Viewing profile — rossitter

In this case I just did a full-text search of HathiTrust's catalog for "and per se and" (quotes of course are part of the query in this case). These are two results of many.

From The Frumentary by William King (1699)[0]: U’s conversation ’s equal to his wine, You sup with W, whene’er you dine: X, Y, and Z, hating to be confin’d, Ramble to the next Eati…

The contractors in that joke are for the CEO's kitchen reno: > ...complicated global factors like [one], [two], and my desire for a marble kitchen island with a waterfall edge. As …

Home button on a keyboard, tap the top of the screen on iOS, and I believe Android implements something similar. I agree with the other commenter here. If a text-only article follo…

Words are only ever added to the OED after a period of use. Before performant made it into the OED as an adjective, the nominal form was listed as a "nonce-word" only and didn't me…

This wouldn't really be pro/rel, not as it's implemented in European football anyway. It's a single league where entry into the lucrative year-end tournament is partly based on lon…

This image from Streetview, taken about halfway across the bridge, shows the scale well, I think: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.439515,-79.9004771,3a,75y,99...

> Is it supposed to sound like the end of "turquoise?" Yes, though some speakers use an S rather than a Z sound (think "choice"). I have only heard these pronunciations from Britis…

I can say I have heard this from native speakers, but I can't pull up any YouTube links right now. I suspect I've heard it from people who don't always go by the spelling pronuncia…

> An-th-ony (with TH from "the") Out of curiosity, is it definitely the voiced TH from "the," rather than the unvoiced TH from "thing?" In the US the spelling pronunciation of Anth…

> "Please list the most important things that give meaning to your life" The actual English-language version[0]: > ...What about your life do you currently find meaningful, fulfill…

"Cushion" is a particularly bizarre example, because even if speakers were to stress the second syllable when using it as a verb, it still wouldn't demonstrate initial-stress deriv…

The point is that context usually suffices to tell which word is which, same as with wait/weight, time/thyme, and so on. Speakers with the pin-pen merger do pronounce these words t…

> While linguists specify a matrix of vowel sounds, a lot of people use vowel sounds that land in between them Definitely, but this is equally true of mat, met, and mate. As for ma…

No, this merger only affects the vowel in "pen," not "pine." So it would be "pineapple apple pin."

For speakers without the merger, marry:merry:Mary as mat:met:mate. If you didn't grow up with the distinction (as I didn't), you may find it easy to enough to notice the difference…

Comparable to one use case of the passive voice, maybe. What do you mean by "intended agent"? "Agent" has a common definition in linguistics, and an agent is only an agent in the c…

I'm not sure I agree that a distinction needs to be made between the two, certainly not on lines of agency. The "our" in "to our surprise" may or may not correspond to an agent, pa…

"To our surprise" is an adverbial. It has no voice. It can modify passive or active constructions, but it does not prefer one over the other. Active: To our surprise, they had left…

The word "tweet" wasn't added to the OED, just a new meaning of it. Two entries for "tweet" (one for the verb, one for the noun and interjection) have been in the OED since 1916, w…

Out of curiosity, what do you mean by "stoppage"? I think baseball does have a pacing problem, but it's really cultural more than anything else: games are about 1.5x as long today …

There's no watch to kill in baseball. You have to get the other team out a set number of times.

> I was surprised to learn that left turns account for "more than twice as many serious injuries and fatalities as right turns." This may be because bike lanes are placed on the le…