Submitted by xmrcx • April 23, 2006
Irrespective of whether 1st generations are the ones who are born first in the new country vs. the ones who immigrated, [See the previous post] what would your child be if say you are 1st generation and your spouse is 2nd generation - Is your child “second and a half”? Curious to know what people under such circumstance (or similar) call themselves?
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Posted in Etymology / History
Submitted by elizabethmcauley • April 23, 2006
I have read that at one time in the American South, it was not common to use an apostrophe to form a contraction of words. Some examples used in the article were you’re spelled as youre, don’t as dont. The implication was that the change was part of Reconstruction and a way of forcing conformity on the southern states. I cannot remember where I read this nor what sources were cited as reference. Where can I find information to prove or disprove that such was the case?
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Posted in Etymology / History
Submitted by isabella • March 12, 2006
Genius has no ‘o’ in it and yet ingenious does. Why the difference in spelling?
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Posted in Etymology / History
Submitted by christina • February 24, 2006
According to the Oxford English Dictionary...
forum n. (pl. forums)
1) a meeting or medium for an exchange of views.
2) (pl. fora) (in an ancient Roman city) a public square or marketplace used for judicial and other business. Origin ME: from Latin, lit. what is out of doors.
But everywhere else I’ve looked, it seems that forums and fora are interchangable. I personally prefer to use the word forums, when referring to a group of workshops and meetings.
I want to argue for this at my work because the term fora is being used and I want to know if there’s more evidence that I’m actually correct, besides what the Oxford English Dictionary tells me.
190 comments
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Posted in Etymology / History
Submitted by andrew3 • January 28, 2006
I never paid this much attention until my dad mentioned today that it’s never sounded right to him when people say “hey” instead of “hi” or “hello”. I’ve been using it this way for at least 20 years, but I looked it up in various dictionaries and haven’t yet found a definition consistent with this usage. Most references just define it as “an interjection used to call attention” or something similar and leave it at that. Any thoughts or references that might shed some light?
62 comments
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Posted in Etymology / History
Submitted by m56 • December 19, 2005
Below, is the speaker B sure of who the person is? If so, why not say “That is Julia Roberts”?
A: Who’s that woman over there?
B: That would be Julia Roberts.
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Posted in Etymology / History
Submitted by m56 • November 27, 2005
Hi All
On another forum, two native English speakers insisted that the questions shown below were incorrect English. Please tell me why, if the affirmative forms (answers ) shown are allowed, the question form is not allowed.
What does psychology study?
What does solid state physics study?
What does quantum mechanics study?
................
-Psychology studies the relationship between environments and human behaviour.
-Psychology studies the human psyche, behavior, and mental processes. This diverse field has roots in biology, medicine, philosophy, religion, and history. ...
-Solid state physics studies the processes taking place on surfaces and semi-conductors. -
-Theoretical physics above all examines the theory of quantum fields, gravitation and quantum information.
-Quantum mechanics studies the behavior of atoms and the particles that make them up.
Thanks
13 comments
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Posted in Etymology / History
Submitted by gabrielle • November 20, 2005
I am trying to figure out if there is a definite pattern in when ‘th’ is voiced (as in ‘the’) or unvoiced (as in ‘thin’). Someone has commented that sounds are to a large degree determined by the sound that comes after them. This doesn’t explain to me why the ‘th’ in ‘with’ and ‘myth’ are pronounced differently as they have the same ‘sound’ preceding them and nothing after. Can anyone shed any light on this for me?
Thanks
18 comments
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Posted in Etymology / History
Submitted by steve • September 28, 2005
What does the “o’” in “o’clock” stand for? I’ve heard it means “of the”, but that sounds odd. “I’ll meet you at two of the clock”. Perhaps it means “on the” which makes more sense to me. “I’ll meet you at two on the clock”
47 comments
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Posted in Etymology / History
Submitted by steve • September 28, 2005
Does the word “akin” share roots with other words starting an “a”? For example, “Morton’s gone acourtin’ Daisy Sue”. And if so, are these hillbilly expressions? Hillbillies on TV never seem to use the word “akin” they say “kin” a lot as in “...we’re kin folk”.
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Posted in Etymology / History
Submitted by steve • September 28, 2005
Where does the word “nope” come from? Is it just slang for “no” or does it have more distinguished roots?
12 comments
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Posted in Etymology / History
Submitted by m56 • September 16, 2005
Summarising: Three ways of looking at it. Extracts from the Geoffrey Leech article, English Grammar in Conversation.
View 1: Spoken English has no grammar at all: it is grammatically inchoate.
(That view) ...does not need to be taken seriously, although it is surprisingly persistent in the mind of the folk grammarian. It is inherited from the age-old tradition associating grammar with the written language, and it is bolstered by examples such as the following, which, like others which follow, is from the Longman spoken corpus:
No. Do you know erm you know where the erm go over to er go over erm where the fire station is not the one that white white
View 2: Spoken English does not have a special grammar: its grammar is just the same as the grammar of written English
Conversation makes use of entities such as prepositions, modals, noun phrases and relative clauses, just as written language does. So - assuming, as many would, that differences of frequency belong to the use of the grammar, rather than to the grammatical system itself - it is quite natural to think in terms of one English grammar, whose use in conversational performance can be contrasted with its use in various kinds of writing. In other words, conversational grammar is seen to be just a rather special implementation of the common grammar of English: a discovery which does not necessarily in any way diminish the interest of studying the grammar (i.e. the grammatical use) of spoken language.
View 3: Spoken English does have a special grammar - it has its own principles, rules and categories, which are different from those of the written language.
In handling spoken language, (David) Brazil argues for a totally different approach to grammar from the approach which has become familiar through conventional focus on the written language. He argues for a linear model moving dynamically through time, and puts aside the more traditional architectural model in terms of hierarchies of units. Although Carter and McCarthy do not take this thorough-going approach, they do throw the spotlight on grammatical features of spoken language which they feel have been largely neglected by standard grammars entrenched in the ‘written tradition’. They argue that structures which are inherent to speech have not been properly studied until the advent of the spoken computer corpus, and are consequently absent from canonised written grammar familiar to learners of English throughout the world: structures such as the ‘dislocated topic’ of This little shop ... it’s lovely or the ‘wagging tail’ of Oh I reckon they’re lovely. I really do whippets. These tend to find their raison d’être in the fact that conversation constructs itself in a dynamic fashion, giving the speaker only a small look-ahead window for planning what to say, and often inducing retrospective add-ons. Carter and McCarthy (1995) put forward a structural model for the clause in conversation, containing in addition to the core clause itself a pre-clause topic and a post-clause tail. With their refreshing emphasis on the dynamic modelling of grammar in action, Carter and McCarthy seem to be taking a line similar to Brazil’s advocacy of a new grammar of speech.
Read more at: tu-chemnitz.de
54 comments
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Posted in Etymology / History
Submitted by adrianna • August 10, 2005
Who thought of calling left, left, and right, right? Why don’t we say 1 and 2, or A and B to determine left and right? My sister really wants to know and I don’t have a clue.
11 comments
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Posted in Etymology / History
Submitted by m56 • July 25, 2005
Does anyone know where the term “zero conditional” comes from and why we use it for labeling the “unchanging Laws of Existence” conditional?
What does that “zero” mean?
(Looking for a bit of etymology here and not a desription of zero conditionals per se.)
4 comments
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Posted in Etymology / History
Submitted by andrew • April 17, 2005
I’m wondering if George Lucas just made this word up. I found that sith was from the celtic word “sidhe” meaning “fairy, especially one that conjures dead spirits.”
It seems really random that Sith would mean something and that Jedi would be meaningless.
37 comments
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Posted in Etymology / History
Submitted by goossun • January 30, 2005
Can one say “beforehandedly?” and if so should it be with double L or single. If rejected what word would you useinstead?
By the way, is the any rule as to use one or two Ls when making adverbs?
23 comments
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Posted in Etymology / History
Submitted by katesmith • January 23, 2005
I was taught by my English Lit professor, whilst studying Chaucer and Shakespeare that the old definition of the word “punk” was “Prostitute”. Is this true? The only references I can find will only give me stuff related to The Sex Pistols & co. Any help?
Thanks!
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Posted in Etymology / History
Submitted by jude • January 23, 2005
Anyone know the origin of the term ‘dew claw’ in referring to the extra claw on a dog’s leg?
3 comments
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Posted in Etymology / History
Submitted by goossun • January 14, 2005
I have always thought that “2 write” like this did not exist “B4″ the Internet and online chatting.
But strange enough I saw in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations that he has used this kind of spelling to picture his illiterate character that is Pip when he is still living with his sister and Joe:
“MI DEER JO I OPE U R KRWITE WELL I OP I SHAL SON B HABELL 4 2 TEEDGE U JO AN THEN WE SHORL B SO GLODD AN WEN I M PRENGTD 2 U JO WOT LARX AN BLEVE ME INF AN PIP.”
Does anyone know of any earlier instance of such thing?
13 comments
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Posted in Etymology / History
Submitted by solgarfunkel • January 10, 2005
HELP! I understand that coke, kleenex and xerox are examples of synecdoches, but I believe that there is a word for the specific kind of synecdoche where a brand name has come to mean the generic name for a product. This search has been driving me moderately insane. Any help you can give will be truly appreciated by myself, my family, and my pharmacist.
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Posted in Etymology / History
