Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2009

The passage below seems to indicate it meaning something like
"latitude" "goodwill" "freedome to use his discretion" but in AusE,
this would mean "avoid". To give someone a wide berth would be to stay
out of their way.

What does it mean "a litmus test".
The entire sentence as below:
And in some ways, they are a litmus test; a measure of the lake's
health.

An online ad for Kaplan University says this: "Who says a college kid
has to be a kid?"
The answer to that question (given beneath a picture of a 50-ish looking
man) is: "The perfect age for college is whatever age you're ready."

gendo - a way of language
eliminating linguistic obstacles to waking up
   from the millennia-old hallucination
          humans call "reality"

The sentence is  "I will be glad to attend YOURS and Joe's anniversary
party."
Is it 'your' or 'yours' or 'you' ?    Nothing sounds right.

To make it easy for anti-pundamentalists to killfile, this thread
and any subsequent guessing games will have a subject header
starting with =SFTW=, meaning "Something for the Weakened".
Fill in the missing words in the following Tom Swifties. The

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Any comments on this headline?
We Should Build a Bigger Navy
China is.
by Seth Cropsey

I am Canadian and was going to see the movie The Wrestler with a
friend who grew up in Texas. As we were seeing a movie about wrestling
I warned him to refrain from giving me a "Chinese burn" which refers
to a puerile prank where you grab someone's wrist  with both hands,

I'm hoping some of you good people will be able to help me with a small
marital problem I am having with my husband. I'm afraid that if he continues
to pronounce "Ligny" as "Lig (hard g) nee" I will not be able to stop myself
from beating him senseless with one of his many ...

Godwin's Law has loopholes according to new discoveries. One loophole
is to always and only use the full phrase “National Socialist German
Workers’ Party” in place of the misleading abbreviation "Nazi" that is
used almost exclusively by the general public (and by all victims of

I'm cornfused. Is this "my address" or the "President's address"?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/president-obama-delivers-your-weekly-address/

So who is author of this quote?
"Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a
person, having neither to weigh thought no measure words, but pouring
them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together,

I want to learn more on english grammar, could you please recommend me
some authoritative and comprehensive english grammar books?
Regards,

Do you know what it's called when a singer is practising hitting high
notes by going "Ah ah ah ah" and getting higher and higher with each
note? Or maybe there's no term for this?
Maybe it's an opera singer who does this.