@Hacovo - I'll go with you half-way. Praise I think has to be a noun, after all you yourself said 'worthy of praise', not worthy of praising, and after 'of' we need a noun or gerund. But I'll give you 'cringeworthy', well spotted. I still think, however, verbs are pretty rare in this construction. And the (US) spell check doesn't like cringeworthy, either, although it is in my British dictionary (OALD). Incidentally a Google count on 'airworthy' gives some 400,00, while 'airworthiness' gives some six and a half million. Strange!

@sigurd - we are not saying you can't do it, but in your apparent enthusiasm for stretching the uses of certain grammatical forms of English, especially with your previous question, you often seem to go against the flow of what sounds idiomatic and natural to native speakers.

Language is, after all, primarily about communication, and ultimately, I would suggest, about people, not logic. So why try to confuse them, or use language that jars, or sounds unnatural, or as njtt says, sounds weird? Why not work with the language we all understand, rather than against it?

Of course language can be stretched and used inventively, which people like Stephen Fry, Eddie Izzard and many others, do very creatively and successfully. But they do it subtly, with an inherent feel for how English works, and how it can be played around with; for what works and what doesn't work. And they do it in a way that people can understand and empathise with, and which above all, sounds natural.

I really don't see that 'in regards to' has any connection at all with the backward(s)/forward(s) issue, which is one of different usage between BrE and AmE. In contrast, 'in regards to' seems to be more an issue of standard or not, whatever side of the pond or the argument you happen to be on, linguistically speaking.

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/regards.html

A closer analogy could probably be made with 'while/whilst', 'among/amongst' etc, which I, being a BrE speaker, use interchangeably. But I know that some American commentators don't particularly like the '-st' versions, seeing them as 'prissy' Briticisms.

@sigurd - this might interest you - http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_words_suffixed_with_-worthy

As you yourself point out, -worthy words are almost all based on nouns - airworthy, praiseworthy etc, my own favourite being cringeworthy (it's in the NY Times - hyphenated). Which is, I think, why your verb-based examples seem so weird.
njtt has hit the nail on the head, really. For example we can call a relationship loveless, but to call it respectless would just sound strange.

I go with the general flow: 'me neither' is absolutely standard spoken English, but there are (formal) occasions when 'neither do I' would be more appropriate. But my main concern is 'me either', because there is no negative; it makes no sense to me. 'Not me either', though unidiomatic would at least make sense.

It seems however, that 'me either' is in common use in North America:
http://throwgrammarfromthetrain.blogspot.com/2010/01/me-either-me-neither.html

but the usually pretty laid-back Prof Paul Brians at WSU Common Errors sees it as an error:
http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/meeither.html

GrammarBook.com's rule is supported by several expert websites, for example: Prof Paul Brians at Common Errors; and writing support websites at Towson University, Wisconsin University and the University of New South Wales in Australia, all of whom give examples of semicolons being used with coordinating conjunctions.

I think this is just another example of a so-called rule being used to override a general principle. It's a case of not seeing the wood for the trees. But spouting rules is so much easier than trying to understand why we do something.

Take the first sentence:

When I finish here, I will be glad to help you; and that is a promise I will keep.

You could of course start with a new sentence after 'you'. But the second part is closely related to the first, so keeping it in one sentence is justified. But in doing so we need a longer pause than a simple comma, to differentiate it from the first part, hence the semicolon. And the second example:

If she can, she will attempt that feat; and if her husband is able, he will be there to see her.

Here we have two complete conditional sentences, and again they are closely related, so the 'and' is appropriate. But again we need a longer pause than the internal commas in each of the conditionals, so again the semicolon is not only justifiable, but called for.

Perhaps if people tried reading the sentences out loud, instead of worrying so much about rules, they would see this more easily.

@Hacovo - No wrath incited. For me there is a difference in meaning. In British English, at least, 'starving' just means very hungry. 'God, I'm starving. What's for supper?', but 'starved' is rather stronger - 'That dog looks starved. Haven't the owners being feeding it properly?'

As I thought, it's a BrE/AmE thing. Scroll down to idioms:
http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/starve

@Hacovo - Thanks for the comment. Just on the crowd, team thing, there is a difference between American and British usage here, as has been mentioned on other posts. Americans tend to prefer formal agreement, in other words use a singular verb, whereas Brits usually go for notional agreement, using a plural verb with group nouns such as crowd, government etc.

"In British usage government, in the sense of a governing group of officials, takes a plural verb: The government are determined to follow this course" - Free Dictionary

Thanks Ing and JAC for confirming my thoughts. I had written it (with 'is') without thinking and then thought it looked a little odd. I realised later that one way round is to reverse it:

There are all sorts of things I believed in then which I don’t believe in now, and one of them is language rules set in stone.

@Tom - I think the point is that 'language rules set in stone' is a single notion, one of several areas where I've changed my opinion. eg (for argument's sake):
Santa Claus, religion, political ideas, language rules set in stone

Sorry, that wasn't of course an appositive; I was obviously trying to be too clever. Hoist with my own petard, perhaps. But the idea is still the same.