Is there any appropriate English terminology for changing the part of speech (of a word) without applying any modification?   This is a concept including verbing (where the verb verb means "to use a word that is not conventionally used as a verb, typically a noun, as a verb").   Korean has a term  for it, but I'd like to know the English one.
31009
This is in very common use on the internet. I just read this:     "[The] hotel employee walks in, I say "uh, puppy" and she just NOPEd the [heck] out of the room."   This is often done by adding 'd to the word.
5617
There are a number of questions e.g.  and  that deal with the slightly different connotations of the words "speak" and "talk". However, there also seem to be some grammatical differences between the two words. This question is about whether there's a way to formally pin down these differences, or whether they're just contingent features of the two words having different histories.  Some examples of grammatical differences are as follows:   be talkative ... be speakative speak French ... talk French give a talk ... give a speech (as opposed to a speak) speak up ... talk up (the meanings of the two phrases being completely different, with "up" being a preposition only in the latter case) speaking of which ... talking of which grammatically speaking ... grammatically talking   On the other hand, many other constructions work just as well with either (though they might have subtly different meanings), for example   speak to ... talk to speak with ... talk with speak about ... talk about   I'm interested in whether there's a way to pin down these differences (e.g. are the two words classified as different types of verb in some way?), or whether they're essentially just arbitrary. I'm also interested in why we have these two different words with subtly different meanings. Is the distinction between “speak” and “talk” a feature of many languages, or is it just a peculiarity of English?  Etymologically, both words are from Germanic origins. “Talk” seems to have been formed from the Middle English tale, even though “speak” already existed in the English language by then (as far as I can tell). This makes it even more mysterious: Why did we form a new word as a synonym of one that was already established? Or were the meanings different at that time?
92409
It is generally taught that  function as adjectives modifying a noun (or pronoun).  In a sentence such as:     A major accident occurred on our bus's route to school, making us late for class.   or     The gas tank exploded, sending shrapnel through the air.   are the participle phrases modifying their preceding clauses? (If not, what are they modifying?)
95997
Can you explain to me whether I should or should not use ‑s at the end of the  verb allow in this sentence?     This function requires that the container class allow[s] random access   The sentence in the book I read wrote allow without ‑s. However, the container class is a third-person singular, so the ‑s must be required. Is that right?
69525
I just read a book to learn English. And the topic I read is about the phrasal verbs, but a big doubt has come up to my mind.  Is it correct to change the position of the preposition (putting it with the verb instead of after the direct object)?  As in:  Common structure:   My wife backs me up over my decision to quit my job. We have to blow 50 balloons up for the party.  I need to break these shoes in before we run next week. Please help me out to get this job done.   So, would it be correct to do the following:   My wife backs up me over my decision to quit my job. We have to blow up 50 ballons for the party.  I need to break in these shoes before we run next week. Please help out me to get this job done.
83426
I am working on my accent and pronunciation. I use  and it says that in spoken English, speakers usually run words together.  For example, "Run them all together" turns into "Runnemalld'gether." I have two questions here.   Is there any rule when we can reduce th sound?  Is it acceptable in business meeting and academic speaking to reduce th and running word together?
11020
Could you please remind me what term linguists and the grammar people use to call it when it's used as a subject pronoun, but the funky thing is that it doesn't really refer back to anything in particular like he, she or we usually do which do refer back to a person or an animal that they stand for.  In grammar-speak, when it is used like that they say that it has no antecedent. I think I knew the term, but I unfortunately forgot it. I did a Google search, but the only thing I could find was empty subject. But the truth is that I don't think that's what they actually use in linguistics. Would you please refresh my memory?  Examples:        It's quite cold today outside. So, I don't really wanna go out.   Did I solve that math problem? Yes. Actually, it was very easy to get it cracked. There was really nothing to it!   Don't mention it! It's nothing. I really like to help people who are in need.
76039
I have always heard the term used in referring to a single word. When browsing questions on this site, I've seen it used applied to entire phrases, and have suppressed the compulsion to edit them and replace the term with origin.
25772
Primary question: A common speaking mistake is to exchange syllables of words, saying "It's trace rhyme!" instead of saying "It's race time!", or pronouncing "kickin' chackatory" instead of "chicken cacciatore." Is there an existing name in poetry, linguistics, or English studies for switching syllables of (quasi-)consecutive words? I am not especially interested in the case when switching syllables results in interpretable homonyms or portmanteaus, like in the first example.  Secondary question: if not, what would you call it?  Tertiary question: is there somewhere a (playful?) taxonomy of fruitful or unfruitful lingual aberrations?
108564
I saw a spelling mistake on an SO question: submittion. That got me wondering, is there a name for the shift of ‑mit‑ to ‑miss‑ in submission, permission, admission and so on? Are there other patterns like this in English words? (Not simple stuff like dropping an e for confuse/confusion) and if so, are these patterns related to the language we took the word from?
122174
It looks like you can't use \verb|...| inside of \textbf{...}. I tried the following:  \textbf{Be very careful when using \verb|-i| as it's destructive and it's not reversible!}   And got this error:  ! LaTeX Error: \verb illegal in command argument.   Any ideas?
1920
I've come across the phrase "Listen carefully to what I say" and I'm really not sure why carefully has gone in between listen and to. It doesn't happen with other verbs; you don't "switch carefully on the light", for example.  When can an adverb follow a verb, and when can it not?
30658
This is something I always get confuse with (native language German). As far as I know "did + verb" is something done and finished in the past. But isn't it the same with "verb + ed"?
15161
There is a function in Arabic grammar where you may bring forward in sentence order a word - as well as deferring it.  For example: if the sentence order is Subject - Verb - Object, you can bring the object forward to be before the subject,  yielding Object - Verb - Subject or Object - Subject - Verb.  Similarly, if you have Noun Phrase - Verb Phrase, you can move the verb phrase forward so you get Verb Phrase - Noun Phrase.  This is used to add emphasis to the item brought forward. The same applies to moving the item to the end of the sentence.  Is there a grammatical term in English that represents this function or functions?
59415
I have a sentence which has an object that is described with an adjective:     We need to inform our interested patrons of this change.   If I modify "interested" with "more" or "less", do I connect the words with a hyphen or not?  Example sentence:     We need to inform our less-interested patrons of this change.     Also, please let me know if I have not used the correct terms for sentence parts in this question.
22324
As a nonnative speaker of English I was always taught in school that there are verbs that cannot be used in the continuous form, i.e.  the stative verbs. However, I've seen some stative verbs used in the continuous form in American English, especially the verbs wish, feel, hope, guess, love and like. Is using these stative verbs in the continuous form wrong? If it's not, what's the difference between using them in the simple and continuous forms?
76538
In many languages, including English, the most important verbs are irregular. Examples include:   to be  to do  to get  to go  to have  to make   The same applies (roughly) to many other languages I know about (Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Swedish) and presumably to many other languages too.  Is there any reason why these everyday verbs tend to be irregular?