June 29th, 2009 by dyske
Have you noticed that, at trendy cafes, more than half of the laptop computers you see are the new MacBooks? (Well, at least in New York City.) I don’t mean any MacBook; I’m talking about the latest MacBook (”the brick”). In fact, I believe seeing the older versions of MacBooks is rarer than seeing PC laptops.
If these people are deciding to work at cafes for practical reasons, then the laptop demographic should be much more diverse, with a lot more PCs and older versions of MacBook, but this is not what I see. The demographic is heavily skewed towards the latest models of MacBook. So, I would have to conclude that the reason why these MacBook owners come out to cafes is because they want to show off their brand new MacBooks.
It would makes sense, therefore, to coin a term for showing off your MacBook at a cafe. I’ve struggled with this for a while, and this morning, I decided that it should be “Mac off”.
“Hey, honey. I’m gonna go Mac off at the Starbucks for a few hours, OK?”
“At a cafe in Williamsburg, I saw about a dozen people sitting in a row Mac’ing off.”
“I bought the new MacBook Pro last week, but I haven’t Mac’ed off yet.”
Tags: Mac off
Posted in Coinage | 1 Response »
We (i.e. the creators of Pain in The English) developed a series of iPhone apps to teach preschool kids how to recognize letters and words. (My wife developed the characters and I did the coding.) Our own 4-year old daughter has been enjoying them. They are now available on Apple's App Store. You can search for "bitskis" on your iPhone, or visit the official website at bitskis.com.
If you have kids and own an iPhone, please check it out. It's $2.
June 28th, 2009 by dyske
If you have a kid and a stroller, I’m sure you’ve experienced this many times. You hang a lot of stuff from the handle of the stroller, and when the kid jumps out of it, the whole thing topples over.
One of my friends wants a word for this (a verb). I tried to think of one, but I couldn’t come up with a good one. (”Stropple”, for instance, isn’t so good because the sound of it lacks the impact of the actual event.) Can anyone think of one?
Posted in Coinage | 2 Responses »
June 15th, 2009 by dyske
Is there a word to describe a Twitter user who follows everyone in an attempt to get them to follow him? Now, I’m getting a regular stream of them. When you look at their profiles, they have hundreds of followers. It’s just not possible or practical to read that many tweets every day. Obviously they are not reading anything; they just want you to read their tweets. It’s a marketing ploy.
Posted in Coinage | 6 Responses »
June 10th, 2009 by Chris
What about proper nouns as in team mascots? Our school mascot is a Grizzly. Would students be Grizzlies or Grizzlys? Since it’s a school’s mascot I’d like for it to be correct, but for the last 20 years it’s been spelled Grizzlies. I believe that spelling to be incorrect. Academic input please:o)
Posted in Grammar | 3 Responses »
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June 9th, 2009 by EGKG
I heard an ad on the radio recently for a company that performs medical procedures. At the end they said “We accept all major insurances.”
That didn’t sound quite right to me, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard the plural of the word “insurance”. If it were me, I would’ve said “We accept all major insurance plans.” Am I right that there is no plural form of the word?
On a related note, I’ve heard, mostly on TV news shows, “damages” a lot. I know that the word exists, meaning a monetary judgement awarded by a court, but they used it when they meant “damage”. For example, “Due to the ice storm, many damages were done to homes,” or “The car suffered severe damages from the accident.” This is improper usage, correct?
Posted in Grammar | 17 Responses »
June 9th, 2009 by Monkey
I am wondering how to use the phrase ‘as of’ correctly. I learnt from my daily email communications with native English speakers that the phrase could mean “from”, “on/at” or “by the end of”. However, the last sense was not found in Oxford English Dictionary or Merriam Webster’s online edition.
That made me quite puzzled. Examples may speak louder than theories.
“As of yesterday, we had finished three tasks.”
Is this usage correct and does it mean the same thing as “by the end of yesterday, we had finished three tasks”?
Thanks.
Posted in Usage | 8 Responses »
June 4th, 2009 by dyske
Is “someone else’s” grammatically correct? Every time I type, the spell-checker reminds me that it’s wrong.
There are a lot of discussions online about “passers-by” vs. “passer-bys”. The general consensus, from what I saw, is that the former is more correct. If this is true, shouldn’t it be “someone’s else”?
I personally feel that “passer-bys” is more correct, especially when you remove the hyphen (”passerbys”). It’s more consistent with other words like “blastoffs” and “playoffs”.
Posted in Punctuation and Mechanics | 4 Responses »
May 26th, 2009 by Richie
I have a feeling I’ll look at this again in a while and find the answer screamingly obvious. Do these parallel the form of “independent” exactly? As “independence of” seems really wrong, though “independent of” seems ok. I’m confused.
Posted in Grammar | 6 Responses »
May 23rd, 2009 by karl B.
I heard this sentence on radio or TV and while it seems correct grammatically, I believe the verb be is in the subjunctive mode, somehow it did not feel colloquial.
Any comments?
Posted in Grammar | 9 Responses »
May 21st, 2009 by tomolonight
What is an infinitive without “to”?
He need not wait.
or
He needs not wait.
Can you explain more about this?
Posted in Grammar | 4 Responses »
