In The New Fowler's Modern English Usage, the late Burchfield offered a guide to the use of possessive s and of with inanimate nouns. It is the most comprehensive and well founded stylistic advice I could find on the subject. He had worked on the Oxford English Dictionary and knew a lot about lan...

In the United States, a white sleeveless shirt is often referred to as a "wife-beater". Typically I try to avoid using "wife-beater" due to its negative connotation. I've tried using a few different terms in the past, but each felt a bit too broad or generalized. Tank Top: Can refer to formal ...

I'm a native English speaker (from Ireland) and to this day I'd hesitate in saying "wife-beater" when referring to a sleeveless shirt. It seems to be much more common in the U.S. Where did this term come from and why? Another answer here gave conjecture that apparently it's from how people are d...

I was a li'l nonplussed to find out that the word wifebeater can mean other things besides "a man who beats up his wife". Its definition reads: One who (usually as a repeated practice) beats one’s wife, or a husband prone to violence A kind of sleeveless shirt, often but not exclusively ...