Discussion Groups / English Usage / March 2010

Is "for" natural at the end? Uneducated speech again?
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[Oswald's does chores for rich people, who are willing to give her
clothes for her son, but for money.]

I find "worked a stain" only here at Google Books. Rare?
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[Lee and Marina Oswald at home]
Then he went and sat down and she wet the sponge and worked a stain

I need to update my résumé in AmE. As President of an Institute of Music,
I'm taking care of the following tasks. How's the wording? Does it sound
'foreign' to you? In particular, I'm not sure about 'funding bodies', as it
does not sound AmE to me...

"he will be running a business out of his pants pockets forever"
is this
"he won't have any financial credit?"
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Is this "wind-scrubbed" invented?
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[Lee Oswald looks at Marina, his young wife]
Even in the heat and smoke she looked wind-scrubbed and fresh.

Couldn't find any reasonable meaning to "troot." Could it be "truth?"
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[Jack Ruby listens to this DJ, Weird Beard. He has no idea what the
guy's saying.]

But make your source for that language someone other than this
company:
http://www.i-newswire.com/impress-your-target-audience-with/26362
"English language is not that easy, as it seems, but those who have a

"suspect" is a word that always confuses me.
When a guy says, "I suspect that the firm may keep its FY2009 dividend
payout ratio flat", I could not tell for sure what he meant.  Because
of two possible meanings I got from the sentence, one is "I think the

Some may remember Ben Zimmer, former (I hope I'm exaggerating) poster
here and winner of the 2002 and 2004 SDCs, or may be keeping up with
him at Language Log or ADS-L.  He has now replaced the late William
Safire as the permanent "On Language" columnist for the /New York

Zapping the old telly mindlessly, I just happened upon live coverage of
some football match.  It seems there's somebody going by the name of
Messi (famous chap, apparently) playing for one team, and a Herr Träsch
for the other... it seems the persistent calls for football to clean ...

Tim Geithner talked about the economy "being brought to the brink of its
knees"
.

I need some help here. Recently I've been dealing with Gerund vs
Infinitive exercise and there is such a sentence there:
Did you remember ___________ (turn off) the stove?
I know the difference in meaning if we use Gerund or Infinitive after

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1. "I left Brazil 8 years ago. I have left Brazil for now."
Can I say the second sentence in the above in the context of the
first, that is if my leaving isn't a recent event?

Is "stole"
a "long loose garment"
or
a "long wide scarf?"

He must have gone, “Why the heck I came here?”
Is this heard in teen or other speak? I mean, this combination of the
formal  "must have" with the very informal "gone" for "said."
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