Discussion Groups / English Usage / May 2009

When a wheel buckles, it is about a broken axle (which I think it is) or
about a blown tire?
----
[They had a car accident, and are in a ditch]

The following sentence appears on a local newspaper in Hong Kong
today.
"Several parents said that police had followed them closely in the
past few days and warned of possible reprisals if they insisted on

Oh yeah, forgot, happy Mothers' Day!
Is this, "Mothers Day" or "Mother's Day" or "Mothers' Day"?
Mother's Day seems a good day for my return. Ain't ya tickled?

From a review in my favorite pincushion, _The New York Review of
Books_:
 But Buffett has a reputation for transparency and integrity, as
 well as idiosyncrasy, and in Schroeder's hands the oddities of his

1. "To beat the book," is it to score un unexpected victory in
betting/horse racing?
2. Is Peter ragging/ribbing Bob? That's my feeling.
3. 'Put your shirt on him,' does it mean bet everything you have on him,

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Please help! Can some kind regular, more well-informed than I,
Explain why AUE should suffer just because of Jai.
The thread some f(r)igure started - aptly - at the crack of Dawn,
Escaping from the Maharaja, just drags on and awn.

The 120 Blondes Lounge at 120th and Blondo streets was
     disciplined by the state Liquor Control Commission over
     a gelatin wrestling incident that ended with full nudity.
(how do you discipline 120 blondes? with a grin!)

I don't see too frequently:
'He is called'
but
'His name is'

The DJIA has been rising fairly steadily for a couple of months now.
How long does it have to do that before we can way we have a bull
market?

1. Wouldn't a continuous
"while Bum was being let out of the room"
be better, taking into account the durative implied by "while" and the
"long delay" mentioned?

I wonder if the following sentence
     ``GateD allows the network administrator to control import and
       export of routing information by individual protocol, by
source

I wasn't sure about this stanza:
-------
And yet she cannot waste by this,
   Nor long bear this torturing wrong,

"To cut a date,"
does this mean
"not to show up"
or

Hi, DC.  A while ago you asked about books on the useful phrases (or
revolting cliches) of academic writing.  Do you know /They Say I Say/,
by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenster?  It seems to be an introduction
to writing about controversial topics, and it includes some dozens of