Discussion Groups / English Usage / October 2007

I was just looking at some webpages on irregular plurals and happened
upon the words "children" and "bretheren" which are "en" plurals.
I'm wondering if there was an old English word "ren" that I seem to
remember hearing about somewhere. I can't find it online and was

"English for All" - one of the lofty ideals of Sai Seva Philanthropic
foundation
Under the program "English for All" I am running "Get your grammatical
misconception cleared"

For many years I was under the impression that, up until roughly 1980,
an order for regular coffee in an American eating place would get you
coffee with the standard amount of cream & sugar in it, but that after
that (because of the increased popularity of decaffeinated coffee, and

To get an entry-level job as a proofreader, would I be able to get
hired without a college degree? Or would they only prefer someone with
a college degree? Is taking a bunch of classes on copy edoting etc. at
a continuing education center good enough?

I wanted to ask a question pertaining to the term "evidence". I think
it's easiest to explain it with the help of a scenario, sorry if its a
bit gruesome (I couldn't imagine anything better). The scenario is:
You work as a janitor at a camp ground next to a nature reserve. One

The sentence that you are the 'most' kind means you are 'extremely'
kind.
the most = extremely or very.
Thanks

If you are already familiar with this, please, reserve comment so as
not to lead the witnesses.
Please, look at this animated GIF image,
http://www.general-cathexis.com/RotatingGirl.gif

What is the difference between put on and put up in:
putting on the new porch
and
put up the garage?

In a debate with a friend of mine over stuff like the accomplishments
of linguistics, psycology, and psycholinguistics, I reached an
undesirable conclusion that the human mind/brain is not equipped to
discover the truth about its nature. What linguists and psychologists

that almost everyone in the Western Hemisphere and Australia and many,
maybe most other parts of the rest of the world....
Does there have to be a comma after "most"?
It seems to me to make the sentence less readable, rather than more.

I've been watching the one-day match between England and Sri Lanka,
and one of the major SL team sponsors is the tea company Dilmah.
The advertisement the players wear on their shirts claims that Dilmah
is "Ceylon's finest tea".

"Jon, what are you doing?" Julie asks.
"Me? Oh, I was." I stumble around in my mind for an answer.
"Don't lie to me, Jon. I heard you talking to someone."
I lie. "I called a one-nine-hundred number." There, that's better than the

I know that BrEng uses "boring" to mean the same thing as AmEng
"annoying," but what is the reverse translation?  If an American
thinks something is boring, what word does the Brit use:  tiresome,
tedious, dull, or something else?  Does it depend on the context?

Browsing a sewing department today, I found an 'analogical tape' for
sale. At first I thought this was a severe typo for 'anatomical tape'
(since it's used to measure parts of the body) on the shelf label, but
indeed the packaging itself confirmed this was the true description.

I just came across a reference to "passing the audition", which has 4,000
Google hits but still strikes me as being an awkward way of expressing
success at something that isn't a generic examination.  Is this {a|the}
standard way of putting it?  Is it "okay" or is there a ...