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

AnWulf

Member Since

June 19, 2011

Total number of comments

616

Total number of votes received

580

Bio

Native English speaker. Conversant in German, Russian, Spanish, and Anglo-Saxon.

Ferþu Hal!

I hav a pilot's license (SEL certificate); I'm a certified diver (NAUI); I'v skydived and was qualified as a paratrooper in the Army (Airborne!); I was a soldier (MI, Armor, Engineer).

I workt for a corporation, was a law enforcement officer, and a business owner.

Bachelor's in Finance; minor in Economics
Masters of Aeronautical Sciences

Strong backer of English spelling reform.

Browncoat

Now I'v written my first novel [ http://www.lulu.com/shop/lt-wolf/the-world-king-book-i-the-reckoning/ebook/product-22015788.html ] and I'm working on others.

http://lupussolus.typad.com
http://lupussolusluna.blogspot.com
http://anwulf.blogspot.com

Latest Comments

The opposite of “awaken”?

  • July 2, 2012, 2:43pm

@Jasper ... If yu are going to borrow the German word and englishen it a bit, it would be inshlafen. To calque it would be insleep or maybe insleepen ... and someone has thought of that: http://www.insleep.com/index2.html

O’clock

  • July 2, 2012, 2:30pm

It's five o'clock in the morning: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj1DR5BhOd8

@Mediator ... Hinges on the validity of the pet peeve. Many of them are rooted on so-called grammar rules that pedants hav either made up (like not ending a sentence with a preposition) or it fits their way of think of how it SHOULD be rather than how it is.

I'll say that it may seem a bit klutzy at times but 'they' and 'they' can be noted for the singular neuter just as someone and none can be noted for the plural. It's an oddity of the tung. Better than writing s/he or his/hers all the time.

Despite what the grammar police might say, it's actually fine to use "their" as a singular pronoun. ... Ask the editor: http://www.merriam-webster.com/video/0033-hisher.htm

“Anglish”

  • June 22, 2012, 6:42pm

Words for ravine: chine, dene (dean), gil(l), kloof (clough), thrutch (as a verb, thrutch means to press or push)

Words for valley: dale (broad valley), glen (narrow valley), coomb / comb / cumb (a small valley), hollow (small valley), slade

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Sometimes mistakes work for English. The Oxford Wordbook says: ORIGIN late Middle English: from bone + fire. The term originally denoted a large open-air fire on which bones were burned (sometimes as part of a celebration), also one for burning heretics or proscribed literature. Dr. Johnson accepted the mistaken idea that the word came from French bon ‘good.’

Who knows, had he not thought that it was half-French, he might hav left it out as nothing more than SOP (sum of parts). But since it was half-French, it needed to be put in the wordbook! The lesser known word with the same meaning is balefire.

“Anglish”

  • June 22, 2012, 11:43am

There are a lot of English words that the etymologists ignore the OE root or that it was alreddy in OE before the French came and merely changed the spelling. I think irre/ire was one. The words close and cloister are two others:

(ME cloos / clos ... erly clus: Wel heo clusden [Otho: tunde] heore 3eten & 3areweden heom to fehten.

Eorð-hus heo hureden..heo cluseden [Otho: clusden] þer wið innen alle heore win-tunnen.

And ME biclosen/beclusen: Swiðe wes þe hul biclused [Otho: bi-closed] mid cludes of stane.)

I'v been shunning "close" for that it is marked as from Old French clos-, stem of clore, from Latin claudere ‘to shut.’

Yet in OE there is clýsan; p. de; pp. ed: To close, shut … Not any byspels given so it might be a LOE borrowing but other shapes seem to hav been about for a long time.

From clýsan one gets beclýsan (ME biclusen) (beclose, inclose/enclose);
To close in, to shut in, to inclose, to shut, to close

clysing / clusung - A CLOSING, inclosure, conclusion of a sentence, a clause, period … stopping; a bar :--
II. an enclosed place, cloister, closet

As well as clys/ clus: An inclosure, a narrow passage, close, bond, prison … Dut. kluis, f: Kil. kluyse: Ger. klause , f: M. H. Ger. klóse, klús, klúse , f: O. H. Ger. klúsa, f: … Maybe from or akin to M. Lat. clusa, clausa: Lat. clausus, pp. of claudere to shut, inclose? … Greek root? … maybe koinobion ‘convent,’ from koinos ‘common’]

cluster: Old English clyster; probably related to clot (Oxfd Online)
clyster, +clystre n. - 'cluster,' bunch, branch

clûstor n. lock, bar, barrier: enclosure, cloister, cell, prison. (O. Sax. klústar, n: Frs. klooster, kleaster: O. Frs. klaster, n: Dut. klooster, n: Kil. klooster: Ger. kloster, n: M. H. Ger. O. H. Ger. klóster, n: Dan. Swed. kloster, n: Icel. klaustr, n: … Maybe from Lat. claustra, pl. n. a lock, bar, bolt. or claustrum?)

The MED (not always reliable) has it as: Clauster, sb. cloister, MD; closter, MD; claustres, pl., S2.—Lat. claustrum (clostrum), whence Icel. klaustr, AS. clúster. Cf. Cloister.

All said and done, "close" is found in OE in all its meanings as in NE. The only sunderness is the that NE notes the French spelling with an 'o' insted of a 'u' (aside from cluster). See that OE 'y' (ü) could eathly be the same as French 'oi' (ü) and as the right-spelling (orthography) changed from OE to ME (French influenced) then clyster=cloister. Either there is a shared PIE root or an erly borrowing. Either way … close and cloister came into the tung before ME. Only the spelling changed during ME.

Same pattern with so many words … A word stands in OE, but after the Takeover, the Norman-French scribes started putting their right-spelling to English words and, for some unknown reasum, today's wordbooks, like the OED, often don't go past the French spellings unless they can't find a Latin root.

“Anglish”

  • June 22, 2012, 11:25am

@Ængelfolc, ... ""for what it's worth, apparently they are not considered cognate words. According to Buck, O.E. irre (n.) is from the adjective..."

What are not thought of as cognate words? And, who is Buck?"

The words OE irre and Latin ira are not thought of as cognates. ... Old English irre in a similar sense is from an adjective irre "wandering, straying, angry," [which is one meaning of it] cognate with O.S. irri "angry", O.H.G. irri "wandering, deranged", also "angry;" Goth. airzeis "astray", and L. errare "wander, go astray, angry". [not ira]

Buck, I guess, is an author of a book on etymology.

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Another NE word with "gar" in it, tho somewhat hidden is auger: Old English nafogār, from nafu (see nave2) + gār ‘piercer’. The n was lost by wrong division of a nauger.

Past tense of “text”

  • June 22, 2012, 11:10am

@Ruthyphro - "Let him be largely ***texted*** in your love. That all the city may read it fairly ..." That's not an adjectiv unless you're talking about noting the -ed PAST TENSE of a VERB as an adjective which is done. Here texted means means make it in big letters ... big enuff "That all the city may read it fairly."

Text as a verb is NOT new. It's been noted for centuries.

But if yu don't like that one, how about this:

To make the Great Rolls, which want it, more useful to the Public, it is humbly proposed, that they be new covered, marked, and ***texted***, the Records which lie in Chests to be bound up and labelled; ... Rob Gardner, Dep. Cl. Pipe. 16 Mar 1731.

all _____ sudden

  • June 8, 2012, 2:54pm

@BillB ... You should try looking in a wordbook before making such pronouncements.

From M-W: — all of a sudden also on a sudden
: sooner than was expected : at once
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sudden

From the Oxford Dictionary Online:
Phrases
(all) of a sudden
suddenly: I feel really tired all of a sudden
on a sudden
archaic way of saying all of a sudden.
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sudden

If that isn't enuff ... try Google ngrams: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=all+of+a+sudden%2C+all+of+the+sudden&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

Questions

What can I do besides... October 8, 2011