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1500 questions
50
votes
27 answers
A better word for "unanswered"
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New—it contains questions that are either new, recently active or (on Stack…
Sklivvz
- 969
50
votes
6 answers
Is "a whole nother" grammatical?
Often one will hear the phrase that's a whole nother kettle of fish, but is "nother" actually grammatical? If not, what would the correct way of saying it be?
Dog Lover
- 6,445
50
votes
1 answer
What does H/F, M/F and M/W abbreviation in job titles mean?
If you look at some job titles on Stack Overflow Jobs you can come across several abbreviations: H/F, M/F, M/W. It does not look programming specific (excuse me if I'm wrong). E.g.:
Ruby-on-Rails or AngularJS developer for Open Source project
…
Ivan Gerasimenko
- 680
50
votes
5 answers
Why are Greek letters pronounced incorrectly in scientific English?
In Greek, for example, the letter β is pronounced "veeta", but in science, people use "beta". Some other offenders are η "eeta", ι "yiota", μ "mee", ν "nee", π "pee", τ "taf", χ "hee", ψ "psee".
I understand the difficulties of pronouncing the γ…
John Alexiou
- 875
50
votes
8 answers
Difference between "computation" and "calculation"
If the words computation and calculation are not perfect synonyms what is the difference between them? Which one describes more accurately what is done by a person computing or calculating something on a piece of paper?
Rasmus
- 761
50
votes
10 answers
Is there a term which covers ATM cards, credit cards, and debit cards?
I work in accommodation for international travelers, and people can pay with various kinds of cards:
In some countries such as USA, credit cards are very common, but debit cards are not so common.
In other regions such as Europe, most people have…
hippietrail
- 7,658
50
votes
3 answers
Which preposition to use with "rename"?
Which is the correct preposition to use with rename?
rename to
rename as
rename by
Ma Ming
- 871
50
votes
10 answers
"To shoot out of cannon into sparrows"
In Russian we have idiom/saying "To shoot out of cannon into sparrows" (literal translation) which is used to convey an idea of applying too drastic measures to small problems. I believe there should be some native-English equivalents to this…
Mike
- 975
49
votes
5 answers
Get hold of, get ahold of, get a hold of
Under what circumstances would you prefer one of the following over the other two?
Get hold of
Get ahold of
Get a hold of
evgeny
- 733
49
votes
2 answers
Why is the apostrophe positioned differently in "ones' complement" than "two's complement"?
There is a concept in computer science which deals with how to demonstrate negative binary numbers. Two methods for achieving this goal are ones' complement and two's complement.
Since I got acquainted with these methods, this question never stops…
Saeed Ahadian
- 483
49
votes
3 answers
Adding "dot com" to the end of a sentence?
Overheard this one while I was getting my hair cut. The two ladies were arguing about whether or not a given shampoo was appropriate for a customer that had just left. Something about the customer's existing skin condition and a previous perm and/or…
49
votes
4 answers
Is there a word used to describe a weekend plus a one-day holiday?
I'd like to ask my friend out this coming weekend plus the coming Martin Luther King holiday.
I was about to say: How's your weekend shaping up? But I feel like he might also be available on the Monday holiday. Is there a better word than just…
Nicholas
- 713
49
votes
9 answers
"Focussed" or "focused"? Rules for doubling the last consonant when adding -ed
Initially, my question was: is "focussed" or "focused" the correct past tense of "focus", but since this applies to a lot of words, I would like to generalize and ask: is there supposed to be a rule when to double the consonant?
mafu
- 4,449
49
votes
2 answers
Why is it "Universal Time Coordinated"?
The UTC is a measure for coordinating activities in multiple regions of the earth in timing. It means "Universal Time Coordinated". What does that mean grammatically? Can you unravel this message with more signal words?
I would say "Universally…
Knampf
- 441
49
votes
11 answers
When did "a buck" start being used to mean any unit of 100? (E.g. "a buck fifty" for 150 lbs.)
Before you answer, please note: I'm only interested in when this usage was established in common (American) parlance. I know what the term means and I don't need it defined, nor do I require an etymology as to its origins.
That said, most of us…
Robusto
- 151,571