Discussion Groups / English Usage / May 2009

Does this "contestable" mean "able/feasible to be
attempted/endeavored/striven for?"
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[The boys at this school can't go out for exercise so easily at this

"In so much that," does it mean "to the extent that?" Doesn't fully fit,
I don't know why.
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[Widmerpool was wearing a strange overcoat, in terms of cut or

I am not quite getting the meaning of "parade" in the context. Was this
some display of servitude?
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[Talking among them about another public-school student]

The OED shows that aside from referring to a knife, machete also can
mean "A small chiefly four-stringed form of guitar played in Portugal,
Madeira, etc., which is the forerunner of the ukulele."
The root word in Spanish is "macho,"    "large hammer."

I hope you are all in good spirits.
I work in a scientific/technological environment (Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory in Berkeley, California -- an extended part of
Silicon Valley, near San Francisco - San Jose).  In this environment,

Shouldn't we write "It is a human flu that needs to be controlled by
us" instead of
"it is a human flu that needs to be controlled in us" ??
Thanks in advance.

Ladies and Gentlemen:
a. It is a story of unwavering neighborhood.
b. It is a story of unwavering neighborliness.
Do they convey different meanings?

Ladies and Gentlemen:
Someone on a Taiwanese forum asked about the use of the "that" in the
following sentence:
Learn some craft when young, that when old you may live without craft.

The BBC has just reported the pinpinting of the "ground zero" of the outbreak
of swine flu.
This implies that the virus was dropped from a plane, which several conspiracy
theorists have suggested.

First time I encountered the "nickname" "fathers" associated with the
Constitution was in Lincoln's "Cooper Address" :
<<Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution? I suppose the
"thirty-nine" who signed the original instrument may be fairly called

Hi native speakers, I need your help once again.
Do you have an idea what "bubble material" might mean in the following
context.
(It is a business letter in which a real estate investment project is

I've noticed that the lads on Top Gear and now Simon Cowell often
preface statements with "Can I say...?" or "Can I just say...?"
I don't recall noticing it growing up in the UK, though it may well have
been that it was so common that it never drew attention to itself, or I

Some recent usages of English I've seen or heard:
"Wouldn't harm a flea." I've always heard "fly" rather than "flea.")
"Iced," meaning "sealed the deal." (This may be common, but I don't
remember encountering it before.)

When the first offer came to be laureate
My initial response was "You betcha, man."
But they phoned me to say they were sorry it
Was intended to go to John Betjeman.

The latest version of the influenza strain A subtype H1N1 virus that
causes flu outbreaks in human populations has components that are found
in swine flu and bird flu as well as in human flu.  As a result, we are
larded with 'swine flu'.