Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2004

From David Aaronovitch in the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1116839,00.html
<<  Call me David Column-writerwallah
On Friday Cyrus Todiwallah, the Parsee owner of Cafe Spice - one of London's

The shortest complete sentence in the bible is "Jesus wept." Only object and
verb!

I understand the word "Oriental" to mean East Asians, but not Indonesians, and
maybe not Filipinos.  It refers to people of the Mongoloid race.
None of the words which are meant to replace this now non-PC word do the trick.
"Asian" can mean people from India.  East Asians can mean ...

[Mailed to the _International Herald Tribune_ and posted to
alt.usage.english.]
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    <http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1219-11.htm>

Wrt "swoll" instead of "swollen" (and perhaps the lack of "During"
right at the beginning), is this a transcript of colloquial and
perhaps uneducated speach?
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Is "the last nut to tip the basket" an idiomatic expression ?
Will you tell me what it means?

Metrosexuals a no-no for linguists
The Associated Press
The TImes of India
Thursday, January 1, 2004

What do you think of the way the words "legend" and
"legendary" are used today?

I'm disagreeing with someone about the hyphen in or not in the
following sentences:
'The term "birding" is of American origin; "birdwatching" is the
commonly-used word in Great Britain and Ireland and by non-birders in

Attitudinous is not in my dictionary (attitudinise is). How recent is it?

I hear both "stomping ground" and "stamping ground" in the wild. I
always thouht it should be "stomping" -- but I was surprised to get
42,900 Google hits for "stamping ground" versus 29,600 for "stomping
ground."

"Please note that it may take anywhere from 3 to 9 hours
for your message to appear on Google Groups."
"Anywhere"? Looks a bit iffy to me.
R.

Will you help me understand the following sentence?
Socorra's voice startled Addie, who squeezed my hand and began to
shuffle her foot one on top of the other, back and forth.
Did Addie move back and forth by stamping the ground?

I have a question about the various forms of "Antony" and "Anthony".  Does
anyone know why the form "Antony" seems to dominate in British /
Commonwealth English countries, while the "Anthony" form dominates in
American English?  I know there are exceptions.