Sarah in San Antonio, Texas, says that when she goes to a restaurant and orders iced tea, the server usually asks, “Sweet or unsweet?” That doesn’t sound right to her. How do you unsweeten tea? Doesn’t the un- imply a “reversal of a state”? Not necessarily. You can have something unfolded that was not previously folded, something unbuilt that was never built, and something unbelievable that never was believable. Particularly with adjectives, the prefix un- doesn’t always imply a reversal. Sometimes it simply connotes the idea of “not” or suggests “the absence of a condition.” This is part of a complete episode.
When you’re talking about the location of an inanimate object, is it okay to say that it lives there, as in The peanut butter lives in that cabinet or The flashlight lives on that shelf? Strictly speaking, of course, that object isn’t...
Sean in Oneonta, New York, says that when he was growing up in New Jersey, his family would pile in the car and set off on a surprise adventure, whether a short distance or long, and the kids would be told only that they were going on Buxtehude...
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