Today I learned that "go pound sand" is...only the first part of that phrase, lol.

#linguistics #etymology #colloquialism

https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/go-pound-sand.html

Just pondering the difference between singular and plural abstract amounts and whether there is some kind of regional difference between them

In Australia, we often use an uncountable plural: we will say ‘shitloads’, ‘tons’ or ‘heaps’

I associate ‘loads’ with UK usage in contexts where AU we’d say ‘lots’

I associate the singular with US usage: ‘a crapload’, ‘a ton’

Because of metric usage I have often had to spell it ‘tonne’ because I have not been able to convince editing clients that the spelling should reflect a semantic difference between a measurable tonne and the figurative ton

‘tonne’ is pronounced with a short o
‘ton’ is pronounced with a short u

And ‘a ton’ or more commonly ‘the ton’, pronounced ‘tun’ cf. the historical social elite) is a common AU colloquialism for ‘100’

#language #EnglishLanguage #editing #dialect #colloquialism

@hacks4pancakes #IfyouDontKnowNowYouKnow "#Gaslighting is a #colloquialism, loosely defined as #manipulating someone so as to make them question their own #reality. The term derives from the title of the 1944 #American film #Gaslight, which was based on the 1938 British theatre play Gas Light by Patrick Hamilton, though the term did not gain popular currency in #English until the mid-2010s"

#TheMoreYouKnow