-----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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