What is the origin of the weird phrase 'many a [singular noun]'? It's extremely odd: for one thing, 'many' here is a predeterminer (very unusual), for another, it goes with a singular noun. What is the explanation for this bizarre structure?  additional question you may not answer: Is it stylistically neutral? How would it sound to a native speaker's ear? Isn't it something literary?
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.
31340
I'm having problems with hundred and thousand.   If someone asks you, How many trees are in this forest? Would you answer seven thousand or seven thousands, because thousands are countable?  I know that you usually say seven thousand, but I also know that thousands are countable, so wouldn't that make it seven thousands?  And when you are talking about multiple countable nouns, you would make it plural, but the plural isn't thousand, it's thousands, so it couldn't be that thousand is the plural.  Why isn't it a few thousands? Is it because of an exception in English? Any help would be appreciated.
118823
I'm Soumya, an author from India.  A reader has challenged me about the use of the word 'hairs' in my book. I have used, 'a few hairs' and that's justified, as hair is a countable noun in that very phrase. But I'm at a confusion for some other sentences. Could you kindly tell me if I'm wrong grammatically?   "The evening zephyr ruffled their long flowing hairs - the Indian village girl's shiny, black hair, and Audrey's curly blonde hair." "They had golden or brown or ashen hairs." "His black and white hairs had now turned into complete white."   Could you please help? Thank you!
48781
I want to discuss the structure of ''There are/is''. First of all, what is the difference between:  There are three children.  and  Three children exist.  Do they have the same meaning? And secondly, In my native language, we would say that  Üç çocuk vardır.  &quot;Üç çocuk&quot; = Three children, &quot;var&quot; = existence (something  that exists, a being), and &quot;dır&quot; is a copula. So basically, this structure is not different from -for example- ''three children is a car''. ''a car'' and ''existence'' have the same function. But ın English, that structure that I have mentioned is confusing for me. I know that you are all used to it. Some can say ''What's the problem with that? It is just ''there are'' and ''there is.'' ''. I realize that I still did not ask a question. Well, let me try to ask a good one, I guess. Normally, ''there'' means a place where I am not in that place. Is there any relevance between ''there'' that means a place where I am not in that place AND ''There'' that is used in the structure of ''There are/is''? What kind of structure is this? By the way, I am new in English. Please excuse my naive usage of language. What do you think about it?
19987
Our proofreader, a native speaker of American English, just won't let me use this word. Every single time I try to sneak it onto one of our sites, she replaces it with three times. Now, I do realize that thrice is quirky, but how quirky is it really? Is it awfully archaic? Is there a chance that native speakers won't understand it at all?  I know I could just search a corpus or five, but I don't feel like looking at cold stats (or the , for that matter). Instead, I am asking members of this community for their very personal, highly subjective, extremely biased opinions.
71772
In the following sentence:     The city is populated by many people.   "many" can be replaced by something like "a great number of" (let us leave the perceived differences between the meanings of these two modifiers out of discussion):     The city is populated by a great number of people.   I understand that this replacement does not change the object "populating the city" from the original "people" to a "number", but rather shows the ability of expressions in the form "[numeral] of" to provide information about the quantity of nouns they modify.  Is this ability due to some special qualities of nouns such as "number", "quantity", "fraction", &amp;c., or is it just one usage of the preposition "of"?
26598
I noticed an infinite article; ‘a’ was used before ‘defeated Napoleon’ in the following sentence of Jeffery Archer’s novel, "Fales Impression" :  “General Sir Harry Wentworth sat at the right hand of the Iron Duke that night, and was commanding his left flank when a defeated Napoleon rode off the battlefield and into exile."  I’m curious to know why it should be “a defeated Napoleon,” not “the defeated Napoleon” or simply “defeated Napoleon.” Isn’t it only one Napoleon who was defeated the battle and exiled (to St. Helena). It looks like as though there were many (defeated) Napoleons who were exiled.  It’s always headache for me to handle articles as we Japanese (I think Chinese too) don’t have article as the basic part of speeches in our language system. I’ve studied it on English grammar text books at school, but have never reached full understanding of the usage of articles, because we don’t have that practice. Is there any special knack to master how to use articles?
50906
I was told that abstract nouns don't get articles. (You can  for example). But I found many abstract nouns that get indefinite articles, such as: "", "", "", "", "a love", "a wish", "a difference", "a power" and more. What is the explanation for that?
124163
I usually use the plural form after "some."   Example:     I bought some books about France   But I would also say some source states that France is best toured in fall.  Is there a specific grammar rule? May I say that in the second sentence I am really thinking at a very specific source, so singular is needed?
77299
Difference between "much, many, a lot of and lots of"  What is the difference between them?  Are they synonyms or not?
95759
Where did the phrases "a cut above the rest" and "a cut below the rest" come from? I'm supposing they came from the same source. I feel it something very obvious, but I don't know what.
21938
Is there any alternative to this construction?      It was too stupid a question.    I mean, can we somehow put the 'a' in a different position and is it used in English (maybe informal) or the version I've given is the only possible?  Also, I feel as if something's wrong in my previous sentence, it would be very nice if anybody corrected it.
15004
What is the correct term to use, or what is the difference between the two?  For instance, if you describe yourself as a founder in a resume it sounds like you founded something alone. In plural form (founders), it suddenly seems more like co-founders - that you didn't do it alone. But I don't know if co-founder alone maybe sounds as if you didn't have a leading role in the founding part.   Hope anyone can clear up my confusion here! Thanks  CC (From Denmark - if the grammar isn't perfect I apologize in advance ;)
15618
Formally, is it correct to write:     A number of questions has been asked here.   or:     A number of questions have been asked here.   As a non-native speaker of English, I would prefer the former: the subject seems to be "number", therefore the verb ought to be singular, I'd say. However, the latter seems more common, and therefore I believe that my gut feeling is just plain wrong — but I would really like to have a definite answer.  Moreover, is it the same for "a myriad of", "a plethora of", and so on?
87148
People care way too much about their appearance/ appearances?   Google provides much more evidence for the singular but I have learnt not to trust it. In a formal essay I would opt for the plural since people do not share the one appearance, but I would like some clarification with this if possible.   The older question  is different from mine because the plural form has no other meaning. Whereas the word appearances, the plural can mean physical appearances as it can multiple looks.  Furthermore, it would be incorrect to use the sentence "people love their life" as it implies they share one. Yet lives has two meanings as well. Why is the plural correct in that context? So I was hoping for an explanation on this.
70087
What kind of verb, singular or plural, goes with phrases like "a record of [singular or plural noun]", "the use of", "the time of"? Does the choice depend on the following nouns (a record of nouns) or on the 'first' nouns (record, use, time)? Or do these phrases obey the rule of proximity (as does "a variety of")?  I have found different example sentences on the internet (source: newspapers or magazines) with different uses. What is correct?  Examples:   there were a record of other issues; there were a record of 28,000 runners; there was a record of these statements.
98599
I've been wondering, since these example numbers end with 1, isn't it natural to use the following noun in its singular form?  From what I've been seeing around on the web this does not seem to be the case. All numbers except for 1 are followed by plural nouns.  In some languages you do need to use the singular form with the numbers ending with 1.  How is it supposed to be in English?