Hmm, not quite. "I got out of the bus but didn't come into the house right away" would be very awkward as "I got out of the bus except I didn't come into the house right away." Even the paperback novel version, "I got out of the bus all right.

For real folk conversation on this topic, people mostly use phrases rather than individual words. He can't make up his mind (or he can never make up his mind), she doesn't know whether she's coming or going, he doesn't know how to make a decision

Here's what the Word-detective website has to say: In his book "In Love With Norma Loquendi" (a collection of his Sunday New York Times Magazine columns, published by Random House in 1994), Mr. (William) Safire provides two possible origins for

They both have the sense of singling out a discordant element. The "however" meaning attaches to a word that can be translated as "but" in most languages, but the "only" meaning is specifically Germanic and is a relict of Saxon in the English

Paul Simon wrote an easier one a generation earlier: I knew a man, his brain was so small, He couldn't think of nothing at all. He's not the same as you and me. He doesn't dig poetry. He's so unhip that When you say Dylan, he thinks

Given "I got so high that i scratched 'till i bled," (2nd line) I would say one possibility for "I'm on a plain" is "I'm holding steady and smooth on my heroin/coke buzz for the day and I'm not coming down for a good long while yet." Various

No other online Merriam-Webster fans here? Dub (transitive verb) 1 a : to confer knighthood on b : to call by a distinctive title, epithet, or nickname 2 : to trim or remove the comb and wattles of 3 a : to hit (a golf ball) poorly b : to

Wouldn't "that was written using poor English" be a misuse of a participle? The writing, per se, was not done using any kind of English. It was done using a writing implement such as a pen or a computer. On the other hand, what began as a

One interesting new teacher is Google. If you want to find out if a phrase is being used in the way you're using it, just type it into google in quotation marks, as in "sweets and ices." If the phrase is widely used, as this one is, then you'll

In my view, none of them is correct. Maybe other readers might have a different perspective, but to me, 'as... as...' is a fixed comparative expression and if you use the second "as," you also need the first: I am not as good a painter as she