Discussion Groups / English Usage / April 2009

I was just looking at "Troy and Homer" by Joachim Latacz on
Google Books, http://tinyurl.com/d8evvq, and reading the bit
about how Rolf Hachmann expressed his doubts as to whether the
site excavated by Schliemann could ever be proved to be Troy.

Are they different meaning?
"in a hurry"  and "in hurry"
"deadly thread" and "dead thread"
I am not quite clear the following sentence. Would anyone please

Could anyone please help me understand the meaning of the phrase
"chain of custody" in the following sentence:
"Installing GPS on vehicles will provide real-time asset tracking and
increase visibility into our chain of custody."

The only thing I know about Nintendo is that it has a work station
referred to as 'WII,'  and the only reason I know that is that it
stumped me in a crossword puzzle and left me with a slight curiosity
to know where the designation came from.  Would someone please tell

I read in a big front page ad of the free newspaper Metro:  I chose to
smoke.  This is what it cost me.
I'm puzzled that there is no 's' following 'cost'.  I would write it
as 'This is what it costs me'.

I run, he runs, they run. Why?
Why do we change from run to runs for the verb when we go from I and
they, to he or she? I'm sure it has been addressed before but I
couldn't find anything. By all means point me to a reference if there

Is this a correct usage of English:
You to the rescue.
If so, what's the syntactic structure?

Not quite OT here. OED lets me in perfectly normally, but when I whistle
up the sign-in screen to get into DNB using my Coventry library card, it
gives me a "Page not found" error when I enter the card number and click
"Go". This message appears on a DNB screen, not the Library ...

This is from an article in Newsweek titled "Why is it a sin to read
for fun".
http://www.newsweek.com/id/193475
I am not able to understand these two sentences towards the end of the

My students are doing some cloze tests for practice, but there come
several items that I cannot resolve. Here are the items in questions,
including the partial text, for your reference.
1)stand for v.s. represent

What does 'one of a kind' mean?  How to use it?  Thanks.

This "indisposeth" must be tongue-in-cheek-historical, isn't it?
-----
[Thinks about death. He has around the house a large medical treatise,
by Doctor Browne, which seems quite old.]

Is there anything wrong grammatically with the following sentence?
"Or is it because Canadians are lesser of spenders but better savers?"
Thanks

It is very interesting to learn that Obama proudly says that "I have a
gift".
I wonder under what condition this phrase can be used.  James

"One might say that Jeff Immelf is as much an unlucky
victim of poor timing as Jack Welch was the beneficiary
of felicitous timing."
I have problem interpreting this sentence. Would you please