Category: Usage

03
Dec

Embarrassing errors

Oh yes, there is a difference in the way we pronounce CONFLICT as a verb and CONFLICT as a noun! If you are a non-native English speaker and you haven’t already discovered this embarrassing pronunciation problem, then the following rule might help you sort it out.

RULE
Τhe stress of a verb is on the last syllable,
and that of a noun is on the first syllable.

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27
Nov

The real story of “OK”

“OK” is certainly one of the most common expressions in the English language – and one of the most versatile. After all, it can be used as an adjective, a noun, and a verb.

But what do the letters in OK stand for? And where did the expression come from in the first place?

Over the years, a variety of explanations have been offered. Some have argued that OK came from the Native American Indian tribe Choctaw’s word “okeh.” Others have suggested it came from a word in the Wolof language of Sub-Saharan Africa.

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26
Nov

Nouns: concrete, abstract, collective & compound

Concrete nouns: People, places, and things are all concrete nouns. They’re things you can see or touch such as kittens and puppies, trees and flowers, sticks and stones, and cities and countries.

Abstract nouns: They’re things such as concepts, feelings, ideas, states of mind, and attributes. For example, honor, loyalty, courage, truth, and freedom are all abstract nouns.

Collective nouns:  They describe a group of things, usually people, such as team, band, group, class, committee, etc.

Compound nouns: Compound nouns are usually nouns that are made up of two other words, and they can be formed three different ways: 1) open compounds (two separate words, such as coffee house), 2) closed compounds (two words that are now written as one, such as football), 3) hyphenated compounds (two words that are joined by a hyphen, such as collar-bone).

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20
Nov

The long linguistic life of “It’s complicated”

Facebook made it a standard option on the drop-down menu of relationship descriptors some ten years ago, allowing daters and would-be daters and whoever else might be interested to take note of such inherent drama in their friends’ profiles and, at the very least, to be warned before engaging or getting engaged. So even though Facebook didn’t create it’s complicated, it gets a lot of the credit for spurring its use across the world wide web and beyond.

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18
Nov

10 idioms about the human body

Infographic-Ten-idioms-about-the-human-body1

Source: vappingo