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Parents reading picture books aloud to their infant children have always used go to produce nonlinguistic noises, as in The train went “toot” and The cow goes “moo.” Now their grown-up infants use go to report speech, as in Then he goes, “You think you’re real smart, don’t you?”. For speakers young enough to get [...]
Fulsome is often used to mean “offensively flattering or insincere.” But people also use the word, particularly in the expression fulsome praise, to mean simply “abundant,” without any implication of excess or insincerity. This usage is all right, but it may invite misunderstandings in contexts in which someone could infer a deprecatory interpretation. You may [...]
Some people insist that you should use the phrases the former and the latter only to refer to the first of two things and the second of two things, respectively: “But Flynn preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake, and the former was a lulu and the latter was a fake” (Ernest Lawrence Thayer). It [...]
Forceful, forcible, and forced have distinct but related meanings. Forceful describes someone or something that possesses or is filled with strength or force: a forceful speaker, a forceful personality. Forceful measures may or may not involve the use of actual physical force. You use forcible, however, for actions carried out by physical force: There had [...]
Foot and feet have their own rules when they are used in combination with numbers to form expressions for units of measure. You can say a four-foot plank but not a four-feet plank; you can also say a plank four feet (less frequently, four foot) long and a plank four feet six inches long (or [...]
You should use as follows (not as follow) regardless of whether the noun that precedes it is singular or plural: The regulations are as follows
Should you be careful with a solvent that’s inflammable? Absolutely. The trouble with flammable and inflammable is that they mean the same thing. The prefix in- is not the Latin negative prefix in-, which is related to the English un- and appears in such words as indecent and inglorious. The in- in inflammable is an [...]
Both first and firstly are well established to begin an enumeration: Our objectives are, first (or firstly), to recover from last year’s slump. Whichever you choose, however, be consistent and use parallel forms in the series, as in first … second … third or firstly … secondly … thirdly
Even though finalize has been around since the early 1920s, people still object to it because they associate it with the language of bureaucracy. Seventy-one percent of the Usage Panel finds unacceptable the sentence We will finalize plans for a class reunion. Although finalize has no single exact synonym, you can always find a substitute [...]
The traditional rule says that you should use fewer for things that can be counted (fewer than four players) but less with mass terms for things of measurable extent (less paper, less than a gallon of paint). But people use less in certain constructions where fewer would occur if the rule were being followed. You [...]