Is the “The Pirate King” another structure of “The King of Pirates”, interchangeably or “Pirate” is like an adj., meaning “The King that is a pirate”?

I have ambiguity with the meaning of some compound nouns, especially in the form noun+noun like: "The Pirate King", "The Lion King", "The Pirate Bay" and so on. EDITED: to put it in context: Consider this famous movie title: "The Lion King", is it literally another structure of "The King of Lions", meaning are they … Read more

Sita was married by Rama

1.Rama married Sita 2.Sita was married by Rama ” The Teacher’s Travelogue ” prepared by the Regional Institute of India, Banglore discussed the use of active and passive voice. It goes on to say that the passive voice( sentence 2) is grammatically correct but different in meaning from the active voice ( sentence 1) According … Read more

When was the first ecocide “committed”?

Dictionary.com defines ecocide as an Americanism dating back to 1965–70: the destruction of large areas of the natural environment by such activity as nuclear warfare, overexploitation of resources, or dumping of harmful chemicals. Other sources suggest that its earliest usages date to 1969 M-W or 1970 Wikipedia for instance. While Google Books offers a few … Read more

Is “I am getting married with my sister” ambiguous?

I have seen the following sentences in a book given to us during our training period at The Regional Institute of English, Bangluru I got married to Priscilla. I got married with Priscilla According to the book, the first sentence means "I married Priscilla" and second sentence means "I and Priscilla married at the same … Read more

“One is done for you” or “One has been done for you”?

While I was writing a textbook I gave an exercise for students. Since the exercise was difficult, I gave an example and gave the instruction One (example) is done for you The editor corrected it as One has been done for you I would like to know whether my instruction “one is done for you” … Read more

“Must be able to” necessity reference

“User must be able to login through google SSO” Does this rule express a necessity for the user or application? I mean that the USER must have the ability for login, or application must let users to login through google? Answer Without context, it’s impossible to say. Ask for clarification. It could mean: Application users … Read more

How do I show ’emphasis’ in the following Japanese sentence?

I’m translating this old book I have from Japanese to English, and I was wondering how to ‘add emphasis’ in English. 背後で聞き覚えのある声がして、 思わずー歩後ずさってしまった。 A rough translation is: I sense behind me a certain voice I remember hearing before, so I instinctively retreat with one step forward. I think in the above instance the して is being … Read more

Labeling Confusion

I’m creating a series of labels for a row of buttons within a software application. Most of the labels are noun-verb pairs, such as “Analyze Route.” It just occurred to my team and me that we were “mixed mode” in the noun-verb vs verb-noun ordering for these labels. Example: Button 1: “Analyze Route” Button 2: … Read more

Is “consecutive” a subset of “sequential”?

Going straight to the dictionary, we can see that: Consecutive means: something following something else without interruption. Some examples: He did 100 consecutive push-ups (1, 2, 3, …, 99, 100) He scored 3 consecutive goals (meaning that a player scored 3 goals without any other team-mate scoring in between) 2.1 Ronaldo scored in min. 25, … Read more

Does “mislead” imply intent?

Someone is saying that he feels “misled” due to false or imprecise information given to him. Does that choice of words imply that from his perspective this false information was given intentionally or at least carelessly? Answer I would argue for no: mislead doesn’t imply intent, though it’s certainly compatible with it. When I tell … Read more