Help with English: "Maybe, perhaps, possibly, probably"

[Saint]

LONDON – Until 11:45 p.m. London time on Thursday, Usain Bolt had achieved something even more remarkable than turning the Olympic Stadium track into his own personal drag strip.

personal drag strip = ?

[Saint]

Bolt's run as the most popular foreign athlete in the United States – maybe ever, or at least in the argument – might have ended abruptly Thursday night. After winning his fifth career Olympic gold medal and second of the London Games, he veered out of his way in the 200-meter news conference to savage Lewis, who merely won nine gold medals for America during his brilliant sprinting-and-jumping career. Them's fightin' words.

Them's fightin' words = what kind of English is this?

[Saint]

Until going after Lewis, Bolt had shown the world that it's possible to be the world's fastest man, have the world's biggest ego and still be the world's most enjoyable athlete.
This is normally a toxic combination. We like our superstars humble – even if the humility is false. We've bred an entire generation of athletes who will throw no-hitters, rack up triple-doubles or score four touchdowns only to blandly chalk it all up to great teammates and good luck. That has become the accepted, recommended and even enforced method of analyzing one's own greatness.

We've bred an entire generation of athletes who will throw no-hitters, rack up triple-doubles or score four touchdowns only to blandly chalk it all up to great teammates and good luck. = I just don't understand the English here.

[Fraggle Rocker]

personal drag strip = ?

Drag racing is a type of street racing. Two cars sit at a red light, and when it turns green both drivers floor the accelerator. The car that accelerates away from the stop fastest is the winner. The phrase comes from the fact that they used to do this kind of racing on the main street in town, which is also called the main drag. The main thoroughfare through a town used to be called a "drag" because of a type of work that took place in the era before the Industrial Revolution. I can't find a description of this but if I do I'll update these notes.

Drag racing has become a professional sport which now takes place on formal tracks with electronic timers, not just friendly races on city streets, scaring all the pedestrians and attracting the cops. A drag race is exactly one quarter of a mile (approx. 400m). Custom-built vehicles with specially-prepared engines can reach speeds above 150mph/240kph and cover the distance in a few seconds

Them's fightin' words = what kind of English is this?

Fighting words are words that can be reasonably expected to provoke a fight. For example, if a Euro-American walks into a bar in East Los Angeles and shouts, "You Mexicans are all lazy and should go home," those are fighting words.

"Them's fightin' words" is simply "Those are fighting words" rendered in the dialect of the southeastern United States. "The South," as we call it, is stereotyped as backward and ignorant, so we joke about their people speaking improper English. In many cases it's simply their accent, but sometimes it's just an exaggeration. In other words, if one of us walked into a bar in Alabama or South Carolina and said, "You Rednecks can't even speak proper English," three big tough guys might stand up and say, "Them's fightin' words, mister."

We've bred an entire generation of athletes who will throw no-hitters, rack up triple-doubles or score four touchdowns only to blandly chalk it all up to great teammates and good luck. = I just don't understand the English here.

A no-hitter is a baseball game in which the pitcher never allows the opposing team to hit the ball. A triple-double is a terrific play in basketball (I'm not familiar with the sport so if I got this wrong I'm sure someone will correct me). For one player to score four touchdowns in a single football game is remarkable.

So these are all example of individual members of teams who play phenomenally well and help their team win many games, perhaps the championship. It's common today to downplay the role of the individual in his own success and to say that he wouldn't have been able to achieve it without the nurturing of his parents, the training he got from his teachers, the encouragement from his team's coach, the cooperation of his teammates, the advantages bestowed by the American system of culture and politics, the farmers who grow such bountiful and nutritious food, the clean air that our environmentally-conscious factory owners produce, etc... (Yes, much of that statement is sarcastic. )

Barack Obama has lately been criticized for going overboard with this kind of talk, and downplaying the role of the individual in his own success.

This speaker is criticizing this philosophy, which has much truth in it but is exaggerated. He may in fact be criticizing Obama, but since the examples are all from sports, this is probably not the case. Nonetheless, many people do say things very much like this about Obama.

[Trippy]

"Them's fightin' words" is simply "Those are fighting words" rendered in the dialect of the southeastern United States. "The South," as we call it, is stereotyped as backward and ignorant, so we joke about their people speaking improper English. In many cases it's simply their accent, but sometimes it's just an exaggeration. In other words, if one of us walked into a bar in Alabama or South Carolina and said, "You Rednecks can't even speak proper English," three big tough guys might stand up and say, "Them's fightin' words, mister."

I've always heard it as "Them thar's fightin' words." Usually said with an approximation of a good southern drawl. For some reason I associate it with Yosemite Sam, but I can't find any clips of him saying it.

[Fraggle Rocker]

I've always heard it as "Them thar's fightin' words."

These days nobody would actually say that except for theatrical exaggeration. "Thar's gold in them thar hills" was the slogan of the 1849 California gold rush. Somebody might say, "Them's fightin' words, mister," but if they say it with such a humorous inflection they're probably not actually in a mood to take you down. If somebody says simply, "Those are fightin' words," then you'd better beat a hasty retreat--or buy a round for everybody in the bar.

With the spread of TV after WWII, exacerbated by the extreme mobility of the American population in the last decade or two as the concept of "lifelong employment" has faded away, American speech has nearly merged into a single dialect, distinguished only by accents. (An accent is merely a difference in pronunciation, whereas a dialect must differ in vocabulary and/or grammar.) So classic Southern speech is heard more often in songs and TV shows than in the South. Their cities are full of Yankees, Afro-Americans and immigrants just like ours, and their children grow up listening to the hybrid Hollywood-Manhattan accent of TV announcers (the country's two original broadcast centers). You have to go out into rural regions to hear people talk like Hank Williams sang.

"This here" ("hyar" in cartoon Southern speech) and "that there" ("thar") are constructions of the Scots-Irish immigrants to Appalachia in the 19th century, which vaguely mimic Gaelic grammar. The same is true of "I have it with me" (Irish has no verb "to have") and the plural pronoun "youse." We call this Hibernian English.

Usually said with an approximation of a good southern drawl.

Southern speech seems to be the most easily mimicked American accent. Up into the 1970s it was the only one that British actors were able to master, so when a character in a movie or TV show had to be easily identified as American, he always spoke like a hillbilly. (Except the comedians. Monty Python have always done perfect New York and California accents.) When rock and roll spread across the Atlantic in the 1960s, an American music critic said, "All British rock and roll singers sound exactly like black or white American Southerners." What he didn't point out was: so did we! There's something about the cadence and mood of rock music that brings out the Southerner in all of us.

Maybe it's because rock was originally the music of rebellion, and the Southerners still called themselves "Rebels."

For some reason I associate it with Yosemite Sam, but I can't find any clips of him saying it.

The first American migrants to the Southwest (it was already populated by seventh-generation Mexican families and hundreds of generations of Native Americans) were from the South. They could stand the heat, and after the Civil War their economy was in turmoil. So the "Western cowboy" dialect is a less exaggerated Southern drawl peppered with slang like "howdy," "young 'uns" and "tarnation," and of course the supremely useful plural pronoun "y'all."

I lived in Arizona when I was a kid and although I never spoke like that, as a budding little linguist I learned how. Today I can sing the old country music hits in the original accents and people really enjoy it. Ah'm jez an ole Air-zona cah-bowie.

Yosemite Sam, of course, is named after Yosemite National Park, which is in central California, a little beyond the acknowledged boundaries of the "Southwest" (western Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, perhaps Wyoming and the southeastern corner of California). But the name was chosen strictly for the quasi-alliteration. His original character was a prospector, which links him to the Gold Rush. The Gold Rush drew many prospectors from the South so his accent fits. When Americans want to make fun of rural people, they're always from the South. Never from rural Maine or North Dakota, which have their own amusing rural accents.

[Trippy]

I'm sure there's more in this post I want to address, but for now this:

These days nobody would actually say that except for theatrical exaggeration.

But that's the point isn't it? I'm NOT American. For the most part, the only exposure many of us get to american culture is that which you choose to export, and our broadcasting companies choose to import.

For the most part, I could probably identify three american accents.
Northern, Southern and New York. But the New York accent, for me, is divided up into several subgroups:
New York Cabbie.
New York Italian.
New York Jewish.

Or something like that anyway.

When Americans want to make fun of rural people, they're always from the South. Never from rural Maine or North Dakota, which have their own amusing rural accents.

Have you watched "Big Bang Theory" at all?

[Saint]

oxymoron = Contrdiction in terms; combination of two opposite words, such as sweet sorrow, or bittersweet.

How to create our own oxymoron?

[Saint]

In the end, the United States men's basketball team wouldn't be denied the gold medal. But Pau Gasol and Spain's national team made sure that the traveling troupe of NBA All-Stars with USA emblazoned across its jerseys had to sweat it out until the very, very end.

In a taut, physical affair that evoked the thriller played between these two teams in 2008, USA basketball held off Spain, 107-100, to capture the gold medal at the London 2012 Olympics.

With Spain having closed within six points deep into the fourth quarter, LeBron James reeled off five straight points on a three-point shot and a driving right-handed slam dunk to propel the U.S. to victory and its second straight gold medal.

sweat it out = try very hard?

In a taut = not relaxed?

held off = deterred?
reeled off = ?

[Fraggle Rocker]

For the most part, I could probably identify three american accents. Northern, Southern and New York.

What you call "Northern" is one of the recognized standard dialects of English: Standard American English. It's the dialect that the vast majority of Americans speak. It has accents, which have differences in pronunciation, but they all use 99.9% of the same grammar and vocabulary. The accents of the Boston area (the only remaining non-rhotic American accent, e.g. "ahsk yuoh brothuh to pahk the cah"), the Minnesota-North Dakota region with its Scandinavian influence (now well-known from the movie "Fargo"), and the Southwest (a region I defined in an earlier post) with its hodgepodge of Southern and Spanish influence (them buckaroos [Spanish vaqueros] are off chasin' varmints [vermin]) are probably the ones the rest of us hear most often and can identify with their regions.

"Southern" can still legitimately be called a dialect because it has a few grammatical differences (most recognizably a second-person plural pronoun that the standard English dialects lack: y'all) and a stock of its own words, many of which are now merely slang.

And don't forget AAVE (African-American vernacular English, briefly called "Ebonics"). This is a true dialect with significant grammatical and vocabulary differences, in addition to Southern pronunciation plus other phonetic idiosyncrasies borne out of a substratum of West African languages, propagated during more than a century of enforced separation from the Euro-American mainstream. Today virtually all Afro-Americans except in the most remote rural regions of the South can speak Standard American when appropriate, but many use AAVE in various situations for various reasons. An exaggerated, theatrical version of AAVE can often be heard in rap music.

But the New York accent, for me, is divided up into several subgroups: New York Cabbie, New York Italian, New York Jewish.

It's always amusing to learn how one's own culture appears to outsiders whose primary exposure to it is in movies and TV. The overwhelming majority of the New York City metropolitan area's twenty million people speak "Northern" Standard American English. Of course it has some rather large ethnic neighborhoods in which you might hear people speaking in the patois of their first-generation immigrant grandparents, but like Afro-Americans and their AAVE, when they venture out into the more cosmopolitan world, they talk like the rest of us. The Sicilian/Italian community was always large and powerful (arguably because when the merde-for-brains U.S. government enacted Prohibition it handed one of the most lucrative sectors of the economy to the Mafia), but their grandchildren have assimilated into the "Melting Pot." Today the taxi drivers in New York are as likely to be Muslim African immigrants (who will refuse to carry your wine or your seeing-eye dog) as they are in any other city.

As for "New York Jewish," that's just a Yiddish accent which you can hear just as easily in the Borscht Belt of Hollywood. Few people speak Yiddish anymore (except a small community in Israel who believe it's blasphemy to speak Hebrew except liturgically) so like all quaint relics of the past, it survives in a much exaggerated form in movies.

Have you watched "Big Bang Theory" at all?

No. But I didn't mean to say that other American accents are never heard. Dramas (theater, film, TV) often rely on exaggerated accents or dialects as a quick way to establish ethnicity or regionality. As noted, "Fargo" familiarized us with the accent of rural Minnesota and the Dakotas, where many Scandinavian immigrants settled in the late 19th century. And of course you can hear exaggerated Mexican-American accents on TV all day long, and to a lesser extent Cuban-American accents in shows set in Florida like "Burn Notice."

oxymoron = Contrdiction in terms; combination of two opposite words, such as sweet sorrow, or bittersweet. How to create our own oxymoron?

"Government efficiency," "religious tolerance," "British engineering." (They'd rather spend their time gluing wood onto the dashboard than making the ignition work. )

sweat it out = try very hard?

No. It means to endure a period of impatient uncertainty while you're waiting to find out if your efforts are successful.

In a taut = not relaxed?

You didn't parse that correctly. It's "In a taut, physical affair." "Taut" meanse "tense." Because the score was so close and either team might have won, there was a lot of tension in the air as both the athletes and the audience worried about which team would finally be victorious.

held off = deterred?

To hold something or someone off means to continually block them from harming you, stealing something from you, beating you in a game, etc. If we can hold off the enemy army for another month, the monsoons will arrive and they won't be able to attack anymore. It can also simply mean to defer something. If we can hold off paying the doctor's bill until October in order to buy food, my bonus check will arrive and we'll be able to pay him then.

reeled off = ?

If you have your garden hose wrapped around a reel, then you can pull it out very quickly to its full length, making it easy to water the lawn. So to reel off a series of accomplishments means that you are rapidly pulling them out as if they were on a reel that you're turning.

[Saint]

The headwind facing the economy, which could doom President Barack Obama’s re-election, grew stronger this month. Gasoline prices have spiked, food-price increases are imminent because of drought, and Friday’s unemployment numbers further highlighted the fact that Obama’s policies do not create jobs. The increase in unemployment to 8.3 percent in July is bad news for the United States and bad politics for the president.

headwind = challenge?

[Fraggle Rocker]

headwind = challenge?

You're getting lazy. You could have looked that up in any dictionary. A headwind is "a wind opposed to the course of a moving object, especially an aircraft or other vehicle (opposed to tailwind)."

If you're running, flying a plane, driving a heavy truck, etc., and a headwind is blowing into your face, then it slows you down. If a tailwind is blowing against your back, it helps you go faster.

The price of gasoline, one of the most important commodities, has risen rapidly. The price of food will increase because we're not getting enough rain. The number of people with jobs has decreased, making them unable to purchase anything except what is minimally necessary for survival--if they're lucky.

This headwind pushes against the President as he tries to move the country forward. It's difficult or even impossible for him (or anybody) to improve the economy under these conditions.

This was an odd choice of words. Most news commentators like to convince us that everything that's gone wrong is Obama's fault. Yet a headwind is a phenomenon of nature. If something is fighting us and we call it a headwind, we're saying that it's just bad luck.

But unlike news commentators, most economists agree that things that happen during a President's term are usually not the result of his own policies but those of his predecessors, which would actually make this simply bad luck for Obama: a headwind. In this case, the blame can be shifted all the way back to President Reagan (1981-88). He presided during prosperous times, and that's when the government is supposed to reduce spending (because a prosperous population doesn't need any help) and increase taxes (because a prosperous population can afford them). This allows it to pay off its debts and be ready to intervene if times get bad. Instead, Reagan did not raise taxes, but embarked on an unprecedented spending program that increased the national debt enormously. His successor, Bush the elder (1989-1992), was no wiser, and Clinton (1993-2000) made only a modest attempt to rein in the national debt. Bush the younger (2001-2008) reduced taxes even further and increased spending to an astronomical level instead of reining it in. (The War On Islam has cost about $3 trillion.)

As a result, the nation was in a precarious position, in which it would be difficult to survive a downturn. Yet, thanks to the incompetence of Bush's own appointee, the Controller of the Currency, a downturn happened. The subprime mortgage disaster is difficult to explain to an American, much less a foreigner, but basically they were selling people houses that they'd never be able to pay for. Suffice it to say that the CoC's job is to make sure that the nation's banks are managed soundly, and he failed in his duty. The economy began to crash in 2008, before Obama was even elected, and it's been going downhill ever since.

The headwind began before he was in office, and it hasn't stopped.

[Saint]

If a headwind is blowing against you, it will exert resistance on you, it is an obstacle, it is challenging.
Right?

[Fraggle Rocker]

If a headwind is blowing against you, it will exert resistance on you, it is an obstacle, it is challenging. Right?

Well yes, but the word obstacle brings to mind the image of a stationary object (or at least one that's not moving very fast and isn't very nimble) that is blocking your path. The way to overcome an obstacle is to go around it, climb over it, tunnel under it, or simply blow it to pieces with dynamite.

A headwind, on the other hand, is a force that pushes on you no matter which way you turn, no matter what you do. You can't get out of its way. The only way to overcome a headwind is to push harder against it, to put more strength into your steps, so you're making progress, if only slowly.

[Saint]

The word contumacious, is it a common word?

[Saint]

inasmuch as

1.Because of the fact that; since.
2.To the extent that; insofar as.

Can you construct some sentences to show me how to use this conjunction?

[Saint]

Who is a dude?

[Fraggle Rocker]

The word contumacious, is it a common word?

No. I recognize it but I had to look up the definition. It's primarily used in legal matters.

"There is no evidence that defendant's action was willful, contumacious, or the result of bad faith." In other words, he was not deliberately or obstinately doing something that he knew was wrong. He was not being stubborn, contrary, rebellious, etc.

Anyone who throws this word around in casual conversation is just trying to impress you.

Frankly, in casual conversation, even in mixed company, an American would probably just say, "He's being a dick."

inasmuch as -- 1.Because of the fact that; since. -- 2.To the extent that; insofar as. -- Can you construct some sentences to show me how to use this conjunction?

"Inasmuch as" is a compound conjunction that can only be used to connect two complete clauses. A clause has both a subject and a verb and could often stand alone as a sentence. It's not like "and," able to connect two nouns or two verbs or two adjectives.

Meaning #1: Inasmuch as you have already apologized to your brother for damaging his bicycle, you have offered to pay for repairs, and the damage was not entirely your fault; I will not punish you for this, but merely warn you not to let it happen again.

Meaning #2: Inasmuch as construction on our new office building is behind schedule due to the unexpected rainstorms, I have leased temporary office space and we will have to work there for a few months until the building is ready.

Who is a dude?

The slang word "dude" arose in 1883 but its etymology is unknown. It was first used in New York City for a fastidious man, one who was fussy about his appearance and paid attention to trends. The word was picked up in the Wild West, where people had to dress more practically, to refer to a man from an Eastern City, especially one who dressed inappropriately when visiting the West. As the nation became prosperous and Easterners came to the West for vacations, they were all known as "dudes" and the term "dude ranch" was first coined, an institution built for their vacations, where they could learn to ride horses, sit around a campfire and sing, perhaps brand a couple of steers, and live a much more comfortable version of the life of a cowboy.

In the 1960s when surfing became a craze, the surfers co-opted the word "dude" to mean any man, including active adolescents.

It is still slang, but it's now universally understood in the USA, and probably in the U.K., and perhaps throughout the anglophone world, since David Bowie wrote the song "All the Young Dudes" back in 1972. It still has the same meaning: any man or reasonably mature adolescent boy.

You are a dude.

[Saint]

Is "perchance" still used in today's English writing?
How about "behoove"?

[Saint]

Whence, is still a modern English word?