As you can see here, the phrase "fickle mistress" is quite common, especially in personifying something (life, love, time, etc). But I can't seem to find any real source on how far back it goes and/or where it came from. Neither the OED nor Etymonline seem to have anything as far as I can see.
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@AndrewLeach If you felt like reopening this question here, I could write a canonical answer, if you thought that was a good idea. The linked-to answer is a bit thin and doesn't really address this interesting question
@AndrewLeach Apparently both are exactly on the same discussion about there as some pseudo-pronoun
This word is so difficult to understand "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious"; does anyone know what it means? I guess I might have messed up its spelling
@AndrewLeach Well, not really. The linked to question is asking about the identity of a locative preposition/adverb. (Answer: it's a preposition/adverb). That one is asking about the identity of a pronoun/syncategorematic word (Answer: it's a pronoun). The fact that the words in question are homophones doesn't make them the same question! :-)
@Araucaria Really? The linked-to is asking about the statement "There is the man" -- which could be an answer saying "There is the man!" (pointing to him, locative) or "Well, there is the man" (dummy pronoun), so an answer distinguishing those usages could usefully go on that question. I think.
@Araucaria Morning. I have an English related question, here you wrote "if you thought that was a good idea." but you are talking about present right? So is "past" there more polite there? I don't understand such sentences sometimes, I mean 'tenses' seem confusing in such instances.
@SBM It is from the movie Mary Poppins it means "Extraordinarily good; wonderful."
@englishstudent It's in the lyrics of the song. I don't remember exactly what is atrocious. It's probably the word itself, rather than the meaning. Clever riposte falls flat
@AndrewLeach That last interpretation is very unlikely unless it is a presentational type usage because it has a definite article. Yes, someone could usefully do that. But I'm not interested in distinguishing those usages anyway. I'm ...
@AndrewLeach ... interested in discussing the word category of there in existential constructions. The linked-to question is not the natural place for that discussion because the title sentence is almost definitely not an existential sentence and therefore nobody who realises that is going to look at that question to find out about there in existential constructions! (that's how it seems to me)
@Araucaria Are we talking about the same thing? One has a title Noun or adverb function of “There is/are” and the other “There is the man.” Is "there" an adverb or pronoun? and both are tagged [there-is]. The target question appears to assume that the sentence is an existential question (so your answer could expand on why it's not and what the difference is).
The problem with re-opening the closed version is that the questions are too similar.
@AndrewLeach I don't think the linked to person thinks that that's an existential sentence. More importantly noone who wants to know the word category of existential there - an issue of some interest to linguists - will bother to read or look at the linked to question, whose title is a locative sentence. I think
the homophone thing is a distractor here. If I ask is lion a verb or a noun in the lion bit the man and I ask is talk a verb or a noun in I talked to the manager, these questions are clearly different.
Now imagine that the two words were homophones. The questions wouldn't suddenly be the same question just because they both say verb or noun and talk about homophonous lexemes. The linked to question just needs an it's an X. The more recent one, about a different word, needs a discussion of/justification of why that word belongs to a particular part of speech. The questions are only very superficially similar, imo.
@AndrewLeach The current one isn't, imo. The horrible fact is that dictionaries list existential there as an adverb! So it's not a which there is this, it's a 'what is this here existential there?'
Well, I'll you what. If I open the question, you can add your answer. The two questions might still be merged, though, so your answer could end up on the other question (or the other answer end up on the current closed question). I advise making sure your answer is absolutely crystal clear!
For example, including a dictionary definition showing existential there as an adverb,
@Shafizadeh "I don't access youtube" sounds like you willingly refrain from using it. The other sentence is missing a word "I don't have access to youtube." which suggests you can't use youtube even if you want to do so. I don't know why it works like that.
I do not know much about the syntactic superbness of English but today's chat has enlightened me a bit about that. Thank you for teaching this school-kid an important lesson.
A tune-up is something you do to your car (and probably other machines) so you should be able to say that you need to tune your car up. Sounds odd to me though.
Tuning a guitar, with no note given, is just the act of making sure the strings are in tune. However, you can tune up or down to a specific scale, and that does indeed need a preposition.
but I had this 'WTF' moment thinking that the entire island south of Hadrian's wall, east of Wales and leaving out Cambria (or whatever you call it) is continuously civilized, urban or farmland.
so I was surprised there was are within the main part that whereever you looked was entirely uncivilized.
wait...I may have misread. I recommend the moors (if you like nature things) and do not recommend the Arthur & Merlin movie if you like quality.
Speaking of things, I just entertained myself considerably:
Yes, I spent my entire metaphor budget for today on 'moved back from the precipice of deletion'. And went into the red with 'budget'. and beat everyone on the head with the metonymy of 'into the red'. If I can only sneak in a synecdoche, that'll be a quadrifecta. Or is it five? — Mitch16 mins ago
@MattE.Эллен Araucaria wrote above: “If you felt like reopening this question here, I could write a canonical answer, if you thought that was a good idea.” So I was confused with the “past tense” there at the end “thought that was a good idea”. They are using it in a ‘present sense’ I’m guessing, right? To be more polite maybe? Because I hear “past” is more polite sometimes. I don’t know. Correct me if I’m wrong.
When we use a drill machine to make a hole to put the screw inside, a spiral pattern is created which makes it easy for screw to be in place.
Is there a name for this?
@englishstudent That's what was meant by flat, yes.
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> she nicked the catch of her paint-box to,
Strange use of nick. To me the sentence vaguely means that she locked the catch on the paintbox.
> she nicked the catch of her paint-box to, more firmly than was necessary, and the nick seemed to surround in a circle forever the paint-box, the lawn, Mr Bankes, and that wild villain, Cam, dashing past.
And strange use of to too, perhaps, for when you push a door to, you don't completely close it. I don't understand that sentence at all.
@Færd I can't make sense of that either. 'nick' doesn't make sense in either sentence. Also, I can't think of other words that could possibly fit in either spot.
@Færd but how does a 'nick' surround anything in a circle either? Also where is that text from? (sorry for butting in to the conversation but the text maddeningly almost makes sense)
@Færd none of the dictionaries I looked at had any suitable meanings for 'nick' though. Maybe it's some weird 1920s English slang. Or then she just invented a new word. That's not impossible at all given the genre.
Well have you ever read Finnegans Wake by James Joyce? They were writing at about the same time in the same artistic movement, and ata least the sentence makes some sense.
The OED records nick meaning: "IV. Senses relating to the making of a clicking sound. 17. trans. To fasten or unfasten with a click. Also with open, shut, etc."
But what about the "to"? Does that feature in the other examples as well? I had a feeling it's related to the verb, but I'm not sure if that's actually how the language works. (I'm not a native speaker)
@Færd Recommend? Oh Joyce. Yeah his stuff is good. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners I can personally recommend. Especially the final short story in Dubliners called "The Dead". They're not as hard as his magnum opus of Ulysses. And I don't think many people have actually read Finnegans Wake. I think there's like 5 languages mixed there. I wouldn't start there.
"riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passen- core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: " is how Finnegans Wake starts. That sentence doesn't end in a while.
I think you get more out of books going through them that way. I'm used to just reading through kind of understanding most things. I think that's due to the way I learned english though.
Yeah. I guess the best way (this is more important with e.g. mathematics books) would be read extensively first and intensively later on. That takes ~ double the time though.
A friend is saying that "nicked to" and generally "to X something to" (with some verbs) means nicking (Xing) towards yourself. So the protagonist closed the catch by pulling it towards her. That makes sense to me
When we use a drill machine to make a hole to put the screw inside, a spiral pattern is created which makes it easy for screw to be in place.
Is there a name for this?
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…