All right has many meanings and uses, including several as an interjection. In British English it...
Author - Stan Carey
A quick dive into ‘dived’ vs ‘dove’
Reading the Simpsons comic book story ‘The End of El Barto’, I came across an interesting question...
How to use (or misuse) a dictionary
A simple view of dictionaries is that they contain definitions of words. This is certainly one of...
Resolving a usage dilemma
Consider the word dilemma for a moment. Without looking it up, how would you define it? Macmillan...
We’re keen as mustard for condiment words
Metaphors are part and parcel of English. Language lets us map the world around us, and metaphors...
TIL about till and until
You may have heard the expression ‘until the cows come home’, meaning ‘for a very long time’: If...
Ambiguity is presently unlikely
The adverb presently has a few related meanings, which has led critics to call it ambiguous and to...
Don’t belittle this word
If you were told that a word had ‘no chance of becoming English’ and should be ‘abandoned to the...
Elementary error, my dear Watson
The word elementary has several senses, the main one being ‘relating to the most basic and...
This is highly irregular
English is a famously irregular language, its grammar laden with exceptions to the rules. This is...