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.

Input: Consider Input: Possible Duplicate: Definite article with plural nouns I recently reviewed (as I believe, rather thoroughly) the rules of using articles in English and I do not recall any rule on absence of definitive article THE with plural nouns. Can you give me a reference on such a rule?.

Output: Plural nouns with the definite article are, well, definite. Consider Cats don't like me. versus The cats don't like me. The former implies every cat on Earth doesn't like me; the latter, that some (contextually obvious) specific group of cats don't like me. ADDED In my opinion, yes, unmemorize that reference in your other question and memorize the following: use the definite article with a plural only to denote a known or stated subset of the class ('The elephants [in this zoo] are dangerous'); omit the article for the whole class ('Elephants [all of them] are dangerous'). Use an indefinite article with a singular to denote the whole class when you want to emphasize the singular nature ('A glass of wine is healthy, but two can lead to dissolution.') Use the definite article with a singular when referring to a specific instance or when you need, for some reason, to sound like Sir David Attenborough in a BBC nature documentary ('The elephant is a regal creature, reigning over his home, the savanna ...'). Of course, an indefinite article with a plural ('An elephants are dangerous') and omitting articles with the singular of a countable noun ('Elephant is dangerous') are both just wrong, wrong, wrong. Edit Two years later and I realize another rule: 'the' is used to mark adjectives that have been promoted to nouns. When Paul Revere said, 'The British are coming', he was referring to the British 10th Regiment of Foot, not to every subject of King George, so the 'the' was de rigeur under the above rule. However, when Quentin Crisp wrote, 'The British do not expect happiness,' he did mean every single Briton. The 'the' is only necessary to make it clear that the word 'British' is being used as a noun. With an ordinary noun, it would be different. 'Plumbers [all plumbers] do not expect happiness' but 'The plumbers [in London] do not expect happiness.' Compare Jacques Brel's lyric, 'The naked and the dead should hold each others' hands' with Dean Wormer's line, 'Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.' 'Naked' and 'dead' are nouns (or adjectives being used as nouns); 'fat', 'drunk', and 'stupid' are adjectives, which is why he uses 'is' instead of 'are': the subject of the verb is 'no way'.


Input: Consider Input: Do the English have an ancient (obsolete) verb for the action of the book opening? For example, in Russian we say otkrit' (open the book), but in the Old slavonic the verb razognuti (to unbend the book) was used.

Output: This is a very interesting question. There may not be an old word in English that does what you describe, but it is important to note that the English word 'open' relative to a book meant something different in earlier times. To open a book now usually means to part or spread the cover and the pages into a position so you can read the pages contained in the book. However, books used to be made by folding sheets of paper larger than the page size and they would be sold without trimming the edges, so when you got your new book, it would be 'unopened' meaning that you couldn't turn the pages. You had to 'open' the book with a dull knife (like a letter opener) by ripping along the folds. (This is why some books have ragged edges of the text block, to evoke the memory of those ripped page edges.) The OED has e. transitive. To cut open the leaves of (a book) when they have been left joined along an edge during the making; to cut open (the leaves) of such a book. You will find old books described (by knowledgable book dealers) as 'unopened'. This correctly means that the folded sheets are un-ripped; it doesn't mean that no-one has ever spread the covers and looked inside.


Input: Consider Input: Duplicate: What day is next Tuesday? I have always considered next Friday to be not this coming Friday, but the one after. This Friday is the Friday at the end of this week. I have a Canadian friend, however, who enforces the more literal meaning of next Friday the Friday that comes next. Is there a correct meaning for next Friday, or does this entirely depend on cultural differences?.


Output: People generally understand next Friday as the Friday after this, that is, if you are on a Thursday, and someone tells you to meet him next Friday, it doesn't mean the next day, but rather, Friday week, the Friday after. Some pedantics will believe and argue that it is, as you say, the Friday that comes next. That is valid reasoning. However, if you want to be understood by the majority, 'next Friday' will mean Friday next week. So, in order to mean the Friday that actually comes next, you would say this Friday, but next Friday is generally understood by more people to mean the Friday after this.