Though I know the meaning of each word except 'duh', I have failed to realize the meaning of the following sentence.     Why do researchers get so many grants to do stuff that's like, well, duh?   Would anybody like to explain the meaning of above sentence?
82624
So like, I had this teacher? And he's like, &quot;You're late?&quot; And I'm like, &quot;There's like other people late too?&quot;  I've always cringed at the word &quot;like&quot; strewn about in a spoken sentence. Well now I've seen it in print, right in the middle of an otherwise articulate National Geographic article. Not once, but twice. As far as I could tell it was not being used tongue in cheek. In the Feb '10 issue, in the article about the Congo Chimps. See last two paragraphs here:   &quot;Sure enough, they built their nests directly over our tents,&quot; says Morgan. &quot;I was like, This is great! But our trackers were like, No way, man, this is very bad news.&quot; &quot;People were like, Curiosity: Hmmm, how do you define that?&quot; says Sanz, 34, now a professor at Washington University in St. Louis.&quot;  When I read that I had to shake my head and go back to re-read those sentences. I'm just curious what people think of this, and if you have seen any other examples in like a literate context?
89112
As always, while reading through I found a sentence whose structure confused me.  What I want to know is whether the first sentence is the inversion form of the second sentence.      1. If the reason was to avoid bad publicity should his error be discovered, then . . .      2. If the reason was his error be discovered to avoid bad publicity, then . . .   If not, how should I interpret the first sentence?  Thanks.
39885
A couple of times I've seen a phrase much like "that's horrible coding &mdash; and I would know from horrible coding!" This seems extremely peculiar to me (if only because of how ungrammatical it is), and while I can guess that it's supposed to be some emphatic way to indicate the subject's authority on the matter, it's pretty unusual and I don't fully grasp it.  Unfortunately, I don't have a good verbatim example on hand, so it's possible my memory is muddling the context of the phrase slightly.  Anyway, what does this bizarre turn of phrase mean exactly and where does it come from?
54500
What does the actual phrase above mean?
45832
I am not sure of the meaning of this sentence:     The significance of culture and identity in development has to do not so much with the cultural factor in the process of development as with abandoning Eurocentric development thinking.   I'm not sure what the use of as is supposed to convey. Does it mean "development has to do not so much ... as with abandoning", i.e. not as much as abandoning? Does the abandoning have more to do with it?  And the second question: Why does it use "has to do not so much". Why not "has not so much to do"? Is "have to" a verb?
13804
I hope this qualifies as a programming question, as in any programming tutorial, you eventually come across 'foo' in the code examples. (yeah, right?)  what does 'foo' really mean?  If it is meant to mean nothing, when did it begin to be used so?
55990
I am not a native speaker and it sometimes surprise me how many different meanings some words have. An example is the word call - when I was learning English I thought it was only "shout" or "to ring someone" but the list of meanings is almost endless:  .  What are some other such words so that I can be careful when interpreting their meaning? As if I could execute the query "give me a top ten list of words with most definition lines on TheFreeDictionary".
114233
Man: What do you think of the view?  Droid: I do not think of it.  Man: I don't think of it. I don't. Droids and apostrophes, I could write a book, except you are... barely a droid anymore.  (c) Deep Breath  I can't understand the difference between do not and don't in this case. I'd be grateful if somebody helps.
43284
There is a sentence:     No sooner had he sat down than he fell asleep.   I just do not understand, is this an inversion? And if so, I still do not understand the sentence.
13489
For , a desire for concision motivated me originally to use 'somewhy' instead of 'for some reason'; afterwards, a user kindly advised that 'somewhy' obsolesced. Why?  Google introduced me to , whose author delineates his confusion of the absence and his reasoning justifying 'somewhy' (identical to mine). Though his questions have not been answered and " "Somewhy" didn't appear in the dictionaries I [he] checked " , OED's entry does not answer our questions either:      {adv.} = {rare.}      For some reason or reasons.   Postscript: I read this , which displays the correlatives for 'why', but doesn't explain their obscurity. The lone prevalent exception is 'therefore'.
3246
Could you explain me please, why sometimes the word "mile" is used in singular, sometimes in plural, while in both cases it refers to several and not 1 mile.  Example:     They took part in a 26 mile long swimming race.   After 12 miles he got tired.   Thanks in advance to those who can enlighten me!
3037
Example:     Just because he does not say very much is no reason to sell him short. Actually, he's a profound thinker and a most talented writer. People tend to underestimate him and not give him the credit he deserves because they think he's shy.   How do you understand it grammatically? If it means the same thing as the most talented writer, then what's the difference?
123513
A phrase I came across tonight was "Here's the good news and the bad news." Trouble is, "Here's" means "Here is", and "is" is meant for one thing, not two things. I'm describing two things. However, "Here are the good news and the bad news" sounds bizarre.  What to do?
3655
I'm not sure about the sentence structure below:  All kinds of problems arise that smaller animals or plants do not have to cope with.  It looks like that works as a relative pronoun for all kinds of problems, but I couldn't find such usage in my dictionary or online. This sentence could be divided into  There are all kinds of problems. Smaller animals or plants do not have to cope with all kinds of problems.  But, I can't figure out where 'arise' fits. If you have any thoughts, please share them.
110831
Head or tail sound fine to my ESL ears.  What's the reasoning behind the plural usage?  I looked it up on etymonline but didn't find anything interesting.
71399
Lately, something has struck me.  I've been hearing several expressions in English, some clearly borrowed from French and preserving their noun-adjective form.  Some examples are:  Attorney General Secretary General Court Martial Notary Public   I suspect there are more that I have missed.  However, in each of the 4 cases listed above, I feel 'OK' saying them the 'English' way; that is, adjective-noun, which is the way we almost always do things except for these borrowed phrases.  One might receive a statement from the General Attorney, or be sent to a Martial Court.  My father is actually a lawyer and does indeed describe himself as a Public Notary.  Doing things this way makes the plural sound a lot more sensible in English, too; which sounds better: General Secretaries, or Secretaries General?  How common is it for people to flip these borrowed phrases around and say them the more standard English adjective-noun way?  Might it be clearer in the long run if we did so?
54706
I've encountered this strange and rather odd (to me) usage of the preposition 'against', which I quite can't grasp as of now. I've tried to look it up in several dictionaries to no avail.