Discussion Groups / English Usage / March 2010

1. Jim and his friends were digging around for me, trying to find the
truth, but they hadn't found anything that might tell me who'd set me
up.
["telling" after "finding," eventually extended to present time]

This one is agonisingly adhesive, but perhaps partly because the words
contain a slight puzzle.
There's a strange little UK TV ad in which a rather foreign-sounding
woman sings merrily and weirdly, but catchily, about pressing buttons.

Please help. I've lost the trail of this phrase, I think it goes like
this:
Horse with me No Nose.
(I'm sure it was No Nose Noonan who was the object of someone nice

1. "I am fain to" typically has two meanings
"I am glad"
"I'm reluctantly willing to."
Which one is in effect here?

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The bed is king-size, and directly across from  it in front of a
window with
the drapes drawn are a small glass table and two chairs.

1. Does
"I have looked down the saddest city lane"
mean
"I have looked in the direction of/along the saddest city lane"

Can you say about a living person "God bless his soul"?
I think you can say "God bless his heart" if he is alive, and "God
bless his soul" if he is dead, I can even give a coherent and logical
explanation for my assertion.

Some people take observing the rules to extremes.
Does this sentence express that they do it to a
point beyond what is normal or acceptable? Would
it be better to use "do something to excess"?

Is Stanley's answer "You _could_ not" considered standard AmE in such
a context?
---
Blanche - Poker is so fascinating. Could I kibitz?

"One flight out sideways would have undeceived him"
Is it because, perhaps, it would have offered the bird another view/
perspective? Wakened him to reality?
Also, "it" in the last verse