But IS it? Varies regionally/according to dialect. ‘Oot the windae’, aye, I’ll give you that one.
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There wouldn’t be an issue if more people learned to use “defenestrate”.
Even if they’re not married to an Ermintrude.
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Seen on AO3: ‘malice of forethought’.
Which almost makes sense.
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Heard on Woman’s hour
Black women like myself
AAAAARRRGGGHHH!!!
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But “Black women like me” may not be universally true. How many even know her?
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Oh, she meant “such as myself”? Then she ought to say so.
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Joe she was introduced as a black lady talking about prejudice in maternity cases so I took here to be a black lady
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Definite prejudice, but won’t and shan’t: for me, it’s a matter of fact as against intention: it won’t come off simply means something isn’t coming off, and it shan’t come off means that it is my intention that it shall stay put.
So when I meet “they shan’t let her” in a story, meaning that it is a fact the Navy doesn’t take girls in 1938, it jars, because it is a statement of fact, and I would write “they won’t take her”. Her mother might aver “they shan’t take her”, of course, with an undertone of “not while there is breath in my body”…
Is this just me, or is there a rule, and is it the opposite in American?
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What I was taught – and I’ve never met anyone else who was taught this, so it may have been just that one teacher, but he was also the only teacher I ever had who actually cared about grammar as more than a thing with which to pass exams – is that for first person “shall” is the usual form and “will” is the forceful, while for second and third persons it’s the other way round. (“I shall eat, you will eat, he will eat” vs “I will eat, you shall eat, he shall eat”.) And the same for negative forms. Which would be consistent with your preference in this case.
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That does actually sound right, now that I look at it. And if so, it quite alters Queen Victoria’s “I will be good”, from the rather smug to the determined.
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‘On Sundays we had winkles that we had picked with our grandfather’ (post on mumsnet)
I’ve only seen it done with a pin.
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Well, if his head were particularly pointy…?
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Winkles - sandy horrible sea snails that are only vaguely palatable when doused in vinegar
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Ah; on the World Service this morning.
“Tom May was left abandoned by the Thames when he was a few days old.”
That would be jetsam, then.
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With a sort of “ptui” sound as he flew onto the jetty?
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Victoria Embankment, but yes, probably.
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Can anyone tell me why some people say “OFF OFF”
I heard it on the radio today as “we need a plan to get off off these restrictions”
Why the extra off?
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Because they know that “off of” is a solecism?
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A word that doesn’t exist but really, really should. I presume the coiner was shooting for ‘morbid’ and merely winged it.
.
A total dependence that, for me, is bordering on morbose. This text will be hidden
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I’m really sorry, but it has existed for a while; first found in the works of the naturalist and theologian John Ray (1627–1705). It means “diseased”, from morbid in the original sense. I think it was generally applied to plants rather than people.
Well all right: my father used to say it about sickly nasturtiums and the like.
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