Discussion Groups / English Usage / February 2009

With all the talk about steroids these days, I've noticed the adjective
"illegal" in many of the reports about steroid use in baseball.
But: Is the use of steroids actually illegal? Isn't it more a case of
being against the regulations (or rules) in baseball and other sports?

On Gamespot someone started a thread "if girls can kick us in the
cherries that means we can punch them in the Melons right?"
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=26777988&tag=topics;title
What does this phrase mean "if girls can kick us in the cherries"?

How would you create a stone axe?
Grind it? Smithe it? Scuplt it???

It seems to be, but maybe I'm wrong that 'really' gets used a lot as
an adjective and perhaps more by British speakers than U.S. ones.
"A really good looking girl". - the girl isn't looking at anything.
"A really hot day".

Quite fitting for this nature of the Obama presidency.
http://consumerist.com/5153770/obama-collectors-coins-turn-out-to-be-stickers-st
uck-on-regular-coins?skyline=true&s=x
Change you can believe in!

China celebrates the Chinese New Year to day - it is the year
of the ox, and an ox is in Chinese "niu" with the same
pronunciation as 'new' in English, so now the Chinese say to
each other:

Should institutions be institutionalized now that so many
institutional investors have shown themselves to be institutionalized?

If a person describes himself/herself as ‘Pakistani British’, is the
noun phrase ‘Pakistani British’ a compound noun? If so, which noun
would be regarded as the head noun and would they ever be hyphenated?
Cheers

Sully Sullenberger's success in bringing his plane down on the Hudson River
has prompted a train of thought.
The verb "to land" means, in the context of aviation, as the OED says:
   To bring (an aircraft) to earth from the air; to place (an aircraft or

Time does not equal distance.  Yesterday a CBC reporter actually got
it right, well at least in context.  She said, "It is 10 minutes by
car to ...".  Most reporters don't get it correct.
This is a pet peeve of mine in general and especially when listening

Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am tempted to translate a Chinese idiom which contains two types of
character traits. One is for someone who always dallies; the other is
for someone who are always over-hasty.

Ladies and Gentlemen:
- a streak of luck
http://tinyurl.com/btscq2
(see noun, #3)

The "stripped-down" nature of pidgins has led them to being called
'reduced' or 'minimal languages'. They have even been compared to forms
of 'baby-talk'. A different view is that they are 'optimal'
communication systems, perfectly appropriate to the circumstances of

I'm testing to see if it is posted using Quoted Printable
--
Skitt

Here are some extract fragments from the following thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.free.newsservers/browse_thread/thread/38d9146
d8e03520a
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