Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 July 23

= July 23 =

Might ought to?
There was a brief exchange in the movie The Guardian. The bar lady asks Senior Chief Randall "Did you read the papers?" The man answers: "No I did not!", and the bar lady says, "Think you might ought to?" It seems to be a very clever way to convey just the right meaning, but at the same time it would be grossly ungrammatical to say "Do you think you might should/could/would read them". Can someone explain, why the phrase "ought to" accepts "might" in front of it while other modal verbs do not? It sounds kind of OK in any case. --Pxos (talk) 19:27, 23 July 2022 (UTC) Just so you know, might could is fine in Texas. --Trovatore (talk) 21:07, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
 * There's some discussion at English modal verbs. The more standard way of expressing it would probably be "Do you think that maybe you should?" AnonMoos (talk) 20:22, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Why are the words in green? Is Texas a green state? --Pxos (talk) 22:54, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
 * It's the xt template, used in MoS-like contexts to indicate correct language. --Trovatore (talk) 23:52, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
 * OK. In the Finnish WP, the colour green is not used by anyone except me. I use it to add a claryfying meta-comment after someone else's comment when the comment needs to be technically commented in some way. I'll demonstrate it in the following edit, which I will subseq'ly undo. --Pxos (talk) 11:04, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Dizzy Dean, commenting on a batter who should have checked his swing: "He shouldn't hadn't oughta swang!" --<-Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots-> 22:42, 23 July 2022 (UTC)