Elizabeth, that's a lovely and sane sentiment, but you're never going to eradicate the fact that the expression actually refers to a son who practices incest with his own mother. Sorry.

I think you're right and the word must have been "raise." A "vCard" is an electronic business or visiting card that people pass around by beaming from their PDA or cell phone. I think the "V" must stand for "virtual," as in "virtual reality." The kids you saw must have been "working" the crowd for business or social contacts.

Look here: http://www.imc.org/pdi/vcardoverview.html

As far as the rudeness of the statement you heard, it seems to me to mean something more like "go away and make yourself useful" than merely "shut up."

Actually double negatives have nothing at all to do with it. We're sort of off track here.

Think of what you mean when you say the expression. If you say "I could care less," what you mean is it is possible that you could care less. If you say "I couldn't care less," you mean that it is impossible for you to care less.

Think about a comparable case involving "more." You might say "I could have more" (of this wonderful dessert), or you might say "I couldn't have more" (I'm so full already, I could pop).

Oh, well, if you want to take MICROSOFT'S word for everything.... lol....

But if you would rather be accurate, @ is still a "mark."

What I see when I do an Insert/Symbol in Word is the full range of characters in the default "Symbol" font. (Technically they are "characters" in this context, not "symbols.") I see any number of punctuation "marks," tempo "marks" for music, letters, numbers, signs, symbols, table-building graphics, and bullet points. If I was to change the "Font" setting, I would see the full range of characters available on any one of my other installed fonts.

In other words, the fact that you may access the @ by doing something in MS Word is IRRELEVANT.

It's "ha'penny." And lots of people I know from the Illinois/Ohio/Pennsylvania belt say something like "samwich." Don't get your panties in a wad.

Dominic, your instincts are correct. "A couple of X" is similar to "a pair of X." "A couple X" is just slurred.

Wow, look what I just found. Not only did the word lose a formerly pronounced N, but it also gained and lost a P (of all the damned things) in both French and English. Here:

[Middle English autumpne, from Old French autompne, from Latin autumnus.] (American Heritage Dictionary Fourth)

[L. auctumnus, autumnus, perh. fr. a root av to satisfy one's self: cf. F. automne. See Avarice.] (Webster's Revised Unabridged 1913)

Working on it. In the meantime enjoy this representative list of silent letters in English:

Silent a: musically, realistically, logically
Silent b: thumb, dumb, climb, debt, doubt, subtle
Silent c: indict, muscle, Tucson, Connecticut
Silent d: handkerchief, sandwich, handsome, Wednesday
Silent e: bridge, serve, clue, many many others
Silent f: halfpenny
Silent g: light, sign, diaphragm
Silent h: hour, honor, heir, exhaust, exhibition, Birmingham
Silent i: business
Silent k: knife, knock, know, knead
Silent l: walk, talk, salmon, almond, calm, yolk
Silent m: mnemonic
Silent n: autumn, solemn, condemn, column, hymn
Silent p: corps, pneumonia, coup, receipt, cupboard, clapboard, Campbell
Silent r: (depends on dialect)
Silent s: island, aisle, viscount
Silent t: Christmas, whistle, castle, listen, soften, often, rapport, ballet
Silent u: guest, tongue, catalogue, guide, guitar
Silent w: sword, answer, two, write, whole, whore, Greenwich, Norwich
Silent z: rendezvous, chez, laissez-faire

Your mileage may vary... that is, you may disagree with some items of this list and that's fine.

Yes, I know that lots of these are foreign words pronounced the way the foreign language pronounces them. The real question is why they haven't or haven't yet been brought to conform to more typical English pronunciations.

What I'm about to say is just philosophical play, not official English. I'm theorizing.

I think there is a subtle usage difference between "sign," "mark," and "symbol" that could be hinted at here. It could be broken down as follows:

Symbols may be thought of representations of relatively complicated concepts, not necessarily visual. "The cross is the symbol of Christianity." "The character of the old sick scholar in the play symbolizes the idea that experience does not equal knowledge."

Signs are representations of simpler concepts, such as single words or uncomplicated concepts. Signs are almost always visual but might not be written or drawn. "She shook her finger as a sign that she was displeased." "The teacher used sign language to communicate with her deaf pupil." "Sign your name to represent that you agree with the contract." The "at sign" refers to the word "at," just as the "plus sign" refers to the simple concept of addition. We have the "dollar sign" to indicate the word "dollars," and the "percent sign" to indicate the word "percent."

A "mark," in the sense we mean, is typically sentence punctuation or else some other sort of written smudge. We have "question mark," "quotation marks," etc. You might say, "Put a check mark beside the statements with which you agree."

Interestingly, in English a "peace sign" is the hand sign that used to be called "V for victory," and the "peace symbol" is the graphic that is supposed to show a dove's foot in a circle.

"Let's begin with page 10"?

Let's begin doing what with page 10?

If you mean, "Let's begin reading on page 10," then you mean, "Let's begin on page 10." If you mean, "Let's begin tearing pages out of the book," then I suppose you can say, "Let's begin with page 10."