New answers tagged difference
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Is there any difference between "character traits" and "personality traits"?
Character trait has something of the feeling of ethics or morality, thus including such examples as honesty, greed, generosity, and duplicity. By contrast, personality trait is more neutral: shyness, ...
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4
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Accepted
I won’t be a jiffy
They don't mean exactly the same thing.
There are several words and phrases that mean a moment or a very short period of time. Some of these are predominantly British, but among them are 'jiffy', 'mo' ...
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it vs. this vs. that
The pronoun it (plural they) is definite — it can only be used if both the speaker and the listener(s) know what it refers to, and the referent is established using this, that, these, those or the ...
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"the" in "Algebra, arithmetic, ... are <the> branches of mathematics." and "Algebra, arithmetic, ... are <the> branches mathematics has."
Are the is exhaustive: John, Paul, George, and Ringo are the Beatles means that someone is a Beatle if and only if they are one of the four people listed. By contrast, John and Paul are Beatles ...
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Help me to understand the construction "Why + noun / adjective / adverb ?" in which there is not a verb
Your examples 2–4 are fine. Your 1b simply doesn’t work. A fragment Why is the X? begs to be completed: Why is the X Y? as in Why is the door open?
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Accepted
Why does "a different-coloured ink" make sense? I can find meaningful only "different-coloured inks"
different-colo(u)red inks refers to inks of multiple colors.
She drew a picture of a flower garden using different-coloured inks.
"different-colored ink" could be paraphrased as "ink ...
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Why does "a different-coloured ink" make sense? I can find meaningful only "different-coloured inks"
This is referring to some specific words within a larger body of words, with those words being written in a different-coloured ink to the rest of the text.
For example, I could ask someone to add some ...
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Isn't it convenient to pronounce "-man" in "salesman" and "-men" in "salesmen" differently as you do it in "man [mæn]" and "men [men]"?
A key difference between your two lists is their syllable counts.
There are few (if any) words with secondary stress on a syllable adjacent to the primary stress syllable.
Secondary stress can be ...
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‘in’ vs ‘after’ vs ‘later’
which ending sounds the most natural and grammatically correct for the
following sentence? and why?
even if you have the best teacher in the world, it’s not gonna matter
if you give up…
…after just a ...
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The difference between " considering formalities " with " standing on ceremony "
These are uncommonly used. "Considering formalities" makes perfect sense when used in the context of a sentence. I'd stick with that, unless you have a reason, as it is more common.
It's ...
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What is the difference between "pack of dogs", "dogs' pack" and "dog pack"?
A dog pack is a simple singularity, whereas a pack of dogs has a hint of the potentially chaotic. A pack of dogs can run amok.
But it's not about dogs; this is really about pack and whether the ...
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What is the difference between "pack of dogs", "dogs' pack" and "dog pack"?
They all mean the same thing essentially, but with subtle differences.
"Pack of dogs" - a "pack" is the collecting word for a group of dogs, but is also used for groups of other ...
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Is the phrase "Do not bring dangerous goods on board" correct?
The phrase you cite is perfectly good English, and "goods" is a traditional word to describe anything non-human carried by train. It would not look out of place on a train in Britain or ...
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Isn't it convenient to pronounce "-man" in "salesman" and "-men" in "salesmen" differently as you do it in "man [mæn]" and "men [men]"?
Where I'm from, all 3 of your examples are pronounced differently.
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Isn't it convenient to pronounce "-man" in "salesman" and "-men" in "salesmen" differently as you do it in "man [mæn]" and "men [men]"?
The words in your second list are far more common than those in the first. That everyday use is what contributes to the change in pronunciation.
John McWhorter in Words on the Move gives us the ...
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Isn't it convenient to pronounce "-man" in "salesman" and "-men" in "salesmen" differently as you do it in "man [mæn]" and "men [men]"?
Yes. That would be convenient.
But in English, unstressed vowels are often reduced to /ə/. So from a pronunciation point of view it is easier to say /ˈseɪlzmən/.
There are plenty of examples in your ...
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What is the difference between "southernmost", "most southern" and "most southerly"?
(1a) The southernmost point of England is "The Lizard". — I know it's
correct
Yes.
(1b) The most southern point of England is "The Lizard". — I know it's
incorrect
Why is this ...
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Can "copycats" and "plagiarists" be used interchangeably in business contexts?
Here is the distinction between "plagiarist" and "copycat:"
"Plagiarist" specifically refers to copying another person's writing or research. It does not -- for instance ...
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Can "copycats" and "plagiarists" be used interchangeably in business contexts?
In the setting you described, neither plagiarist nor copycat would be a natural choice. Plagiarist is descriptive / literary and might be used in a book or news publication. It attributes an identity ...
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What's the difference between these two definitions of ‘determination’?
It's certainly true that there is a close connection between definitions 2a and 2b, but they are not the same and cannot be merged.
To grasp this you need to understand that determine (the verb) has ...
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Accepted
What is the difference between these two defintions of "hold out"?
Your first (number 6) is intransitive. It means refraining from doing something. Your second (number 7) is transitive: one holds someone or something out, as in the example sentences you quote. It ...
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Is fair-to-middling better than middling?
English point of view.
Actually, it isn't directly related to the word acceptable.
It is from flour milling.
A yesteryear term for how the millstone was set up for grinding.
Fair (fine), middling or ...
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"Big" vs "Huge" vs "Massive" vs "Large" vs "Enormous"
One grammatical distinction is that "big" and "large" are gradable adjectives, while "huge", "massive" and "enormous" are extreme adjectives. As with ...
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Accepted
"Big" vs "Huge" vs "Massive" vs "Large" vs "Enormous"
"Big" and "Large" imply roughly the same size. The choice of one or the other is mostly a matter of idiom or personal choice.
Image from xkcd is a humorous take on this.
We say &...
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"What's the most you've ever won at poker?" — 1) What can "the most" imply: money or some other prizes or both?; 2) Can I remove "the"?
This is not a matter of English, but a question of how poker games are played. There is nothing in the question that refers explicitly to money, but you may assume that it is asking about money, ...
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What's the difference between these two definitions of ‘determination’?
The difference between 2a and 3b can be illustrated using the verb determine, which has meanings parallel to them. Consider
How did paleontologists determine the age of the fossil?
and
How did the ...
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"How ...?" vs. "What ... like?"
There has been a shift among native speakers of English, with How gaining ground over What...like over the past few decades. It is true that How connotes things like nature, essence, qualitative ...
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Do the suffixes -ic and -ous have the same meaning?
No, they need not have the same meaning. For example, "generous" and "generic" share a root but have very different meanings (from M-W) despite bearing those suffixes:
generous: &...
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Accepted
Do the suffixes -ic and -ous have the same meaning?
In chemistry, such terms almost always have distinct meanings. For example, ferric refers to compounds of Fe³⁺ and ferrous to compounds of Fe²⁺, nitric oxide is NO and nitrous oxide is N₂O, and so on....
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