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

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porsche

Member Since

October 20, 2005

Total number of comments

670

Total number of votes received

3091

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Latest Comments

Cow Eyes

  • June 28, 2007, 9:08am

I'm not familiar with the expression, but when "cow" is used as a verb, it means to threaten or intimidate. The implication is that cows are docile, submissive, easily dominated creatures. It makes sense that "cow eyes" could mean a lookof coyness, docility, submission, showing one's soft white underbelly.

Good point about semi- . I was originally going to just suggest semi-daily, on the notion that semi can mean a fraction, not necessarily half, but rejected it for being ambiguous and confusing. As for straying off on tangents, that's part of what makes this site so much fun to visit and post. Also, any topic that includes a plea to make up a word is inviting light-hearted replies.

Correspondence

  • June 22, 2007, 4:11pm

Interesting, AO. I don't think the fish analogy works completely, but there are certainly mass nouns that do make sense to use in the plural, like waters, as you mentioned. I'm not sure I can think of a case where "correspondences" would work better than just plain old "correspondence". Try comparing it to the word "mail". For what it's worth, at least at dictionary.com, there is no listing for the plural at all. I could imagine two or more distinct groups of correspondence being referred to as correspondences, but I'm not sure. If I had two piles of mail, I would still have only more mail, not mails.

Me Versus I

  • June 22, 2007, 2:27pm

...By the same token, I don't think it matters if you caption the picture "Greg and I" or "Greg and me."...

Well said, AO. Since, as you mentioned, it is a sentence fragment, there really isn't any way whatsoever to know if it means "Greg and I are in this picture" or "This is a picture of Greg and me".

If anything, the existence of an ongoing unresolved argument about it suggests that either could be acceptable. Just my opinion, too.

AO, that's why I suggested part-daily. By analogy, Bi-weekly can mean either every other week, or twice per week, but semi-weekly unambiguously means twice per week. Thus, semi-daily would only mean twice per day, and part-daily, the unambiguous indeterminate version. By the way, while I don't have any particular support for this, I suspect that since semi-weekly can only mean twice per week, bi-weekly probably originally meant every other week only. The opposite definition probably came about later, first as a mis-use, then later becoming accepted. Note, the dictionary does list every other week first, which might suggest that it is the preferred definition.

Correspondence

  • June 16, 2007, 2:57pm

Actually, that is incorrect. Yes, the WORD correspondence is singular, but is it is a mass noun not a countable noun. It's like the word water. Three letters of correspondence are still described as correspondence, not correspondences, just like three glasses of water are still described as water, not waters.

Irregardless?

  • June 13, 2007, 5:43pm

Nigel, I take my hat off to you for making the distinction between arrant and errant!

Past tense of “text”

  • June 7, 2007, 12:03pm

authorized is correct, not authorize. Oh, and it's an adjective, not a verb.

Irregardless?

  • June 7, 2007, 11:58am

While it would be nice, even plausible, to justify the ir- in irregardless as intensifying rather than negating, unfortunately, it would also be incorrect. AO is right. Irregardless is a double-negative, in particular, a double-negative resolving to a negative (It's like the song "I ain't got nobody" [which does NOT mean that the singer HAS somebody] or "Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges!").
The word irregardless is generally viewed as a splice error between irrespective and regardless. As little as twenty or thirty years ago, it wasn't considered a word at all. Since then it has officially made its way into the language but is still considered slang or vulgar.
By the way, AO, in another post on this site, you suggested that irregardless means regardful. I'm sure you didn't really mean that. It is a double-negative, but still, irregardless means regardless, similar to the examples I just mentioned.

At first, I was going to suggest 'multi-daily', but that might imply an indeterminate time less often than once per day, not more often (i.e., multiple days between occurrences). Then I thought, we need a prefix that means fractionally less than one, but is indeterminate. How about 'part-', as in 'part-time'? What do you think of 'part-daily'?