Wordwizard

Tabletop. There you go. The transition is complete. Actually, there are some factors that play into how easily and quickly collocations become single words. In this case, we could contrast "table top" with "worktop" and "desktop". In the collocation "table top", each word appears to retain in full i...

Erik is, in his labyrinthine way, correct.

But it has to be said that your sentences are all not pretty...

Indeed, they are entirely unnatural.

I agree with both Erik's and Bonnie's comments. However, the use or otherwise of a comma suggests two different meanings. "She has so many dresses you wouldn't believe it." This implies an ellipted consequential subordinating conjunction "that". The number of dresses is so great that it stretches cr...

Pretty well every style guide and punctuation guide will tell you that only 2 and 4 are correct. Some will suggest that two nouns in apposition always need to be separated by a comma. Other, more enlightened, guides give information along the lines of "if an appositive is essential to the fully iden...

As far as I know, the US military use "fire in the hole" when a grenade is thrown into an enclosed space. The phrase actually predates military usage, coming from mining. Other than that, I have no military experience, but I seem to remember soldiers in war films simply shouting "grenade", either fo...

Sentence 1 is extremely odd. Sentences 2 and 4 are good. Sentence 3 is problematic. The reason is not entirely transparent. "Somebody" isolates a single, but unidentified person. This makes the actual meaning of sentence 1 extremely bizarre. The first part of the sentence means "there is a particula...

That particular platform is at the "Summit Lodge" at the top of the "Sea to Sky Gondola". The people who run the facility refer to the various platforms as "viewing platforms" and "viewing decks" in their advertising material.

Hmmm, I missed the responses to this one. I revel in language. Always have done. I consider myself fortunate to have had the education I have had and to have the facility with language that I have. And yet, the more I consider the way in which language actually works, the more I understand that huge...

Your example a is odd. It is an unusual, but possible way to say b. For me, without further context or embellishment, sentence b (and a) would mean that I get a good feeling form helping (people). In other words, intuitively, they do not mean the same as your sentence c. Again, without a complete di...

tony h wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 19, 2018 9:22 pm

I tend to think of it as "thinking inside the box".

Brownie points for that.

I would agree with trolley. There is no specific name for a structure like that. I would call it a viewing platform.

c and f are probably the most natural to me. a and d sound fine to me, but I probably wouldn't use them myself. b and e sound odd to me, but I may just be being fussy. Or maybe I am wanting to see the subjunctive, which sounds fine to me: The best thing that can happen is that he fall in love. The l...

The link to the Word Detective reminded me - does anyone know how Even Morris is doing? Is he still alive? I sent a note by snail mail in January & didn't hear back. I'm still reading his archives & enjoying them very much. There has been no activity on his blog or on Twitter since Spring last year...

As far as "hell bent for leather" is concerned, the mighty Ken had a good go at that one a few years back, and there are some even older discussions on the board if you search for them.

Steven, you have made me very happy! As Erik says, what you show is a "spiral staircase". But it is not just any old staircase. It is THE spiral staircase in the single most beautiful room I have ever been in, namely the Long Room of the Old Library at Trinity College, Dublin. When I first visited T...