Discussion Groups / English Usage / December 2007

some nigger said that I was using waist wrong and it just goes to show
how dumb these niggers really is.
I find it amazing that someone is interested in me enough to waist time
on lies.

What is the point of having different words for the subject and object
as in the following pairs?
I me
we us

I am not sure about the spelling, but this is the word I got for a
"signature", today.
Something to do with John Henry, but I am not sure ....
Anyone cares to share the story?

Okay, just heard a profile of Sir Simon Rattle, where he talks about
adding vitamins to a garden, and of course in his part of the world
(Berlin, what did you expect   ;-} ) that word is pronounced "vitt-a-
min", where as my part of the world has it as "vite-a-min".

I am unable to convert "water" into "blood," by changing one letter at a
time.
  Since the numbers of letters in each word are equal, this would be only a
wonder, not a miracle - it would take a miracle to change "water" into

New thread begun on usage of "disease" to describe obesity.
Arcadian Rises wrote on 26 Aug 2004:
[...]

Some people choose not to use their given name but prefer their
initials instead. A man I met once called himself Tee Jay. I'm not
sure which is the correct way to write it, T.J. or just TJ ?
Thank you.

I seem to recall this word has only a present tense.  For example, can
I say the following:
***I went down to a mall yesterday and bought a camera.  It cost me US
$100.

Kaiila
It's a made up word. It's supposed to be an English spelling of a word from
the Dakotah and Lakotah Sioux language. How is this pronounced? One guess
is Kay-la. Another is Ka-EE-la. Any help? Thanks.

Although I'm aware that there's disagreement about whether the plural
noun should be 'dwarfs' or 'dwarves', today I encountered "dwarves"
used as a verb.  (The Guardian's centre-spread photo, we're told,
shows how a new ship "dwarves an onlooker as it leaves Poole

for a translation of an article I am looking for the correct english terms
of the following item:
German "Etagenhangbau" = engl ???:
This is a form of agriculture of grassland on the slope of a hill

I came across a blog post where altruism appears to be defined as its antonym:
Quote:
"The term altruism is used to describe the concept of “tit for tat” in the
professional and elitist world (Trivers, 1971). Altruism is a term that

The celebration Christmas day soon arrival, the company promotes
thegrand expense,
so long as the customer spend 99usd, may select andpurchase a coat in
the shop, pair of pants, with a pair of shoe, leteach person's

This is more of a usage question than a grammar one: I was wondering
what the phrase "not an option" usually means. I know it means what it
says (duh), but it seems to be used quite frequently even when
something really *is* an option -- "Surrender is not an option",

"When I arrived at the street where he lived, my legs were
heavy as stone|: I was so
near, but I felt so long away now"
This is a sentence a pupil has made.