Many a man died in that battle.   My understanding of many mean more than 2 and a man mean 1.  But in the sentence above, these two words are put together and I wonder what does it really mean? How can you have many one man died in that battle?
15286
Can someone please elucidate the difference between "many" and "many a"? In what context of usage should we add an extra "a" beside the word "many"?  For example:         Many times, I had seen that . . . .   Many a times, I had seen that . . . .      I do not know if the example is accurate enough to support my question, but I would like to know the difference between how they are used.
45682
I just read about a guy that was beaten to the punch several times. I couldn't find a meaning of that using my dictionary or Google, so what does that mean?
102615
Why is there a comma after "his" in the headline? Does this mean his AND his wife's experience? Is it correct english, or slang?  "Man discusses his, wife's experience being injured during the Boston marathon bombings."  Source:
95150
Could you please tell me which sentence is correct?   It's not worth learning many a language when you haven't got the opportunity to use them. It's not worth learning many a language when you haven't got the opportunity to use it.   Until now, I've only known that "many a + singular noun" takes a singular verb. Unfortunately, I've never heard about the correct pronoun for it.  Before I posted this question, I'd done some searching and  is the only one that I've found useful. But it seems to be a mere opinion, not an officially accepted usage or something like that. What I really want is a widely accepted usage.  Please enlighten me. Thanks in advance.  P/s: This is not a duplicate of . In other words, I've already known the use of "many" vs "many a". You can clearly see that my question isn't about "many" vs "many a". In addition to that, the link above refers to a question that doesn't even mention anything about "pronoun" while mine is mainly about it.
50667
There is a shirt with a sentence written on it. The sentence is :       I can't people today   What does it mean? I've seen  and I know that "people" can be a verb but in this special case, I don't get the meaning of the phrase.
35589
I came across this :     Unbelievable as it may seem, many individuals that fought in the   American Revolution were still alive in 1839, the year the world was introduced to photography. (choose the error - the 'answer' is in bold)   It noted that the reason "that fought" is wrong is that 'The relative pronoun “that” may not be used to refer to people (“individuals”) and should be replaced with the relative pronoun “who.”'   I had thought that the word "that" could refer to both people and objects (while which was reserved for objects and who reserved for people). Am I wrong?
51861
With all the "Royal baby" craze comes something that really confuses me. All the news media used pretty much the same sentence to make the announcement:      The Duchess of Cambridge has been delivered of a son.   A couple of questions:   Why not "The Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to a son" or "delivered a baby", or something along those lines? Why is "of" used in this structure, and what purpose does it serve?   From a non-native English speaker's perspective, this sentence doesn't seem to make any sense at all to me.
11868
Suppose John has 5 sweets. Is there any difference between the following two sentences?     Jack has 3 times as many sweets as John.      Jack has 3 times more sweets than John.   I prefer the first construction and would know unambiguously that Jack has 15 sweets in this case. However in the second construction I would be inclined to think that Jack has 20 sweets, since it seems to suggest 15 sweets in addition to the original 5.
68948
I would like to ask how people who are familiar with English interpret these sentences regarding the nouns that can be both count and noncount nouns.  (1) I have to make more cake/cakes to offer a wide variety of bakery products for my own business.  (2) France is famously known for having more cheese/cheeses than there are days in the year.  My foreign teachers went for plural noun in (1), but they chose the bare form for (2). I have them chose only one form for each item. For me (I'm Thai), I just want some explanations because both items represent "a variety of sth", so why these two are treated differently.
44482
I heard this in  movie. It was my op. What does it mean? Googling gave me : 'Original Poster'. But that doesn't seem very meaningful.
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".
54404
"Look into the motives which have induced men, once united by their   common needs in a general society, to unite themselves still more   intimately by means of civil societies: you will find no other motive   than that of assuring the property, life and liberty of each member by   the protection of all."   Would anyone please tell me what the following means?, or what does than that of assuring mean?     ... than that of assuring the property, life and liberty of each member   by the protection of all."   And, Would you possibly elaborate this:assuring the property, life and liberty of each member by the protection of all.
35260
Today I said some event was a couple of weeks away. A native speaker from Australia corrected me and said, no it's at least three weeks away. What followed was a discussion as to whether a couple always means two, or if it can mean more than two.  What does a couple, in particular a couple of weeks, mean to a native speaker?  According to :        Two partners in a romantic or sexual relationship.   Two of the same kind connected or considered together.   (informal) A small number.      According to :        two people or things of the same sort considered together:   'a couple of girls were playing marbles'   [treated as singular or plural] two people who are married or otherwise closely associated romantically or sexually:   'in three weeks the couple fell in love and became engaged'   'a honeymoon couple'   [informal] An indefinite small number      Yet my colleague — a native speaker — insists that a couple never means three, although there can be a small error bar on the two. We asked one other native speaker who agrees with him, yet three non-native speakers point at the above-mentioned sources to claim they're wrong. But it's a bit tricky for non-native speakers to claim native speakers are wrong. Note that both native-speakers are from Australia/New Zealand.
55146
I never saw anyone work as hard as he did, many a time I saw him on the weekends working to his highest standards to give the best research he could give.   From the context, I understand many a time equals many times. My question is when we can use this structure. Can we, for example, say many a person in place of many people?  A link explaining this structure will be appreciated.
17014
The usage of singular and plural has always been confusing for me.   I often see sentences like these         People are using cell phones.   People are using a cell phone.      Does the first sentence mean everyone has a phone and they are all using their own?  Does the second sentence mean they are sharing one cell phone?   If I see a group of people holding a cell phone in their hand(s), &lt;- even this is confusing for me, should I use the first sentence then?   Another example: you see two men, and both of them are carrying a bag. Which sentence should I say/use?        They are carrying backpacks          They are carrying a backpack      Could you please make it clear for me?
78634
What's the meaning of 90-plus? More than 90? If so, please tell me more ways to say "more than 90". Thank you!
115802
I saw these sentences on the Internet:   There are three people here.  A few people didn't enjoy the play.    Now I'm not sure whether people and other collective nouns like team, family and police are countable nouns or uncountable nouns. Is there an explanation for how these words work?