Discussion Groups / English Usage / November 2009

In Meet the Huggetts, a BBC 7 radio show from 1959, Mr. Huggett (Jack
Warner) kept saying,
'Lummy',
which, of course, is, as you would expect and interjection of

This morning on Weekend Edition Sunday, i heard an interviewee say,
"...I came to be abhorred by it", meaning (in common usage) that he
came to abhor it.  The meaning was clear, but the usage seemed odd to
me, archaic at least, so i wondered whether it is found in modern

"Publishers employ thousands of staff *to concern* many different aspects of
publishing books, so for a start you can speak to those people who will be
out of jobs thanks to Google books."
I read this in a reader's letter to the Times today and wondered if such

Why is the word convertible and not convertable?
Is there some rule?

Why is the word convertible and not convertable?
Is there some rule?

"This is about my shape"
could it be an idiom related to
"This is what I like"
or is he perhaps suggesting that this trip will make him lose weight

"Mustn't she rather—in the time then—have rushed it?"
does it mean:
"Is it possible that—at the time—she might have rushed it?"
Also:

"She was worked for"
what does it, really, mean?
--
[ Stether meets Mme Vionne in Notre Dame. It seems that their latest

Any chance that "fair" means "blonde" and not "beautiful" here?
--
Her head, extremely fair and exquisitely festal, was like a happy
fancy, a notion of the antique, on an old precious medal, some silver

Just a thought that occurred to me respecting a perennial question
here: the  phrase exemplified by "need/want washed".  This has a
parallel in "get washed".  We're used to thinking that one of the
meanings of 'get" is "become", as in "c'mon, get happy", but that must

     Please help me with the following questions.  Thank you very
much!
1.  Sometimes, I heard people say " health food", but sometimes I
heard people say "healthy food".  I feel confused.  Which one is

Any difference in style or usage between "forehead" and "brow" in such
a context?
---
[Sally Pocock visits Paris]

Is this from cards, "decked him out?"
Its meaning?
"Bristling total," the uncomfortable/aggressive totality of men?
---

"...can be wound up or charged by a small solar panel."
What does "wound up" here refer to?
Thanks for your explanation.

Turning out a cupboard today, I found a slim volume entitled "Targets"
by "Sagittarius", evidently given to my father by my mother in 1944. I
remember it from our bookshelves in my childhood because it had a paper
dustcover (now vanished) that reversed to a design that clearly ...