Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2010

What does pre-contact mean wrt Indians.
Does it mean before contact with Europeans?

Below is a short article from a news website. I do not understand the
last sentence:
Volume fell to 1.1 billion shares from 967.1 million shares Monday.
A lot of stock falls today. How about the Volume? The number 1.1b is

My cat Destructo the Visigoth weighs exactly 14 pounds, and I
described him to a UK colleague as weighing "one stone".
Is that right, or are only people weighed in stones?

In the following sentence, is the verb 'live' supposed to be 'lives'?
Although the rules and terms can fluctuate, the low down payment and
below market interest features of VA loans come with the condition
that the borrower live in the property.

Hello, Everyone:
We have the terms "status quo" and "status quo ante". What is the
Latin equivalent to "state of the future" or "future state"?
Thank you for reading and replying!

When we say a plant that is in operation, I saw people say "goes on-
stream" and "comes on-stream", I wonder if there are differences
between the two?  I only know that a friend from Australia comes to
Hong Kong to see me, and I go to the UK to meet my pen-pal.

Just posted by Mark Liberman on Language Log
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2050
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Word of the day
capitonym    (KAP-i-toh-NIM)
noun

Hi, my wife loves to read and is keen to get an e-reader; I've being
trying to find information for her; So far I know that there are
supposed to be 3 main leaders, two of them being the Amazon Kindle(s)
and the Sony(s), but that reviewer didn't mention the third, but

"strung-up"
is this
"as suspended by a string (from say up in the ceiling)"
or

How is
"Peaches kind of dried up on me in this heat"
different from:
"My peaches kind of dried up in this heat?"

I don't see the motivation for
"up under (the bar)"
here.
I see more of an

"put mirrors on her door"
was it to deflect the devil?
Known?
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Is the following paragraph, in particular the usage of "at all" in the
last sentence, correct English?
"My friend uses to leave his computer switched on day and night. ....
When he was visiting me, he expressed

Is there a single English word for
failing to reach a lower bound from below?
For example, I can say;
"This exceeds the maximum size requirement",