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: I believe there is a term for a person who uses 'expert sounding' terminology and exudes confidence, even when their actual abilities are significantly short of their 'presentation'. Using 'wine' a subject.... if a person described a taste as: Magnificent bouquet, the esters resonate with hints of mulberry and asparagus. This must be an oak-matured red from Bordeaux. Perhaps.... 2003 vintage, that was a year when unusual rainfall produced an outstanding crop that had the same rich tannins. A person describing the wine like that has apparent confidence, apparent technical expertise, and so on. Yet, if he was a fraud, and knew nothing about wines, and the 'wine' was really vinegar.... what would you call that person? Additionally, this would not be a one-off thing. This would be a person who consistently 'bamboozles' people, and only when you dig below the posturing, or put them in the company of a 'real' expert, do you see the reality. A fraud, a cheat, an imposter. Those would be true, but I'm sure there's a word which also covers the confidence, charisma, and presentation style too. I just can't think of it.

Answer: My first thought for this would be charlatan:- A person who makes elaborate, fraudulent, and often voluble claims to skill or knowledge; a quack or fraud. [American Heritage Dictionary via The Free Dictionary] Another possibility would be mountebank:- a boastful unscrupulous pretender [Merriam-Webster]


Question: This phrase is all over the internet. They will say that something is free as in 'free beer' and free as in 'free speech'. I have never really understood this. Are these the examples of two different types of 'free'?.

Answer: Wikipedia on Gratis versus Libre: Gratis versus libre is the distinction between two meanings of the English adjective 'free'; namely, 'for zero price' (gratis) and 'with few or no restrictions' (libre). The ambiguity of 'free' can cause issues where the distinction is important, as it often is in dealing with laws concerning the use of information, such as copyright and patents. And further: With the advent of the free software movement, license schemes were created to give developers more freedom in terms of code sharing, commonly called open source or free and open source software. As the English adjective free does not distinguish between 'for zero price' and 'liberty', the phrases 'free as in free beer' (gratis, freeware) and 'free as in free speech' (libre, free software) were adopted. [...] 'Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer.' Richard Stallman Emphasis added.


Question: Why is the verb when paying for a service subscribe, but the noun form is subscription? Is there a rule that changes 'b' to 'p'?.

Answer:
The 'rule' goes right back to Latin (and probably to pre-Latin) where suffixes starting with an unvoiced consonant, such as '-tu' (earlier '-to') and '-si' caused a final voiced consonant on the root to be devoiced. Examples: scrib-o 'I write' -> scrip-si 'I have written', scrip-tum 'written' dirig-o 'I steer' -> direxi (direk-si) 'I have steered', direc-tum 'steered' So you see there are other similar pairs in English (eg 'dirigible' and 'direct' - though 'dirigible' is not a very common word, it's true) Unfortunately, rules like this that go all the way back to Latin, are not very useful to learners of English, because they don't always apply to every case that might appear similar. So although most English words that end in '-ibe' are derived from 'scribo', and have nouns in '-iption' (subscription, inscription, description, ascription), 'imbibe' is an exception: There is no noun '*imbiption'. And conversely, there are nouns in '-ruption' (disruption, corruption, interruption) but their corresponding verbs end in '-rupt', not '-rube' as you might have guessed.