It's not found in most dictionaries, but based on the known meaning of the root, plus the most likely meaning of the suffix, it would be analyzed as "lover of old people." This would imply that the writer thinks of the person described as someone who has an unhealthy sexual interest in the elderly.

I know that it doesn't necessarily /denote/ that, but it's the most likely reading. Trust me.

Actually it has everything to do with synecdoche--it's one of the textbook demonstration examples (Google it and see what I mean). Good point about "foot" though.

Anyway, I was thinking about this last night when I went to the grocery store, and damned if I didn't hear one poorly dressed woman say to another, "if you're gonna make salad for all them, you're gonna need about ten head a lettuce." In other words, maybe it's a casual or uneducated usage that has become common through use.

Nope, goossun... you explained it better than most native English speakers ever understand it. We typically just memorize that old construction (I think it was called the subjunctive, don't quote me on that) in the rare cases where it is needed, mostly with "if," as in, "if I were you, I'd...." I'm a good example of the trend toward NOT using it anymore, so to a very conservative grammarian, I get it "wrong" all the time.

"If only" means "I wish it was true that." It's usually used when the wisher thinks that the thing he is wishing for is not really possible (although it would be nice).

So if your boyfriend leaves a testimonial on the web about another girl (you did not specify who it was about) that says "If only she were mine," then he is really doing nothing more than admiring her from a distance. If he says that about YOU, though, maybe he wishes you would pay more attention to him.

Wow, this IS interesting. I found this site:

http://www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/teflindex.htm

It seems very informative... a whole book's worth of info there. A good start, anyway!

Berlitz teaches by something called the "immersion method," I understand, that involves exposing the student to the new language all at once and guiding him through to a limited extent. It's said to be very effective.

I asked my father, who learned English as his second language when he came to the US in 1956, and he said he went to a class held by a church, but it was not very formal and he wound up being the teacher's assistant the second day! He thinks the best method is just to move to the new country and start interacting with the people who live there. It's a little drastic--I mean, I don't want to just go move to Tokyo for no other reason than to learn Japanese, for example--but it's what he did, and it worked for him.

It's called a "synecdoche," which rhymes (sort of) with "Schenectady" (the town in upstate New York); if you can say one, you probably can't say the other.

Anyway.

A synecdoche is defined, in the Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, as "A figure by which a more comprehensive term is used for a less comprehensive or vice versa; as whole for part or part for whole, genus for species or species for genus, etc." You say "head" when you mean "entire individual bovine."

The same mechanism is at work when you say "Texas A&M beat Georgia Tech at football this weekend." (hooraw go Aggies!!) OK. Weird morning at the oil rig, sorry. Seriously though, since all of one college did not play football with all of the other college, what you have here is an example of synecdoche.

Why is this done, though, you ask? Well, my friend, Your Correspondent From Houston can only say, "That's the way cowboys say it." (Of course, the cowboys in question probably kept cattle long ago in England, but a cowboy is a cowboy is a cowboy, /pace/ Gertrude Stein.)

This is not easy!

http://www.berlitz.us/default.htm?lcid=7 I would feel OK recommending this as a place to start your search. Berlitz has a decent reputation. They also have a Danish homepage here: http://www.berlitz.dk/default.htm?ISO=en that is in Danish.

An English school in NYC, and I'm in Texas, a thousand miles away. At least I'm in the same country! :)

That's a clue, about the method used to teach Korean students. I'll see what I can dig up. Any information from anyone else would be massively appreciated!

"ward" should, of course, be "word" in the previous post.

Do go see the site I referenced. It's a lot of fun!

Oh, this is a good one. :)

"Jack" is a diminutive of the name "John." (Compare French "Jacques.") For centuries, it's been used in common English to refer to a typical lower-class man, or something thought of as if it was a man (anthropomorphized). But when it isn't actually used as a man's real name, it's usually used in contempt. See this site for many great examples and further information: http://www.bootlegbooks.com/Reference/PhraseAndFable/data/669.html

An "ass" is a donkey. Ever since ancient Rome (when the ward was "asinus"), this, too, has been a term used in contempt, to insult someone. (Cute historical note: In the Forum at Pompeii, scrawled in a schoolboy hand on the marble wall of a temple is the following graffiti: "Caius asinus est," or, "Caius is an ass.")

So, a male donkey was (and still is sometimes) called a Jack ass (a female donkey presumably would be called a Jill ass). When you call a fellow a "jackass," you're calling him a donkey, with all that that entails.

Joe, you're goddamn brilliant. "Your problem is one of syntax." What the heck did you think we were doing, mistaking it for a banana?