Trouble With Tenses - Double have.

X. ‘If I’d have known, I’d have told you’. This is a colloquialism often heard today, though rarely seen in written English. The have in the first clause is superfluous and ungrammatical.
Change to:
If I’d known, I’d have told you. (If I had known, I would have told you.)
A warning, by the way, about spelling. It is all too easy to write X. I’d of done it if I’d known and X. You might of told me. The words have and of may sometimes sound the same, but they are not the same word.
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Irregular Verbs - I Swam The Channel.

The problem of deciding between past and perfect does not arise for regular English verbs. The forms are the same: I talked, I have talked.
The difficulties arise with irregular verbs, where the past and the past participle forms are different (go, went, gone; bite, bit, bitten; and so on). Some require special comment.
Drunk, swum, and others.- In many dialects the past participle form of verbs like sing and drink is used for the past tense. For instance, people say X. The ship sunk and X. We begun yesterday. This is wrong in Standard English.
With some verbs, there are alternative forms for the past and past participle. The verb spin, for example, has spun and the old-fashioned span as past-tense forms: She spun/? Span some cotton. The past participle in spun: She has spun some cotton.
Shrink has shrunk and shrank as past-tense forms. Most people use shrunk to mean ‘got smaller’, as in The pullover shrunk in the wash, but shrank to mean ‘recoiled’, as in He shrank back in horror. The past particle is shrunk: The pullover has shrunk in the wash. The form shrunken is now used only as an adjective: a shrunken head.
All the other similar verbs have lost the distinctive past form completely, such as slink, slunk, slunk and wring, wrung, wrung.
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Pronouns and Case - Me Doing, Or My Doing?

Which of these sentences is correct?
I hope you don’t mind me asking? I hope you don’t mind my asking?
The same problem occurs with nouns:
I was amazed at Paul saying that. I was amazed at Paul’s saying that.
Purists point out that asking and saying in these sentences are gerunds – that is, they act like nouns – and so should take a possessive, just as in sentences like I hope you don’t mind my question and I was amazed at Paul’s insolence.
Nevertheless, idiom often favours me asking and Paul saying that, especially in informal contexts.
Certainly the possessive form –my,Paul’s – is more formal, and is clearly preferable at the beginning of a sentence:
His saying that was very strange. ? Him saying that was very strange.
And it must be used if the -ing word is so noun-like that it is followed by of plus a noun or pronoun:
We enjoyed his parodying of the minister.
On the other hand, possessives are awkward or impossible in some contexts:
You can depend on something/?? Something’s turning up. She did it without either of us/X our knowing. She did it without her brother or sister/?? Sister’s knowing. I caught him/X his rifling through the files lying on my desk.
If you are worried in particular cases, avoid the problem altogether by rewording – I hope you don’t mind that I asked; You can depend on it that something will turn up, and so on.
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Origins - Hints and Helps.

The verb intimate is from Latin intimus, innermost, the same root from which the adjective intimate and its noun intimacy are derived; but the relationship is only in etymology, not in meaning. An intimation contains a significance buried deep in the innermost core, only a hint showing. As you grow older, you begin to have intimations that you are mortal; when someone aims a gun at you, or when a lorry comes roaring down at you as you drive absent-mindedly against a red light through an intersection, you are suddenly very sure that you are mortal.
Alleviate is a combination of Latin levis, light (not heavy), the prefix ad-, to, and the verb suffix. (Ad- changes to al- before a root starting with l-).
If something alleviates your pain, it makes your pain lighter for you; if I alleviate your sadness, I make it lighter to bear; and if you need some alleviation of your problems, you need them made lighter and less burdensome. To alleviate is to relieve only temporarily, not to cure or do away with. (Relieve is also from levis, plus re-, again – to make light or easy again.) The adjective form of alleviate is alleviative – aspirin is an alleviative drug.
Anything light will rise – so from the prefix e- (ex-), out, plus levis, we can construct the verb elevate, etymologically, to raise out, or, actually, raise up, as to elevate one’s spirits, raise them up, make them lighter; or elevate someone to a higher position.
Have you ever seen a performance of magic in which a person or an object apparently rises in the air as if floating? That’s levitation – rising through no visible means. (I’ve watched it a dozen times and never could work it out!) The verb, so to rise, is levitate.
And how about levity? That’s lightness too, but of a different sort – lightness in the sense of frivolity, flippancy, joking, or lack of seriousness, especially when solemnity, dignity, or formality is required or more appropriate, as in ‘tones of levity’, or as in, ‘Levity is out of place at a funeral or in a house of worship’, or as in, ‘Okay, enough levity – now let’s get down to business!’.
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Pronouns and Case - But Me, Or But I.

But is usually a conjunction: I like the idea but I think it’s impractical. But when it means ‘except’, is it still a conjunction?
Nobody but I took the idea seriously.
Or is it a preposition, which takes the object pronoun me instead?
Nobody but me took the idea seriously.
Unlike the as and than examples, these cannot be expanded into a reasonable sentence by adding an extra verb: X Nobody took the idea seriously, but I did. So but seems to be a preposition, and but me to be logically correct. If you remain uneasy, you can always avoid the whole issue by rewording:
I was only person who took the idea seriously.
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Origins - Heads and Headings.

Latin caput, capitis means head. The captain is the head of any group; the capital is the ‘head city’ of a state or nation; and to decapitate is to chop off someone’s head, a popular activity during the French Revolution after the guillotine was invented.
Latin capitulum is a little head, or, by extension, the heading, or title, of a chapter. So when you recapitulate, you go through the chapter heading again (re-), etymologically speaking, or you summarize or review the main points.
When you capitulate, etymologically you arrange in headings, or, as the meaning of the verb naturally evolved, you arrange conditions of surrender, as when an army capitulates to the enemy forces under prearranged conditions; or, by further natural extension, you stop resisting and give up, as in, ‘He realized there was no longer any point in resisting her advances, so he reluctantly capitulated’.
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Pronouns and Case - It's Me Or It's I.

The most controversial question about pronouns is whether to use the subject or object case after is, was, and other forms of the verb to be.
In earlier times, grammarians trying to model English grammar on Latin argued that the verb to be cannot have an object and insisted on using subject pronouns after it, as in It is I and Was that she? This habit survives in the common American usage when answering the phone: Can I speak to Maria Higgins? – This is she.
But what comes after to be is not really a subject either. It is a complement. Modern Standard English remains undecided about what to do here, but the fact is that most people nowadays say It’s me and Was that her? This is acceptable usage for everyone except the most formal and traditional.
As always, you can rephrase things to avoid the problem entirely. In answer to the question Who’s there?, you do not have to say either It’s I or It’s me: you can say, uncontroversially, I am instead.
Note that if a who-clause follows the personal pronoun, Standard English usually prefers a subject form. For example:
It’s I who do the shopping.
Colloquial English, on the other hand, would probably still favour me here, together with various other changes:
It’s me that does the shopping.
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