Curious if this textbook example is correct. According to the textbook, “are” is incorrect and “is” should be used instead. Why is this? After days of testimony, the jury, including its two alternative members, are in deliberations and expected to deliver a verdict this afternoon. (not naming the textbook so it makes cheating harder) I … Read more
“Seeing the baby the mother rose in her.” Is the word ‘mother’ in the above sentence a: (a) Common Noun (b) Abstract Noun (c) Proper Noun (d) Collective Noun Answer Robikul, Welcome to English stackexchange. The word ‘mother’ is a common noun but it becomes a proper noun and is capitalized when it is used … Read more
I know megafauna is not a very common word, while fauna is more so. Fauna is singular, defined as a group of animals. ex. "The African fauna is diverse". Megafauna is the word defining all animals with body mass larger than a certain threshold (45kg, 100kg, etc), so in theory is still a group. Following … Read more
I recently came across a surname in a podcast, called Barleyfoot. In the podcast, his family was referred to as the Barleyfeet. Is this correct? Or should it be Barleyfoots? What about other possible names ending in words like goose, man, cactus etc. whose original words’ plurals don’t just add an ‘s’ at the end? … Read more
Is there a noun for the general, solely negative, discrimination of any kind of group? Like, a word that encompasses misandry, misogyny, anti-semitism, the common use of both “racist” and “sexist”, etc. If there is no such word, that is a valid answer too. Answer bigotry [big-uh-tree] noun, plural big·ot·ries. 1 stubborn and complete intolerance … Read more
As I believe “alphabet” refers specifically to the latin a-z, is there a term that collectively refers to all collections of writing characters. ie, if I had a list that contained the entries “Latin, Kanji, Cyrillic” etc, what would that list be called? A single word is preferable, as I need the term to describe … Read more
In Christopher Nolans “Dunkirk” an opening caption appears with the first sentence: “the enemy have driven the British and French armies to the sea” My intuition tells me that it should be “the enemy has driven …” because the enemy is singular. As I guess that this is not an error, why is it correct? … Read more
I’ve tried to look for a collective noun for arrows that are in motion and most internet results suggest a quiver of arrows and a sheaf of arrows. However, a quiver is a container that holds arrows and a sheaf is a bundle of arrows tied together. In both these cases, the arrows are stationary. … Read more
I want to write the sentence: People have now turned their attention toward… But I am unsure if attention should be written as attentions. I have looked up this sentence online and it seems that both are used. For example: “Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey sparked not only a revolt within the … … Read more
At the risk of asking a duplicate question, I was helping my little one read a school book that had the following line, The band of pipers is playing in the background. Because the collective noun is used in conjunction with the members of said group, I’d have thought the correct expression would be, The … Read more
