Page 228 - Basic English Usage
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If | say my elder brother/sister, | only have one brother or sister older than
me. If | have more, | say e/dest.
We say elder son/daughter when there are only two; if there are more we
say eldest.
Elder and e/dest are only used before brother, sister etc.
In other cases we use o/der and oldest.
She likes older men.
I'm the oldest person in my office.
experience and experiment
The tests which scientists do are called experiments.
Newton did several experiments on light and colour.
(NOT ... severatexperiences ...)
We also use experiment for anything that people do to see what the
result will be.
Try some of this perfume as an experiment.
Experiences are the things that you ‘live through’: the things that happen
to you in life.
/ had a lot of interesting experiences during my year in Africa.
The uncountable noun experience means ‘learning by doing things’ or
‘the knowledge you get from doing things’.
Salesginl wanted . experience unnecessary.
female and feminine; male and masculine
Female and male say what sex people, animals and plants belong to.
A female fox is called a vixen.
He works as a male nurse
Feminine and masculine are used for qualities and behaviour that are
supposed to be typical of men or women.
She has a very masculine laugh.
It was a very feminine bathroom.
Feminine and masculine are also used for grammatical forms in some
languages.
The word for ‘moon’ is feminine in French and masculine in German.
its and it’s
Its is a possessive determiner, like my, your, his and her.
The cat's hurt its foot (NOT .. . it's-feet)
It’s is a contraction for it is or it has.
It’s late. (NOT 4tstate-) ‘It’s stopped raining.