English usage and grammar

I'll be sitting a CAE exam this Friday and I'd enjoy learning some vocabulary I can use when doing it.

Some idiomatic expressions, collocations or just some fancy adjectives or adverbs that you think could be useful. Something that if the examiner saw would make them say wow.

There is an speaking part where it's mostly informal language that I'm going to use and a more formal writing part.

Thanks for your help.

I realized afterward that I forgot “a” 🤦‍♂️. Any other possible words or interpretations that I missed?

Ever wanted to understand where the phrase "needs washed" comes from? This is a good site to check out maps and explanations of local phrasings

Hello, English is my second language. I was just reading a sentence where I got a little confused with the use of "their":

In fact, the people prone to such behavior are liable to do it even more once there's no chance of their getting caught.

I've never heard "their" in this context, only "them getting caught". Is this correct grammar?

When I first learnt English, I thought this type of formulation only worked with a few verbs like "do", "have","should" (ex: "Should I do this? No, I shouldn't.")

More recently I also encountered "Need I?" and "needn't", tho they're more rarely used. But this got me wondering, is it still an exceptional construction, with "need" being one of the exceptions, or can it be done with every verbs? For example, are the following sentences correct:

• Read you mangas? No, I readn't them.
• Grow they potatoes? No, they grown't these.
• Sounds it like a good idea? No, it soundsn't.

I know talking like this would raise a few eyebrows, but does it break any established rule?

The first time I came across the usage of this phrase was in the movie Hellraiser, and I had no idea this was a common saying. Clearly though, there must be a double meaning there in the movie that I couldn't fully grasp without knowing the more colloquial meaning.

The description on Wikipedia is unfortunately not enough for me, I would like to see examples. And it's very hard to find those because Google gives me mostly links to religious websites.

Going off of this sequence of adjectives, “East Coast” would be categorized as origin (7) and “spicy” would categorized as type (9), correct?

For example, if you say that "feed" isn't a real word because there is a better way to say "issued someone a fee," but the real word is "feed" as in "to provide with nourishment," what would that error in judgment be called?

"I'll woo her again! One day she's mine!"
"I wood her before but she wasn't sure yet..."
"I woo'd her before but she wasn't sure yet..."
"I woed her before but she wasn't sure yet..."

How does this word work?

You know when something can be either "or" or "and?" You may also say it is "and" and or "or"; "or" and/or "and," if you will. That's the inclusive or!

The Latin "vel" is a word for the inclusive or. I also just learned that the logic symbol, ∨, is called "vel" and is used for something called "disjunction" as opposed to "exclusive disjunction (⊻)," which is simply the exclusive or, which is the regular or in English.

Apparently the legal term "vel non" uses this word to mean "or not," which means there's at least a chance of it making it out of the courtroom and into the common lingo like quid pro quo, de jure, and de facto, did.

For example:

It is a thing that works producing stuff.

This feels wrong to me, but I can't quite put my finger on what exactly is wrong about it. It seems like it's trying to be a participle phrase, but it's not necessarily modifying the current state of "it", and is, instead, describing what "it" is.

If it is, indeed, a participle phrase, then it should be able to be written as

Producing stuff, it is a thing that works.

But, to me, this doesn't seem correct either, so it leads me to believe that the very structure of the sentence is incorrect.

I did a quick search on google and, not only I see both versions, I even see both of them in the same document.

Example: Region-Enhancing Network for Semantic Segmentation of Remote-Sensing Imagery - PMC

the dataset with much more images
the dataset with many more images

Specific searches show these numbers:

• About 4,520,000 results for "much more images"
• About 2,780,000 results for "many more images"

Is there any difference between them?
Thanks!

I'm desperately looking for antonyms or somewhat opposites to "procedural". Checked on some antonym dictionaries but didn't find anything. More specifically it's about "procedural knowledge".

"Unplanned" or maybe "creative" could be some possibilities, but I wonder if something more appropriate could be found.

All possible suggestions greatly appreciated! Thank you!

Edit: Thanks everyone for the great suggestions! Together they led me to choose "exploratory" as somewhat opposite to "procedural". There's a huge variety of possibilities, but this one seems to fit my context well :)

I've linked this several times. Here it is. Just get (and read) this book.

Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme―And Other Oddities of the English Language

Here's a podcast interview with the author if you're illiterate:

Corpse, Corps, Horse and Worse

As a non-native speaker I encounter this phrase from time to time (in podcasts and such) and I'd like to understand the use (beside the literal meaning which is obvious).

Why would you say that? or sometimes Why do you say that?

To me, that sounds almost rude, like rebuking the questioner. However, the context usually leads me to conclude that this sentence is to be understood neutrally, in the sense of "I am interested in the background of the question".

How should the sentence usually be used? Or does it depend solely on the tone the phrase is used?

I remember this clip from the wire where they discuss the difference between evacuating a place and evacuating a person. The Wire - Evacuate Found one example of what they discussed in an NPR article today and is made me laugh.A woman evacuate her horse.

Prepositions are hard, and these are the ones that confuse me the most:

• It seems (...) [to / for] me
• It looks like (...) [to / for] me
• It feels (...) [to / for] me
• It sounds like (...) [to / for] me
• (...) makes more sense [to / for] me

Questions:

• Are both valid?
  • If both are valid; is there any nuance as to which to use?
  • If they aren't: is there a general rule or is it a case-by-case (as it usually is with prepositions)?

Thanks!

What are the comparative and superlative of the adjective "fun"? I'd say "more fun" and "most fun"...

But I'm somehow slightly tempted by "funnier" and "funniest", which should be for "funny" though, not "fun"...

I didn't find anything about this in the main dictionaries.

The em dash is called the em dash because on old typewriters it was as long as an M. Why do I feel closer to this punctuation mark than the others? It could be partly because I ignored it for so long that it is the last punctuation mark that I got to know, and when I found it, I learned that it could do the work of several other punctuation marks, especially my archrival, the semicolon!

I mean, semicolons have their place. In my opinion, two places: lists within lists can be indicated with semicolons, and when you want to show your English teacher that you were listening in class. That's about it.

I was taught that if I want to show that two independent clauses (an independent clause is a complete simple sentence) have a stronger connect than just being right next to each other, we can add a semicolon. And then they proceeded to show us examples of full, complex, sentences with semicolons between them. So, they weren't wrong, but they could have just said that they link two sentences to show a stronger connection--other specific syntactic units have nothing to do with it.

See what I did there? I used an em dash where a semicolon would have been. If you don't know where it is on your keyboard and your app doesn't make it automatically when you write a double dash, then a double dash (--) will do fine.

If you are among the continentally-challenged users of English, you may use a single dash ( - ) to achieve the same thing as a double dash. If you use the en dash, leave a space before and after the dash, but not with the em dash.

The em dash can also replace (parenthesis) or commas to set apart a phrase in the middle of a sentence.

"My best friend—the one who moved to Australia last year—just sent me a postcard."

So, we've now replaced the semicolon, parenthesis and commas in at least some of their uses. We're coming for you now, ellipsis.

The ellipsis (...) does a lot of things: omission, pause, cutting off a sentence part way through, and suspense. The em dash can be used for all but omission. So, if you leave out some text from the middle of a sentence, replace it with an ellipsis, but otherwise, you may want to use the em dash. When constructing an ellipsis, shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three.

When using an em dash to cut off a sentence, it comes across as a bit more harsh. "If I have to come in there again--" When you want it to kind of trail off more gently, maybe an ellipsis is called for. "But I thought Christie was..."

I've seen them replace quotation marks and colons, but that's not something I do with them.

I would be happy just to have them rid us of the semicolon and Kurt Vonnegut agrees with me. He said, "Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons... All they do is show you've been to college."

Thoughts?

Hi folks.

Can I ask: Is it better to say “We’ve got to get going” or “ We have to get going”?

I hear the former in conversation and it slightly irks me. I think it’s because of the redundancy (?) in the sentence. Which is better, grammatically? The latter feels cleaner. Am I wrong?

I’m a computer programmer. When we test programs, we often use a function called “assert” to check if the program produces the conditions we expect.

For example, this test will fail if the + produces an incorrect result:

assert( 2 + 3 ).equals(5)

Another meaning of “assert” in programming is “check, and take action, if necessary”. For instance, the procedure assertDataPresent() may check if the data has already been loaded. If it hasn’t, the function would try to do so, so that in either case the data is present after the procedure is executed.

Which of these meanings is the more common one in regular English? Can “assert” even be used in these ways outside programming?

My Microsoft account at work made me re-think this because it is pushing me to add more commas that I usually do.

I'm of two minds here. On one hand, punctuation is for clarity. If a sentence is clear without additional hyphens or commas, you could argue that they are not needed. For example:

I want ice cream too. (Acceptable in informal writing.)

I want ice cream, too. (Expected in formal writing.)

I want to eat, mom. (Always a good idea.) I want to eat mom. (Or the police could be involved.)

Or with hyphens when putting two adjectives before a noun, as with: "a well-known author" or "a high-speed chase." With both of these, leaving out the hyphen would not change the meaning or cause confusion.

However, with "high-school students" vs "high school students" the police could get involved again over omitting the hyphen.

I tend toward leaving it out unless it improves clarity or changes meaning.

Now for the Oxford comma. Have we all seen the memes?

However you feel about strippers, is would probably be less confusing if "the strippers, Kennedy, and Stalin" suddenly arrived, than it would be if "the strippers, Kennedy and Stalin" arrived.

Not using the Oxford comma can make the phrase ambiguous, but when it doesn't become ambiguous, as with, "Get me the carrots, potatoes and celery", we can really leave it out without problems.

I go back and forth on these. Even the most careful writers and editors can fail to see the ambiguity in their phrases, so choosing to always include the punctuation is a good way to go. Then again, if you feel confident and want to remove the clutter, I can respect that too. If you have a style guide you must follow, do that, if not, then stay consistent with whatever you choose.

Thoughts? Or more fun examples are welcome.