"He told me an anecdote, and I didn't laugh."
An anecdote is a personal and unverified story. The
word you want is `joke'.
Jokes IMHO are very short. Long jokes are bad joke;
-----Beginning of the citation-----
Why do French people eat snails?
They don't like fast food.
----- The end of the citation -----
Anecdotes are rather short humorous stories
Can you tell if it's a joke or anecdote? ;-)
(Excuse my possibly lame "adaptation")
??<< E. Kopelyan's voiceover:
"Stierlitz gave it a thought.
It was good.
So he gave it a second thought". >>
Thanks for the collection of jokes. Did you put them into
English yourself?
-----Beginning of the citation-----
Why do French people eat snails?
They don't like fast food.
----- The end of the citation -----
A Collection of Intermediate Anecdotes in American English
Jim walked into a store which had a sign outside:
"Look at this," the dean said." Susan didn't know the answer to
this question, so she wrote, 'I don't know.' And your football
player wrote, 'Neither do I.'"
Then one day Mr. Harris hurried into the doctor's office
An anecdote is a personal and unverified story.
Anecdotes are rather short humorous stories
Jim walked into a store which had a sign outside: "Second-hand
clothes bought and sold." He was carrying an old pair of pants
and asked the owner of the store, "How much will you give me
for these?" The man looked at them and then said rudely, "Two
dollars." "What!" said Jim." I had guessed they were worth at
least five."
-----Beginning of the citation-----
Why do French people eat snails?
They don't like fast food.
----- The end of the citation -----
This is an example of what I would call a "riddle", i.e. a puzzling
or misleading question which when used as a joke often involves a
play on words.
Another example: Q. What do you call an angry carrot? A. A steamed vegetable.
A Collection of Intermediate Anecdotes in American English
Hmm. While my American dictionaries seem to agree that an anecdote
is a story which other people may find entertaining &/or amusing,
many of them also take into account that (as Anton said, and as a
Canadian I agree) that as far as we're concerned such stories are typically autobiographical or at least reported by a person who if
not on the scene at the time has done their homework.... :-)
An English joke -- "Englishmen are the most coward
people. If they ask something they always say 'I am
afraid'". ;-)
An English joke -- "Englishmen are the most coward
people. If they ask something they always say 'I am
afraid'". ;-)
`cowardly'.
You mean that there is no adjective "coward"?
Here for instance,
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/coward
PS: And in general, it is an English feature that almost every word
can perform every part of speech.
You mean that there is no adjective "coward"?
Here for instance,
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/coward
PS: And in general, it is an English feature that almost every
word can perform every part of speech.
I've never seen the word used as an adjective. I suspect it's an
archaic usage. The Cambridge dictionary doesn't define it as an
adjective (listing only "cowardly"), same for Merriam-Webster,
Collins, and the Britannica Dictionary. The Oxford dictionary shows
it used an adjective but last used in 1818!
I've never seen the word used as an adjective. I suspect
it's an archaic usage. The Cambridge dictionary doesn't
define it as an adjective (listing only "cowardly"),
same for Merriam-Webster, Collins, and the Britannica
Dictionary. The Oxford dictionary shows it used an
adjective but last used in 1818!
That said, `coward' is no more an ajective than `widow' in
the famous tautology `widow woman'.
That said, `coward' is no more an ajective than `widow'
in the famous tautology `widow woman'.
I've been wondering why do you always put a grave accent
sign in place of the apostrophy (which is in turn
supposed to signify a single quotation mark) -- any
technical reasons to that?
I've never seen the word used as an adjective. I suspect
it's an archaic usage. The Cambridge dictionary doesn't
define it as an adjective (listing only "cowardly"),
same for Merriam-Webster, Collins, and the Britannica
Dictionary. The Oxford dictionary shows it used an
adjective but last used in 1818!
1913 Webster lists `coward' as an adjective:
<http://dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=gcide&Query=coward>
I think `coward' /can/ be an adjective by virtue of the
ability of nouns in English to become adjectives in certain
cirsumstances, such as:
systems (vs. systematic) programming
fall guy
finger man
glass (not glassy) jar.
that said, `coward' is no more an ajective than `widow' in
the famous tautology `widow woman'.
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