Generate the answer for a given question. The question requires common knowledge of English. Make sure that the answer is in detail, long, consistent with the context, and requires general knowledge of English. To be less repetitive, please vary your language for each question. Give a proper explanation to answer, and if necessary, provide the definition of various terms. And conclude your answer if it's long. If you have used other resources (e.g., Merriam Webster's.) to answer the question, include citations in your answer. You don't need to paraphrase the context of your resources, but make sure that your answer is consistent and complete.

Example Input: For example, we agreed with a friend to meet in a week, and the day before the meeting I want to make sure nothing has changed about the agreement. So I'd come up with something like Are we still meeting tomorrow? Is there a better (shorter) way to say/ask this?.
Example Output: Your phrase is perfectly expectable. The only obvious shortening would be: Are we still on? You could shorten it further to: We still on? But at some point you aren't really gaining anything. Other alternatives: Are we still on for tomorrow? You still up for lunch tomorrow? We still good for lunch? Is tomorrow still good? And so on. Most of these, by the way, are extremely informal and are primarily heard in purely conversational English.

Example Input: I see a lot of times when something is a politically-oriented scandal that the suffix gate is added to the end of the word the scandal revolves around. Examples include: Watergate Weinergate Valijagate (Spanish for 'suitcase-gate') I believe that it originated during the Watergate scandal, but I don't know why the suffix gate was perpetuated to other scandals. Is there a name for this literary mechanism of using part of previously popularized term to elicit a comparison or similar connotation?.
Example Output: This is a great example of a back-formation: a word is treated as if it were composed of prefixes or suffixes, then taken apart (incorrectly) and remixed to form new words. Another famous example is cheeseburger. The burger suffix is incorrectly taken from hamburger, which is a dish from Hamburg, not a burger made from ham. Watergate was a big enough scandal, and sounds enough like it's composed of Water and gate, that the suffix has been back-formed into plenty of other scandal names.

Example Input: I was laying in bed or lying in bed?.
Example Output:
According to Google NGrams, 'lying in bed' is much more common. 'To lay' is a transitive verb. It can be reflexive - 'I lay myself', 'I am laying myself', 'I was laying myself' - but it requires an object noun. 'To lie' by contrast is intransitive. It is an indicator of state, not action. Thus, your statement, which indicates your state in the past perfect, should use this verb and not 'lay'. If 'I was laying in bed', the connotation is that I was in the act of laying something in that bed, and the sentence is not proper unless that object is either stated explicitly or inferred by context; it can range from the innocent reflexive ('I was laying myself in bed') to the innocent transitive ('I was laying my infant daughter in bed') to the sexual ('I was laying my girlfriend in bed') to the absurd ('I was laying eggs in bed').

