Wednesday, September 13, 2017

This Week: More Language of Health Care on the Podcast + able to

able to
People are able to do things, but things are not able to be done: you should not say, “the budget shortfall was able to be solved by selling brownies.


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2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Hello Peter—I had to look this up and realized only then that this usage is limited mainly to North America, but it is not uncommon here for "birth" to be used as a transitive verb, especially in the context of birthing legislation or birthing an idea.

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