I’m translating a movie about basic income, from French to English. In this movie, someone says that basic income would make people do a lot of new things, that it would create a lot of initiatives. If anyone knows French, the exact words are "Il y aurait une floraison d’initiatives." (There wou...

In a recent question, the OP wanted to know why English would borrow a foreign word like kudos from Greek when we already had two perfectly good English words, honour and glory. I wanted to point out that both of these English words were themselves borrowed from French but I did not know what wo...

I asked a question recently (Send, sent; end, *ent?), which hasn’t yet received a straight answer. It leads me to wonder if questions about Old and Middle English are actually on-topic for this site; while it’s certainly acceptable for answers to draw on historical English to substantiate specula...

money for old rope dates back to the time of sailing ships when old rope was picked appart by children and women and added to tar to make caulking for the decks on the ships

I'm sorry but the whole idea of "gay" and "retarded" be offensive when used in that context is absolutely ludicrous. The idea is that you are saying something is "gay" to mean it's homosexual and bad, but that's not at all what it means in that context. In that context it literally means "stupi...

When talking about time as a unit, which one is correct, in second or in seconds? For example: How long does it take to complete the task in second? or How long does it take to complete the task in seconds?

I read the following: After graduating from Junior High, Kevin and Winnie both go to McKinley High and Paul attends a prep school. Paul would later transfer to McKinley High and join Kevin and Winnie. The story is in narrated in simple present. Why do they use 'would' here?