While I’m at it:
a meteor is what you see burning itself up.
If any of it survives to hit the earth, that chunk of rock is called a meteorite.
Exactly. (In English idiom, “fifteen sugars” would mean 15 lumps or teaspoonfuls of sugar, and would be greeted with an aghast reaction were you sweetening anything less than a large jugful, which no-one would serve tea in anyway.)
Emancipated is what somebody is if they’re separated from something. A minor can be emancipated from their parents.
Emaciated is what somebody is if they are very very thin. Holocaust victims, Somalian children, and anorexic classmates are emaciated.
a soutenu is a turn. You cross one foot over the other and unwind yourself without moving your feet off the floor. a sous-sus is not a turn. it’s just standing in fifth position relevé (standing on your toes with your feet crossed) with your feet tightly together so that, from the front, it looks like you heve one toe and two heels. the Sioux are Native Americans. They have nothing to do with ballet.
A retiré is, in ballet, when you pick one foot up and put your toe to your knee (like most pictures of ballet dancers) and then put your foot back in the same position. That is not a passé. A passé is when you put your toe to your knee and then PASS your leg and put your foot down in a different position, usually back to front or front to back.
I could keep going…
Or fifteen types of sugar: “Last week we took our six-year-old to the sugar bar, and he tried fifteen sugars before we cut him off; even so, he was bouncing off the roof of the minivan all the way home. We had to wash out his mouth with Perrier before he would start to calm down.”
‘Fishes’ works the same way, doesn’t it?
Tsunamis are not tidal waves, as they are not caused by the tides.
Podkayne hit knitting/crocheting, so that’s covered.
There are many different kinds of computer technicians. Some specialize in Windows, some specialize in Linux or other flavors of Unix. Some specialize in hardware, some specialize in software. A Unix administrator who specializes in software might not know any more than you do about fixing the CD-ROM drive on your Windows machine.
Six is right out.
Sorry, I don’t have a cite - except having the confusion beaten out of me in my junior naval days… 
There are other terms, like high/low tide, (should be high/low water) which are perfectly acceptable in polite society but which might cause raised eyebrows in maritime circles (the ones I travel in anyway). Maybe this is the same thing.
I hope I am not spreading ignorance…the shame would be unbearable. 
And if it’s still outside Earth’s atmosphere, it’s a meteoroid.
Yet tsunami means “harbor wave” which, though it is the accepted term, is not much more accurate that “tidal wave”.
I’d consider someone who worked with software to be a Software Technician or an IT Professional.
A stroke is the sudden onset of (usually localized) brain damage either to a blood clot blocking blood flow to the brain or due to bleeding into the brain.
A seizure is the sudden onset of uncontrolled electrical discharges in the brain often leading to convulsions. Not all seizures cause convulsions. Epilepsy is the condition characterized by a tendency to recurrent seizures.
A heart attack, although sometimes called a “heart seizure” by lay people, has nothing to do with seizures. A heart attack (formally termed a myocardial infarction) occurs when there is a sudden lack of blood flow to parts of the heart itself.
Oh, and a nervous breakdown is a lay term used to denote, I think, an acute depressive or psychotic episode.
“That’s one less thing to worry about” or “That’s fewer things to worry about”; I agree single objects are outside this rule.
“There are fewer than three weeks in the season”, as indeed weeks are countable, but “there is less than a month in the season”.
Money is only countable in units, probably dollars in your case. So either “I paid less taxes” or “I paid fewer dollars in tax”.
I agree with you with those two - they were made up rules based in fasle analogy with Latin. The lesser/fewer distinction is solely English-based and is useful.
I think I can clear confusion: ‘<’ and ‘>’ don’t only refer to integers. “2.71828 < 3.14159” couldn’t mean e is fewer than pi, since neither number is an integer; you can’t have 3.14159 pencils. And if the two numbers just happen to be positive integers, (ie. 3 < 7) you use the same word.
Which begs the question: what’s the difference betweem “eg” and “ie”?
Oh, I know! i.e. is short for id est = “it is” (in Latin, of course), while e.g. = exempli gratia or “here’s an example.” If it helps, you can think of “example given”, which works also.
Almost forgot what I came to post, too!
Mental illness or psychiatric illness is a medical term that describes conditions a psychiatrist treats.
Insanity is a legal concept. It’s defined as the condition of an accused person who is not only mentally ill, but so severely ill that he can’t be considered responsible for his acts. The criteria for insanity are defined by the relevant laws, and usually include inability to tell right from wrong or inability to understand the nature of the act. In effect, the doctor can make a diagnosis, the lawyer for the defense can argue that the diagnosis should be grounds for insanity, but nobody’s insane until the jury says so. (Or the judge, if it’s a bench trial.)
Competence is another legal concept. In order to make a will, sign a contract, get married, or give consent to medical treatment, the person has to understand the nature of the act and possible consequences. There isn’t one general “competence” test; somebody might be able to tell he’s sick and that he wants a doctor to treat him, but not be able to balance his checkbook or keep track of finances. A judge might decide to appoint a conservator of finances for him, but find him competent to make the medical decisions. Many people think if they have a mental illness they will automatically be considered incompetent to manage their own lives. This is a mistake. Details of the laws vary from state to state, but the presumption is that an adult is competent to decide for himself until a court finds otherwise.
Handwriting Analysis is a legitimate forensic technique which aims to discover, for example, whether two samples of text were written by the same person. This is a scientific discipline (the conclusions are based on empirical evidence and can be independently corroborated), albeit an imperfect one in which there is always a degree - reduced as much as possible - of subjective interpretation. It often plays a role in legal and criminal investigations.
Graphology is a baseless pseudo-science wherein practitioners claim they can study someone’s handwriting and, from it, assess things about that person’s character, aptitudes or fortune/destiny. It is entirely bogus, it is not based on anything at all except self-delusion and the delusion of others, and is not in the least scientific or based on empirical evidence. It shouldn’t play a role in any kind of investigation consistent with rational thinking, but all too often it does, which is sad.
A die has numbers on six sides and you throw it in board games and some gambling games. The plural is dice.
Vanity publishing is when you pay a ‘publisher’ (in reality a print shop touting for work) to print x copies of your book. In most cases, this course is chosen as a last resort after having tried, unsuccessfully, to get a publisher to pay you for your work.
Self-publishing is when you publish your book yourself, and take on all the work of getting your book printed and distributed, because that’s what you want to do and/or you don’t want anything to do with ‘publishers’, given that they are entirely unnecessary in this day and age, and given the numerous drawbacks of trying to deal with them.
A good way of illustrating this is that mass is measured by a balance while weight is measured by a scale with springs.
I assume this is why some people say rocket scientists don’t exist, you can’t “discover” rockets.
Couldn’t an engineer be considered an applied scientist, if that makes sense?
New Mexico is one of the fifty states of the USA. It is not a foreign nation. It’s located to the south of Colorado, west of Texas, and east of Arizona. It’s southern border is the international border with Mexico, which is a foreign country. (You would think most people would understand this…)
And now for something completely different!
Martial art is a general term, usually used in the plural. It refers to (usually, but not always) Asian combat sports and/or methods of self defense. Usually, but again not always, the use of weapons is minimal in these, but there are exceptions.
Karate is a specific Japanese martial art. Some schools of karate use weapons, but most do not. Karate techniques are almost exclusively kicks and punches: there is very little wrestling/grappling or joint manipulation.
Kung fu is a term encompassing a fairly wide range of Chinese martial arts. This can include everything from tai chi (which is a very ‘internal’, slow and flowing art) to Shaolin, which is an extremely acrobatic, aerobic art.
Judo is a Japanese wrestling art. Despite certain pop-culture references, there is really no such thing as a “Judo chop”, as it’s not a striking art.