Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

Username

Warsaw Will (unlogged in)

Member Since

February 4, 2015

Total number of comments

2

Total number of votes received

5

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Latest Comments

It gets even more interesting. The actual title seems to be down to a Time sub. Time took it from an article at People.com, which had the even weirder title 'Katy Perry: I'm Nervous for the Super Bowl!'. People in turn got it from ESPN, where she actually says "I don't get nervous about much, but I'll definitely be a little tingly inside that day."

If you Google "is nervous to", there are quite a few hits in US media:

"Shanine is nervous to take pregnancy test", AOL and Oprah.com
"Kate Middleton is nervous to give birth", US Magazine

As she was talking of a specific action which she had the intention of doing, I'd go with Jayles and say 'nervous about'. I think I'd use ' nervous of' for more general situations, such as this from the BNC:'She had found, since her return to the house, that she was horribly nervous of being alone in it at night.'

Incidentally, judging from the main corpus of contemporary American English, COCA, Americans vey rarely use 'nervous of'. It seems to be a British thing.

Is “leverage” a verb?

  • February 4, 2015, 10:01am

Leverage as a verb has two meanings.

The first is specifically financial one meaning to use credit - so at the of the 2008 crisis, Obama talked of the American economy being over-leveraged: too dependent on credit. A leveraged buyout is when one company buys out another, but financed bank loans rather than form its own finances. These wre rather popular in the nineties, I think.

The second is rather more controversial, and is often seen as business bullshit, and means to generally improve something - 'He's taking extra courses in an attempt to leverage his career.'

Incidentally, Americans pronounce these verbs with a short e as in bed, while Brits pronounce the noun with a long e, asin sheet.