Discussion Groups / English Usage / July 2009

A question about American folklore: what are Wal Mart greeters?
Taken from a nutty poster (a fanatical Ron Paul follower it seems)
who infests the ebooks groups with longish Subject headers like
"D.C has converted the U.S. into a Nation of Wal-Mart Greeters <real

Since I last posted, I heard someone on the radio refer to the Cuyuga
or Cuyoga river in Pennslvania, I thought, but it seems to be in Ohio.
It seems to run through Cleveland, and it seems to have been polluted.
I still don't know if it is different from the Cuyahoga or just

Is this "sportily" BrE?
Also, what does "sportily raked" say about a car window?
--------
[In their "motor car"]

    I have some questions regarding grammar.  Please help me.  Thank
you very much!
1.  These same states were the only parts of the U.S. ______ murder
rates were considerably below the national average.

In AmE:
1. The first thing I did yesterday was cleaning the car.
2. The first thing I did yesterday was to clean the car.
3. The first thing I did yesterday was clean the car.

The New York Times
July 5, 2009
The Medium
Street Smart: Urban Dictionary

I have mentioned this before but I could not name an example. I recently
read Ann Perry's new book "Execution Dock", which is printed in an
attractive, legible, serif font called Centaur (Bruce Rogers, 1929.) The
thing that annoys me about this font and several others is that no

I have heard an expression that I think odd, either in BrE or AmE. It
is 'nighty night', which indictaes a night full of action or full of
surprises.

same with "disgruntled" (which probbaly doesn't have a non-negative
verb "gruntle" either).
Are there other verbs that are hardly ever used in the present tense?
Also, I found a strange use of "fraught":

'"July 1st marks the return to our shelves of the curved cucumber and
the knobbly carrot," said Mariann Fischer Boel, Commissioner for
Agriculture and Rural Development. "More seriously, this is a concrete
example of our drive to cut unnecessary red tape. We don't need to

How would you read the captioned sentence: one cannot be too hopeful?
Which of the following answers would you choose?
1. It always mean "one should not be too hopeful", regardless of
context?

When asked:

I replied:

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I'm still watching Big Brother UK and listening to the English they
speak.
It's obvious that certain words and phrases that I've always thought of
as AmE have found their way into BB Newspeak, and I would guess they

This phrase has bothered me since childhood. It seems incomplete. Every
little *what*?
Or did "little" turn into a noun just for use in this phrase?