A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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tive. The rule therefore permits Zach is liable to fall out of his chair if he doesn’t sit up straight but not The chair is liable to be slippery. Nevertheless, constructions of the latter type have long been common in good writing.
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Apt usually suggests that the subject (whether a person or not) has a natural tendency enhancing the probability of an outcome and that the speaker is somewhat apprehensive about the outcome. Thus you would naturally use apt in a sentence like The fuel pump is apt to give out at any day but not in Even the clearest instructions are apt to be misinterpreted by those idiots (since “those idiots,” not the instructions, are at fault). Similarly, you would not use apt in The fuel pump is apt to give you no problems for the life of the car (since there is no reason that the speaker should regard such an outcome as unfortunate).
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Likely is more general than either liable or apt. It ascribes no particular property to the subject that would enhance the probability of the outcome. Thus, while John is apt to lose the election may suggest that the loss will result from something John does or fails to do, John is likely to lose the election does not. Nor does it suggest anything about the desirability of the outcome from the point of view of either the speaker or the subject.
When lifestyle became popular a generation ago, some people objected to it as voguish and superficial, perhaps because it appeared to elevate habits of consumption, dress, and recreation to categories in a system of a social classification. But the word has stayed with us, if only because such categories figure importantly in the schemes that Americans commonly invoke when explaining social values and behavior, as in “an anticonventional lifestyle is no sure sign of feminist politics, or indeed, of any politics at all” (Rachel Brownstein). The Usage Panel accepts the word, but more so when the context requires a term that implies categorization based on habits of consumption. Thus 53 percent of the Usage Panel accepts the word in Bohemian attitudes toward conventional society have been outstripped and outdated by the lifestyles of millions of young people. But 70 percent accept the word in Salaries in the Bay Area may be higher, but it may cost employees as much as 30 percent more to maintain their lifestyles.
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light
You can use either lighted or lit as past tense and past participle of light. Both forms are also well established as adjectives: a lit (or lighted) pipe.
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like
instrusive like
You may have heard people complain about the use of like as a “meaningless” particle, as in The waves were, like, really big or He wrote two bestsellers and then he, like, stopped writing. Linguists call this “intrusive” or “focus” like. It can appear anywhere in a sentence and is used to set off the most significant new information—the focus—of the sentence. This use of like is a hallmark of spoken language and is used in writing almost solely in dialogue.
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like indicating direct speech or an attitude
So I’m like, “Let’s get out of here.” Everyone has overheard this construction in casual conversation at the mall or in the park. It is used primarily by young people and appears to be gaining in
