On leaving the person is to do with time and means “when you saw him” whereas by selling the person is to do with Cause and Effect relationship. How can we know this? But there is a difference: by = she sells insurance in order to earn a living, it is her aim, it is a means to an end. In = Howard does not try to protect the Queen in order to put his own life in danger, it is just an occupational hazard for bodyguards, a side effect.

What is a “culture vulture”?

How do the “knowler” look on the lookout for “cutting-edge knowledge”? Take “knowledge”, cut “edge”, add “er” in English!

Why are some of the players waiting to strike?

Why is there a ban on it at the moment?

I think the choice between ‘go’ and ‘get’ to collocate with an adjective obeys two criteria:

1) whether the adjective is gradable or extreme :

you go bananas, not * get bananas because you cannot be * very bananas, only completely bananas ( extreme adjective) whereas you

get

angry, not * go angry, because you can be very angry ( gradable adjective).. but that’s not enough,

because why then would you get furious, not *

go

If a adjective does not express a quality

you can control over (e.g. not going bald), consider putting a hat on or

going crazy. If your anger is intense but it overwhelms you, and you go to the trash bin, you get furious.

If the adjective

is gradable, get ( get old/tired/ill because you can be very old/tired/ill ); if it is extreme,

go, unless it describes something you can have control over/over, in which case you still use get.

Sorry about the English translation. No grammar books to quote from, just a hunch. In fact, I don’t look

up google. And I’m not that old.

What is the difference between ‘plenty of’ and ‘a lot of’ ‘..or something like a few things’..? The

first are relative quantifiers (‘plenty of’ means’more than enough’ ‘little/few’ mean ‘less than enough’, so the refer to a desirable/needed amount of money or number of friends) the second are absolute quantifiers

(a large or small amount of money, number of friends, without reference to a

Why do French students keep saying words like “to search for something” and “chercher quelque chose” in school?

Even though the reason for searching is because you want something which you hope to find somewhere in that person, you could not say “*I looked (at) the Internet for that piece of information” whereas you can say “I searched the Internet for that piece of information” for which you can be proud.

“Search” is di-transitive (has a direct object, the Internet, and an indirect object, for a piece of information ), whereas “look”, here, is mono-transitive (only has one, indirect, here – object, for a piece of information ).

The search is the means. The thing looked for is the means.