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- Why . . . ? vs. Why is it that . . . ? - English Language Usage Stack . . .
I don't know why, but it seems to me that Bob would sound a bit strange if he said, "Why is it that you have to get going?" in that situation
- Reason for different pronunciations of lieutenant
While Americans (and possibly others) pronounce this as "loo-tenant", folks from the UK pronounce it as "lef-tenant" Why?
- Origin of fag (meaning a cigarette in British English)
This appears to be speculative, and doesn't necessarily explain why this definition fell into common usage to indicate a cigarette I'm looking for something more concrete indicating what caused it to be used in this context What is the origin of this meaning of the word?
- Why was Spook a slur used to refer to African Americans?
I understand that the word spook is a racial slur that rose in usage during WWII; I also know Germans called black gunners Spookwaffe What I don't understand is why Spook seems to also mean 'ghos
- indefinite articles - Is it a usual or an usual? Why? - English . . .
As Jimi Oke points out, it doesn't matter what letter the word starts with, but what sound it starts with Since "usual" starts with a 'y' sound, it should take 'a' instead of 'an' Also, If you say "today was an usual day", unless your pronunciation is extremely clear, you risk being misunderstood as "today was unusual day", which will only confuse your listeners
- Is it CoViD? Or COVID? Covid? How should the word be spelled?
This explains why the medical specialist was at odds with The Guardian writer editor over the treatment of the acronym COVID-19 Newspaper guidelines for formatting of 'COVID-19' 'Covid-19' It's tempting to view preference for spelling acronyms as all-lowercase or initial-capped-only words as peculiar to British journalism
- Why is a woman a widow and a man a widower?
I suspect because the phrase was only needed for women and widower is a much later literary invention Widow had a lot of legal implications for property, titles and so on If the survivor of a marriage was a woman things got complicated before women had many rights If the survivor was a man in the middle ages it didn't really make much difference as he held all the property anyway A similar
- How does pussy come to mean coward?
The word pussy is often used to mean "coward" This guy is a pussy and I am wondering why How are woman's genitals related to being a "coward"?
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