Discussion Groups / English Usage / April 2008

There was a thread of emails lately where I work, to which I
responded, describing some coming changes and expressing a hope that
the subject of the whole discussion would soon become "moot".
I wonder if this was a correct use of this word. I've seen numerous

I felt very badly about the slur.
I could care less about otiose commas.
I'm waiting on line for tickets.
etc.

Should I assume that his knees or feet were tied close to his hips?
------
[Benjamin, a prefect in his school now, is terorized by those whom he is
supposed to keep under control.]

How widely is the phrase "the game is up" used nowadays to mean
"the game is over"? I was watching BBC Match of the Day, and the
commentator used "the game is up" with the meaning that it's all over,
points won, game decided. I am well aware that this is the old meaning

See how I made 32,000 in 12 days. Not hype or bs. This Opportunity
is Smoking Hot and people who have never made a dime online are
earning
Thousands Per Week.

as a non-native, one thing I find really impossible to grasp has to do
with first names.
In my own language (French), if you are called Thérèse or Gérard, I
will (perhaps wrongly) immediately associate the choice your parents

Anyone can explain this to me, please?
I found the following:
"In our own century Platonic has been used of relationships between members
of the same sex."

During a meeting at my Unitarian church, I used the
word "oriental" for person xyz.
At which point I was roundly attacaked for using
the "deemed discriminary and insulting" word "oriental".

There *has been a series of car accidents at the crossing.
There *have been a series of car accidents at the crossing.
May I ask which verb is correct here? Thank you!

Breaded deep-fried mushrooms
Breaded deep-fried jalapeño w/ cream cheese
Breaded deep-fried jalapeño w/ cheddar cheese
Breaded deep-fried mozzarella sticks

Google gives 228,000,000 hits for the word "rare".  I'm not ever going
to get a total that's substantially closer to the square root of
228,000,000, am I?
daniel mcgrath

Re: "womanly", say in:
"Her appearance began to grow womanly," etc ...
Does "womanly" feel old-fashioned these days? It does to me and am not
sure what to replace it with.

I was wondering if you knew of a book/website/anything that would help
me with my comprehension, so that i can understand whether something is
logically true, etc..
For example, in one of the psychometric example tests, the question asks

"She resolved to go in search of them."
(somewhere in Jane Austen:-))
Am I correct in supposing that "resolved" has considerably lost ground
to "decided" in such contexts?

Could
"taking a bed there"
mean
"staying overnight there?"