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SuperESL Posted 12 years ago
Grammar
Sign onto
Hi,
"In other situations, the need for unanimity results not so much in a narrower decision as in a more ambiguous decision: it becomes easier for justices to sign onto “vague concepts” or equivocal wording."
How commonplace is the phrase 'sign onto,' used in my understanding in the sense of 'accede to,' as it seems to be the case in the passage quoted above?
It seems to be quite common in Canadian writing.
Thank you.
"In other situations, the need for unanimity results not so much in a narrower decision as in a more ambiguous decision: it becomes easier for justices to sign onto “vague concepts” or equivocal wording."
How commonplace is the phrase 'sign onto,' used in my understanding in the sense of 'accede to,' as it seems to be the case in the passage quoted above?
It seems to be quite common in Canadian writing.
Thank you.
Top answer
Hello SuperESL. I speak British English: I'm not used to this use, and I couldn't find an example of it in the British Corpus (BNC). On the other hand, the US Corpus (COCA) has plenty of examples, so I'd say it was reasonably common in American English.
- Hello SuperESL.
- I speak British English: I'm not used to this use, and I couldn't find an example of it in the British Corpus (BNC).
- On the other hand, the US Corpus (COCA) has plenty of examples, so I'd say it was reasonably common in American English.
- Here are two instances: the first is a typical example of its use in spoken political discussion; the second is one of the only examples I found of its use in an academic article.
- What he would do though in getting that was have the Republicans sign onto tax increases which would demoralize the Republican base and fracture the party and enable him to run as a born-again deficit reducer.
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4 Answers
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Hello SuperESL.
I speak British English: I'm not used to this use, and I couldn't find an example of it in the British Corpus (BNC).
On the other hand, the US Corpus (COCA) has plenty of examples, so I'd say it was reasonably common in American English.
Here are two instances: the first is a typical example of its use in spoken political discussion; the second is one of
I speak British English: I'm not used to this use, and I couldn't find an example of it in the British Corpus (BNC).
On the other hand, the US Corpus (COCA) has plenty of examples, so I'd say it was reasonably common in American English.
Here are two instances: the first is a typical example of its use in spoken political discussion; the second is one of
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