Language Overflow

4:43 AM

@snailboat Thanks!

1

Q: Is baggage has some meaning about slut?

What's the relation about behind the two words? slut always likes to take a baggage and move here and where? And in what cases we use the baggage[less people know] to instead of slut[more people know]?

word-meaning

Now, that makes me wonder whether Excess Baggage (1997) was a pun intended (in that meaning).

Anonymous

5:32 AM

I . . . doubt it?

Anonymous

I have no idea what meaning of baggage the OP is referring to.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat The OP mentioned that the baggage could be used to mean the other word in the title.

Anonymous

Yes, but, well, can it?

Anonymous

I don't really think so.

Damkerng T.

Our answer seems to support the OP's idea.

But mentions that it's outdated.

Anonymous

5:39 AM

No, I don't think it supports the OP's idea.

Anonymous

The definitions given have no overlap.

Anonymous

Or essentially none.

Anonymous

Oh!

Anonymous

They could have quoted the one definition that potentially has some overlap, but they didn't.

Anonymous

> a prostitute or disreputable woman.

Anonymous

5:40 AM

(archaic)

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

From a learner's point of view, the answer should be there is essentially no overlap.

Anonymous

Sometimes you can't come up with a more specific title because the OP hasn't asked a more specific question.

Anonymous

But talking about the historical usage could be interesting.

Anonymous

I'm not familiar with it.

Damkerng T.

5:50 AM

0

Q: What does "Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale" mean?

Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale. –Nathaniel Hawthorne Kindly paraphrase it. What does this quote mean?

grammar meaning meaning-in-context quotes

Maulik added "Kindly paraphrase it", which I know is in InE, so I don't feel it's too weird, but I don't know if it sounds weird to native speakers.

Anonymous

6:04 AM

It's fine. I think kindly is infrequent in my dialect, but there's nothing wrong with it. I'd probably phrase a request like that as a question, which is more polite.

Anonymous

In my experience Indian English speakers often use imperatives ("Kindly do the needful.") where I'd expect interrogatives ("Could you please do whatever's necessary to finish the project?"). But that's just my personal impression.

Anonymous

Everyone uses language differently, and that's okay :-)

Damkerng T.

Okay! :D

jimsug

6:44 AM

This feels relevant to this room.

Damkerng T.

It is!

Damkerng T.

7:37 AM

> We're these unbelievably complicated brains drifting through a void, trying in vain to connect with one another by blindly flinging words out into the darkness.

> xkcd.com/1576 (the xkcd post above)

Damkerng T.

8:31 AM

Argh! Why does the image write Thai in English!? -- It says kob khun krap (ขอบคุณครับ). Chinese, Japanese, and Korean all are in their CJK characters in there.

Hmm... I can't see Arabic characters in the image either...

Damkerng T.

9:07 AM

> The l is doubled only when the last syllable has the heaviest stress.

> ell.stackexchange.com/q/67724/3281

I haven't searched for it, but I wonder who wrote it.

Looks like it's from here:

> github.com/michaelklishin/english/blob/master/doc/grammer/…

Now, who is Michael Klishin?

Still unclear whether he wrote it himself or he just hosts the book there.

Ahh... it's Learn English Grammar 1.0 APK for Android

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

← 7 messages moved from Title clean-up (Phase 3: FAQ ready)

Damkerng T.

A-ha!

> docslide.us/education/grammar-grammar-grammar-grammar-.html

> English language grammar

> Prepared by:

> Mr.Safwat.M.Reda.Shoaib.

> Banha university.

> Egypt.

> 2005

No wonder the terms (and language) are a bit different.

Damkerng T.

12:04 PM

0

Q: As ... as construction

Can't figure out what the correct way to construct the following sentence is. Please help. He is probably not as influenced by his views as you are Or He is probably not as influenced as you are by his views. Should 'as you are' be placed near to the first 'as' or at the end of the s...

sentence-construction

This is actually interesting...

3

A: Difference between anyone and anybody?

There's no difference. Cambridge's reference: Anyone and anybody have no difference in meaning. Anybody is a little less formal than anyone. Anyone is used more in writing than anybody: I didn’t know anybody at the party. [talking about the New Zealand rugby team, the All Blacks] It is hard...

> Cambridge's reference:

I wonder if that's a correct use of reference.

It should be his reference, not Cambridge's.

Araucaria

12:35 PM

@DamkerngT. Your posts are coming on ! +1

Damkerng T.

@Araucaria Ah, after the graduation, I don't have to worry that my answers will be favored because of my rep points anymore, I think. ;-)

Thanks for the vote. -- (I'm reading yours.)

+1

Damkerng T.

12:53 PM

0

Q: Do I need "however" in the following case?

Like last night, I couldn't sleep. This time, however, what kept me awake wasn't the neighbor, but the neighbor's dog. It sounds a bit off without "however", but maybe it's just me? Why should I include it? Or why not?

grammar

An interesting request (a little proofreading-like, IMHO).

> Like last night, I couldn't sleep. This time, however, what kept me awake wasn't the neighbor, but the neighbor's dog.

Somehow the sentences lack something...

A good rhythm?

I don't know.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. I don't expect to see Like last night the beginning.

Damkerng T.

nods

StoneyB

1:14 PM

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M It would be fine in a context where it contrasted with tonight -- for instance, on Chat at midnight: "What are you doing up so late?" "Oh, like last night, I couldn't sleep. But tonight it wasn't the neighbor who kept me me awake, it was the neighbor's dog."

Damkerng T.

1:56 PM

Hmm... Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Is that the optimum order of adjectives (or attributive nouns/adjectives)?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@StoneyB I know it's fine, but without further or previous context, it's weird.

Damkerng T.

I'm guessing that other variations could've worked too (e.g. Ninja Teenage Mutant Turtles).

Or maybe Teenage Mutant Turtle Ninjas.

Damkerng T.

2:12 PM

If you mean something like "This Disneyland discount coupon may be used a maximum (of) six times" then yes, "of" is optional. — TRomano 52 mins ago

Hmm...

Maybe he's right. He's usually right.

jimsug

Hmm

Is it, though?

Damkerng T.

I don't know. I'd expect of there.

StoneyB

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Well, that's true of about three quarters of our questions!

jimsug

I mean, it's certainly something one might say, and so I suppose it's correct, but if you typed that? I suspect you would be strongly inclined to put of there.

StoneyB

@jimsug I think what we have to say is that it is becoming correct. I don't much care for it, but I'm an old fart and it's pretty clearly where that piece of the language wants to go.

jimsug

2:17 PM

That's true. I mean... it's a real grey area for me.

I mean, I could, would, and I'm sure, have used it, but... I'm uncomfortable with seeing it used in writing.

Incredibly uncomfortable.

> This Disneyland coupon may be used a maximum six times.

Damkerng T.

I think I'd drop a too, if I dropped of.

jimsug

I wouldn't go that far.

StoneyB

The older you get the more you'll find that happening. <grump> Think of it as an adverb and cut the article -- and there's DamkerngT saying exactly that!

jimsug

I will be a very grumpy old man indeed, then.

Damkerng T.

I'm not sure I agree. I would probably require the "of", in writing at least. I don't really have anything to back it up, though, so maybe someone more informed can write an answer here. — Aaron Brown 9 mins ago

Ah, another opinion just came in.

tchrist

2:31 PM

It sounds weird to my stuffy Edwardian instincts.

Damkerng T.

4:31 PM

Eh? That second not is surely an error, unless the writer is expressing the very heterodox opinion that trespassing against Divine Law is desirable. — StoneyB 11 mins ago

Ah, that makes me curious about the original!

Hmm... it's not on the web...

It looks like "Literary English Reading" is not even a book title.

Probably just a class name.

Damkerng T.

5:46 PM

2

Q: with a decade more experience

Source: The C Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie As we said in the preface to the first edition, C "wears well as one's experience with it grows." With a decade more experience, we still feel that way. We hope that this book will help you to learn C and to use it...

comprehension

This is related to our case of "a maximum (of) six times", I believe.

Anonymous

8:28 PM

@DamkerngT. I think a maximum six times is ungrammatical.

Anonymous

TRomano's sentence without of doesn't sound like an English sentence to me.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I was about to draft an idea for an answer before I saw that comment!

Anonymous

I think tchrist's comment is possibly the best answer.

Damkerng T.

nods -- More idiomatic.

Anonymous

I'm curious, though, about the OP's motivation. They said they want to remove of "to reduce words".

Damkerng T.

8:31 PM

If I really want to reduce words, I think I'll use top (six times top, something like that).

Anonymous

To be sure, there are times when you need to use an arbitrarily small number of words, but usually you have more important things to worry about.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. six times tops works for me (with the -s on the end), although it's slangy.

Damkerng T.

Oh, I missed the s!

Anonymous

A maximum of six times is relatively formal.

Anonymous

At most six times is neutral with respect to formality, I think.

Anonymous

8:32 PM

Six times tops is slangy and informal.

Damkerng T.

nods -- Agreed.

Hehe! Also agreed. :D

Damkerng T.

8:42 PM

0

Q: provided by Vs provided with

The following default options are provided by the plugin. or The following default options are provided with the plugin. Which one is correct?

word-choice prepositions

Hmm... is that a trick question?

I think maybe they want to say, The following options are the defaults set by the plugin.

Hmm... jQuery Cycle Plugin's documentation uses by!

> The following default options are provided by the plugin. They can be overridden by passing an options object to the cycle method, by using metadata on the container element, or by redefining these values in your own code.

> jquery.malsup.com/cycle/options.html

Damkerng T.

9:03 PM

in ELL's Cabin, 1 min ago, by snailboat

> The OED shows that less has been used of countables since the time of King Alfred the Great -- he used it that way in one of his own translations from Latin -- more than a thousand years ago (in about 888). So essentially less has been used of countables in English for just about as long as there has been a written English language. After about 900 years Robert Baker opined that fewer might be more elegant and proper.

in ELL's Cabin, 2 mins ago, by snailboat

> Almost every usage writer since Baker has followed Baker's lead, and generations of English teachers have swelled the chorus. The result seems to be a fairly large number of people who now believe less used of countables to be wrong, though its standardness is easily demonstrated.

in ELL's Cabin, 3 mins ago, by snailboat

@DamkerngT. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003775.html

in ELL's Cabin, 56 secs ago, by snailboat

Mark Liberman put the whole MWDEU entry quoted above online here: http://ldc.upenn.edu//myl/llog/MW_LessFewer.pdf

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