Discussion Groups / English Usage / July 2009

What is the most common phrase used by children to select a person for
a purpose in a game? If it varies from one geographical variety of
English to another, please mention it. A phrase I've heard is:
Eeny meeny miny mo,

Earlier this year we discussed the use of the word "surgery" in the UK
to mean an elected politician's advice session in which he or she is
available to constituents. We discovered that in the Irish Republic the
word "clinic" is used for the same purpose.

It is very confusing. I got different answers from different people.
Could anyone please point out which of the following is correct.
Thanks in advance.
1) at weekends

The old American musical has the titlesong "Meet me in St.Louis" - among
one of the other songs in this muscial a sentence says ".... to have
your picture took" - how on earth does this concur with the grammatical
issues in English.

I find the expression "of the female persuasion" very witty and funny.
Do we know its author?
-Ramon

SENTENCE ONE:
"Another great fact confronting the modern world is the discovery of
the method of training professionals, who specialize in particular
regions of thought and thereby progressively add to the sum of

Recently, I've been reading a few novels by Lynda Page, mainly because
they are set in Leicester shortly after the war and bring back memories.
However, her attempts at reproducing Leicester dialect and accent give
me a few giggles and a bit of puzzlement.

Let me ask a question about the usage of "leave" in the following
sentence from a novel.
I intend to leave the gun in the car. Guns leave bullets and people
see cars, so it's

Some time ago, in sci.math, I used the expression "logic chopping",
expecting it would be understood by any native speaker. I was informed,
by one Bill Dubuque, that this was an expression peculiar to the
philosophers, not in wider circulation. This claim I find doubtful. Is

What is a "“Fish Bowl Discussion"?

ElseNet I had the need to describe a stereotypical burglar, so I wrote
- A sack marked "Swag".
It occurred to me that this word (in this sense and in the UK) is so
very specific that in modern usage it appears only in images, on sacks

Can anyone translate what this guy is saying? This is a portion of a
review of The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche.
However, as one scholar noted, "the Antichrist is unrelievedly
vituperative, and would indeed sound insane were it not informed in

"I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless,
petty
kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter."
What does "in an aimless, petty kind of way" mean here? I have

Let me ask a question about this phrase"You don't say that" in the
following senteces from a novel.
Grantham gulped coffee, "Busy week at the White House."
"You could say that. Lot of excitement. Lot of happiness."

In English, there is a case rule called »title case« that
 possibly also might be used for headings, where most words,
 except some very short words, are written in uppercase.
 In German, only the first word is capitalized in such a case.