By Nouns, Football

Dear Jim, Where is this paragraph taken from? And is the following your explanation of the text ? The bad condition of his eyes came about suddenly; he was not expecting it.When blindness comes, it will be as if someone shut him up in the dark. (No one is really going to shut him up in the...

Hela wrote: PS: Please do not forget to answer my previous question: Dear MrP, why should we write "Bill Gates' achievements" and not "Bill Gates's achievements" and still pronounce /geitsiz/? Is it the same for "James' house" (or "James's house")? Hello Hela I would take the terminal s in...

Hvpl wrote:I understand that certain nouns (collective nouns?) that do not have a plural word. E.g. aircraft, rain and perspiration. However, I come across such usage, specially in Asia. "Many aircraftS are taking off and landing at this airport." or "Beads of perspirationS fell from his...

CalifJim wrote:Can you give examples?No. That was the point of the "maybe" and the question marks.Here's another "maybe":Maybe it's just that the original sounds like a statement of a definition, and in that context "where" sounds too informal to me. We'd never see "where" used that way in a...

From Cambridge: diehard, die-hard Show phonetics noun DISAPPROVING someone who is unwilling to change or give up their ideas or ways of behaving, even when there are good reasons to do so: a diehard conservative/fan A die-hard fan of a Philadelphia Eagles football team (for...

A line is an expression, speech or monologue that is designed to unfairly (through manipulation of feelings or outright mendacity, for instance) influence the listener toward some goal concocted by the speaker-- such as sex, power, respect, etc. Many young men have lines which they hope...

You know well the first one in both two pairs is a correct collocation. The 'it' is what grammarians call as "preparatory it"("prep it"). It is very difficult to explain this prep it grammatically in some cases where the 'it' represents a wh-clause. Isn't IT amazing how well he plays football?...

You can use a fraction as a subject as long as you write it like "two thirds of X" not like "2/3 of X". As for the verb's form, use a verb in singular form when the noun X is singular, and use a verb in plural form when the noun X is plural. "Two-fifths of the football players were lost in...

"... is big football club" and "... going to library" are impossible. A noun which is singular and countable must have a determiner, usually "a(n)" or "the". There are a few exceptions, as in "... going to school", but not many. If the noun is not singular ("... are big football clubs") or the...

I'd say 'to' fits quite well. As for bottling...I've only heard 'bottle off' in this kind of connection: 1. The band played abysmally, and were bottled off the stage. i.e. they were forced to retreat in a hail of beer bottles. Related verbs are 'bottle out', 'to have lost one's bottle',...