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Bookmark or Share- Reason for different pronunciations of "lieutenant"As to why present day usage is as it is: People can be contrary. It's possible the US adopted "Loo" because and only because the Brits said "Lef" -- or vice-versa. But it seems the answer is not known by the best scholars Oxford can produce.
- How did the word "beaver" come to be associated with vagina?From "Why King George of England May Have to Lose His Beard: How the Game of 'Beaver' Which All England Is Playing Is So Threatening the Proper Reverence for the Throne That Banishment of the Royal Whiskers Seems Imperative," in the Washington [D.C.] Times (October 22, 1922):
- "Why ...?" vs. "Why is it that ... ?" - English Language & Usage Stack ...Why not: I don't know why, but it seems to me Bob would sound a bit strange if he said, "Why is it that you have to get going?" Eliminating 'that' before 'Bob' would seem to be more in context with the criticism of the way Bob sounds. This beside the point that "Why do you have to get going?" is more direct.
- What's the proper way to handwrite a lowercase letter A?But why are there two different As? Back in ye olde days there were many ways to write a lower-case A. (The same went for other letters, for example þ was later written "y", hence "ye olde days".) After a while there were two emerging winners: a and ɑ. One won the handwriting competition, and the other won the printing competition.
- How did the letter Z come to be associated with sleeping/snoring?See also Why Does ZZZ mean sleep? for another theory: The reason zzz came into being is that the comic strip artists just couldn’t represent sleeping with much. ... As the sounds made while sleeping are quite difficult to represent with letters, the artists chose zzz, because it best represents the sound ...
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