I just realized that I’ve never needed to use 31th or 31st in my four years English study. So which one is correct, and what about other alternatives? 31th or 31st 101th or 101st 1001th or 1001st Can I also use that way everywhere in the same way (for example, ordinal numbers in math)? Answer … Read more
I do not know if it is correct to use a hyphen between the words wrap, and around, in describing a porch that wraps around a house. Answer The adjective “wraparound” does not have a hyphen in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, in case you’re American, or Oxford English Dictionary (free citation through Lexico), in case you’re British, … Read more
Why is one of those spelled with a single L and not the other? For the etymology of Beryllium name it’s unclear but could be either Greek or Latin, and Helium is named after Helios (so Greek here). Answer As the comments have said, there isn’t any reason to expect these two different words to … Read more
I have seen this many times, but I am not sure what to call this. For example, the People’s Republic of China is often written as China, People’s Republic of. Thanks in advance! Answer According to the Chicago Manual of Style (CMoS), it’s called an inversion. 16.9: Main headings for index entries … A noun … Read more
When specifying possession, my understanding is that one adds an apostrophe if modifying a plural ending with an ‘s’, or adds apostrophe followed by an s if not. How does one specify possession of one of a group? For example, when discussing a ball belonging to a friend of mine, should I assume ‘friends’ is … Read more
When we say : Specify, it becomes Specification (no t) Value, it becomes Valuation (no t) Custom, it becomes Customization (no t) Lemma is a code used in programming, to describe the process of doing this Lemma, the word used is “Lemmatization”. I wonder where did the “t” in Lemmatization come from? https://nlp.stanford.edu/IR-book/html/htmledition/stemming-and-lemmatization-1.html Answer "Lemma" … Read more
The title of a Spotify playlist from Disney is “Disney Score To Study To”. The name surprised me because I would have thought it would be titled “Disney Scores To Study To”. Seeing as this is an official playlist from Disney, I would like to think they thought about the grammar. This is a link … Read more
The words juice, fruit, bruise, cruise, sluice, suit, pursuit, suitcase, lawsuit, nuisance, recruit, bruit are spelled with ui and pronounced with the IPA phoneme /uː/. Full pronunciations from OED: nuisance: Brit. /ˈnjuːsns/, U.S. /ˈn(j)us(ə)ns/ juice: Brit. /dʒuːs/, U.S. /dʒus/ cruise: Brit. /kruːz/, U.S. /kruz/ bruise: Brit. /bruːz/, U.S. /bruz/ suit: Brit. /s(j)uːt/, U.S. /sut/ recruit: … Read more
Pope, according to Etymonline is from: Old English papa (9c.), from Church Latin papa "bishop, pope" (in classical Latin, "tutor"), from Greek papas "patriarch, bishop," originally "father." Papal, papacy, later acquisitions in English, preserve the original vowel. From Wikipedia: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest recorded use of the title "pope" in English … Read more
When I initially wrote inforce the dictionary told me that enforce was the correct word. However, when I wrote reenforce it told me that reinforce was the word I was looking for. So, I searched this on-line, but didn’t find anything useful except this post Can someone elaborate on this further? Answer The reason the … Read more
