Discussion Groups / English Usage / February 2008

Earlier today, on Fox News, Brit Hume said there's "a huge
rasher of delegates," in reference to today's primary
elections.
Did I mishear him? Was he saying "a huge rafter"? But that

You have long hair and you are ready for an updo or "long hair"
service and you go to a full service salon and what - they don't offer
"long hair" service. Guess its not so full service after all. So you
go to another beautician and they don't know what to do either. Why is

Learning God's Language
Destined to Language
Or
What's Unknown Becomes Important

Recently I've been reading and hearing sentences such as "The series
of meetings helped to inform the grant announcement." Meaning that
(learnings from) meetings were used by people somehow in developing a
grant announcement.

Recently I have heard relatively simple words adopted from foreign
languages alarmingly mispronounced in the media. First, I have a
noticed a tendency for stashes of weapons or explosives hidden by
insurgents in Iraq referred to as "cachets," when I think what they

In a translation class, I translated a Japanese sentence into:
"I did not imagine that I would have taught at H. University
for that long."
There was another student who used a similar construction:

ELLIEBLE PEOPLE ONLY FULLENTY GRAMMERS
                    ABOUT DEATIL BELLOW
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
Whttp://www.freewebs.com/fhsdajkq/ http ...

"Doubled back between the portico columns"
Are we dealing with a phrasal verb, "double back"
or it means "doubled (in the mirror, via reflections) in the back
between the portico columns?"

From the Guardian today:
"Neither man has yet to secure his party's nomination, but Barack Obama
and John McCain have begun to lay down the battle lines for a possible
confrontation in November's presidential election."

On the radio just now a keen Washington spokesman told the BBC reporter,
'We're gonna keep the embargo in place so when Castro goes, Cuba'll just
collapse like a pin going into a balloon'.
Sounded like he'd want a ringside seat so he could _watch_ that pin

I tried to find some of these words (ciculus, culus, dare) in a
Latin-English dictionary, couldn't quite find them.
Those nasty twins Rose and Lily seem to have contrived these verses in
order to emasculate Nicholas with stuff which may be quite vulgar ...

What's with the wrod "seriouse"? The only time it's appeared in aue was the
following from Lyke Joikonov:
Mr./Mrs. Kl00bus roadkill,
       this news froup is for discussing seriouse matters. Please

William Safire's "On Language" column in today's _New York
Times_ has the following remark:
  (Cummins credits Ben Zimmer, an editor at the
  Oxford University Press, for this research; Zimmer

Sorry, English being my second lanuage, I am trying to decipher the
correct usage of "loose time" or "lose time".
e.g. I cannot affort to lose any more time on this project....
I thought using "lose time" was the correct usage until recently

In the International Banking and Finance dissertation I'm proofreading,
I'm seeing stuff like this all the time:
"Firms with growing investment opportunities never issue risky debt."
Here she's clearly referring to firms that borrow money, not lenders.