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Do you refer to your dog or cat as “somebody”? As in: When you love somebody that much, you don’t mind if they slobber. In other words, is your pet a somebody or a something? Also, for centuries, there was little consistency in the...
Chris in Northampton, Massachusetts, and his mother are debating whether you can refer to your dog as somebody? Is it reasonable to say your pet is a someone rather than a something? Strictly speaking, dictionaries define the word someone as...
Remember a few years ago when Amazon introduced that mysterious device called a Kindle? People worried that electronic readers would replace traditional books. Turns out the death of the hardcover was greatly exaggerated. Also, the expression...
Left-handers are called southpaws, but righties aren’t commonly known as northpaws. That’s because being right-handed is the default, and the more colorful terms are applied to the exception, not the rule, such as the Australian term for...
synch license n.— «Barring an exception under copyright law, the use of a sound recording and/or composition in a film requires a license from the owner (or owners) of the copyrights. Thus, for example, for the film Donnie Darko to...
single-sort recycling n.— «One means of increasing the rate is a user-friendly method called “single-stream,” or “single-sort” recycling. All commodities, usually with the exception of cardboard, which is fetching...