Help with English
- Thread starter Saint
- Start date
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Saint, you're getting lazy.
All of these words are in the dictionary. The brunt of a blow is the main force. The impact may be spread over various parts of the target, but the brunt of the impact is intended to hit the part of the target that is most important, or most vulnerable."The mugger punched Mr. Gomez all over his face, but the brunt of the attack was concentrated on his nose, which was broken."
No. To cite something means to identify it as an authoritative source for information that you are passing along, or that you are using as the basis for your own work. You may choose to quote it to help the person to whom you're speaking or writing understand you better. But often the material you are citing is lengthy and it would be impractical to repeat or reproduce it. Your purpose is to reassure your audience that your own work is based on something that is regarded with respect.
"No, it is not possible for a particle with mass to travel at the speed of light. I cite Einstein's famous work, if you're not familiar with it."
No, it's okay. Most people write it that way because even if their text editing software has the capability to generate a foreign character set, it's usually a lot of work. If you submit it for publication, the editors of the journal will convert it for you.
In American English I'd say the only foreign letter we take the trouble to write is ñ. It's common in Spanish and in the USA we use a lot of Spanish words. Ñ is not pronounced the same as N (it's pronounced -NY-) so it makes a big difference to spell it correctly. It's also used in Czech, as in the city of Plzeñ.
No. "Fearsome" would be a better definition. The person who is daunting is not afraid (fearful), he's making you afraid. But to daunt also means simply to discourage or dishearten, not necessarily to scare.
"This is a daunting assignment. I have class tonight so I can't stay late, but I don't think I can finish this by 5:00."
Yes. Time to give up or find a way around it.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
In the 15th century, the word "hogwash" meant, literally, swill (refuse from human meals, food preparation, slaughterhouses, etc.) that was fed to hogs: pig slop. By the 18th century it was used metaphorically as a pejorative term for cheap liquor. From that it was expanded to mean inferior writing, and ultimately it just came to mean anything a person wrote or said that was stupid, incredible, or deliberately false. In speech it's fallen out of fashion amid today's coarser language, but in writing it's a polite euphemism for words like "bullshit," "horse puckey," etc., which carry the same meaning (although they refer to the other end of the animal
) and apply to a much wider scope of targets than language, including a poorly planned project or a ruinous government program.In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, inventors competed with each other to bring products to market that the public found impressive. Since most laymen didn't really understand industrial technology, they could be impressed by trivial features that made a device seem fancy but actually did not enhance its functionality. Many contraptions had a few bells that served as warnings or indicators, and a few whistles that might serve the same purpose but could also simply be exhaust valves for steam engines. People came to associate the sounds of bells and whistles with state-of-the-art "high technology" in the 19th century. So by adding more bells and whistles an inventor might make his product seem to be more elaborate than those of his competitors.
So today, when we talk about a company adding "more bells and whistles" to its products, it's a pejorative term meaning new features that seem, at first glance, to be impressive, but actually provide very little additional value.
This is German slang, nichs, a slight simplification of nichts, which means "nothing." It came into English in the late 18th century and I can't explain why. Our language has borrowed very few German words, compared to French and Latin. Perhaps it's a legacy from the Hessian mercenaries who were recruited to fight in the American Revolution, but that is a completely uneducated guess.
In American slang it originally meant "no" or "nothing," but its meaning expanded to become both a verb and an exclamation: "Nix! The cops are coming!"
From Elvis Presley's big hit song "Jailhouse Rock":
Shifty Henry said to Bugs, "For heaven's sake,
No one is looking, now's our chance to make a break."
Bugsy turned to Shifty and he said, "Nix, nix!
I want to stick around a while and get my kicks."
Let's rock, everybody, let's rock.
Everybody in the whole cell block
Was dancing to the Jailhouse Rock.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
A woman sits in a man's lap and moves her butt around to stimulate his penis.
It's a form of sexual contact. Since both people keep their clothes on, in many places the law does not treat it as prostitution, but the wives of the men who go to bars where lap dancing is performed don't think it's very much different from prostitution. Underage people are not allowed in bars. I'm sure some do it in private since there is a trend among teenagers to engage in sexual activities that are not actually copulation.
"Neck and neck" refers to horse racing. When the horses go by, if two horses are "neck and neck," it means that when you see them from the side their necks are aligned so closely that you can't tell if one is ahead of the other or if they're tied. So if two candidates are neck and neck, it means it's impossible to tell if one is ahead of the other.
No. "Valuable" simply means worth a lot of money. It also applies to things with no monetary value, such as advice, skill, information, friendship. "Invaluable" means so valuable that it's priceless, irreplaceable. It can also apply to information, skill, etc., meaning that it's indispensable.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
"Why do we need an "S" there?" Sometimes when we ask questions we can simplify the grammar by eliminating words, e.g., "Why go there?" "Why do this?" But this is only allowable in certain circumstances, not in general. You should copy these questions precisely; you're not allowed to invent your own.
Also, the name of the letter S is pronounced ESS, which starts with a vowel. Therefore it takes an, not a.
To get back to your question, the profession in which these people work is called "sales." Therefore we call them "salesmen." We also have bondsmen, who provide bail bonds to people who have been arrested.
Don't forget the rules of grammar. In a question, the verb must come before the subject. (We don't have the convenient word ma that identifies a question in Chinese, so we have to do it a different way. And nobody can hear the question mark when you're talking.
) So: Can "SMS" and "email" be used as verbs?"Email" (or e-mail) is used as both a noun and a verb. "SMS" is newer; the dictionary doesn't even indicate whether it's a noun or verb, it just explains that it's an abbreviation for "short message service." Since "service" is a noun, to be safe I would only use SMS as a noun.
Furthermore, SMS is an abbreviation. We read it as the names of the individual letters: ess-em-ess. This makes it very awkward to apply grammatical rules. How would you write the gerund: SMSing -- SMS-ing -- SMS'ing? How would you pronouncel the plural: SMSs or SMSes? Or the past tense: SMSd or SMSed?
Usually (but not always) we wait for an abbreviation to become an acronym before we treat it as a legitimate word. We no longer say ell-ay-ess-ee-ar for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation," and we don't write it as LASER. We write it as laser and pronounced it in two syllables. This way we can use it as a verb: "I lasered the message to Mars." "You've spent too much time lasering and not enough time doing research."
Of course there are exceptions. We regard ID as a word, even though we write it in capital letters and pronounce it as if it were the names of the two letters: I-Dee. (We can't pronounce it "id" because that is a word in Freudian psychology meaning the deepest, darkest part of your personality.) Nonetheless this gives editors a headache. "The policeman ID'ed the suspect and determined that he was wanted for a crime in Arkansas." "Sergeant Blake, you don't spend enough time ID'ing the people you arrest, so you've let several wanted felons go free." "Captain Gomez is the most accurate ID'er on the police force."
I don't think any editor in America is going to allow SMS to be used this way.
Perhaps one day it will become an acronym, spelled sms and pronounced "semz." Then you can use it as a verb.In speech, of course, you're welcome to say anything you want, so long as people understand you. But I'm curious as to how you will pronounce the gerund (SMS-ing) or past tense (SMS-ed)?
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Remember, "SMS" is pronounced ess-em-ess; it starts with a vowel, so you have to say "an SMS," not "a SMS." It's like FBI: it's an abbreviation of Federal Bureau of Investigation, but it's pronounced eff-bee-eye.
Everyone knows what e-mail is. Only people who work in information technology know what SMS means. And not everyone. I've been working in IT since 1967 and I had to look it up in the dictionary. It's better to use terminology that everyone understands. Say "send an e-mail."
I think you're confusing the word "cranky," which means grouchy, cross, crabby, grumpy, in a bad mood, possibly because of illness or bad news. It's usually only used to describe people. Perhaps a dog or a horse, but not a machine. Sometimes old people are in a lot of discomfort, so we become "old and cranky."
If an engine is cranking, that means that it's trying to start running, and maybe it needs a little more gas, or even a tune-up. This refers back to the old days before electric starters, when an engine had to be turned by hand with a crank in order to make it start.
I've never seen it that way. It's customarily written P.S. It's an abbreviation of postscript, which is a shortening of Latin postscriptum, literally "something that was written after...", i.e. written after the writer finished his letter and already signed it.
It's a silly custom to practice in the digital age. If you think of something you forgot to put in an e-mail, you can just move the cursor up and insert it. No one will know the difference.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
No. It's "Can I not go to school today?"
"Can" is an auxiliary verb. An auxiliary verb replaces the "to" in an infinitive.
Other auxiliary verbs:
I will go to school today.
Jorge said he would see me in class today, but he lives in another part of town and I do not [or "don't"] go to his school.
You must not [or "mustn't"] go to school today because you have a fever.
You're not sick anymore, so you may go to school today.
My teacher is sick so I can not [or "can't"] go to school today.
If the school had an internet connection she could teach from home and we would go to school today.
There are probably a couple of other auxiliary verbs I didn't think of. But all other verbs require their object to carry the "to" if it's a verb.
I want to go to school today.
I have to go to school tomorrow.
I forgot to go to school yesterday.
I don't like to go to school.
Sometimes you can use a gerund instead: I don't like going to school.
Sometimes you can only use a gerund, not an infinitive: I hate going to school. Not "I hate to go to school."