Discussion Forum
This is a forum to discuss the gray areas of the English language for which you would not find answers easily in dictionaries or other reference books.
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‘Couch potato’ is a phrase, which everybody knows already. I’ve also found ‘mouse potato’, which means a person glued all the time to the computer or tv screen, (treated as one of the English neologisms). Do you know any other types of ‘potatoes’?
I’ve always been baffled by the idiom ‘’five o’clock shadow’. It’s one of my favourites. Can you tell me what it comes from and who coined it?
Does anyone know the origin of the word okay or O.K. or OK? I once heard that that has to do with French and is derived from some Mississippian dialect and so. Does that make any sense at all? The bad thing is that I do not quite remember what I was told, neither I remember the supposedly original French word.
Is there any informal, figurative and rather impolite way of calling someone lazy? Any slang etc.?
So, I wrote this email to my girlfriend that went:
Have fun in your meeting (or don’t have fun at all!).
That leaves me with an awkward feeling; an exclamation mark, a parenthesis, and a period to end off my sentence. Can I do that and still be correct?
Can anyone give an example of verbal “charade” plesae?
My friend sent me a message saying, “My dad is work at home.” I said that it should be “My dad is working at home” or “My dad works at home”
My friend said what he wrote was correct. He said “work at home” is an incoherent phrase. because many people do their work at home.
Is “My dad is work at home” correct?
On the computer keyboard, in the upper left hand side, right below the escape button. What are these?: ~ ` And, what are they used for?
Thank you.
Does anyone know the etymology of the phrase: ‘’not enough room to swing the cat'’?
I work in a sign shop and am putting the name “The Jonses” on a trailer - the customer says it should be The Jones’s - I say The Jones’ Which is correct?
