# She intuited that something bad was about to happen



## Ikk

Does 'intuit' sound idiomatic in this sentence?

She intuited that something bad was about to happen so she took the children and got out of the cottage. As soon as they were outside a large tree fell onto the cottage completely destroying it.


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## Wordy McWordface

'Intuit' is a fairly formal and low-frequency word.

Most people would simply say "She sensed that..."


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## sdgraham

Ikk said:


> Does 'intuit' sound idiomatic in this sentence?


Not to me, but our dictionary has it as a verb. intuit - WordReference.com Dictionary of English
(Note that dictionaries often contain words that seem unidiomatic to at least some of us)
[cross-posted]


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## Ikk

Wordy McWordface said:


> 'Intuit' is a fairly formal and low-frequency word.
> 
> Most people would simply say "She sensed that..."


Thank you. I know that it's a formal word and that it isn't used frequently. But does it sound idiomatic in the sentence I have written?


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## elroy

It's not a common use, and there are probably native speakers who wouldn't even recognize the word.

If you want to refer to intuition, "She *intuitively* sensed/felt" would be far more common.


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## LVRBC

I think it's acceptable.  It's not the most common way to say this, but it's good English grammar and understandable.  I wouldn't use it in conversation unless both parties involved had big vocabularies. "Intuited that"  also quite hard to pronounce accurately.


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## Wordy McWordface

Ikk said:


> Thank you. I know that it's a formal word and that it isn't used frequently. But does it sound idiomatic in the sentence I have written?


The verb 'intuit' is not a word I that have ever used or even considered using. While the noun 'intuition' and the adjectives 'intuitive' and 'counter-intuitive' are widely used, the verb is very rare indeed. An indication of its rarity is the fact that I, like SDGraham, even looked it up in a dictionary to check that it was there and that it meant what we supposed it to mean.  If by 'idiomatic' we mean 'natural to a native speaker', the answer is probably 'no'. It simply isn't a word which most of us would think to use.


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## Ikk

Wordy McWordface said:


> The verb 'intuit' is not a word I that have ever used or even considered using. While the noun 'intuition' and the adjectives 'intuitive' and 'counter-intuitive' are widely used, the verb is very rare indeed. An indication of its rarity is the fact that I, like SDGraham, even looked it up in a dictionary to check that it was there and that it meant what we supposed it to mean.  If by 'idiomatic' we mean 'natural to a native speaker', the answer is probably 'no'. It simply isn't a word which most of us would think to use.


But according to its definition, it's correct to use it in my sentence, isn't it? I am sorry for asking too many questions. Let me know if I am a pain in the neck.


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## owlman5

Ikk said:


> But according to its definition, it's correct to use it in my sentence, isn't it?


_Correct _and _idiomatic _are not the same thing, Ikk. Dictionaries are full of low-frequency words that most speakers don't normally use. As others have mentioned, _intuit _is not a common verb. It is understandable, however, and it isn't _incorrect_ to use it.


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## sdgraham

Ikk said:


> But according to its definition, it's correct to use it in my sentence, isn't it? I am sorry for asking too many questions. Let me know if I am a pain in the neck.


It all depends upon your definition of "correct." If you mean "supported by a dictionary," I suppose it is.
On the other hand I regard something bizarre to the vast majority of native speakers as *wrong*, despite its appearance in dictionaries and misguided notions of "formality."
Proceed at your own risk.  
[cross-posted]


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## Le Gallois bilingue

Not idiomatic but you might say _“she had an intuition that…..”_


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## Ikk

sdgraham said:


> It all depends upon your definition of "correct." If you mean "supported by a dictionary," I suppose it is.
> On the other hand I regard something bizarre to the vast majority of native speakers as *wrong*, despite its appearance in dictionaries and misguided notions of "formality."
> Proceed at your own risk.
> [cross-posted]


What I mean by 'correct' is that the word choice (apart from the fact that the word occurs rarely in conversations) is not weird.


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## Ikk

LVRBC said:


> I think it's acceptable.  It's not the most common way to say this, but it's good English grammar and understandable.  I wouldn't use it in conversation unless both parties involved had big vocabularies. "Intuited that"  also quite hard to pronounce accurately.


Are you implying that the verb is so rarely used that not many native speakers are familiar with it?

According to this online dictionary, this verb is among the 30.000 most frequent English words and according to some studies a native speaker knows somewhere between 25.000 and 30.000 word families (lemmas) thus I assumed that native speakers were familiar with it.


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## Ikk

owlman5 said:


> _Correct _and _idiomatic _are not the same thing, Ikk. Dictionaries are full of low-frequency words that most speakers don't normally use. As others have mentioned, _intuit _is not a common verb. It is understandable, however, and it isn't _incorrect_ to use it.


Thank you!


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## elroy

Ikk said:


> that the word choice (apart from the fact that the word occurs rarely in conversations) is not weird.


Aside from the fact that "weird" is a subjective judgment, the same word can sound "weird" in one context and completely unremarkable in another.  It all depends on the context, the register, the purpose of the text, etc.


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## kentix

Yes, I think most people would know it or be able to figure it out based on context and similarity to intuition. But it is not a word anyone would think to use in everyday, conversational English in relation to kids and trees and immediate danger.



Ikk said:


> According to this online dictionary, this verb is among the 30.000 most frequent English words and according to some studies a native speaker knows somewhere between 25.000 and 30.000 word families


If you want to look at it this way, you should probably focus on words in the top 5000, not the top 30,000. You are getting very far into obscure territory with 30,000 words.

"Knowing 4,000 to 10,000 words makes people advanced language users while knowing more than 10,000 words puts them at the fluent or native-speaker levels."

Most everyday conversation, if that is your definition of idiomatic, takes place with a limited number of core words. Those same words appear over and over. They form the grammar skeleton. It's famously known that most of the everyday core words in English are from its Germanic parent language. As a general rule, bigger, fancier, less-everyday, more formal words come from Latin and Greek and other languages. Often, if there is a choice between a word from Germanic and a word from Latin with a similar meaning, the word with the Germanic background will be the more obvious choice for everyday language. And if it's a choice between two words of Latin origin, the simpler one will be the more obvious choice. Intuit is from Latin. But so is sense. And sense is a much plainer everyday word, with lots of uses, that came into English several centuries before intuit. (And even looks more like English.) So it's a much more obvious choice.

If you want to study something that will help you understand English better, especially everyday English, then study the distinction between words of Germanic origin and words of Latin/Greek origin, and how each of those are commonly used.


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## Ikk

kentix said:


> Yes, I think most people would know it or be able to figure it out based on context and similarity to intuition. But it is not a word anyone would think to use in everyday, conversational English in relation to kids and trees and immediate danger.
> 
> 
> If you want to look at it this way, you should probably focus on words in the top 5000, not the top 30,000. You are getting very far into obscure territory with 30,000 words.
> 
> "Knowing 4,000 to 10,000 words makes people advanced language users while knowing more than 10,000 words puts them at the fluent or native-speaker levels."
> 
> Most everyday conversation, if that is your definition of idiomatic, takes place with a limited number of core words. Those same words appear over and over. They form the grammar skeleton. It's famously known that most of the everyday core words in English are from it's Germanic parent language. As a general rule, bigger, fancier, less-everyday, more formal words come from Latin and Greek and other languages. Often, if there is a choice between a word from Germanic and a word form Latin with a similar meaning, the word with the Germanic background will be the more obvious choice for everyday language. And if it's a choice between two words of Latin origin, the simpler one will be the more obvious choice. Intuit is from Latin. But so is sense. And sense is a much plainer everyday word, with lots of uses, that came into English several centuries before intuit. (And even looks more like English.) So it's a much more obvious choice.
> 
> If you want to study something that will help you understand English better, especially everyday English, then study the distinction between words of Germanic origin and words of Latin/Greek origin, and how each of those are commonly used.


Thank you. I already have a very advanced level in English and a correspondingly extensive vocabulary. Nonetheless, I keep learning new words because my goal is to become a Hungarian, English, French, Spanish, and Mandarin conference interpreter. Contrary to some people's assumption, I don't want to learn obscure words in order to impress native speakers when talking to them in everyday situations. The reason why I want to master even obscure words well is because there are many people who like to use turgid language and as a conference interpreter I won't be able to say the audience: 'The interpreter would like to apologize but the speaker is using obscure words which the interpreter is not familiar with.' It is true that conference interpreters are not dictionaries on two leg because let's face one of the harshest truths of life: No one knows everything. And yet, clients tend to have way too high, I even say unreasonable expectations with which conference interpreters have to comply.

Conference interpreters working on the private market have a lot more difficult time than those working for regulatory bodies such as the EU Institutions and the UN. Now you might think: What the heck are you talking about?! Only the accomplished conference interpreters get to work for the UN and the EU. Which is true to some extent. Conference interpreters working for the UN or the EU Institutions usually work from their C Languages (passive languages) into their A languages (mother tongues, the languages they speak the best). But conference interpreter whose mother tongues don't have many native speakers are required to work into a B language (the second active language which the interpreter masters very well thus she or he is able to provide interpretation into it.) 

And now the problem that prevails on the private market but not in regulatory bodies: Clients on the private market expect 'flawless' B language knowledge from interpreters but the problem is that conference interpreters do not master their B languages as well as their mother tongues (A language). The EU Institutions and the UN, however, are more reasonable: They won't write a negative review about the interpretation provided if, for example, an interpreter with a Polish/German/Hungarian or Slovak A interpreting into an English B says something like this: Yesterday, we have adopted the law pertaining to....  A client on the private market, on the other hand, might write a slightly less favorable review especially if that client is a native English speaker and a layman who knows nothing about the language combinations. But that won't matter to other people who might want to hire the interpreter because all they will see is a negative review.


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## kentix

But that wasn't your question.



Ikk said:


> Does 'intuit' sound idiomatic in this sentence?


And the answer is no. You aren't translating a political speech by a stuffy bureaucrat in that sentence. You are describing a very basic incident in everyday life with trees, children and cottages. Most of the words are everyday Germanic words - children, tree, happen, took, she, something, bad, outside, it. These are basic, simple words.

And then you throw in a very Latin word that sounds out of place and intellectual and isn't commonly used anywhere. It just doesn't fit and is not very idiomatic, even if it is grammatical and even if the basic definition fits.



Ikk said:


> I already have a very advanced level in English and a correspondingly extensive vocabulary.


Which is irrelevant in this context. This is not a context where you need to know or use the 28,564th most used word in English. You need a basic word that 99.9999% of people know. And that's why I suggested studying _the difference_ between different kinds of words. I didn't suggest learning more words, I suggested understanding their uses more deeply.

Perhaps you should focus on writing, which tends to use a larger and more sophisticated vocabulary. Asking questions about common everyday scenarios will always get you the same answers - we don't use fancy Latin words for those.


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## suzi br

Well said, Kentix. That’s a clear account of tbe underlying issue and a good suggestion which I have used myself with students in the past.

I used to set them  to explore the history of synonyms (which natives intuit  as being from different registers)  so that they could learn how these etymological roots often explain their intuition.

Here’s another potential use for intuited

I intuited a faint shimmer of exasperation ruffling the smooth feathers of my preternaturally patient partner.




There you are, lkk. Two uses of “intuited” embedded in more elevated sentences where it seems more at home than it did in your domestic drama.


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## djmc

Putting on an epistemological cap, intuition/intuit implies thet someone knows something without having perceived it or having learned or deduced it. One can legitimately question the possibility of this. If I intuit the truth of a statement *P *how do I do so?


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## suzi br

Intuition doesn’t need reasoning.
So it’s possible that we cannot  use it in any sentence where the subject is a matter of absolute fact.
Perhaps.

These two examples from the OED encapsulate that puzzle:


 1.  A. Huxley Two or Three Graces:  You intuit things that aren't there at all.

2  Times 13 Jan 1968:
  We may intuit his reality, but we cannot share it.


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## kentix

Here is a thread that touches on the difference in perception of words with Germanic roots and words with Latin roots.

Anglo vs latinate terms

A quote:

_*"Penultimate" sounds pretentious unless you habitually speak in "high register".*_


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## Wordy McWordface

Of course, _sense, _the alternative  I suggested way back in #2, is also Latinate. Some Latinate words - especially those we acquired through Old French a long time ago - are actually basic everyday vocabulary in English. But while 'sense' is an unremarkable little word that belongs in a simple sentence about taking children out of cottages, 'intuit' definitely is not.


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## kentix

Sense entered English in the 1400s according to references – intuit not until somewhere around the 1800s. That 400 years makes a huge difference. Sense has been fully assimilated. I had no idea it was from Latin until I looked it up. The spelling resembles the spelling of many other words, including the silent e on the end. A date of 1400 puts it into the Middle English period. It's been English for a very long time.


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## suzi br

I doubt that timing is the key point, lots of the Latin we assimilated via Norman French has become quite familiar, but interestingly plenty of it still retains an air of elegance compared to Germanic synonyms, which modern speakers are still sensitive to, even when they don't know the etymology. 

The thing with* sense* is - it's mono-syllabic. Lots of the elevated (latinate) register is multi-syllabic . Generalising wildly, of course!


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## kentix

And so was I, of course.  Every word is unique.


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## Ikk

suzi br said:


> Well said, Kentix. That’s a clear account of tbe underlying issue and a good suggestion which I have used myself with students in the past.
> 
> I used to set them  to explore the history of synonyms (which natives intuit  as being from different registers)  so that they could learn how these etymological roots often explain their intuition.
> 
> Here’s another potential use for intuited
> 
> I intuited a faint shimmer of exasperation ruffling the smooth feathers of my preternaturally patient partner.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> There you are, lkk. Two uses of “intuited” embedded in more elevated sentences where it seems more at home than it did in your domestic drama.


I smiled when I read the last sentence. Then how come I read texts written by native English speakers where formal and informal words are intermingled?  The same is true for the spoken language: Even when two friends talk to each other, formal words always seem to pop up even though they don't talk about academic subjects.


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## Loob

The answer to your post 1 question is still "No", lkk.


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## kentix

Ikk said:


> formal words always seem to pop up


We'd have to see examples to really judge whether they are strictly formal or not. Some words are more flexible than others.


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## Ikk

kentix said:


> We'd have to see examples to really judge whether they are strictly formal or not. Some words are more flexible than others.


'Afford' when it is used as a synonym of 'provide'. The job affords you the opportunity to travel.


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## suzi br

Ikk said:


> I smiled when I read the last sentence. Then how come I read texts written by native English speakers where formal and informal words are intermingled?  The same is true for the spoken language: Even when two friends talk to each other, formal words always seem to pop up even though they don't talk about academic subjects.



A slow smile! Weeks later.

HOW COME?
Because words are flexible.
Because what we say as guidance in here is based on general patterns but there’s always variation according to the context, audience and purpose. People write literally entire books on the subject of stylistics including nuances such as register and formality.  

None the less.

Intuit is an outlier, it is unfamiliar, latinate and frankly ridiculous in the context of your OP. Why ask us if you don’t want to heed our opions?

It’s genuine advice from language experts.

Take it or leave it. 

I don’t care.
It matters little to me
You might intuit my indifference.


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## dojibear

Ikk said:


> Does 'intuit' sound idiomatic in this sentence?
> 
> She intuited that something bad was about to happen so she took the children and got out of the cottage. As soon as they were outside a large tree fell onto the cottage completely destroying it.


She predicted a future event. That is not intuition. Intuition is determining something from actual evidence, but without logical reasoning. If she saw the tree and (unconsciously) noticed that it was about to break, that would be intuition. 

But just thinking "something bad is about to happen" is not intuition. Depending on your worldview (your beliefs), predicting a near-future event might be a warning from angels, or a miracle, or impossible, or an unknown ability of the human mind. But it is not intuition. An example of intuition is distrusting a person, but not knowing why. You distrust him because of non-verbal cues (his voice tone, facial expressions, body language). You aren't aware of these cues, but they are real. That's "intuition".

_My intuition says she is lying. I can't prove she is, but that's what I believe._

Most of this thread is about using the verb "intuit" to mean "determine by using intuition". I agree that the verb "intuit" is not common, though it is correct. Here is a graph counting all uses in published books, by year:

Google Books Ngram Viewer


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## dojibear

Ikk said:


> how come I read texts written by native English speakers where formal and informal words are intermingled? The same is true for the spoken language: Even when two friends talk to each other, formal words always seem to pop up even though they don't talk about academic subjects.


I agree with your observations. That definitely happens. I disagree with the term "formal words". With very few exceptions, English words don't fall into a "formal" category. That is why you don't see every word in an English dictionary marked as "formal" or "informal". It isn't two separate languages that are used in different contexts. Instead we say "how formal?". In other words, formality has many different levels in English, not just two. 

Some dictionary words are marked "casual" or "informal" or "slang". Someone who is trying to be formal in writing or in speech might try to avoid using those words and phrases. But the reverse is not true: people don't avoid some set of "formal" words in normal conversations or in normal writing.


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## dojibear

Ikk said:


> The definitions of intuit in all of those four dictionaries differ greatly from how you define 'intuit' and 'intuition'.(Don't come with the 'dictionaries are fallible' thing. It's possible that a dictionary contains some or maybe even many mistakes but not four different ones.


It isn't a mistake. The word does not mean exactly the same thing for every English speaker in the world. There is no "one correct meaning" or "one correct usage".

It isn't the purpose of dictionaries to distinguish "correct" and "incorrect" meanings. The purpose is this: when you see an unknown word (used correctly), the dictionary gives you a rough idea about its meaning (a "gnoll" is a grassy hill, not an ocean-dwelling mammal) so you can understand the text. That's it. How high is the hill? How big? Dictionaries don't say.

Do you use dictionaries to speak Hungarian? Do you check every word in your native language, to make sure you are using it the same way as the dictionary says? Perhaps you do, but that is very odd (in my opinion).


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## elroy

dojibear said:


> She predicted a future event. That is not intuition.





dojibear said:


> just thinking "something bad is about to happen" is not intuition.


It can be.

_My intuition tells me that something bad is about to happen.

- Why do you think something bad is about to happen?
- I don’t know, it’s just my intuition._

These make sense to me. 



dojibear said:


> An example of intuition is distrusting a person, but not knowing why.


Yes, that’s another example.  Both are valid.



dojibear said:


> Intuition is determining something from actual evidence, but without logical reasoning.


I don’t think the presence of evidence is part of the definition of intuition.  If anything, I would say that intuition is usually about leaning/feeling a certain way _without_ (concrete or clear) evidence.  I agree that “without logical reasoning” is part of the definition of intuition.


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## ain'ttranslationfun?

"She had a feeling that something (bad) was going to happen."


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## bandini

Ikk said:


> Does 'intuit' sound idiomatic in this sentence?
> 
> She intuited that something bad was about to happen so she took the children and got out of the cottage. As soon as they were outside a large tree fell onto the cottage completely destroying it.


Okay not sure how this thread jumped the track but your original question was whether your sentence sounded idiomatic and you were told, by everybody, that "intuit" as a verb is rarely used.  Question asked question answered.

 The thread probably should have ended there but... it lingered on and feelings got hurt.  I interact with all these people daily, or at least read them, and can assure you that no one meant to insult your self confidence or demean you in any way.  Must have been a breakdown in communication somewhere.  Sorry.


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## suzi br

On the issue of formal and informal.
That’s a continuum not a binary thing.

To explore this in my days as a teacher of these matters I used to give the students synonyms and ask them to order them in terms of formality. Almost without fail native speakers can do this easily.

Three or four synonyms:
Eg
Spectacles, bins, glasses, goggles
Home, pad, residence
Pooch, canine, dog

English is ridiculously rich in synonyms (due to its historical evolution) and growing up knowing these options is our gift as native speakers.

Using the variation effectively for clear communication, obfuscation or entertainment is all part of our joy in language.

And it gives us plenty to teach about or just talk about in here.

He invited me back to his pad/home/residence.

I offered to look after his pooch/dog/canine.

Now residence and canine have the same meaning “in the dictionary” but sound ludicrous in these daily chat contexts. Both a bit latinate, as it happens. Dog and home being much more established from Middle English.
It’s not that natives assess the etymology of their word choices (most of my 17 year old students didn’t even KNOW that word until they met me!). It’s all about familiarity, regular use and context.


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## ewie

Wordy McWordface said:


> The verb 'intuit' is not a word I that have ever used or even considered using.


Ditto.  I'd feel a tuit using it


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## JulianStuart

The subject has come up before   The usage note in the first post of the thread notes the diversity of acceptance of "back-formed" words like this.
'intuit' as a verb


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## JulianStuart

I don't see any posts where there is an implication that "second language speaker = dumb" nor do I detect any malice in the posts.  This site was created to a large extent to _overcome_ the limitations of dictionaries - they can't include all possible meanings (given the influence of context etc) let alone distinguish the shades of idiomatic and formal/informal, or rules for mixing and matching them.  So the acceptance of a "neo" word like _intuit_ generates discussion and that's what has been happening here.


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## Cagey

This thread began with a very specific question has been answered in various ways.  People are invited to look over the discussion and accept the response which makes sense to them and suits their needs. They are welcome to disregards any response that does not satisfy them. 

The thread has wandered into general discussions that are outside the scope of the English Only forum, which is set up to discuss specific words, phrases, and grammatical constructions. 

This thread is closed. 

Cagey, 
moderator


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