have a thing about, etc,
reading Jeffrey Archer's "The Eleventh Commandment":
AAA. ---- Is that a double-barrelled name?
---- No, Gregory is my first name. My mother had a thing about Gregory Peck.
question: 1. what is a "double-barrelled name"?
2. the phrase "have a thing about" seems to have two opposite meanings, so how to judge if we come across "She had a thing about men who wore glasses. ", does she like or dislike a man wearing glasses?
BBB. corridor, corrider, I find in dictionary the two words have the same meaning, but pronounced differently, I hope to know from local speakers how the two words are actually used.
thank you for your help and your time

Question

have a thing about, etc,
reading Jeffrey Archer's "The Eleventh Commandment":
AAA. ---- Is that a double-barrelled name?
         ---- No, Gregory is my first name. My mother had a thing about Gregory Peck. 
question: 1. what is a  "double-barrelled name"?
                 2.  the phrase "have a thing about" seems to have two opposite meanings, so how to judge if we come across "She had a thing about men who wore glasses. ", does she like or dislike a man wearing glasses?
BBB. corridor, corrider, I find in dictionary the two words have the same meaning, but pronounced differently, I hope to know from local speakers how the two words are actually used. 
thank you for your help and your time

Answer

To have a thing about something means to have strong feelings about it, usually favorable feelings, but depending on how it's expressed, it could be negative feelings. In this case, I would say she had a strong liking for Gregory Peck and therefore named her son Gregory.

With the second sentence, it's hard to know without more context.

I've never seen it spelled "corrider". My pronunciation of "corridor" is close to the one here: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/american-english/corridor_1

Answer

I've never read the Eleventh Commandment, but let me see if I can answer your questions... A double-barreled name is a name that has 2 names where commonly there is just one. For example, let's say my full name was Mary Kate Louise Williams-Schaffer. "Mary Kate" is a double-barreled first name (Because you would call me Mary Kate, not just Mary) and "Williams-Schaffer" is a double-barreled last name. (Double-barrel name is an analogy of a double-barrel shotgun) Perhaps my mother and father had different last names and wanted me to have both of theirs so that's why they made me a "Williams-Schaffer" rather than just a "Williams" or a "Schaffer".

To "have a thing about" is a fun one, and a little tricky. In this context the mother likes Gregory Peck and that's why she named her son "Gregory." You are right though, "to have a thing about" can be used in a negative sense too. "Please don't do that here, I have a thing about the sound of fingernails being clipped." (meaning it's a huge pet-peeve). So it's either to have a strong like for something, or a strong dislike for it. It depends on the context.

About the corrider/corridor thing, I could be wrong since you looked it up in a dictionary, but I am not sure "corrider" is correct. A "corridor" is a long passage (a hallway) but I've never seen it spelled "corrider."

Answers · 4

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