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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While we are at this racial slur thing: I was told that “He is a Jew” sounds offensive, but “He is Jewish” does not, because the former sounds like a Nazi trying to identify Jews from the rest, which is odd because he would not be speaking English in the first place. To make the matter more confusing, I was told that “They are Jews” is not offensive. Singular is offensive but plural isn’t? You would probably say, “He is American” instead of “He is an American”, but either way it does not sound offensive.
Webster defines “chink” as “narrow opening”.
However in California people seem to only think about its derogatory (bigotry) meaning, and only after you press them they recall that “Oh yeah, we actually say ‘chink in the fence’ so that probably makes sense”.
Just curious, how widespread is its original meaning - is it only in the Golden State people react like that?
“I’d like to be friends with you.”
Why “friends”? It seems to make more sense to say, “I’d like to be a friend with you.” The “I” is singular, not plural.
“We are friends,” makes sense.
“I’d like to be your friend,” too makes sense.
What is the difference between a hyphen, an N-dash and an M-dash? How do you properly use them?
I know that you are supposed to put one space after a period if you are using a word processor, and two spaces if you are using a typewriter. But this doesn’t make sense. A space on a typewriter is wider than a space on a word processor (though it depends on the font you are using.). So, why would you put two spaces on typewriters?
Once I used the term “savory” to mean the opposite of sweet, i.e., pizza as opposed to ice cream. I used it in a sentence similar to: “In the savory genre, the pizza was the best thing they had.”
My friend, who is a professional writer, told me that he had never heard the word “savory” used to mean something not sweet, and therefore to avoid using it in that sense since many people may get confused. But then I keep hearing it used everywhere around me. So, how common is this usage of “savory” to mean something not sweet?
I use “shrewd” to mean smart but in a negative, cunning way. One native English speaker told me that this is wrong. According to her “shrewd” is just as positive as “smart”. But another native English speaker told me that I am right. What is your impression of the word “shrewd”?
The word “commodity” seems to have contradictory meanings. In one sense a commodity is something valuable, precious, desired, and/or expensive, but in another sense, it is something common, ubiquitous, dime-a-dozen, cheap, and undesirable. In my head, the former definition is more dominant, but is that normal? When you hear the word “commodity”, which association do most people have?
“This knife has dual purpose.” Do I need to pluralize “purpose”? After all, the statement is saying that it has more than one purpose, namely two purposes.
A pet peeve of mine is people incorrectly using the expression “I could care less”. I’m no grammar nazi as you can tell from this email, but it doesn’t make sense to say. Here is an example.
Rooomate 1: “You suck at this video game. I always kick your butt in it.” Roomate 2: “I could care less.” Roomate 1: “Haha.”
If you say you COULD care less then that means you care to some degree. However, if you COULDN’T care less (the proper way of saying the expression) then it means you absolutely don’t care at all, therefore properly expressing your apathy.
From Brad Davis
