Outage

[nq:1]Is the term "outage" to refer to a temporary loss of electrical power used at all in British England, or would people generally say "power cut"?[/nq]
"British English", I assume you mean.
The British generally say "power cut". Using Google I find that *.uk pages are about 20% of the pages containing "power cut" but only 1.4% of pages containing "outage". I would be surprised to hear

[nq:1]Is the term "outage" to refer to a temporary loss of electrical power used at all in British England,[/nq]
No.
[nq:1]or would people generally say "power cut"?[/nq]
Yes.

Don Aitken

"Power cut" sounds like a diminution rather than a cessation of power. ("We'll have to cut your power down to 80% this afternoon, ma'am.")
Peter T. Daniels (Email Removed)

Tangentially, this reminds me of two odd nominalizations I've encountered in the last 24 hours:
(1) The US Dept of Agriculture in sites such as
http://plants.usda.gov/cgi bin/plant profile.cgi?symbol=DAHE2&mode=Print

Has a category "US Nativity", which means the pla

[nq:2]No. Yes. Don Aitken[/nq]
[nq:1]Tangentially, this reminds me of two odd nominalizations I've encountered in the last 24 hours: (1) The US Dept of Agriculture in sites such as http://plants.usda.gov/cgi bin/plant profile.cgi?symbol=DAHE2&mode=Print Has a category "US Nativit

[nq:2](2) Heard on the radio (unfortunately didn't get the exact ... World Cup". Here "favouritism" means "state of being the favourite".[/nq]
[nq:1]"Favo(u)ritism" to me means giving better treatment to one's friends. Your example seems wrong.[/nq]
Bingo! That's the reason he chose the "wrong" example, if you get his drift.

[nq:2]No. Yes.[/nq]
[nq:1]"Power cut" sounds like a diminution rather than a cessation of power. ("We'll have to cut your power down to 80% this afternoon, ma'am.")[/nq]
That's an interesting assumption; it doesn't sound that way here. "Cut" allows the meaning "cut off" as well as "cut down", and in this case the former is assumed.

Don Aitken

[nq:1](2) Heard on the radio (unfortunately didn't get the exact words down): "The All Blacks retain their favouritism to win the Rugby World Cup". Here "favouritism" means "state of being the favourite".[/nq]
This could be an Australianism that has migrated to NZ. There are some Australian sports reporters who have been using the word that way for some time now. It drives me crazy.
I shou

[nq:2](2) Heard on the radio (unfortunately didn't get the exact ... World Cup". Here "favouritism" means "state of being the favourite".[/nq]
[nq:1]This could be an Australianism that has migrated to NZ. There are some Australian sports reporters who have been using ... should be more tolerant, I suppose. Nobody expects sports reporters to speak the same language as the rest of us.[/nq]
T

[nq:2]This could be an Australianism that has migrated to NZ. ... to speak the same language as the rest of us.[/nq]
[nq:1]That "some time now" has been sufficiently long for the sense to be given in the entry for "favouritism" in ... ran at low odds. (end quote) Raymond S. Wise Minneapolis, Minnesota USA E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com[/nq]
Even longer than that! I honestly thought these we