Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2007

I'm not a native speaker of English, so I was really surprised when I
got a mild admonition from my CTO for referring to an all-female
department as "ladies".
Basically I needed the help of that department, so in my mail to them I

Yesterday, celebrating the holiday, two couples went into a San Diego
café after dinner, seeking something sweet and coffee.  While sitting
at their table, a gunmen approached them and shot the two men.  Is
there something beyond the ordinary in this tale?  Some might argue

Eventually, I didn't call you yesterday night, because "il se faisait tard".
Someone told me: it was late
An other: it was getting late
Which one is correct?

From an email sent to a cow-orker by her husband, and forwarded to me
for comment.
=======
I thought I should find out something about Korea, so I looked up

About the idiom "the hard way" as in the interesting sentence
below, do you also say something like "I have learned the easy way
that ..."/"I found out the easy way that ..." to mean the
opposite situation, that is when "I have learned/found out 'with

It would be "awesome" if "TomKat" "went missing"
<http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=2007
-01-03T130923Z_01_NCU271694_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-CLICHES.xml>
http://tinyurl.com/y3bgh4
Wed Jan 3, 2007 8:09 AM ET

On one hand, this passage below implies that testosterone is bad for
you ("detrimental health effects").  Also, it interferes with the
immune system.  However, men with high levels of testosterone are
"strong and healthy."

Is the end of language diversity desirable?  Consider an article by
John J. McWhorter (senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute) in the
newspaper this week:
http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=45847

I don't know why "as" is used with "doing".Generally, I use "as" in
following construction: ...define/interpret sth as noun.
Dykes and McGhie interpreted this finding as
indicating that ¡°the habitual attentional

"Tortuous" means "twisted," and "torturous" means "like torture."
The traditional phrase "tortuous logic" means elaborate, twisted logic.
It is sometimes misspelled as "torturous logic." In other contexts
"torturous" is often used when "tortuous" is meant.

Can "Y" only be a vowel when there is no other vowel in the word?

Watching the Green Bay Packers/Chicago Bears football game tonight, Al
Michaels was talking about growing up in Brooklyn and playing
punchball with Sid Luckman.  Sid, a very famous (in the US) former
quarterback with the Bears lived in Brooklyn.

"As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
when they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky
so up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
with the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too."

As predicted by Vinny in June, the UK yesterday paid the last
instalment on the 1946 loans from the US and Canada, so the financial
account of the Second World War is presumably closed. Happy Holidays!
It is hoped that the books for the First Great War will remain a little

Does anyone understand how much I've been fascinated by Edward
FitzGerald's famous work _The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám_ that renders
the quatrains of a Persian poet into the English language?  It is my
favorite poem, more or less.  I study it all the time, and I seem to