|
- Where does the term heads or tails come from?
The term is heads or tails in America or Britain but it differs in other countries based on their monetary history I know that Italy has Heads or Crosses and back in the Roman days there was Heads or Ships Heads is a given Most coins have a picture of a leader or powerful figure on one side and the opposite side whatever
- etymology - Why do we use the plural heads and tails when . . .
The Oxford English Dictionary has one citation from 1801 which puts it in the singular, but the earliest citation, from 1684, has ‘heads or tails’ I think we must regard heads and tails,when found in this context, as examples of ‘pluralia tantum’, the term used to describe nouns that end in -s, but whose meaning is ‘collective or
- Meaning and usage of head (s) AND tails above?
Personally I think heads and tails above [the competition is a kind of "eggcorn" misunderstanding mishearing of the idiomatic standard head and shoulders above Certainly the former has almost no currency by comparison The standard version makes sense - literally or figuratively "shorter" ones don't even reach as high as the "taller" one's
- Head or tail? vs Heads or tails? - English Vocabulary, Grammar and . . .
Heads or Tails is a coin-tossing game Most coins have a side where the imprint of a person, such as a current or former head of state, is impressed — this side is called the “heads” side (since the embossing is of the head of a person)
- . . . the probability of flipping exactly one head [s] and three tails
After all, the normal-sounding wording "two heads and two tails" doesn't add a plural ending to the singular ending "heads" or "tails" that we use to describe the result of a single flip The answer here, I believe, is that the description of multiple coin flip results isn't a progression from singular to plural "heads" or "tails" at all
- grammaticality - Everyones heads or everyones head - English . . .
All in sync, everyone's heads readjusted so that they were still staring at him (Stories of Earth: WWIII, by Dimitrious Charles) I think this would require restructuring the sentence, not just replacing "heads" with "head", to avoid plural use You see that later on in this sentence, the plural pronoun "they" is used to refer back to "everyone"
- Where did the idiom giving a heads up come from?
” At the time, “heads up” exhorted soldiers to straighten up and hold their heads high—or more metaphorically, to be courageous and vigilant For baseball players around the turn of the 20th century, “heads up” served a more specific purpose: the phrase helped keep the fielding team alert and ready for a ball to come in play
- Correct use of immediately [duplicate] - English Language Usage . . .
Immidiately is an adverb [of time], and just as the tag summary mentions, the position of an adverb often depends on the kind of adverb (manner, place, time, degree) and if the word being modified is a verb or an adjective
|
|
|