Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2007

are there exist a list of Easily confused  numbers vs alphabet or
alphabet vs alphabet?
such as
1 vs I

I have recently received details of a paper entitled: 'The German
Corporate Governance Code: general acceptance and neuralgic norms - a
second look'
Having never before encountered the word "neuralgic" used in anything

"..the late Dr. Scott": Most dictionaries define "late" in this sense as
"recently deceased." "Recently" here probably means a few hours, a few
days, a few weeks, or a few months.
**My neighbor knew the late Dr. Scott when he was in medical school.**

On the one hand we have (quietly minding its business mind you)
http://www.yaelf.com/questions.shtml
and then more recently, we have...
http://www.thebirdman.org/Index/Temp/Temp-SomeInterestingWordOrigins-ScrollDownA
Little-EH.htm

I check my email regularly. So if my boss asks, "Do you check your email?" I
answer, "yes".
If my boss asks me, "Don't you check your email?" should I answer with a no
since I DO check my email?

I just finished reading Gulliver's Travels, part 3 chapter 11, where
the guy arrived in Japan and went home from there.
( http://xahlee.org/p/Gullivers_Travels/gt3ch11.html )
Quite a few items i no unstand, from specifics to general allusion.

What do you think "lop-haired" means in this context? I imagine
it's "having a rough haircut," but am not sure of the details.
Also, does "swivel-hipped"
mean

I keep hearing that Saddam Hussein received justice.
Didn't he receive punishment instead and his victims justice?

A grandson to the late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was born last month.
The (Toronto) Globe and Mail reports:
<http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070103.wpierre04/BNStory/Na
tional/>

Recently, a fashion (or, by now, a cliché) has developed for describing a
girl or young woman as "bubbly". The earliest recollection I have for
hearing this term in use was about 10 years ago. How long has the word been
current? Does anybody remember it being used before, say, ...

... in rhotic English? I can't think of a minimal pair that would
indicate otherwise.

A correspondent raises the following usage point.
 I have noted of late a tendency for people to substitute "request"
for "ask", and interchanging them without regard to prepositions or
structure.  I have always thought that the following were correct

Listening to the text of Robinson Crusoe read by Nigel Graham I got
somehow sensitive to the word "abate".
Why it happened, I don't know. Maybe, the reason was that I was lucky
to know its meaning maybe, my attention was triggered by a minimal

I looked up the word, "curling" in the dictionary and it says,
curling is a game played on ice in which two teams of four players each
compete in sliding large stones toward a mark in the center of a
circle.

Hi, speakers of American English,
In an interview with a German newspaper a young American soldier used the
adjective high-speed as a synonym for cool in the sense of
excellent/attractive. Is this commonly used or just a personal way of saying