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The part of the sentence which names the person or the thing we are talking about is called the subject. This is a bad definition. Verbs are words that describe actions. A subject is a property of …

In the first sentence, play is an infinitive, and playing is a gerund. Both of those are "non-finite" verbs. It's really hard to easily express the difference in meaning between infinitive and gerund. …

You want to use a relative pronoun here to connect "He was in a quandary about which selection from his extensive repertoire" and "X would be feasible to perform for the children." I believe The "X wo …

It's possible to relate to and draw ALL of the following things: breath, meaning, and inspiration. If two verbs can apply to a complement, combining them with and is normal. I washed and dried the cl …

Do we always have to add what we swapped/traded it for in sentences like these? No--if it's not specified, either context will fill in that information, or the speaker/writer doesn't think that what …

Professional, royal, government, and family roles, such as teacher, boss, co-worker can be considered abstract and don't need the article, especially after as. But it's OK to use it as well, because t …

To X identifies a destination or target. So go up to X means when you have completed going up, you are wanting your location to be X. She wants to go up the mountain. No destination is specified. S …

CGEL talks about the nestable "head"--"constituent" structure that English uses for many things. If you connect multiple structures with and, and all such structures have the same "head", the head of …

Level up is a phrase derived from video games and is appropriate to use when talking about things you do in a video game or possibly if you're trying to use video-game terms to relate to others. Outs …

Tom died 15 years ago. He has 3 sons. Even though Tom has passed on, Tom still exists in this sentence and in at least the memories of his sons. Use of has is appropriate. Tom died 15 years …

It's passive voice if adding by X after confirmed would make sense. A speaker/writer may not add the by X for a few reasons: the speaker/writer has already said who/what X is and doesn't want to be …

Empathize isn't transitive, so you need a prepositional phrase if you want to express the action as being directed in some way. With is common with empathize: to empathize with X means to share feeli …

Born this way - you were "this way" the moment you were born. Born to be X - you were not X when you were born, but are destined to be X as you grow up. To be X often means "planning to do X" or "de …

The X means the speaker is expecting the listener to know which specific X he/she is talking about, either from previous conversation, context, or shared experience/common knowledge. It can also be …

If you look up the word to via Google (I used the search term "to definition") - Google gives the part of speech of the "infinitival to" as infinitive marker - basically putting it in its own category …