Friday, 7 December 2012

Hailstones

My friend in Italy wants to know if it is "hailing" or "hailstoning". Could anyone provide the correct nomenclature for the dear ex pat?

2 comments:

  1. As with most wordy things it all depends - hailstoning only gets 41,000 hits on google so it's quite rare but clearly better if you want to emphasise the getting hit by hard things part of the process. 'Hailing' + 'weather' gets over 3 million hits so its clearly commoner - though who wants to be common?

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    Replies
    1. Yes, quite! The rare birds are the most exotic.
      I thought hailstoning was much more pithy and descriptive. The trouble is she's teaching English as a Foreign Language and they get quite touchy about things like that: They rely on what's in the dictionary, as opposed to being in the avant garde of language development.
      Thanks for the statistics. Will be of great support.

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