117
votes
Accepted
Is "I was had" standard English?
Oh, wow, that's a much more complex bit of word-play than it seemed in the title of the question.
The expression "was had" is an idiom that means "was cheated or tricked", and is perfectly valid ...
- 8,206
61
votes
"Four is better" vs "Four are better". Which one is correct?
The answer depends on the exact wording.
If you say exactly what you wrote, "One cake is good but four is/are better", then the correct answer is "are". There's an implied "...
- 62.2k
51
votes
Accepted
Does this make sense to a native speaker? "despite the real Jones is living in a cave!"
Most of the people just wanna keep up with the Joneses, despite the real Jones is living in a cave!
This sentence is understandable to native speakers, but there is a grammar error. You may have ...
- 21k
51
votes
Is 'sarcasm ill becomes' a grammatically correct phrase?
ill becomes is an idiomatic phrase that means "is not suitable for", or "is not appropriate for"; an old-fashioned meaning for become is "to be appropriate or suitable; to ...
- 40.8k
46
votes
Why can't you say "A doll was made me by my sister"?
For some reason, English allows you
to turn a prepositional phrase (“My sister made a doll for me”) into an indirect object (“My sister made me a doll”), called a dative shift, or
to turn an active-...
- 6,426
44
votes
Accepted
Why is "He is the kind of person who, if he had lived ..., people would not have been able to categorise him." ungrammatical?
First, as others have pointed out in the comments, the sentence uses "who" when it should use "whom." Even native speakers fail to correctly distinguish between "who" and "whom". It is common for "who"...
- 7,237
43
votes
Accepted
Is "says you" grammatically correct?
It does not conform to standard grammar, but is fairly common in speech.
Treat it as an idiom. It only works with "says", not other verbs.
- 73.7k
43
votes
"She need not worry" or "she needs to not worry"?
As Void says, need (at least for some speakers) is a semimodal, and can be used in both of those ways.
But She need not worry has a very different meaning from She needs to not worry.
She need not ...
- 73.7k
41
votes
Accepted
Is "slightly ajar" a tautology?
Redundancy or a pleonasm can be a device used by an author. That doesn't make it a grammar mistake. In some contexts, redundancy is avoided, but in many contexts it is just a natural aspect of ...
- 204k
39
votes
In how many ways can something not be right?
There are a multitude of ways we can approach this. There are a lot of classifications and labels for things that can be reasonably marked as wrong in language. For instance, an error might happen in ...
- 7,351
39
votes
Accepted
What does this sentence in Harry Potter mean?
As was pointed out on that other question you linked, this is a surprisingly tricky sentence!
Let's slowly build it up.
It will take someone else.
What is "it"? Stopping Voldemort again. Implied ...
- 8,225
38
votes
Why is "John makes Bob looks short." wrong?
*John makes Bob looks short.
make is a causative verb. langeek explains:
The structure of making this type of causative is as follows: Subject + Causative Verb + Object + non-finite clause
A non-...
- 7,689
36
votes
Meaning of 'What are they upto?'
"Upto" is not a word, but two separate words, "up to":
What are they up to?
To be up to something means to be doing something. It often (but not always) carries a connotation of mischief or ...
- 40.8k
36
votes
"Four is better" vs "Four are better". Which one is correct?
I would tend towards is in this case, because to me the underlying meaning of this sentence is "(having) One cake is good, but (having) 4 is better"
Using are here sounds vaguely off to me ...
- 510
34
votes
Accepted
Can things "grow smaller"?
Oxford lists three primary meanings for the word grow. The first two reflect what we often immediately think of when we think about growing:
grow (v.) to undergo natural development by increasing ...
J.R.♦
- 109k
34
votes
Accepted
When the Gentle Giant song "Black Cat" refers to a cat as "she", does that mean the cat is female?
In English, there is no grammatical gender that is different from biological gender.
However, there is a tradition in what you call 'folk language' of referring to unknown cats as female and unknown ...
- 49.5k
33
votes
Can things "grow smaller"?
Grow and smaller aren't linked the way you are interpreting it. The sentence is saying that fish that used to reach a certain size in adulthood aren't growing that big in a warmer ocean, they are ...
- 1,695
32
votes
Is "motivate people's willingness" grammatically correct?
You are right that sentence 2 is better, since it is people not willingness which the site is attempting to motivate.
Even so, I think it is still too verbose. The words motivation and willingness ...
- 4,577
31
votes
Accepted
"She need not worry" or "she needs to not worry"?
That is fine. Need in that sentence is used as a modal auxiliary and we use the bare infinitive1 after modal auxiliaries. It's called a 'semi-modal' because it can act as both a modal verb (like ...
- 18k
31
votes
When the Gentle Giant song "Black Cat" refers to a cat as "she", does that mean the cat is female?
This cat is 100% a female.
There are no arbitrarily gendered nouns in English. The personal pronouns "he/she/him/her..." are only used when referring to nouns that are gendered by definition,...
- 48.9k
31
votes
Accepted
I ___(to read) your book. It's fantastic. I'll finish it tonight
The verb read has two different pronunciations, its present simple form /riːd/ and its past simple form /red/. Neither tense belongs to the sample sentence
a) I read your book [at the moment]. It's ...
- 26.2k
30
votes
"In the 1970s, Viking space probes may have etc." - help for understanding
Your example is using probes as a noun.
A probe is a scientific instrument for analysis and measurement, e.g. a surgical probe.
- 66.2k
30
votes
Why not use "casualties" in "Small shops have been a casualty of the recession."?
The reason for the use of the singular casualty is to imply that small shops (collectively) are one casualty among many other groups of entities. Another example:
Private equity funds are a ...
- 88.1k
30
votes
"Too expensive for me to afford it" why ungrammatical?
As far as I can see, it is grammatical both with and without "it" at the end.
I think I would usually say it with "it", but I'm not certain.
- 73.7k
30
votes
What is the grammatical error in "Apart from Federer, I have not seen a stronger player"?
I don't think there's an error in that sentence. It's acceptable to start a sentence with a prepositional phrase, including ones like "except for" and "apart from".
Here is a page ...
- 446
30
votes
What is the grammatical error in "Apart from Federer, I have not seen a stronger player"?
This sentence says clearly and grammatically correctly that you have just been watching the second strongest or possibly strongest player you’ve ever seen, and that you have also seen Federer, who is ...
- 3,789
28
votes
Accepted
"has not sold" vs. "didn't sell"
Has not sold suggests that product #55 is still available for sale.
Here's a typical example:
My house has been on the market for two months. Why hasn't it sold?
This implies that the house is ...
- 27.5k
28
votes
Accepted
Could 'a' and 'single' be used together?
Yes, your sentence is correct.
How can a single photon be detected?
The indefinite article "a" tells me you want to know how to detect a photon, any photon, not a specific one. If you ...
- 1,991
27
votes
Accepted
Is it wrong to hyphenate a phrasal verb like "log in" or is it a matter of style?
In formal English, adding the hyphen to log in makes your sample sentence grammatically incorrect.
The hyphen has the effect of turning the phrasal verb into an adjective or a noun. For example, ...
- 7,696
27
votes
Is the sentence "This whiteboard won't erase" grammatically correct?
Merriam-Webster has already picked up this usage:
erase:
[intransitive verb]: to yield to erasure
There are a smallish number of examples on the internet, for instance
The new whiteboard erases ...
- 1,699
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