show any results for 'two gos at' or 'two gos at', but does when written as 'goes'. A Google search shows the following results: 'two gos at' = 453 results. 'two goes at' = 19,500 results. 'three gos at' = 252 results. 'three goes at' = 20,200 results. Note that both Google search and Ngram Viewer may show false positives, as Google search, as far as I know, doesn't take punctuation into account when giving search results, ie., full stops, commas. But I think it's safe to assume the consensus is that the plural of go (attempt or try) is 'goes'. I think this is a good question, as somewhere in my head I have an instinct to write it 'gos'. However the answer is gotten easily by checking some dictionaries. Also, if you wrote 'I had three gos at it before giving up', I have a feeling the typical reader probably wouldn't even be surprised by it or notice it particularly as wrong. This is just my opinion. I have this feeling because the '-os'/'-oes' plural ending rules are wildly inconsistent. Potatoes, tomatoes and heroes are correct. But 'photos' and 'burritos' are correct. However most dictionaries seem to list either '-os' or '-oes' ending as acceptable in 'ghetto' and 'mosquito'. Both 'mosquito' and 'burrito' most likely come from Spanish, yet most dictionaries say only 'mosquito' can have plural ending either '-os' or 'oes', whereas they're consistent in listing '-os' for burrito plural. Same goes for 'canto', 'manifesto' and 'grotto'. These words most likely come from Italian, yet the plural of 'canto' is 'cantos', whereas the dictionaries say the plural of 'grotto' or 'manifesto' can end in either '-os' or '-oes'. Addendum As some people have claimed that the rules for -os or -oes plural endings are quite consistent (and I happen to disagree), I've included more examples to show just how unpredictable this can get. The claim generally is basically that borrowed words or imported words from other languages have -os as their endings and most everything else has -oes. The more specific claim is this rule applies for words from Romance languages specifically. embargo (Spanish): Dictionaries show only -oes plural. NGrams show -oes much more common. tornado (Spanish): Dictionaries show either -os or -oes plural. NGrams shows -oes much more common. desperado (Spanish): Dictionaries show either -os or -oes plural. NGrams shows -oes more common. cargo (Spanish) plural possibly as the pants: Dictionaries show either -os or -oes. NGrams shows -oes more common. mango (Portuguese): Dictionaries show both -os or -oes. NGrams shows -oes much more common. domino (uncertain exactly which language, but a Romance one, or maybe directly from Latin): Dictionaries give either -os or -oes. NGrams shows -oes much more common. volcano (Italian): Dictionaries give either -os or -oes. NGrams shows -oes much more common. motto (Italian): Dictionaries give either -os or -oes. NGrams shows -oes to be more common. Words taken directly from Latin many times have -oes plural ending, but not always: veto has plural vetoes torpedo has plural torpedoes However memento overwhelmingly has plural mementos. And embryo is always embryos. Echo, directly from Greek, has plural 'echoes'. hello (native English): Nearly always 'hellos'. no (native English): Much more common as 'nos', ie., 'yeses and nos'. do (native English): Dictionaries give plural as either 'dos' or 'do's'. The results for searches of these terms would be confounding to say the least. weirdo (native English): some dictionaries show both -os or -oes. NGrams shows -os is much more popular Unknown origin: hobo: Dictionaries give either -os or -oes. NGrams show roughly same frequency. gizmo: = Dictionaries only give -os, 'gizmoes' doesn't show anything in NGrams. gazebo: Dictionaries show both -os or -oes. NGrams shows -os more common. So I don't know about anyone else, but I personally need help, in many ways.