Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2010

Is there another way of expressing that your dog or cat has become old and rather
frail except saying "Our cat's old now"? I mean would you actually use the word
"frail" with pets?
Thanks,

People who speak BrE finally settled on the Noughties for the years
2000 to 2009, after much of the decade had passed. To get a drop on
the decade starting tomorrow, what do you think people will wind up
calling it? "The teens", as I suggested to someone this morning? "That

It's not her she's writing about, but part of her novel.
Is it okay to use herself?

Does "languor" express "tender sentiment" as "languishing" seems to be
doing (at 2)? They seem related to me.
Also, does Waugh talk about "languor" as "dreaminess" (see 3 in
"languor") or as "undefined tender sentiment? (see 2 in "languishing".

Isn't the closeness of
"my excesses" and "who"
a bit uncomfortable?
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What does "oil-fading" to you?
Is this "spreading the oil" on their backs? Is it common?
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... while we had been rolling one another in the mud at football and

I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family,
tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who
settled first at Hull: He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and
leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, (The Life and

Waiter: The Norwegian salmon is our specialty/speciality.
Why?

Another query: Is rogue gunman the proper expression for someone who indiscriminately
shoots people like the military doctor in Fort Hood? Would it be British as well as
American usage?
And what would you call a driver who went berserk and plowed into a crowd of people?

This sketch is essential New Year viewing in many countries, but not in
the UK where it originated:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1v4BYV-YvA
Happy New Year

Ladies and Gentlemen,
What follows is quoted from /The Citadel/ by A. J. Cronin:
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He was a long, thin, cadaverous man with a bald head streaked with jet

I know this sounds stupid, but I just caught someone (in a non-English
bulletin board) arguing that the following two sentences mean more or
less the same thing:
"Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of

Is "I" still useable these days with non-finite verbal constructions
such as this "having had?"
Or should one use "me?"
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My dictionary lists a sentence "The baby is supposed to cry." for an
example.
But as I searched on the net, I got a large number of example
sentences saying "Babies are supposed to cry." ,and very few with "The

A pusillanimous newsfeed from the BBC entitled "Charges for cartoonist
'attacker'", which is about an attacking attacker shot by police while
caught in mid-attack trying to kill a cartoonist by attacking him with
an axe, includes a quote from a Sheikh Rage: