for an ad-free Fetcheveryone experience!

Grammar pedants - help please.

95 watchers

ChrisHB Mar 2022 7:56pm, 22 Mar 2022 21,609 posts	Quote Pin ChrisHB I wonder... in similar cases, many would use a singular because of the proximity of 'life'. Not for me, though.
RichHL Mar 2022 7:59pm, 22 Mar 2022 18,669 posts	Quote Pin RichHL I don't think so.
Cerrertonia Mar 2022 9:02pm, 22 Mar 2022 16,032 posts	Quote Pin Cerrertonia Six years is a long time. So maybe expressions of duration, even with a number, are singular. I think this is where my comment about adjective order comes into play. A six years? No A long six years? Yes Six long years? Yes
DeeGee Apr 2022 10:19am, 25 Apr 2022 21,912 posts	Quote Pin DeeGee I've just received an email from a UK company about "Gifts for green thumbs". When did our fingers stop being green?
iRicey Apr 2022 10:38am, 25 Apr 2022 2,465 posts	Quote Pin iRicey I guess since we now do all of our gardening online...
swittle Apr 2022 10:55am, 25 Apr 2022 86,180 posts	Quote Pin swittle Mining for bitcoins and their like is one of the blackest arts....
JCB Apr 2022 1:47pm, 25 Apr 2022 3,209 posts	Quote Pin JCB I’d always heard green thumb. That’s weird, because I see that green finger is also used, I guess predominantly in the UK.
DeeGee Apr 2022 1:51pm, 25 Apr 2022 21,917 posts	Quote Pin DeeGee Ah, yes, but aren't you some kind of colonial? "Green finger" is the term I've always used, I always assumed "green thumb" to be more common in US English.
Northern Exile Apr 2022 1:53pm, 25 Apr 2022 8,723 posts	Quote Pin Northern Exile Same.
JCB Apr 2022 2:12pm, 25 Apr 2022 3,210 posts	Quote Pin JCB Sometimes I go get terms mixed up and forget which is UK and which is US. Having grown up in Australia in a time before the web and when there was more UK influence meant we mostly had UK terms. I remember the time when I came across green X and asked my mum what it meant. But I can’t be entirely certain whether it was finger or thumb. I do now think of using thumb more now and had largely forgotten finger. For the sake of transparency I did live in the US for a period of years and my partner was born in the US. 🙂 Memory also has a way of changing over time so I may have morphed my memory into the term I use now.