Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2004

What is a gimme?
Alan

In a few weeks our students can come see a film at school; they don't have
to pay to get in. What do I write on the invitations? Free entry? Free
entrance? Free admission? Admission free?
Thx

Is anyone else having problems marking their newsgroups read?
Matt

I've spent a lot of time on aue this evening, most of it in whittling
about 3900 posts down to a current count of 817. I managed to write
seven responses all the while.
As I progressed through the list (in date order, instead of alphabetical

In "The Seven Daughters of Eve", Bryan Sykes writes:
"We could see that the machine (christened the 'Genesmaid', after
the tea-making device people of a certain age regard as an essential
bedroom accessory) ..."

"Verbalization" is the process of forming a verb from a noun.  For
example, we can say, "Mary lunched at Cranberry Haven."  The noun
"lunch" has been verbalized.
It seems to me that there's a linguistic term other than verbalization

a

From the Times today:
"The Moon is a place that has been thought about a lot that has a lot
of what you want," said Dr. J. Roger P. Angel, a professor of
astronomy at the University of Arizona. He has proposed putting a

From a book review in The Spectator*:
       At one time repairs to St George's Chapel, Windsor, were
       suspended to allow 460 men to work at Fonthill in shifts by day
       and by lamplight at night.

From http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3869088/
"Now the world has to deal with the possibility that—come January
2005—there could be someone else in the White House, and that
this someone else might be Howard Dean. If it is, *would* we be

From a review on "Mona Lisa Smile"
The solid cast does what it can with the cut-and-dried material.
Maggie Gyllenhaal is _the_ self-destructive party girl; Julia
Stiles, _the_ smart girl who stifles her own ambitions for

I remember seeing a word in a vocabulary book sometime ago.  I
remember the definition, but I can't remember the word for the life of
me, and I've been trying to find out what the word is.  Does anyone
know a word for a job/position/post that is effectively useless or

Is there a list of rude words invented for TV or films to avoid
saying the real rude words?  Have any of them moved into the
mainstream?
I can start with Shazbat, Frel, and Smeg.  Hmmmm.  These are all from

Foreign nurses decry hurdles to jobs
in the U.S.
By Thomas Ginsberg
Inquirer Staff Writer

what is right:
"This email and any attachment is confidental" or:
"This email and any attachment are confidental"?
Thanks Norbert