Discussion Groups / English Usage / December 2006

What does "arcipello" mean? Perhaps I'm not spelling it right, although
I don't think I'm confusing it with the word "archipelago", but maybe I
am...

"Criminal attacks now range from programs that steal
information from home and corporate PCs to growing armies of slave computers
that are wreaking havoc on the commercial Internet."
This is not a question on the meaning... I've heard the term "wreaking

What does "the sky is the limit" exactly mean?
Thanks

At the risk of upsetting Laura (and others), I have a question.
"Carousel" was the first piece of amateur musical theatre I was
ever involved in, and I remember clearly the words of the
first line of  "You'll never walk alone" as:

I understand this "progressive/continuous" usage of "to seem" is quite
rare, isn't it, at least per:
http://www.english-zone.com/verbs/prgverbchrt.html
---------

Does anyone know the term used to describe a rhetorical sentence that, when
used by a speaker, attempts to subtly draw attention to subject and
predicate in an effort to enforce an association in the listener's mind?
An example could be;    "Some German people are Nazis."

Seen in today's (print) Sydney Morning Herald:
BUG CREATES HUMAN SEX KITTENS
A common parasite picked up from undercooked meat or cats' excreta can
make "men behave like alley cats and women like sex kittens" a

Is this really the correct English usage?
It is not beyond a doubt that they did come in contact with one another
[Neandertal & Cro-Magnon man], possibly even trading and communicating.
Isn't it, "it is beyond a doubt?"

What kind of rain the "drip" is?
------
But before noon it began to rain again, a long drizzle and drip from
the spongy sky that lasted two days.

I seem to be hearing a lot of misplaced modifiers on scripted TV
programs. It does not seem to be mistakes purposefully put in
characters' mouth. In fact, sometimes I hear them from a narrator on a
non-fiction TV program.

When ineffable experience is put into words it loses its value. There
is a term for the loss of value due to expressing the experience in
words. Please help. Thanks

I'm re-writing a draft of letter to the judge for someone. It's
form the defendant's husband to the judge who will be sentencing her
on November 9th. The judge looks at a "sentencing grid". See
http://www.sedgwickcounty.org/da/sentencing_grid.html

Which is the precedence in the following sentence? (I don't know why
there are two commas in the sentence.)
Basic insulation provides basic protection against electric shock and
is normally determined for the working voltage relative to earth, for

Rubbish sounds a little bit posh. Rubbish/crap I'm not sure which is
best.
Something which is worthless, useless, nonsense or of bad quality:
I can't believe she's trying to pass off this crap as art!

Hi. In one of the previous discussions, someone mentioned that a 'long
upper lip' was an example of a characteristic facial feature. He said
that he too had struggled to discover its meaning but that once he
discovered it, he could identify several of his relatives who had it.