A guy is preparing to have a vasectomy, and to his wife's complete confusion he buys a new, expensive suit. She asks him why; he says "well, if I'm going to be impotent, I want to look impotent!"



Mario, I know this is talking about words, but hey, you started it.


English has clear hints about a lot of this stuff, but not all of it. You say it yourself, level is (more accurately, level is a description of) a flat horizontal plane, and A level ("A" indicates that a noun, the name of a thing and not a descriptive term) follows. So level is an adjective that describes something, and is also a noun that names an actual thing


I never talk so technically that I call such a hammer a claw hammer, but that is, technically, the proper name for the tool you describe. See, your confusion as a new speaker of English comes from needing to know the technical term, claw hammer, so you can understand that native speakers of English don't usually bother to say "claw." It's understood. You can see 23 types of hammers at [Link: me-mechanicalengineering.com], but the one with the claw is the average home and construction hammer.


Poor you, non-native speaker of English. The joke was park on a driveway and drive on a parkway. As for the alarm, setting it off is different from turning it off. I cannot explain "set it off" AT ALL, if I may be excused for shouting.


I have to ask: was this one floor up from the ground, which we call the second floor in the US, or two flights up, which the rest of the world calls the second floor? I love being in an elevator and pressing zero!


FWIW, I don't understand from what you wrote what she was asking for. Did she mean bring them one or two flights up to the apartment?

Do we agree that going north is traveling up to some location? And... I heard an interview with an American who has lived in Israel for fifteen years. He loves coming to America, because it's nice to visit "the old country"!

'up North'- I guess it's easier to relate to a globe than the planet.

For some reason, a lot of the people from Illinois who live near the border with Wisconsin say "Going up to..." someplace in Illinois. A friend moved to Kansas City and wondered about the locals saying "out South", rather than "down South" and some said "out East", rather than "back East"- neither of which makes much sense.

Gee, this is even further afield, but please:

I recently ran into a group who say what I expect: on Friday, on Saturday, etc. but then surprise me by saying on tomorrow instead of just tomorrow.

We'll do that on tomorrow
instead of
Well do that tomorrow.

Anybody have any comments on that? I learned the first one from my New England parents and in California schools.

I know, I'm doing it again. Sorry.

I think "on tomorrow" or "on today" is a European thing- I haven't heard it very often from people with US origin.