#130

Huge if true

#132

How would you define the difference between them?

Are they different enough that we need the word ‘societal’ when we coped give without it until the last few years?

#134

That’s where it is though.

#135

Nope.

#136

We’re going to have to look in the pudding to see who’s right aren’t we?

#137

The phrase is “the proof of the pudding is in the eating” which makes sense. Nobody in their right mind has ever stashed a proof of something in a pudding.

#138

I bet someone has.

#139

Yes but not someone in their right mind.

1 Like
#140

As a medical geneticist, I start twitching when someone (usually an athlete of some description) comes out with, “It’s not in my DNA to give up.”

DNA makes protein, variants might contribute to their above average muscular performance and co-ordination, but I’m yet to happen across a generic variant for ‘giving up’.

1 Like
#141

Not a distinction I’ve ever felt the need to make personally

But I don’t want to clutter up the societal board with such hair splitting.

1 Like
#142

‘Chest of draws’

Or, as i once read in a local selling page

‘Chester draws’

3 Likes
#143

that is how it is pronounced tbf

(@Epimer…)

3 Likes
#144

Only if you’ve got an idiot accent for dickheads.

6 Likes
#145

Wow, did not know this. Pretty baffling, especially with such an inconsistent language as this one.

#146

Yeah it’s a really tricky one because today’s English teachers (like me) grew up in a system that didn’t teach formal grammar so there’s a whole rung missing from that generational ladder.

Easy to criticise the hippy teachers who got rid of formal grammar teaching but I think it came from a good place of trying to make English a more creative and more practical subject rather than the over formalised teaching of English - as - Latin that had been the norm previously.

2 Likes
#147

ah but surely that societal board sounds stupid is precisely why having the word is useful

1 Like
#148

Huh if you say so. I feel that I manage fine without it.

#149

Much more recently, i learned what the past participle was in French before I ever grasped the concept in English

1 Like
#150

I never heard of the preterite until I took Spanish.

#151

Yeah I learned lots of grammar rules in French that I never learned in Norwegian or English, but then French grammar is a whole THING so

1 Like