English Language & Usage Weekly Newsletter - Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Top new questions this week: What does "Your hair is so white now, it can talk back to police" mean? Vanity Fair magazine (April 27) introduced a barrel of jokes about political figures Cecily Strong delivered at Best White House Correspondents' Dinner held on April 25th in Washington under the ... *meaning-in-context   asked by Yoichi Oishi 42 votes answered by George Pompidou 76 votes 'Male'/'female' is to 'gender' as 'left-handed'/'right-handed 'is to...? Is there a word to describe this? For example, if I ask a guy What's your ____? It should mean I'm asking whether he's left or right-handed. Another example could be Our designs are not ... *single-word-requests *hypernyms   asked by Area 51 Detective Fiction 30 votes answered by Chris H 110 votes Adjective describing a person who has lots of children, not "fertile" Is there a single adjective that means "this person has lots of children"? Context: I'm not actually talking about a person. I'm talking about a data structure in a computer program, where objects ... *single-word-requests *adjectives   asked by japreiss 27 votes answered by Matt Gutting 67 votes Better term than "hardcoded" for end-user documentation The term "hardcoded" refers to configuration that's imbedded in a program's code. To a programmer, it may have a negative connotation (if it is a bad design decision) and to a non-technical user, the ... *single-word-requests   asked by Scribblemacher 16 votes answered by Lucky 18 votes What is the action called when a grumpy old man shows that he is annoyed, by making a 'throat-clearing' sound? Sometimes when a grumpy old man gets annoyed, he makes noises like clearing his throat. Does grumbling or grunting define that action? Is there a more appropriate word or an idiom for that? *meaning *word-choice *single-word-requests *phrases *idioms   asked by irishmist 15 votes answered by PerformanceDBA 2 votes What is the origin of "analogue" as a term meaning "non-digital?" This question came up when having a pun-ridden discussion with some of my colleagues: When and why did we start using the word "analogue" to mean "not using numerical digits?" Etymonline only has an ... *etymology   asked by user867 15 votes answered by javaNoobs 21 votes Is the lowercase pronoun "i" a feature of Indian English? The Rule The personal pronoun "I" is always capitalized in English, regardless of its position in a sentence. This is an orthographic convention that every native speaker should know. Whenever I ... *orthography *pronouns *capitalization *formality *indian-english   asked by Mari-Lou A 12 votes answered by Area 51 Detective Fiction 30 votes Greatest hits from previous weeks: What is the difference between "till" and "until"? What is the difference between till and until? When to use till or until? Please explain with examples. *word-choice *grammar *prepositions *till-until   asked by LifeH2O 59 votes answered by Robusto 51 votes What is a word in English that means "able to learn new things quickly"? What is the English word to describe the following skill: "able to learn new things quickly"? *single-word-requests   asked by user7904 20 votes answered by b.roth 19 votes Can you answer these? 'plight' (as 'predicament'): How did 'to fold' evolve to mean a predicament? Of the two dichotomous noun homonyms 'pledge', below I ask only about that derived from Latin. For the homonym derived from Proto-Germanic , please see this. [Etymonline for 'plight (n.1)' ] ... *etymology   asked by Law Area 51 Proposal - Commit 1 vote Groups coordinator, group's coordinator, or groups' coordinator? I haven't been able to find the answer to this anywhere, which of them is right? I need to finish my CV and can't without knowing for sure. Thanks *grammar *writing *apostrophe   asked by user118344 1 vote Is "markets shares" correct? I know that the common plural form of "market share" (the percentage of a market) is "market shares." However, I found a sentence containing "markets shares." In the last decade, several papers ... *grammatical-number   asked by Naetmul 1 vote

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