"Do you do Taco Hell?" / "bus" as non-count n.

Charles Doyle cdoyle at UGA.EDU
Sat Dec 9 19:54:50 UTC 2006


Re. "bus":

And then we have such "non-count" uses as "go (travel) by bus (car/train/boat/plane/mule/foot)."  Or "jump ship" (though I reckon that's pretty much just an idiom now).

By the way, Arnold: Despite my most ardent effort, I'm not wholly persuaded that "prom" (as in "Who are you taking to prom?" or "I wish our schools had prom on different nights") functions like a proper noun, unless we regard "proper noun" in a way that includes such words (as they occur in certain phrases) as "(back from) vacation" or "(on) leave" or "(at) rest"--which I suppose is possible: a special, nonroutine time or occasion.

Until pretty recently, "He's on break now" sounded odd to me.  And there's the unAmerican "Where did you go for holiday?"

--Charlie
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