Some more questions.

[Anonymous]

1.What's the difference between:
equal - equivalent
legacy - bequest
long-lasting & long-life
long - lengthy ( can we say "a lengthy car"?)
The book disappointed/had disappointed her.

2.What's the meaning:
darkside
grounded for life

3. Which is correct:
lie (in/on) one's bed
He can jump 7 and (half a feet/a half feet).

4.Can we say "red brownish" besides "reddish brown"? Is there any difference?
Can we use "doleful" with "party", "book"...?

5.Which sentence is correct?

- Astronauts can stand weighlessly in space.
Astronauts can stand weighlessness in space.( Does "stand" mean 'bear" here?)

- Before anyone had made a space flight, scientists wondered if a person could stand weighing nothing.
Before anyone made a space flight, scientists had wondered if a person could stand weighing nothing.

6.Can as and like be interchanged in these sentences?If so, is there any difference?

He has blue eyes like me
Repeat these steps, as in the last exercises.
I don't want to make her cry like before
She used her umbrella as a weapon

7.Well, may be that's too many questions.Thanks so much if you can answer them all.

[Pete]

1.What's the difference between:
>equal - equivalent - equal means really the same; equivalent means not the same, but one can be substituted for the other.
>legacy - bequest - One meaning of legacy is bequest, but it has another, less formal use. See http://m-w.com and look up legacy.
>long-lasting & long-life - I'd use "long life" usually for something that is alive or by metaphor, acts alive. Long-lasting paint. You do hear, long-life battery.
>long - lengthy ( can we say "a lengthy car"?) "Lengthy car" doesn't sound natural. I usually hear "lengthy" used to refer to time, at least indirectly: lengthy movie, lengthy book (will take a long time to read).
>The book disappointed/had disappointed her. Depends on context. Usually you use simple past. Use past perfect to contrast the time of this happening with some other time being mentioned, which was also in the past.

2.What's the meaning:
>darkside - This refers to a place where people emphasize the gloomy, serious aspects of life. It is used in many contexts and has no single definition.
>grounded for life - one way that parents punish children it to "ground" them, to restrict their privileges. When one is grounded, he/she can attend school or go to work but is allowed no social activities with friends. Usually you are grounded for a specific period of time (a week, a month). "Grounded for life" is an exaggeration, saying that an offense is so bad that one's sentence would be for one's whole life. (At least in the US, a parent could not impose such a punishment past a child's 18th birthday.)

3. Which is correct:
>lie (in/on) one's bed - both are correct. In bed: snuggled under the covers. On the bed: emphasizes being stretched out on top of the bed.
>He can jump 7 and (<strike>half a feet</strike>/a half feet).

4.Can we say "red brownish" besides "reddish brown"? Is there any difference?
Both are ok. Reddish brown is more precise; it is a brown with a bit of a red cast. Red brownish would be used to describe something whose color is close to "red brown" but differs in some unspecified way. (Red brown would be a type of brown with a definite red cast.)

5.Which sentence is correct?

- Astronauts can stand weightlessly in space.
Astronauts can stand weightlessness in space. (Does "stand" mean 'bear" here?)
-- Both are correct, with quite different meanings. You are correct that in the second sentence, "stand" must mean "bear", be able to exist with.

- Before anyone had made a space flight, scientists wondered if a person could stand weighing nothing. [Ok. The order in which the verbs took place is the reverse of what you would expect from traditional use of the past perfect, but you sometimes hear this reversal. The word "before" makes clear which happened first, and people put sometimes put the one in the "before" clause in the past perfect.]
Before anyone made a space flight, scientists had wondered if a person could stand weighing nothing. [Ok. This sentence, with past perfect used for an action that took place before another past action, is traditionally the proper form.]

6.Can as and like be interchanged in these sentences? If so, is there any difference?

>He has blue eyes like me. [I think in current standard English, this is correct. Traditionally the rule for this sentence would be to end with "... as I (do)." The meanings are the same.]
>Repeat these steps, as in the last exercises. [As is proper in this sentence.]
>I don't want to make her cry like before. [Use "as" instead of "like" here.]
>She used her umbrella as a weapon. [This is correct and preferred. This says that the umbrella essentially became a weapon the way she used it. If you use "like", it sounds as if the umbrella was used like a weapon, but it didn't really work as one.]

7.Well, may be that's too many questions.Thanks so much if you can answer them all.

-- It really would be better for you to break a long series of questions like this into multiple postings, each with a descriptive subject. You would probably get the answers to at least some of them earlier, since I had to hold off posting a reply until I had them all done. Sometimes different people would do better answering different parts, and that is hard to do when you post many questions at the same time. Of course, with individual descriptive subjects, it would be easier to find particular