sounding is an adverb. You’re welcome. The dog take all of you. BBL

@Cerberus reasonably.

I'm off to try and watch some BBT. Been catching up on the English version.

Lators. Or tomornors.

I have to admit, I am partial to the rule that you use a/an based on the first sound of the head noun of the noun phrase, rather than the following word

macbook# perl -le 'print ++($want = sex)'
sey

@nohat Better than on someone’s else word.

@nohat wouldn't work. Everyone knows that the choice between the adjectives a and an is based on the gender of the noun.

Ann is a girl.

@RegDwighт I forgot about that

She didn’t.

An Glish as she is spoke. See? Not Aglish. How ugly would that be!

And I'm not here.

@RegDwighт Haha.

@tchrist I'm not taking them.

@nohat Huh, as in, how?

@nohat Notice how improved this sentence is by removing the -ly adverb: “I can only see laughing at the ‘grammarians’ (qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?) who say such.”

Or are even you joking.

@tchrist "Que" ça?

Whatevers.

What is it but that?

The grammarians.

Dunno what a grammarian is but a partypooper.

Right.

kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2010/06/one-rule-i-refuse-to-follow.html

No offence intended to partypoofers.

which I linked to previously in a VERY old question, english.stackexchange.com/questions/152/…

What, did they send the Gregg question back at us?

a question from before Shinto Sherlock (now known as "delete") was known as Shinto Sherlock, but instead "Kinopiko"

I have an herbal remedy for that, which is inapplicable in Britain, unless preceded by especial or especially.

And no, I do not normally have an Espanish accent.

Yikes! What is it about scientists and mathematicians that they co-opt ordinary words to mean something very technical, and then assume that all uses of that word necessarily conform to their technical definition?

I know!

But people in other professions do it too...

A common phenomenon.

At best it's an epiphenomenon.

You can look it up.

@nohat Which sorts of words are you thinking of?

wonders what a plastic rubber is

@tchrist I was thinking of english.stackexchange.com/questions/88110/…

Oh, those are silly, yes.

@MετάEd Look what up?

But I had an argument a long time ago about using the word "variance" to refer to something other than the square of the standard deviation

And which side did you take? :)

I took the side of M-W senses 1-4

Their site is too spammy for me.

I find their definitions are superior in most cases

But you probably mean OED senses 1–4 and 6–9.

better written, less biased

Less biased than. . . ?

Wiktionary?

sadly, I no longer have free access to the OED, and unless stackexchange wants to shell out £215...

less biased than, say American Heritage or Random House

Wiktionary is sui generis

I am unfond of them myself.