I’ll tell you before the end, I promise (I bet he just says that both are correct, he always does). But you can see already, can’t you, how the letter H isn’t so simple even for native speakers.
In fact, it can be quite a controversial letter, sparking more arguments than perhaps any other.
Or trousers for that matter, if you’re from the UK. I went with pants for the title simply because most of you, dear readers are American. Anyway, the burning question: why are these words so brazenly plural when they clearly refer to a single garment?
Absolutely.
Writing yesterday’s post, I came to a point where I wanted to use the phrase racking their brain. A few words before I got to the point where I had to type it though, I paused: was it wracking their brain?
I’ve never been sure how to spell it, and it’s not something I often have to write, so I never had to look it up. At least until yesterday anyway, so to satisfy all our curiosity, here’s the answer…
The above photo is of a box I came across recently in a shop in Liège, and is a classic example of how literal translation will usually lead you astray.
Shine bright like a diamond,
– Rihanna, 2012.
How do you feel about the adjective brilliant? It seems to be a bit divisive. Like the word awesome, there are those who feel that it’s cheapened by being used as a general adjective of quality, to indicate that something is very good.
I understand that point of view, and I’ve argued previously that sometimes a strong adjective is just too strong for the situation, and a nice simple adjective often works well. That being said, the sheer positivity of words like awesome and brilliant can be infectious.
And while brilliant is now firmly established as a synonym for great, this is actually a fairly recent development.
English-Language Thoughts 