niryuu/sni-each-converted huggingface dataset:
A few years ago I was told not to use that word because, in addition to its negative meaning, it comes from Latin denigratus, past participle of denigrare, which means to blacken. Therefore, 'to denigrate someone' would be 'to blacken that person'. Considering its current definition (see below) and the wish to be politically correct, I wonder whether the word has come to acquire any racist overtone. The reason why I'm asking is because I was reading 'Language Myths' a book by Laurie Bauer recently, and came across this passage which contained that word '...certain educational institutions denigrate the way certain ethnic minorities and lower-working-class children talk.' Then I remembered I was once told not to use 'denigrate' as it might be misinterpreted by some people. denigrate - from Merriam-Webster 1. to say very critical and often unfair things about (someone) 2. to attack the reputation of, to deny the importance or validity of, belittle EDIT (on Dec 17th, 2017) - This article, Dark Words Of Disapproval which Mari-Lou A mentions in one of the comments, shows very clearly the writer's feelings about this word, with very good arguments to bear him out. Then again, there are those who think otherwise. For one, Melvin B. Tolson, the character played by Denzel Washington in the 2007 feature film 'The Great Debaters', says the word has racist undertones. - Edit (on May 6th, 2020).
Output: I don't see why this question has received such negative responses. I think it's a good question. 'Blacken' indeed has a trans-historical meaning associated with vilification or corruption, but this has nothing to do with the inherent qualities of black people, animals, or the vast majority of black things. Would you consider the term 'blacklist' racist? If not, then you shouldn't see 'denigrate' as racist. Anyone who does is being a little silly. If you're worried, you could always replace it with 'disparage.' EDIT: Another example is use of the term 'sinister' to mean 'wicked.' This word comes from Latin 'sinister,' meaning 'left' or 'on the left side.' Over time, the mythologized connection of the left hand to the false or unfavorable came to give 'sinister' an association with the unsavory. This does not mean that we cannot use 'sinister' to mean 'wicked,' or that doing so would impugn left-handed people.
I keep writing dataset. Is that correct, or should I write data set?.
Output: As @mmyers notes, dataset does not appear in any dictionaries. However, there are 172 incidences in the Corpus of Contemporary American English, and all but a handful are in the 'academic' section, representing formal academic writing. Its lack of appearance in dictionaries is probably because it is a fairly new coinage, the two examples from the Corpus of Historical American English are from 2001. Nothing from before then. Interestingly, the British National Corpus has 51 incidences, dating from the 1980s to the mid 1990s.
What am I doing when I search for something on the internet and the search provides for some other interesting stuff apart from what I was looking for and I end up opening an infinite number of browser tabs and browsing more and more it goes in an endless loop and the whole episode makes for after thought to ponder upon. PS: I lost the term I had found on Wikipedia and I cannot get it back.
Output: Tab-surfing From wikipedia: Tab-surfing, also more accurately known as 'Branching' is a type of link-surfing in which, rather than click directly through to the next web page, the link is opened as a new window or new Tab. This method is used by people wishing to read as much information as possible on a variety of subjects which may or may not be related. The parent article is about Link-surfing: Link surfing is the process of starting on one article on a website and clicking on various hyperlinks to eventually finish on a different (pre-determined) article. There are all sorts of web browsing details here.
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?.
Output: 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]
There is a joke: Q: What is grey and comes in quarts? A: An elephant. Why? Why does it come in quarts? What is funny here?.
Output: I feel like I'm walking into some kind of trolling here, but I believe the joke is based around the definition of 'comes' which is synomymous with 'ejaculates'. In other words, the joke is implying that volume of the elephant's ejaculate is rather large: a 'quart' of course being another word for a quarter of a gallon, aka two pints. The first-glance reading of 'comes in quarts' would be 'is available in quarts' (like milk), and the reversal of the understood meaning of 'comes' is where the humour arises (if it does arise).
When it comes to cities and boats named after saints, it seems that 'Santa' is always female and 'San' is always male. e.g. Male Saints: San Diego, San Francisco, San Antonio Female Saints: Santa Barbara, Santa Maria So why isn't 'Santa Claus' a woman like all the other 'Santa's?.
Output: The city names you quote are all derived from Spanish, where 'San' (or 'Santo', as @tchrist clarifies below) is the male inflection and 'Santa' the female one. However, Santa Claus isn't derived from Spanish, but from Dutch, where it was originally rendered as Sante Klaas, and was modified to Santa when it was adopted into English (and from English, to the rest of the world). Here's Etymonline's take on it: from dialectal Dutch Sante Klaas, from Middle Dutch Sinter Niklaas 'Saint Nicholas,' English, like all other languages, borrows words from many sources, and they often carry over remnants of their original grammar or usage, even when it makes for inconsistent usage in English.
Whenever I hear statements like 'It was a great deal for he and I' and 'Call Karen and I in the morning,' I die a little. Such solecisms, as Twain said in another context (Cooper's prose style), 'grate upon the fastidious ear.' Moreover, I know that these things will likely become accepted usage in time, if that hasn't already happened. As someone who tries to be careful with words and speech, I feel almost a moral obligation to hold the line against this kind of decline. I'm not a word snob; I say 'ain't' when it works for emphasis, and so on. I've tried suggesting the grammatical alternative to the above constructions, but even when I phrase my suggestion in the gentlest possible way it never works well and I almost always wind up feeling pedantic and priggish at best, and at worst I feel I've alienated someone. What's the general opinion here? Is it best to just let these things slide or to take up the fight? In sum, is there a good way to promote good grammar, or at least protect it from the most egregious violations?.
Output: There is nothing wrong with having gut reactions to the way that people say things. I am completely aware that the standard/educated version of a language is arbitrary (i.e. is no more 'correct' in any real sense than any dialect), and even still, I have pet peeves and things that irk me about people's language usage. I think these are unavoidable, just like my reaction to certain fashion choices that people make in their outfits. But, like with fashion, there is very little objective truth to my judgment about any of it. I try not to actually challenge people on uses that bother me; aside from the arbitrariness of language, every bit of evidence suggests that stopping language change in any significant way is like going to the beach and trying to stop the tide from coming in. There was a more in-depth discussion about this in a previous question. That said, I do believe there is a certain time and place where standards and clarity are important. In formal contexts, information is often supposed to be presented in a certain way, and, generally, these conventions benefit everyone. Also, following certain language conventions in these situations can eliminate ambiguity. If I am asked to proofread an academic paper that my colleague has written, I would make corrections for things that I would never object to otherwise.
The word second can refer to ordinal #2 (that which comes after first), or a unit of time, 1/60 of a minute. Ordinarily you might think that this is just a coincidence, but in Spanish, the word segundo also means both a second (of time) and ordinal #2, which suggests that there's some actual link between the two meanings somewhere. So, why is there a 'second' of time but not a 'first'?.
Output: The English word minute in the time sense (and the various similar European words) came from Latin 'pars minuta prima' or 'first small part'; when it became necessary to subdivide even further, the obvious term was 'pars minuta secunda' which became second and its various cognates. (Best explained in Etymonline.)
Most grammar checkers are capable of detecting the the misuse of 'your' and 'you're'; providing the necessary correction. I'm curious though, is there any sentence that can be constructed where replacing 'your' with 'you're' keeps the sentence grammatically correct, but changes the meaning? If this is not possible, what grammar rules are in place that prevents these edge cases from occurring?.
Output: a. I love you and your bananas. b. I love you and you're bananas. This particular case depends on the your/you're coming after an independent clause followed by 'and,' since its feasibility depends on functioning either as a second direct object or as another independent clause. It also depends on the noun serving either as a thing that someone might be in possession of (the bananas we eat) or as an adjective or noun complement describing a person (bananas=crazy). Easiest if that noun is plural or uncountable. The same sentence could be constructed with nuts, garbage, and other nouns which I'll let you brainstorm because my stormer hurts. You can also (and thanks to @Barmar for drawing attention to this) use verbs, in which case they act as a gerund with the possessive pronoun and a present participle with the 'you're.' As in: a. I love you and your cooking. b. I love you and you're cooking. Or: a. I despise you and your smoking. b. I despise you and you're smoking.
Possible Duplicate: 'Did it close' vs 'Has it closed'? As a English non-native speaker it is difficult for me to understand when I must use present perfect or past simple because in my official language there isn't the present perfect tense. I know that present perfect is related to something that happened in the past but its result is important now. But for instance: The message has been sent. The message was sent. Please help me point me out any examples/contexts where I should use 1. instead of 2.
Output: 1 means that the action happened just now. You would typically see it in your e-mail program just after you send an e-mail. Your program might give you this message to let you know that the message you just sent has indeed been sent. 2 refers to something that happened at some time in the past. It could have been an hour ago, a day ago, or even a century ago! But it wasn't just now.
Is there a word which has this definition: usage of vulgar or abusive words too often especially while chatting or talking to someone or while giving a speech. What do you call a person who uses abusive words too often without needing to.
Output: Two adjectives come to my mind for a person who uses excessive foul language: 1) crass having or showing no understanding of what is proper or acceptable; rude and insensitive 2) vulgar (as you used in the title of your own question) not having or showing good manners, good taste, or politeness. Both of these suggestions are more reflective of the person's demeanor or temperament than the cursing itself, but I think they could be more colorful (pun intended) alternatives. I hope this is helpful to you!
I'm a non-native English speaker, and my automatic spellchecker seems to accept both therefore and therefor. Is one orthography preferred ? Is that a British vs. American difference ? Or an old vs. more recent orthography ? Or something else ?.
Output: Therefor means for that. For example: Here we sell guitars and accessories therefor. Therefor is one of a whole series of adverbs: thereof (of that), thereafter(after that), therein (in there), etc. If you are familiar with German - the Germanic sister of English - you can find a direct analogy there: for = fur therefor, for that = dafur (literally, therefor) Therefore, as you must know, means as a (logical) consequence
A few days ago, a friend and I were discussing how every 'rule' of English spelling or pronunciation has an exception, and every exception has an exception as well. Then I brought up the rule of a ph cluster equaling an f sound (as in phonetic, elephant, morph, etc.) as a pronunciation rule that didn't have any exceptions I could think of. Is this a true hard-and-fast rule or does it have some exceptions as well? I'm not counting abbreviations such as pH scale.
Output: The exceptions come in two categories: Greek words that were originally pronounced with an 'f' diphtheria, diphthong, ophthalmology, phthisis but have come to be pronounced with a 'p' by no process I understand. Compound words uphold, saphead, peephole that are just a word ending in 'p' run up against a word beginning with an 'h'. Neither of those really feel like exceptions: mispronunciations that have become accepted and two words being treated as one. Then there is aphelion. Arguably, that's a compound word and a mistake. By analogy with apogee and apastron, it should be apohelion: 'apo' ('from') + 'helion' ('sun'). Several people brought up 'Stephen', which is often pronounced like 'Steven'. Eh, I think we should play with Scrabble rules: no proper names. Finally, there is an example that will really blow your minds: phthalate. The ph- is silent.
There is a concept in computer science which deals with how to demonstrate negative binary numbers. Two methods for achieving this goal are ones' complement and two's complement. Since I got acquainted with these methods, this question never stops coming to my mind that why the apostrophe is placed differently in ones' vs two's? I also saw many articles using one's instead. Even Google suggests that I might be mistaken! So I want to resolve this issue once and for all. Is it a stylistic preference? What causes this difference? And please provide more examples of similar usage.
Output: Donald Knuth, that doyen of computer science, says in Art of Computer Programming, Vol 2.: Detail-oriented readers and copy-editors should notice the position of the apostrophe in terms like 'two's complement' and 'ones' complement': a two's complement number is complemented with respect to a single power of 2, whereas a ones' complement number is complemented with respect to a long sequence of 1s. Indeed, there is also a twos' complement notation, which has radix 3 and complementation with respect to (2...22) (base 3).
Possible Duplicate: When is 'L' doubled? I'm confused about the two spellings. In which contexts do I have to use canceling or cancelling? Google returns 15.6 million results with canceling and 18 million with cancelling, so I don't know what is the good spelling. Why are both possible, and are there other such pairs?.
Output: There are many words that have different accepted spellings between British and American English. The wiktionary.org entry for 'cancelling' says: Alternative forms canceling (US English) This implies that a single 'l' is preferred in American English and a double 'l' in British English.
My wife is always accusing me of casting aspersions and I'd like to do something else with them. Please advise.
Output: You can also sprinkle them. [aspersion: (n) An attack on somebody's reputation or good name, often in the phrase to cast aspersions upon (Dict.com)] (label) ...a sprinkling of [aspersions] Merriam-Webster: 'sprinkle' def: scatter or pour small drops or particles of a substance over (an object or surface). Maybe a sprinkling of aspersions will make them appear more tiny vs. this casting aspersions upon her. Perhaps a sprinkling of aspersions sounds less inoffensive; somewhat harmless, or innocuous--somehow. Seem like a piddling of aspersions. Maybe because there's less of them. I don't know. Sometimes, if I apply a sprinkling of aspersions on my wife instead of casting, she thinks them funny. Try a sprinkling of aspersions instead. If that doesn't work, you can always go back to casting aspersions upon her, or even try dusting or powdering her with aspersions. See if that works. Good luck!
E.g. is short for exempli gratia, and is in common use to introduce an example within a sentence. Submit a sample of academic writing, e.g., a dissertation chapter. However, some authors use ex. or ex: (short for 'example') for the same purpose, and this form is listed in some authorities like the Wiktionary. Submit a sample of academic writing, ex: a dissertation chapter. I know they both roughly mean 'example', but which one should I use, and when? Are there connotations associated with one or the other? This question has been asked elsewhere, and this very answer comes up when you ask Google about the difference. It would be good to get an EL&U answer for it.
Output: E.g. is short for exempli gratia and stands for 'for example'. Ex., if used to mean the same, is incorrect. Mostly ex. is used as short for exercise and not 'for example'.
A knife has a handle and a blade. A spoon has a handle and a... Bowl? A fork has a handle and... Spikes? Prongs? I guess this can be extended to more esoteric cutlery such as sporks.
Output: A spoon has a bowl. A fork merges at its neck into a root carrying prongs or tines Source: Visual dictionary online 1 and 2
There are many English words with silent letters, words like gnome or island that are spelt with consonants that aren't pronounced, but are there any words that work the other way round, with a pronunciation that includes extra sounds or syllables that are not in the spelling? I can't think of any real examples, hence this question, but a made-up example would be if gnome were spelt nome but pronounced with a g at the start. Or if people started pronouncing offer as 'ofter' as a sort of weird parallel to after. Note: I don't mean words like rough, where the f sound is spelt gh, because in those cases the spelling does still include letters (however seemingly illogical) for each of the sounds.
Output: Probably 'yes', but it depends on what you mean. There isn't actually a clear way to identify which sounds in a word correspond to which letters: for example, rough, which you say has letters for 'each of the sounds', could be analyzed as r- + -ou- + -gh or as r- + -o- + ugh. When similar issues arise with other words, it makes it pretty subjective to decide whether the word has consonant sounds that 'aren't part of the spelling' or that just have an complex relationship to the spelling. Some words that could be considered to meet your criteria: Consonants Any word with an epenthetic voiceless plosive between a nasal and a following consonant. For many speakers, a productive process causes a sound like /t/, /p/ or /k/ to be inserted after the sounds /n/, /m/ or // respectively in various environments. In most words, the epenthetic plosive is not written, so you could say that there is a /p/ in the pronunciation but not the spelling of warmth, dreamt, hamster, seamstress, a /t/ in the pronunciation but not the spelling of sense, glance, a /k/ in the pronunciation but not the spelling of strength, angst. In eighth and in one pronunciation of threshold, a digraph that usually represents a single sound corresponds instead to two sounds: /t/ and /h/ respectively. You could say that the /t/ in eighth or the /h/ in that pronunciation of threshold isn't part of the spelling. Something similar applies for speakers who use the pronunciation /hat/ instead of /hat/: whether it's spelled height or heighth, it seems like one of the two sounds at the end is not explicitly represented in the spelling. In some accents of British English, the vowels found in words like saw and draw is regularly followed by epenthetic /r/ before another vowel. This means that the words sawing and drawing are pronounced with an /r/ that 'isn't part of the spelling'. Vowels or syllables Many words with syllabic resonants, or sequences of a schwa followed by a resonant, have no particular letter that marks the syllabicity. Words ending in -thm or -sm are the most obvious example. Other examples are more dialect dependent, but words like hour are disyllabic for some speakers.
In technical literature as well as aircraft user interfaces where there is not enough space to write the whole word, the prefix 'trans' is shortened to 'x'. Transmit -> Xmit Transfer -> Xfer I am interested to know what is the origin of this. I am curious because 'Ex' and 'Trans' do not have a similar sound.
Output: X is commonly used to refer to cross because of its shape of two lines crossing. Trans- means cross/across. Trans- and cross- are interchangeable in many cases. From Wikipedia (emphasis mine): In abbreviations, it can represent trans- (e.g. XMIT for 'transmit', XFER for 'transfer'), cross- (e.g. X-ing for 'crossing', XREF for 'cross-reference'), Christ- as shorthand for the labarum (e.g. Xmas for 'Christmas', Xian for 'Christian'), the crys- in 'crystal' (XTAL), or various words starting with ex- (e.g. XL for 'extra large', XOR for 'exclusive-or'). Example: a transatlantic flight is one that crosses the Atlantic, and something that is transdermal crosses through the skin. The trans- in transmit and transfer is analogous to transatlantic. Crossing a mit or a fer makes perfect sense. -Mit is from the Latin mittere which means to send. -Fer is from the Latin ferre which means to bear or carry. 'Transmit' often means to send across something or over a specific medium and 'transfer' can be to carry across from one to another. Therefore trans- is often replaced with X- in certain words.
I overheard my manager asking 'What are you up to?' What does that idiom mean? Is it an informal/negative way of asking??.
Output: 'What are you up to?' means 'What have you been doing lately?'. If you add an adverb to the end of the phrase, for instance, 'What are you up to tonight?' or 'What are you up to this summer?' it can be interpreted as 'What are you planning to do tonight?' or 'What are you planning to do this summer?'.
I am watching a UK TV programme called 'The Apprentice'. The candidates have to sell guided tours. Some candidates are terrible at giving these tours. They fluff their lines, or they haven't researched, or they make up 'facts'. Watching their ineptitude cause a feeling of discomfort. What is the best word for this discomfort? The German word schadenfreude means roughly 'the pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others'. The word I want would be almost an antonym of schadenfreude - 'the discomfort derived from the mosfortunes of others'. Except not the misfortunes but the uselessness of others.
Output: vicarious embarrassment The very uncomfortable sympathetic feeling experienced while you watch someone else embarrassing themselves. This feeling is often intensified when the person embarrassing themself is not aware of how embarrassing their behavior is. In this case it is more like you are feeling the embarrassment on their behalf. The Opposite Of Schadenfreude: Vicarious Embarrassment Vicarious Embarrassment: Witnessing Awkward Moments Triggers Pain Centers In The Brain Your Flaws Are My Pain: Linking Empathy To Vicarious Embarrassment Validation and correlates of the vicarious embarrassment scale Facepalm (slang) is another possible translation of the import term (from German) fremdschamen. A German term which describes the process of being vicariously embarrassed by someone else. For example when somebody's concept for a great party gag goes terrible wrong and you watch him fail in the middle of all of his friends. Tom was completely wasted while he held the speech on Mike's wedding party. Fremdschamen in perfection. urban dictionary 'Fremdschamen describes the almost-horror you feel when you notice that somebody is oblivious to how embarrassing they truly are,' writes Daniel Hawes in Psychology Today. 'Fremdscham [the noun] occurs when someone who should feel embarrassed for themselves simply is not, and you start feeling embarrassment in their place.' ... the auditions for American Idol and all of the related rip-offs are Fremdschamen factories, Alo's suggestion of 'cringeworthy' is also very valid. More generally, here in the UK we sometimes talk about 'car crash' or 'train crash' TV. In the US they call it a 'train wreck'.
This is similar to a palindrome but, instead of a word/sentence that reads the same forwards and backward, is there a word for words/sentences that read the same right side up and upside-down? See picture below where the word 'yeah' is written in cursive:.
Output: That is called an ambigram. It is a typographical design that can be read in more than one direction. ambigram noun A typographical design consisting of text modified in such a way that it can be read in multiple orientations, as in mirror image, inverted, or when rotated. (ODO) Famously (?) used in Dan Brown's Angels and Demons.
When someone says I stand corrected. What does that mean?.
Output: It means 'I admit that I was wrong'. See e.g. Cambridge Dictionaries: used to admit that something you have said or done was wrong I stand corrected - the date of foundation was 1411, and not 1412 as I had written. Or Wiktionary: Said to acknowledge someone who corrects something that one says or writes that was not correct. The Battle of Hastings was fought in 1056. No it wasn't! Look in the textbook! Oh, sorry. I stand corrected - it was fought in 1066. Note that the Cambridge Dictionary marks this idiom as 'formal', and Merriam-Webster's Learner's Dictionary as 'somewhat formal'.
Is the word 'dude' becoming gender neutral? I don't think so, however, has modern usage changed? Are there some recent examples of 'dude' being used to refer to a woman or group of women?.
Output: It is common in my experience (woman in US, 26, liberal hippie type) for groups of women to be called 'dudes' or 'guys' by both men and other women, but not for individual women to be called a 'dude' or a 'guy.' One exception seems to be in greetings using 'dude,' as in, 'Hey dude!'
I am looking for a word or phrase which can be used in the sentence: It is a rather old, but _________________ technology. The word or phrase should address a technology that is totally investigated, researched in detail, and thoroughly optimised, so there is nothing more to find out or improve.
Output: Most common term I have seen repeatedly and would thus use is, well established. It is rather old, but well-established technology Note as correctly point out by @Chappo below in this case grammar dictates a hyphen is required since it is a compound adjective preceding a noun. 'science can be leading edge or well established' Wiki Technology
On a Physics specification, it says: 6.7 Know how to use two permanent magnets to produce a uniform magnetic field pattern. Isn't it 'produce an uniform magnetic field', or is the existing 'produce a uniform magnetic field pattern' correct?.
Output: The word uniform begins with a palatal approximant /j/. The palatal approximant is a consonantal sound, even though the letter itself is a vowel. Since we use the pronunciation of the word following the article to determine whether we use 'a' or 'an', and because it is pronounced starting with a consonant, we use 'a'. Thus, the original sentence is correct. Just for the sake of completeness, the letter 'u' can also have a vowel sound, such as in the word 'umbrella', which begins with an open-mid back unrounded vowel //.
The question is quite straightforward: Which of the following is preferable? 'I keep myself up-to-date on the latest technology.' 'I keep myself up to date on the latest technology.'.
Output: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, as quoted by the site below, you hyphenate if the compound adjective is before the noun and don't hyphenate if it is after the noun. With compound adjectives formed from the adverb well and a participle (e.g., well-known), or from a phrase (e.g., up-to-date), you should use a hyphen (or hyphens) when the compound comes before the noun: well-known brands of coffee; an up-to-date account, but not when the compound comes after the noun: His music was also well known in England. Their figures are up to date. From Oxford Dictionaries via Adverbs and Hyphens by Maeve Maddox for Daily Writing Tips. In this case the noun is myself and before the adjective, so no hyphen. In other styles, this may not necessarily hold true. For instance, in APA style, hyphens are discouraged unless they add clarity.
I would tend to write double-l, but Google gives me more single-l, so I'm guessing it's an Atlantic divide thing. And I guess all the other *full words.
Output: I would say successfull is a typo. Neither Merriam-Webster nor Wiktionary mention it as an alternative spelling. The British National Corpus has 10695 cites for successful and exactly one for successfull. According to OneLook, 33 dictionaries have an entry for successful, but only Wordnik has a few cites for successfull (without a definition). Edit: by popular request, I will add that the adverb successfully is written with two L's. Successfuly would be incorrect.
Background We have a motivational poster in our office that says: None of us is as smart as all of us. I think that it's grammatically incorrect, and here is my reasoning: All of the tigers have spots. All of us are here. None of us are dead yet. The three examples all sound correct when using the plural 'are', rather than 'is'. Question Unfortunately, some of my coworkers disagree with me. They believe that the quote is correct when it uses the word 'is'. So my question is this: Is the motivational quote grammatically correct or should it say 'all'?.
Output: 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. Positive quantifiers are either singular in verb agreement, like each and every, or plural, like all. None can be either, depending on context. Every boy is playing today. Every one of the boys is playing today. Each boy is playing today. Each of the boys is playing today. All of the boys are playing today. None of them are playing today. None of them is armed. If it quantifies a plural noun phrase, as in none of us, then it's equivalent to the negation of a universal quantifier in many cases. For instance, None of us are going to the party. is equivalent to All of us are not going to the party. which is ambiguous; that's one reason not to say it this way. instead of All of us are staying away from the party. which is unequivocally plural. As for the motivational slogan None of us is as smart as all of us (note, no full stop) It's intended to make you think, and it seems to have succeeded. If you like, you can take it as short for None of us is as smart as all of us together are. which is meant to contrast individual intelligence with groupthink, and therefore is unequivocally singular. tl;dr It'd be grammatical with are, but it'd also be a less efficient slogan.
What is the plural of syntax? Would it be syntacies? What rule would govern this kind of construction?.
Output: As FumbleFingers has commented, the plural is syntaxes. That's probably because the normal plural -es is added to the root word, or it may possibly be because the Greek/Late Latin word from which syntax is derived is syntaxis and Greek words ending in -is are pluralised with -es. If we were to create a spoof plural for syntax it would be syntaces (words ending -x get -ces; the preceding vowel can change as in index/indices). But no-one uses that, or would know what it meant.
What's the difference between these two phrases?.
Output: To add to Martha's answer: The simple past ('Did you see this') refers about an event in the past The present perfect ('Have you seen this') suggests a link with the present time. If 'this' is something you could have seen but cannot anymore (you should have been there seeing 'this' at the time, but it wouldn't have the same impact if you see it again now), then 'Did you see' is more appropriate. It is about an event that happened once in the past. If 'this' is something you can check out whenever you want, 'Have you seen' is more to the point, because it suggests that, if you haven't seen it in the past, you could consider seeing it now or in the near future. It is about an event which can happen again or is still relevant in the present.
What is the meaning of wrt in the following text? I think this is an excellent idea, but I'd like to see this explicitly reframed under the banner of providing Drupal.org data through publicly-accessible APIs. We started kicking off at least one discussion like that wrt Git over, which also led back to '#112805: XML-RPC Interface'.
Output: It's an abbreviation for 'with respect to'. Edit: regarding the lack of punctuation (thanks for bringing it up, ukayer), that's definitely because of the informal nature of the context. It would be more standard to write it as w.r.t., except that in any context where punctuation matters, you probably shouldn't use this abbreviation in the first place.
There is a question titled 'Does calling a road 'wavy' convey its shape clearly?' which looks like this is a duplicate, but in fact, it's not. In that question, there's talk of a road that slightly bends right and left, not up and down. So how do you describe a road that is up down and road? I am confused which word to use. There is one word to describe it. Can I say it is a zig-zag road?.
Output: 'Undulate' is often used for roads that go up and down, while 'zig-zag' is used for roads that repeatedly bend to the left and right. The road undulates for three miles before descending into a valley. I enjoy an undulating road while driving, but not while cycling.
I just realized there are some people around my workplace who always try to correct me when using a certain word, saying that that's not how I should speak, and I should use other words (the ones they provide me with) or pretend they didn't understand what I was saying, but it's pretty clear that they did understand. This again with the same purpose, of making me rephrase, or use the words they expect. When doing this, they use, among others, the argument that they sure have understood, but others might not. But then, nobody else complains of not having understood what I was saying. Another argument they use is that even if they understood it, what I said was incorrect. I make the assumption that when I express my ideas in words, I use enough details to get the point across. I would call this type of non-constructive attitude a 'hater' attitude, but I'm curious whether there's a more specific word for this. meta: I'm not a native English speaker, and I don't know a word for this in my language, I'd just use the dictionary to find out if my language has an analogous word. Anyway it would be good to know if there's a word for this concept in these two languages. meta: Also, the situations I refer to happen (mostly) when I'm speaking my own language, but the language really isn't the point here, because I do speak multiple languages and I did meet this behavior (though very rarely) when speaking any language.
Output: You could call a person who does that a pedant: Pedant (noun) a person who annoys other people by correcting small errors and giving too much attention to minor details; one who unduly emphasizes minutiae in the presentation or use of knowledge (Merriam-Webster)
Possible Duplicate: Is it correct to use 'punctuation outside of the quotations', or 'inside?' I've heard that you should always place ending punctuation inside of quotes, no matter what. Are there any cases where it is appropriate for a sentence to end with '.?.
Output: Yes. See the Economist style guide: If the quotation does not include any punctuation, the closing inverted commas should precede any punctuation marks that the sentence requires. More at the Guardian style guide.
As generally agreed and as extensively discussed in this question, 'an' should be used in place of the more common 'a' where the following word begins with a vowel sound. I have just encountered for the first time an instance of the phrasing an mule in the book Why Chemical Reactions Happen (James Keeler and Peter Wothers, Oxford University Press, 2003). (This book is not mine. I was sitting opposite a friend when the friend mentioned the unusual phrasing.) This phrasing appears to contradict the rule discussed above, since 'mule' is, as far as I am aware, pronounced /mjul/ (see Wiktionary). Here is the context. The author is using an analogy to explain a chemistry concept (the italics are not mine, but the bold emphasis is): A useful analogy here is that of an mule, which we get by crossing a horse with a donkey. To describe an mule as a horse or a donkey would be inaccurate and it certainly does not interconvert rapidly between the two! Rather we need to recognize that although an mule has parts that are reminiscent of a horse and parts that a reminiscent of a donkey, it is something altogether different. Looking for other examples online, I have managed to find one on Wikipedia's List of Siege engines. Discussing a Siege engine, the Scorpio: Similar to the ballista, but smaller. Was sometimes mounted on an mule-drawn cart. Other examples are difficult to find, but here's one from a user-posted question on Answers.com (referring, notably, to a kind of deer rather than the animal, a mule): Is an mule deer an omnivore? No. Mule deer are herbivores. ... What is going on? Is there an irregular pronunication of 'mule' of which I am not aware? Is this some strange language quirk, some archaic spelling that I am encountering for the first time?.
Output: The original printing had 'an ass' instead of 'an mule'. That error was not lost on the chemistry community. See, for instance, Krenos's 2004 review of the text in the Journal of Chemical Education: In Chapter 10, bonding in extended conjugated systems and resonance are introduced with the horse + donkey = ass analogy (it is likely the hybrid animal mule is intended instead of ass, however). It seems the editors subsequently made an error mistake.
I have found a similar topic addressing the use of 'comprise' but my question is not exactly in line with that one. I did ask this question there to keep the topic related to the use of 'comprise' but it was removed since I did not follow protocol. So my apologies if this seems like a duplicate entry. When does one use 'comprises of' and when 'comprise'? Are they interchangeable? For example: 'My name comprises 5 letters' 'My name comprises of 5 letters' Which is correct? Or are they both acceptable?.
Output: A quick look in a decent online dictionary is advisable: comprise Usage: The use of of after comprise should be avoided: the library comprises (not comprises of) 500 000 books and manuscripts Collins English Dictionary Complete and Unabridged Collins. I don't think US usage is any different. Another quote, from the internet (repunctuated): Never use 'comprise of' or 'comprises of' - but 'comprised of' is allowed. This is a passive (or arguably adjectival) usage involving comprised which some consider to be ungrammatical.
The only word that comes to my mind is tiptoe. However, this word implies that you are walking stealthily or cautiously. Is there a word that just means to walk slowly? Example sentence: Without knowing what I was doing, I _ toward her.
Output: I would suggest amble: verb to go at a slow, easy pace; stroll; saunter: noun a slow, easy walk or gentle pace. dictionary.com Your sentence would then be: Without knowing what I was doing, I ambled toward her. As that definition suggests, strolled or sauntered may also work for you.
I often read the expression 'would of' used instead of 'would have'. Each time I read it I get annoyed so I googled it and found out -as I expected- that it is an incorrect way to say 'would have'. Now, there are a lot of brilliant slang words/expressions, so my question is, why do people use this one? It's so annoying to read, stupid and clearly wrong, it is pointless, why did they come up with this expression? Edit: I don't think my question is a duplicate as I didn't ask how can somebody use it (since I know it's incorrect and I know that I can use it with commas giving it a different meaning) but I asked why and how people came up with this expression.
Output: Correction: what annoys you is people writing 'would of' when they are saying /wdv/, which is the standard pronunciation of the contraction would've. The vowel of the preposition 'of' is almost always reduced in actual speech, yielding /v/. Thus 'would've' and 'would of' are homophones. So no surprise that some people spell it that way, even though it makes no grammatical sense. Would've can be even further reduced to /wd/, which some people spell woulda as a kind of phonetic eye dialect to represent actual speech or set an informal tone. The same goes for the modals, shoulda, coulda, musta. Spelling as it sounds can yield amusing results: Along the way the details of his past are sordid out and he realizes that what he once thought about his parents isn't the truth at all. Amazon.com Review. A speaker of British English, of course, would never write sorted in this manner, but with an American flapped t, it's a perfect fit.
In my language there's a saying which literally translates to Don't burn your house to smoke out a rat! It advises us to use solutions that are appropriate to the magnitude of the problem. Eliye pedichu illam chudaruthu! - in Malayalam/Indian. What could be the English equivalent?.
Output: This idiom carries the same idea, but it is expressed as a description of what happens when the magnitude of the 'solution' far exceeds the needs of the problem: Using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. This idiom has the reverse idea: Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Instead of advocating restraint when a portion is bad and the rest is valuable, it advocates care when a portion is valuable and the rest is unwanted.
The nuns in the 1965 movie 'The Sound of Music' are singing about Maria, who is difficult to deal with: How do you solve a problem like Maria? Being non-native (and only seeing a still frame of the scene) I thought it meant 'How does Maria solve problems?'. Somewhat similar to 'What would Jesus do?'. Can 'solve a problem like [someone]' also be understood in this way? Edits: I am aware of the context. It would be silly to think the singing nuns hold up Maria (Julie Andrews) as a role model. I checked my Quirk/Greenbaum grammar but have trouble finding anything conclusive concerning this usage of [like] and its validity. I do have to admit, that I didn't look very thoroughly. I am a bit like Maria, in this way.
Output: You're right: 'How do you solve a problem like Maria?' is syntactically ambiguous. The phrase 'like Maria' can modify either a preceding noun phrase ('a problem') or a preceding verb phrase ('solve a problem'). Both of these usages are recognized as valid by traditional prescriptive grammars (Fowler 1926 describes 'He talks like an expert' as an 'unexceptionable' usage of like, where 'like is equivalent to a prepositional adverb'p. 325 in republished 2009 edition). Prescriptive grammars have traditionally condemned a third use of like, the use 'as a conjunction' where it is followed by a clause (e.g. 'like Maria does') rather than by a noun phrase. However, as the comments point out, that construction would allow you to express 'How do you solve problems the way that Maria solves problems' without ambiguity. Many modern linguists analyze like as a preposition when it takes a bare noun phrase like 'Maria' as its complement (although like is not always a preposition, and even when it is, it doesn't always behave exactly the same way as other prepositions). The same kind of ambiguity is seen with many prepositional phrases, as illustrated by the joke 'One morning, I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know,' which relies on this ambiguity. You can see further examples and discussion in the answers to Does 'I am eating vegan cheese in my underpants' really imply that the vegan cheese is inside my underpants? (the 'shot an elephant in my pajamas' joke is mentioned in JoeTaxpayer's answer there).
What is the difference between 'parentheses' and 'parenthesis'?.
Output: Parenthesis is of course Greek and means in fact 'insertion'. It has taken the meaning of the signs ' ( ' or ' ) '. Parentheses is the regular plural. Usually, you use a pair of the signs showing an insertion, then 'between parentheses' - or brackets ; however, 'in parenthesis' means : as an afterthought.
Exact Duplicate: Can anyone tell me what the suffix '-fu' stands for in the following sentence? I was reading an article on MSDN where I found a mention to google-fu. It says, 'To search for C++ delimeters and code snippets is going to take a little Google-fu on the reader's part.' what does google-fu mean?.
Output: Google-fu is defined as 'skill in using search engines (especially Google) to quickly find useful information on the Internet.' It is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek reference to kung-fu, which is generally perceived as requiring a high degree of skill to master in the western hemisphere. In the example sentence you provided, the author is suggesting that the expected results are somewhat difficult to attain and you will need to use diligence when searching. I used a bit of Google-fu to research this answer.
Possible Duplicate: This question has been asked at/on SO? Which sentence is grammatically correct? The papers are freely available at the journal website. The papers are freely available on the journal website. Using Google's search results: available at the website returns 72,800,000 results. available on the website returns 106,000,000 results. So, I inferred that both variants are popular. Is this method (comparing the number of results by Googling) sound?.
Output: Speaking as a longtime computer geek, files are said to reside on a hard drive or on a certain machine. Since I know that a website is made of computer files, I think of a website as being on a machine and so any part of the website is also on that machine. A website's 'address' is a 'Uniform Resource Locator' or URL. These terms connote the idea of website as 'place'. In this case the file would be at the website location. So, if you think of a website as it is actually constructed (files stored on hard drives), you will probably say on. If you think in the location metaphor, you will probably say at. Personally I find myself saying 'on' to other geeks and falling into 'at' when speaking with normal people.
Are both is equal to and equals similar in meaning? Which is the more natural? For example, one plus one equals two or one plus one is equal to two.
Output: Both are grammatically correct and mean the same. And both are the natural ways of saying it. Use either.
Possible Duplicate: 'Toward' or 'towards'? Which is the correct usage? 'Onwards' or 'Onward' ? For example: I would be free any time Tuesday onward. vs I would be free any time Tuesday onwards. Or is both correct/wrong? The spell checker in my browser says onwards is wrong but I've heard people using it. (p.s: Sorry if this question is redundant. I searched here but couldn't find a related question).
Output: Apparently, there is a slight difference, but only in British English: Note: In British English, 'onwards' is an adverb and 'onward' is an adjective. In American English and sometimes in formal British English, 'onward' may also be an adverb. So, depending on where you are, the difference maybe slight. However, they both mean the same thing practically, and most people will understand you if you use either anyways