2013年11月7日 · The question: "Why is [etc.]" is a question form in English: Why is the sky blue? Why is it that children require so much attention? Why is it [or some thing] like that? When that form is put into what is called indirect speech, it becomes: Please tell me why the sky is blue. Please tell me why children require so much attention.

2018年12月4日 · "For why" (also hyphenated or written as one word) meaning "why" as a direct interrogative was used in Old and Middle English (see the MED's entry), but it became obsolete sometime around the year 1500. Other senses of the expression (for example, it was used as a conjunction meaning "because") gradually over time all dropped out of use, so the ...

2012年12月10日 · Towards the end of the century, that is why was predominantly the phrase to use. In the 1950s, there was a trend reversal so that about 1982, that's why seems to have started gaining wider acceptance and usage. We may have to infer that today, writers prefer the contraction over the longer idiomatic phrase.

2022年7月22日 · As to why "Bloody" is considered obscene/profane in the UK more than in the US, I think that's a reflection of a stronger Catholic presence, historically, in the UK than in the US, if we're accepting the above etymology, as Catholics venerate the Virgin to …

I was looking up a definition online, as I often do, in this case the British slang word tuppence; I got the standard "a slang reference to a coin denomination" definition from Wikipedia,...

Why are detectives/inspectors colloquially referred to as Gumshoes? Is it anything other that they would travel a lot in investigations and, presumably, wore hard-wearing shoes?

2016年2月18日 · If the final sound in the base of the word is voiced, we use the voiced alveolar sibilant /z/. If the last sound in the base is an unvoiced consonant, we use /s/.

Why is Erdős' conjecture on arithmetic progressions not discussed much, and is there an active pathway to its resolution? Why are the download sizes so much bigger than they actually are? In a 'floating' world over bottomless depths, what keeps the air up?

2019年1月12日 · An option in this context is a right to do something, so it makes sense to describe the option in terms of that right: a Put option is the right to put (sell) a security and a Call option is the right to call (buy) a security.

2012年12月22日 · That’s why, even if the origins of the word “history” are clear, the question of who gets to decide which version of the past is the right one remains a contentious debate centuries after the term came to be. “The narrative element has always been there,” Zimmer says.