Wordwizard

Shorties is successful , in part, because it sound good. Tallies rather misses the mark on that. I would use lanky (lankies) or giants but neither have that comfortable group feeling that shorties achieves. Lanky may be a bit old fashioned and giant may be a bit off the scale unless the relativeness...

Still doesn't really work for me, Tony. The fronting of the locative expression, combined with the inversion, put massive emphasis on the fronted noun. ... In the case of sentences c and d, this would mean that the sentence is "about" the distance. It's not. it's "about" the cloud of dust. It's all...

I have, in recent terms, heard the following usage which I find odd. Am I alone?

He won't debate me = He won't have a debate with me.
I will debate her = I will (would like) to have a debate with her.

I would guess that it is something that was originally a " minced oath " for "what the hell", although I can find no early occurrences of it. I remember it being used as a minced oath. Hades was a much milder that Hell when being used in a curse. I'm not sure, but I think I recall it being used in ...

OK Phil, I'll give it a try. They remind me of books I used to read when I was a boy. c. In the distance moved a cloud of dust. The small band of khaki clad men had reached the edge of the village. They looked out over the flat plain of the dessert which they would have to cross. "Look", said Algy p...

I presume you have already found that Hades, in Ancient Greek mythology, is Hell. Therefore "what the Hades" and "what the Hell" are conceptually equivalent. There will be many who will not know that Hades is Hell. "What the Hell" isn't considered to be particularly rude; merely ill-mannered. The us...

Sometimes a word is just right. Talking to an exSWP member who later was Labour Party candidate about his support for Brexit, he described how he decided in 1992 to read the Maastricht treaty for himself and not just swallow the party line. He was struggling for words to describe that experience. I ...

As far as I am aware, the correct usage is reflexive: "The judge should recuse himself." The transitive use is very rare and means that a person challenges a judge to stand down: "He recused the judge." From the OED 2. transitive. a. To reject or renounce (a person, authority, judgment, etc.); (Law...

The judge should recuse.

Not a word I had remembered coming across. But, so says the OED, it is mainly USA and South Africa.


It means , in this case, that the judge should stand down because of a conflict of interest.

Ok.

From an aeroplane:
- bale - pushing people out
- bail - getting yourself out

A company:
- mostly bail.
- bale to sever a company from a parent(ish) company. Either for that company to be the survivor or to sever liabilities liabilities.

The key part is, I suspect, the meaning of "navigate tricky waters". In the literal meaning it is "to make a route through waters which has obstacles and currents that may ground or turn over the boat". So in this case the "tricky waters" are palace protocol. And the whole problem is how to make sur...

speechless

Thread also has the concept of going through multiple places. - To "thread" my wife's sewing machine requires 12 different threading actions to complete. - To "thread" the headlamp wiring on my car goes through about 10 apertures. Also of note is the use of "he threaded his way through the crowd" an...

I am not sure there is an English language equivalent.

It is somewhere between: a clothes airer, a washing line , a drying room.

BonnieL wrote: ↑Mon May 27, 2019 7:03 pm Gouging. But that's such an over-the-top amount no one in their right mind would pay it.

It depends on what sort of dollar. If it is , say, Zimbabwean it is about US$6 so a bit of a ripoff but not too bad for the average tourist.