Conundrums of the English Language
If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out, and in which an alarm goes off by going on.
Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.
-From an email I received today.
If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out, and in which an alarm goes off by going on.
Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.
-From an email I received today.