Wordwizard

Dale is clearly busier in retirement than ever...

I would describe a hawk pouncing on a defenceless pigeon as a two-fowl swoop.

Yes... Too, too foul.

What's the context?

Ken, I suggest we wait until after the US has adopted the metric system.

Bob, based on what you wrote, you are either now 58, or you will be born in 42 years' time. ...Now, what was the question?

I conducted a brief internet search to see what other people had come up with, since I remember this being a hot topic of debate at the turn of the millennium. Among the suggestions I found for 2000-2009 were the following: The aughts, oughts, naughts, noughts, aughties, oughties, naughties, naughty...

Bob, would I be right to infer that the female equivalent of Taffy would be 'Taffeta' (or 'Dafydda' in Welsh)?

As they might put it in Russia, "My friend Banks not standing around here".

Beehive now, Edwin!

Much time has eelapsed since then, and we now have the even more eelongated Queen Mary II.

It has the demontrative pronouns 'hic' for 'this' and 'ille' for 'that' which are (or were) used for emphasising an object or person.

Actually, that 1589 sense survives in a number of other expressions that are still in common currency, such as 'stand to gain', 'stand to acquire', 'stand to learn [something]', 'stand to win [something]' and 'stand to benefit', including some in the passive voice: "That hedge/Your hair/The presiden...

My wife has solicited opinions on this subject at her Kansas workplace, and writes: "I've asked my colleagues and they all agree that "in back of" has two meanings, depending on the objects in question, e.g. 'the ball is in back of the fence' means it is behind the fence, while 'the counter is in ba...

If it comes to that, Russian manages quite well without either 'the' or a present-tense form of the verb 'to be'; "the car is white" becomes simply "car white". Depending on the context, the possessive pronoun too is often dropped where it would be used in English. So "My parents are pleased to see ...

My American wife has a different sense of this expression than you do, Russ. She says that: 1) 'In back of' means only 'at the rear of', and that she has never encountered it in any other connection than in descriptions of the spatial relationship of objects or areas to buildings; 2) She would use '...

Actually they say both. (Even Dale, I'm pretty sure). 'In back of' is generally (but not exclusively) used for describing spatial relationships: "The paint counter is in back of the store", whereas 'behind' covers the full spectrum of both concrete and abstract relationships: "The U.S. administratio...