"I've been playing a game called 'Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,' and I came across this dialogue: CJ: 'Sup? SWEET: Carl, it's Sweet. CJ: Whassup, Sweet? What you want? SWEET: It's moms, she dead, bro. My question is, why is there an 'S' in the word 'mom' here? Is it African American Vernacular English (AAVE) slang? Because the game uses AAVE, so maybe that's the case. If someone can help me understand this, I'll appreciate it." video context if you want: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm8Tn...| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
I'm working on various projects involving nations ruled by non-physical god-like entities (e.g. hiveminds, psionic presences, etc.) that are not confirmed to be gods, either being ambiguous in nature or explicitly below the status of divinity Is there a word for a government ruled a god-like being that does not state that the ruler is divine? Example Sentence:- "The Great Forest State is a ________"| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
State the types of underlined phrases: I am going to the beach. The difficult test made me tired. The boy at the back likes to tease me. The enthusiastic fans cheered wildly for the players.| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
I was wondering why in story telling or in newspapers, the simple present tense is often used. Some sources say that using the simple present tense helps to add a sense of immediacy. But I could not get this idea because to me the simple present continuous tense can do the job better of providing a sense of immediacy. For example consider the two sentences: The lion's crouching down ready to launch the attack. The lion crouches down ready to launch the attack. The first sentence seems to evok...| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
Concerning the standard English pronunciation of Latin loanwords, the rules for determining which syllable receives primary stress appear to give only stress on the penultimate and antepenultimate syllables as possibilities, according to Wikipedia. Many words, however, accent on the preantepenultimate syllable, including the following: devastator, arbitrary, obituary, commentary, lavatory, momentary, dictionary, ...| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
According to the Traditional English Pronunciation of Latin website, a syllable with secondary stress is by default pronounced with a short vowel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_English_pronunciation_of_Latin#Short_vowels (rule 4). So this would indicate that words with a nigro- prefix where ni- has secondary stress would be pronounced with a short i. Nigromantic is pronounced with a short i in the Oxford dictionary: https://www.oed.com/dictionary/nigromantic_adj, but nigrostriatal...| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
I’m working on this SAT practice question and I’m stuck between answer choice A and C. Here’s the passage and the question: Hypothesizing that lullabies, characterized by their slow tempos, are universally calming to infants, Constance M. Bainbridge and colleagues played a lullaby sung in the Scottish Gaelic language and a non-lullaby sung in the Seri language to a group of infants. The team found that the infants' heart rates decreased more during the lullaby than during the non-lullab...| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
A: Did you enjoy your holiday? B: Yes, it was really good. It is the best holiday I have ever had Can I say "It's the best holiday ever"?| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
Is the i in the first syllable in "vicarious" a dipthong or a short vowel? I would have placed a wager on short because the letter "i" in the words “vicar” and “victory” is pronounced the same in British English: /ˈvɪkər/ and /ˈvɪktəri/ while in American English it's still /ɪ/ in /ˈvɪktri/ and /ˈvɪkɚ/. In fact, on those rare occasions when I do utter the word vicarious in speech, I say /vɪˈkɛərɪəs/. When I checked Merriam-Webster, it showed me the following pronuncia...| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
Did we set a 2 times a week routine or just for Wednesdays?| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
I am looking for online tools to translate specialized technical terms. Do you have any suggestions ?| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
A familiar proverb runs: A broken clock is right twice a day. is a saying used to express that even an entity which is typically wrong, would sometimes be right accidentally. Is there an inverse saying, one which encapsulates the idea that even something which is typically correct can sometimes be wrong?| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
"Hard of hearing" is a widely recognized and standard phrase in English to describe someone with hearing difficulties. On the other hand, "hard of reading," though grammatically correct, is rarely used and sounds unusual to most English speakers. Is there a specific historical, cultural, or linguistic reason why "hard of hearing" became idiomatic while "hard of reading" did not? Are there similar examples of this pattern in English? Is "hard of reading" actually grammatically correct?| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
I watch a fair few videos about video games on youtube, and a while back I started to notice that many people in those videos used "costed" and "casted" for the past tenses of "cost" and "cast. I'm familiar with the use of "costed" to mean "having a cost assigned", e.g. "The pineapple was costed at $10 per kilo." But not in "The pineapple costed $10 per kilo." I'm not familiar with any traditional use of "casted", and as I write this, it does get the red squiggles of disapproval. I might add ...| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
The proverb "ignorance is bliss" is used to express that somebody feels better by not knowing all the details about a topic. In an existing thread titled "ignorance is not bliss", it is claimed that an example of the opposite of "ignorance is bliss" is the discovery of a brain tumor, which, while devastating, allows starting the necessary life-saving treatment. In other words: ignorance is worse. Arguably, however, this is not the opposite of "ignorance is bliss" at all: when the cancer patie...| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
Commonly when we hear 'observatory' we probably think of an astronomical observatory. Merriam-Webster defines 'observatory' as: a building or place given over to or equipped for observation of natural phenomena (as in astronomy) also : an institution whose primary purpose is making such observations a situation or structure commanding a wide view ...so there are non-astronomical natural-phenomena observatories - like volcano observatory ("provides continuous and periodic monitoring of the sei...| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
There seems to be a problem. There seems a problem. In this type of construction, the version with to be, such as (1), is much more productive than the one without, such as (2). See this Ngram: There seems to be a,There seems a There seems to be little doubt that.... There seems little doubt that.... In this similar construction with "little", however, the version with to be, such as (3), is even less productive than the one without, such as (4). See this Ngram: There seems little,There seems...| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
I'm writing an introduction for my PhD thesis. The text has to sound natural and formal, but can also have glimpses of poetry and broadness. I would like to express that a problem will be addressed from a distance and also in detail, my non-fluent English speaker mind came up with the following sentence: "I will develop a description from afar to close by." I couldn't find any other good "afar" antonyms that made the sentence sound natural and beautiful at the same time, at least in my opinio...| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
What do you call (a noun or an adjective) a person who keeps talking to someone despite the fact that they're clearly not interested in having conversation with that person? The most typical (but not the only) case I can think of is when a man is making advances to a woman who is not interested in him and thus he keeps trying to initiate a conversation with her over and over again. The word or phrase should mainly express that this kind of behaviour is annoying. A person behaving in such a wa...| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
"Svära i kyrkan" literally means to swear in church, and to my understanding the figurative meaning is when someone says or does something that questions/defies a social norm in a softer manner than simply breaking rules. Its meaning is not just about misbehaving, but is a bit similar to the allegory of the child who points out that the emperor is naked. As an attempt to exemplify, one could use it to politely caution for (and/or) soften one's critique of a certain routine at work: "I may be...| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
In my native language, we have an expression :- sugar to your mouth. It is used to express a wish or hope that what the speaker is saying may come true. Is there a similar expression in either American or British English?| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
I would like to know how to say ¨is a good idea¨ in a formal setting. After reading your comments, I add some context: I have quoted a sentence from a soil scientist in a paper that I have submitted to a well-known International Journal. Sentence: Increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) is a good idea in any situation to generate or maintain healthy soils. Lehmann, J., 2009. Biological carbon sequestration must and can be a win-win approach. An editorial comment 459–463. https://doi.org/10.1...| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
I'm looking for a noun that describes a person A, who loves person B, but person B doesn't reciprocate. Person A suffers because he or she can't have person B and is not interested in relationships with others. The shorter the word, the better (ideally -- single word). Sample use in a sentence: It poured as if it rained tears of all people who suffered from unrequited love. I need a substitute for people who suffered from unrequited love.| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
I am asking about the conventions of abbreviations of pages, for academic/journal purposes. For example, if one submits a paper on arXiv, you will see that some renown physicist/mathematician uses the conventions of: 120 pp. instead of 120 pages. And if there are more comments like how many figures there are, one can use 120 pp, 10 figures. instead of, 120 pages, 10 figures. It looks to me that from Usage of "p." versus "pp." versus "pg." to denote page numbers and page ranges, the pp. actual...| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
There is a Japanese phrase "Kuuki yomenai", which literally translates to "Can't read the air", and can be used to describe someone who doesn't get social cues or is unaware of other people's moods & intentions. (There is an equivalent in Korean as well: "Noon-chi up-da") It's like a combination of oblivious, awkward, and self-centered. I want to use it to describe someone who would keep talking about themselves, dominate a group conversation, and not realise that the others are tired of it. ...| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
"Like a thief being stung by a scorpion" is the literal translation of a South Indian proverb, used to describe situations where a person who's already guilty will be proven so, if he voices himself against something. Examples: From the literal saying: A thief entered a house at night, and a scorpion stung him. He can't shout out loud, otherwise he'll be caught. He just has to bear it. A student skipped school on the day of a field trip to a local hospital, unbeknownst to his parents. The par...| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
I often see "replace with" and "replace by" used interchangeably, but this doesn't sound right to me: I replaced that component by this one. I would use "with" in such a sentence. "By" only seems reasonable in passive, although "with" sounds like it would there work too: That component was replaced by this one. That component was replaced with this one. In my native language, the equivalent of "replace by" can only be used in passive, and even then it's a bit weird unless a person is the obje...| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
I'm from New England. Here we use the expression to yard on something meaning to pull hard on it. For instance, you might hear She's stuck up in that tree. If you want to get her down, you're going to have to yard on her tail until she comes loose. I was curious where this sense of the word came from, but I can't so much as find a dictionary that has this definition. Most don't have yard as a verb, and of the ones that do, it is defined in a way I am not familiar with ("To enclose, collect, o...| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
I've always heard people say something like "Pronunciation is not my [for-tay]" ... but I feel that I've heard that the correct pronunciation is "Confusing people is my [fort]" What is the prop...| English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
In Iraqi Arabic, when we refer to an ugly person or a bunch of unattractive & unsightly people, we say "look at this shkoolat!" - The latter word literally means image but it has evolved to mean "ugly image" in Iraqi slang. Is there a single word in English that specifically pertains to "an ugly look" or "ugly image"? Look at this [insert noun/word]! I can't stand looking at that face!| Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
When something works, but it is unreliable and intermittently goes wrong, what could it be called? I'm actually thinking of computer software. In my work we tend to use the word "flakey", but ther...| English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
I'm a little bit confused with the word "accommodate", since that the common usage is "to provide lodging or sufficient space ...", but I found out there's another meaning of this word is "to provide| English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
Can someone explain the difference between legacy and inheritance?| English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
Why do New Englanders (specifically, Connecticut people) say the word bring and never use the word take? I've lived in Connecticut for a long time. I grew up in the Midwest and Deep South and people| English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
Here's from Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2. But two months dead!--nay, not so much, not two: So excellent a king; that was to this, Hyperion to a satyr; I think I understand the meaning of these sentences.| English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
There's a word used in India, 'cheatercock.' Wiktionary defines a 'cheatercock' as (India) Someone who violates rules in order to gain an advantage; a cheater. There are a few hits online, mostly...| English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
Growing up in Pakistan, I heard variations of either: Cheater caught, Peter red; or Cheater cock, Peter red I assumed it was about a cocky boy named Peter who was either caught red-handed or turn...| English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
I was scribbling a grocery list last night and my wife, with her master's in English education and service as a middle school teacher, kept asking me what every other word was. I thought I was being| English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
"Would " & " Used to ". They both are used for repeated action in the past tense. Then what is the difference between them?| English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
I often see questions on Stack Exchange sites which I presume are written by non-native English speakers who use the word "doubt" in place of the word "question". Is this a case of misunderstanding...| English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
I know that "Stick to your knitting" means to stick with what you're familiar with/good at rather than giving your opinion or trying your hand at something out of your area of expertise. But I can't| English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
Q&A for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts| English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
Q&A for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts| English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
Q&A for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts| English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
The verb 'to be' is used differently in these two sentences: I am a human. I think therefore I am. In the first sentence, the verb has a subject complement ('a human'). In the second there isn't ...| English Language & Usage Stack Exchange
