Discussion Groups / English Usage / August 2008

cuhlunary
cyoolunary
or
coolunary?

I couldn't help but laugh watching London Mayor Boris Johnson at the
Olympics closing ceremony.  He looked more like the president of the
local soccer club booster committee opening a new pitch...suit jacket
open and blowing in the breeze, resisting the temptation to stick his

If you can stand Stephen Fry, he has a new series on BBC Radio 4 on the
English language - "Fry's English Delight" (a double confectionery joke).
This morning he was discussing metaphor, particularly our wealth of
naval metaphors. Brass monkeys came up: a bod from the National ...

What does 'ice-scarred' mean? The word doesn't appear in the dictionary

How to use these phrases?
cool as a cucumber
bone of contention
a hill of beans (does this really just mean a hill of beans or

Please consider the following two sentences which will appear in an academic
journal.
From an academic style, shall I try to keep a sentence short, where
possible, or shall I just write things out.

Q1:
The existing experiments including the comprehensive Smith's data are
reported here.
The existing experiments including the comprehensive data of Smith are

Hi - I wonder if wings mean "medals" or similar things....
Here are the context:
He took off his wings and gave them to me. I was taken aback., "you
are supposed to take these off unless----"

I posted about transparent before in the smaller group, but it comes
up so much, I thought I'd point it out here too.
The new computer usage** and the new USA general population usage** of
transparent are exactly the opposite.  **In the last 20 or 60 years

I have just begun reading "The Victoria Vanishes", the latest in the
Bryant and May series by Christopher Fowler, discussed recently elsethread.
After reading several pages, I realised that I was waiting for the
unusual word which he usually includes at an early stage - and there, ...

Do you recognize this "for as to a bus?"
I think it means "as [looking] for a bus."
-----
[Lost, trying to intercept a bus]

How do you pronounce "Toyota"?  The other day, a Canadian (from Toronto)
mentioned Toyota, and I didn't understand what he was talking about
until he repeated the word third times.  One week later, I also heard
an American (from Portland, Oregon) referring to Toyota, and again

The parade of dufi at the Democratic National Convention is
unbelievable.

Add My Two Cents and Five Eggs
For the highbrow side of "add my two cents" we have
a letter from Oliver Wendell Holmes dated 1872,
but published in 1895:

Is Edinburgh's map shown (at least in part:-)) on any of the pound notes
in the UK?
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[I know that JL McAdam was a surveyor/engineer]