English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2014-03-23 (page 1 of 4)

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12:12 AM

544

Q: What is the optimal algorithm for the game 2048?

I have recently stumbled upon the game 2048. You need to merge similar tiles by moving them in any of the four directions. Similarly, I mean tiles with the same value. After each move, a new tile appears at random empty position with value of either 2 or 4. The game terminates when all the boxes ...

algorithm logic artificial-intelligence

!!define has-been

@cyril No definition found.

@cyril has-been (pejorative) A person, especially one formerly popular or influential, who continues in their field after their popularity or effectiveness has peaked and is now in decline.

6 hours later…

6:03 AM

> 23.568

uppe med tuppen? up with the cock? (no ambiguity in Swedish)

Maybe a slight ambiguity since there is the expression 'ruska tupp'

@Cerberus forgot to ping ^

3 hours later…

9:33 AM

Limerick Machine: A man who was stuck in a cell Thought things were going quite well He’d free room and...

posted on March 23, 2014 by sgdi

A man who was stuck in a cell Thought things were going quite well He’d free room and board The only discord Were the torture and terrible smell

4 hours later…

1:15 PM

@JohanLarsson Ahh so that just means "what's up"?

Funny.

pimple

@Cerberus it means more like the early bird thing, something you say to a person who is up early as an alternative to good morning.

Hi.

@JohanLarsson Ahh I get it.

[Are you] up with the cock? Not: [what's] up with the cock?

yeah

I think roosters starts making their sounds early hence the expression

In Dutch, you can also say op zijn met x, "be up with x", as in woken up.

Yes.

Hey, do you have an expression like the crack of dawn?

Any word that sounds vaguely like crack and that can be used in an expression with sunrise or the start of the day?

1:24 PM

hmm, gryning is dawn but can't think of any crack sound, will ping if I do

@JohanLarsson Hmm interesting.

Do you have any idea what other words or roots gryning is related to?

nope, not even a guess

OK.

did not mean it in a stop-asking-questions way :)

Haha.

> gry

to dawn

Innan en ny dag gryr

Before a new day dawns

> ------------------------------
Danish
Proper noun

Gry

A female given name of modern usage from the vocabulary word gry "dawn".

Norwegian
Proper noun

Gry

A female given name from the vocabulary word gry.

1:35 PM

what is the dutch word?

This could very well be related to Dutch krieken, also a verb.

what is it in german?

i think swedish lended from french and german for a while

But it is only used in fixed expression, like het krieken van de dag, which means dawn, the beginning of the day.

No idea about German.

Swedish borrowed gryning from French or German, huh?

dunno about gryning but we borrowed words for a while, dunno which century

i almost flagged your message by mistake

chat was hidden behind another window and i clicked the flag when clicking on chrome

Haha.

1:38 PM

luckyily there was a are you sure you are sure

I can take a flag or two.

OK.

> M. Philippa e.a. (2003-2009) Etymologisch Woordenboek van het Nederlands

krieken ww. ‘aanbreken van de dag’
Vnnl. crieken ‘aanbreken van de dag’ in Met crieken van den daghe ‘bij het aanbreken van de dag’ [1562-92; MNW].
Er bestaat een werkwoord krieken ‘tsjilpen, piepen’, zoals al in de afleiding vnnl. kriecker(ken) ‘krekel’ [1599; Kil.], en kricken ‘met lawaai barsten’ (zie ook → krekel). Men heeft daarom gedacht aan het geluid van vogels bij het aanbreken van de dag. Dan zou het gaan om een klanknabootsend woord dat met → kraken verwant is. De betekenis ‘dageraad’ is echter opvallend.…

you probably see more dawns than most people

then you go to bed

Okay, this seems like the definitive answer: grieking = "graying", the way the sky becomes grey as dawn approaches.

Haha true.

OE has dægred or æring for dawn.

Can gry be related to a word for grey in Swedish? Grijs/grau in Dutch.

@Robusto Dagenraad, I see.

I don't know what the -raad means, actually.

1:40 PM

grey is grå

OK.

Do you agree that Dutch grieking/griekelinghe/graken/krieckelinge seems related to Swedish gryning?

@Cerberus It might be connected to rǽd, meaning counsel?

That would indeed be raad.

But would it make sense?

Hmm, maybe more like reading, as in seeing signs of.

"Seeing/reading signs of dawn"

Hmm...

But in Dutch it doesn't feel like that.

1:44 PM

I'm only thinking of OE.

It is the phenomenon, not one's observation, in Dutch.

One thing that springs to mind is the reddish sun of dawn.

Ðis wæs eall geworden ǽr dægréde => This was all done before daybreak.

Note how it differs from current Germanic word order.

Hmm how do you mean?

Dit was al geworden eer dageraad.

Hmm, the Latin given as a direct translation for dægréde is dilūcŭlum

Apart from the archaic vocabulary, you could use that order in modern Dutch.

Dit was allemaal gedaan voor de dageraad.

@Robusto Hmm that would be from lux.

Di- could be "in twain", as in the moment that separates night and day?

> De herkomst is onduidelijk. Wrsch. gevormd uit → dag ‘tijd dat het licht is’ met een onbekend achtervoegsel, dat in elk geval niets met het huidige rood of raad te maken heeft.

1:49 PM

@Cerberus Das war alles vor Tagesanbruch geschehen.

The verb would come after the time expression in German.

In Dutch, you can use either order.

@Robusto Isn't it also optional in German?

google.com/…

Hmm . . . Betweox ðam dægréde and sunnan upgange differentiates between dawn and sunrise. Dawn happens before sunrise.

> lm naturphilosophischen Weltverständnis der antiken Materialisten war alles Geschehen in der Welt von einer durchgängigen objektiven Notwendigkeit bestimmt, die ...

@Cerberus Like ǽfen-glommung but bidirectional.

@Robusto Ahh yes.

@Robusto So that would be Tchrist's nautical dawn v. sunrise, right?

1:52 PM

@Robusto Yes, but most people don’t know that.

@tchrist Avondgloren?

We would only use gloren/glory for morning now, wouldn't we?

@Cerberus yeah reads like it would sound the sameish

@tchrist Actually, I would never use krieken for anything other than morning, and neither do the old quotations.

@JohanLarsson OK cool.

@Cerberus råd

OE dagung and Ger. Tagen (v.) are related, both meaning "to become day" and mean the v. form of dawn.

1:55 PM

@Cerberus Not glory, but gloaming, because glóm (now gloam) meant twilight, but gloam is a back formation from gloaming in modern English, as OE glómung survived but glóm was lost and had to be rederived.

Dawn is the period between true night and sunrise.

@JohanLarsson What is that? Related to dawn?

I still think the -rǽde there means "reading" as in "perceiving signs of"

@Robusto Right, Dutch dag and dagen "to dawn".

råd means council or ha råd to be able to afford or råd hint

@Robusto One issue is that Dutch does not have any verb related to reading like that.

Isn't read of Scandinavian origin?

Or is it related to German reden, Dutch rede "speech"?

1:57 PM

@Cerberus But English does.

where did gutenberg live? proly not an indication of anything

@Cerberus It does mean speech, but in the sense of counsel (in OE).

@Robusto Well, rǽd (now rede) means counsel or advice. It turned into raad in some other northern languages.

@tchrist Hmm what are you saying exactly? That it is in no way related to morning glory?

@Cerberus Yes.

1:59 PM

@Robusto But Dutch has dageraad...

@JohanLarsson Germany?

@Robusto Hmm I see.

@Cerberus Dutch has raad.

@tchrist There are various spellings in OE. -rǽde, -rǽd, -rede, -red, etc.

There are.

@tchrist Yes, but nothing that means anything close to m.E. read.

OK so they are related, I had no idea.

gryning and råd related? feels strange

2:00 PM

So reading, speaking, and councselling are in the same meaning-space in this word.

Æthelræd Unræd is generally mistranslated as "Ethelred the Unready" when it really meant Ethelred the Unadvised (or Uncounseled).

@JohanLarsson Do you have anything like råd related to dawn?

no don't think so

@Robusto Ahh I see! Dutch onraad = trouble, danger.

oråd

2:02 PM

Especially in onraad ruiken "to smell danger".

ana oråd

What does that mean?

2x same thing

Ah OK.

@Cerberus Which would be a "reading" of sorts.

I wonder if it could be related to "wheel" in the Germanice sense of Rad. Just a thought.

2:03 PM

Maybe in the sense of "something you are advised against"? On- can work like that in Dutch.

For example, tucht is discipline; ontucht is mostly incest in modern Dutch.

@Robusto Would be a big jump in meaning...

@Cerberus Yes. Just throwing that into the pot.

We also have verraad, "treason, treachery". As in ver- "twisted" -raad "counsel". Ver- can often be negative.

rede /riːd/, sb.[entry#1] Now arch. or poet. and dial. Forms: 1-3 ræd, 3 reæd, ræid, (reað), 3-6, 9 read, 3-7 (9 Sc.) reade, 3 (4-6 Sc.) reid, (5 Sc. -e), 3-7 reed, (5-7 -e), 2-7 (8 Sc.), 9 rede; 1-5 (6 Sc.) red, 5 redde, 7 Sc. redd, 2-3 (7 Sc.) rad, 3-4 rade.

Etymology: Common Teut.: OE. rǽd masc. = OFris. rêd, OS. râd (MDutch rāt, rād-, Dutch raad), OHG. rât (G. rath, rat), ONor. ráð neut. (Sw. raåd, Da. raad):-OTeut. *ræ̂d̶o-z (? and *ræ̂d̶om), f. the stem of the vb. *ræ̂d̶an to read or rede. The word is very frequent in OE. and early ME., and remained in literary use till the beginning…

Vergaan, (gaan = go), "to perish". Akin to Latin pereo "to perish", possibly a loan translation?

But it is surprising how many words can be got out of the same idea. For example, root from radix which becomes English root (also radish) and is used in the mathematical sense and also is seen in radius (I suppose), and who knows what else.

2:06 PM

Forego, forewent, foregone

Hmm is radius related to radix?

Radically.

@tchrist I don't believe ver- is related to for(e)?

Radius in Latin would be ray.

@Cerberus I wouldn't be surprised.

They are both oblong shapes...

2:07 PM

@tchrist Yes, I left out radical, though I was thinking of it.

radius /ˈreɪdɪəs/, sb. Also 7 -ous. Pl. radii /ˈreɪdɪaɪ/; also 7-8 radius’s, 8 -uses.

Etymology: a. L. radius a staff or stake, measuring-rod, spoke, ray, etc. (cf. senses below).

Oblong is not the right word...long and thin.

@Cerberus Oh, really? Hmm.

@tchrist Right.

English rod is of course related?

Only through PIE.

2:08 PM

Dutch roede "stick, [specific measurement]".

Yes, rod is an old Germanic word.

rod /rɒd/, sb.[entry#1] Also 1-6 rodd-, 4-5 rodd, 5-7 rodde.

Etymology: OE. rodd, corresponding in sense to the continental forms cited under rood sb., but in form quite distinct. Prob. related to ONor. rudda ‘club’, Norw. dial. rudda, rydda ‘a large pliant twig or stick used as a whip’, rodda ‘a stake set upright to hang things on’ (Ross).

Old English rodd "a rod, pole," which is probably cognate with Old Norse rudda "club," from Proto-Germanic *rudd- "stick, club," from PIE *reudh- "to clear land."

Ah, it was already related to land that long ago?

Hmm.

In Dutch, a roede is more like a unit of length I think. We have other old units of area derived from how long it took to clear land, like morgen "morning".

But I'm not wholly convinced that radius and radix don't have a common ancestor.

rood /ruːd/, sb. Forms: ɑ. 1-6 rod, 3-6 rode (6 roide, rodde), 4-7 roode, 5 roed, rowd, 6 roud, 6- rood. β. Sc. 5 rwd, 5-6 rud, 5- rude, 6- ruid (9 reed).

Etymology: OE. ród fem. (obl. cases róde, pl. róda), corresponding in sense (def#1) to OFris. rôde, OS. ruoda, OIcel. róða (also róði masc.); the latter is prob. from OE. In the sense of twig or rod (also measuring-rod, measure of land), the cognate forms appear as Fris. roede (roe), MDutch ro(o)de, roede, ruede (Dutch roede), OS. ruoda (MLG. rôde, rôdhe, LG. rôde, rôe), OHG. rouda, ruada, ruota (MHG. ruote, rûte, G. ruthe, rute). In OE.…

2:10 PM

@Robusto It is possible, I can look it up...

It is annoying how no classical etym. dic. are available digitally: I only have PDFs.

@tchrist Yes, a cross, as in "The Dream of the Rood" (which every student of Old English has to read).

It has 10 primary senses given, all cruciferous.

Now I wonder if pole and pale are related. I think they must be.

> II 7. As a linear measure: A rod, pole, or perch. Now only in local use, and varying from 6 to 8 yards.

pole (n.1) "stake," late Old English pal "stake, pole, post," a general Germanic borrowing (cf. Old Frisian and Old Saxon pal "stake," Middle Dutch pael, Dutch paal, Old High German pfal, Old Norse pall) from Latin palus "stake"

2:13 PM

A rood’s a crappie word for a perch.

How many perches in a chain?

Palo Alto

macbook# units perch chain
	* 0.25
	/ 4

user image

user image

Well, it was a good thought anyway.

So they are méfiants.

2:15 PM

Hehe.

Yes, you had me convinced.

And apparently two other etymologists were equally convinced.

Please don’t tell me they were women.

No time to go back and fix.

Huh?

Women? Where?

Teasing.

How long is a chain anyway?

Radical women etymologists?

2:18 PM

Those were méfiant(s). In English, we don’t normally inflect méfiant into formal agreement.

@Cerberus That is at the root of the problem, yes.

@tchrist Ahh is that what you meant.

@Robusto The wortel, as we would say in Dutch, also related.

Another word nucleus I love is mel (Greek "honey") which winds up in melody, mellifluous, etc.

It does.

Is root from Scandinavian?

2:19 PM

rot = root, no need to go fancy with double os

@Cerberus Which one?

The one that is /rʊt/ or one of those that are /rut/?

@Robusto Is it Greek? I only know the Latin.

@JohanLarsson Haha OK.

@tchrist Umm I only know /rʊt/?

Oh.

@Cerberus I remember wortel as wurtzel from reading Märchen in which there was some kind of magic root known as Spriggwurtzel (sp?)

You get root for the other team. That one is /rut/.

2:21 PM

Because it seems strange that English should have root where Dutch has wortel, both from the same root.

@Robusto Exactly, Wurzel.

@tchrist Oh I thought that was the same word?

It's a bit slangy, right?

Or at least informal.

> root Late OE. rót, a. ONor. rót (Icel. and Fær. rót), Norw. and Sw. rot (MSw. root), Da. rod (†rood), NFris. rôt, rut (prob. from ODa.), LG. rut. The original stem ∗wrōt- is connected on the one hand with L. rādīx, and on the other with OE. wyrt: see wort. The usual OE. words for ‘root’ are wyrttruma and wyrtwala.

@Cerberus Same spelling, not the same word. It means cheer.

Googling Spriggwurtzel yields nothing. Hmm, there are limits to the Internet's reach.

@tchrist I actually always read rooting for a team as taking root, taking a firm defensive stand.

@Robusto If you can recall the story...

@Cerberus It was an ancient book of German (poss. Czech or other Central European, but written in German) fairy tales. They were dark and repellent, but interesting to my adolescent mind.

You know what? The way swine root for food always sounded a bit strange to me: why would the browsing for edible roots be called rooting? That seemed too...modern. Turns out it is unrelated, from wroot (obs.) "dig", Dutch wroeten.

@Robusto You don't remember what happened in the story? I think there are a couple about magic roots...

2:27 PM

> root v 2. Later form of wroot v., probably through association with prec. See also rout v. in this sense. 1 d. intrans. colloq. (orig. U.S. slang) To cheer for a (baseball, etc.) team. Also transf., to be active for a person or thing by giving support, encouragement, or applause. Also without const.

Toverwortel sounds like something from my youth.

In English, a baby's instinct to try to find its mother's nipple with its mouth is known as "rooting" as well.

@Cerberus This was decades ago.

Let's not forget the square root :-)

@tchrist So I don't get the transition from digging, searching to cheering for.

@Cerberus I just know that the Spriggwurzel was a magic root that maybe was used to transform some inanimate object into a human (cf. mandrake and prob. Pinocchio).

2:29 PM

@Robusto Ah, yes, that makes sense. Although in Dutch you really have to wroet in something, like in the ground, in a pile of clothes.

@Cerberus I don’t either, but you can look it up. They list it in the same place.

Most people don't use rooting to describe the behavior, though. They would just say the baby is hungry.

Rooting for Zauberwurzel doesn't uproot anything of interest.

Hmm, bróþorrǽden is OE for fellowship.

@tchrist I did, but the OED isn't helpful.

2:31 PM

I know.

Right.

@Robusto Brotherrede?

Ach, I was misremembering the spelling. It was Springwurzel.

@Cerberus Yes, roughly.

A raad can be a council, as in a group of wise men.

@Robusto Interesting.

De gemeenteraad = the city council. Gemeente is "community", mainly "municipality".

Also interestingly, in Dutch a raad can be a person, a counsellor. This an old use.

2:34 PM

We have no end of rathskellers in Wisconsin.

Staatsraad = counsellor of state, sort of.

Counsel cellars?

Beer nooks.

By the way, what the hell is up with counsel/council? That is terribly annoying, I always have to think about the spelling.

Everyone does.

Surely it is the same word, concilium?

No, wait, it's not.

Concilium v. consilium.

Arg, it's all Latin's fault.

5

2:36 PM

Rathskeller, rathskeller /ˈrɑːtskɛlə(r)/. Also ratskeller.

Etymology: ad. G. ratskeller (formerly rathskeller), f. rat council as in Rathaus + -s gen. ending + keller cellar. The form rathskeller was preferred to avoid the phonetic association with rat sb.[entry#1] + cellar sb.

a A cellar in a German town hall in which beer or wine is sold. b An underground beer-hall or restaurant. Also transf.

Concilium is like a convention of people; consilium is plan, advice, decision.

@tchrist Ohh so German town halls traditionally have/had beer cellars! I never knew.

And they say capitalism is Anglo...phone.

@Cerberus Blame it on centum–satem.

@Cerberus Ask the Angles.

A hypothetical *conkilium would have been fine versus consilium. It’s when /k/ > /s/ that stuff got messed up.

@Cerberus Or di as in day, no?

@tchrist Huh, what are you suggesting? Both are old Latin words?

@Robusto Ohh d'oh! Of course.

Why didn't I think of that. grumbles

@Cerberus Are there any new Latin words?

2:42 PM

Diluculum sounds newer than concilium.

I actually meant loan words from a satem language.

I guess Church Latin could be considered "new" in a sense.

@Cerberus The Hanseatic League was indeed born of Saxony and Westphalia. Not Britain.

@Robusto Very.

@Cerberus That when you say them in Classical Latin, they sound nothing like each other.

@tchrist Sure, anyone can trade, and close connections between rulers and merchants are all over the place, and by place I mean world.

Notably merchant republics...

2:43 PM

That is, capitalists.

@tchrist Yes, so...

I blame the Saxons, not the British.

Hah.

When I worked in Germany, the Innenleiter was named Dumrat. No, really. I had many a chuckle at that.

Haha.

That's dom.

What is an Innenleiter?

2:45 PM

Kind of like an office manager.

Oh.

I only know Diana Damrath (sp?).

That's not right.

How do you spell her name?

I don't even know of whom thou speak'st.

The opera singer.

Her name is something like that, but not quite.

Random association.

Diana Damrau (born 31 May 1971) is a German soprano opera singer. She is Kammersängerin of the Bavarian State Opera. Biography Damrau was born in 1971 in Günzburg, Bavaria, Germany, and began her operatic studies with at the Hochschule für Musik Würzburg. After graduating from music conservatory she worked in Salzburg with . Her first operatic engagements were in Würzburg and subsequently the National Theatre Mannheim and Oper Frankfurt. Since then, she has sung throughout the world at venues such as the Vienna State Opera, the Metropolitan Opera New York, the Royal Opera House London, t...

??

Ahh Damrau, that was it.

2:47 PM

Not quite the same thing.

I suck at remembering...things. And people. And places.

> By the late 16th century, the League had imploded and could no longer deal with its own internal struggles, the social and political changes that accompanied the Protestant Reformation, the rise of Dutch and English merchants, and the incursion of the Ottoman Empire upon its trade routes and upon the Holy Roman Empire itself. Only nine members attended the last formal meeting in 1669 and only three (Lübeck, Hamburg and Bremen) remained as members until its final demise in 1862.

Yeah. I'm getting worse. I can't believe I didn't remember Springwurzel. It's an easier word to remember than Spriggwurzel.

radish radix radius

I guess I kept thinking of sprig in its sense of shoot or twig.

2:48 PM

@tchrist Poor German monopolists!

@Robusto And she’s not even a dame.

@Robusto Yeah that sounded English, but I thought it might also be a German word...

@tchrist Ain't nothin' like a dame, neither.

@cyril Exactly.

> Despite its collapse, several cities still maintain the link to the Hanseatic League today. The Dutch cities of Groningen, Deventer, Kampen, Zutphen, and the ten German cities Bremen, Demmin, Greifswald, Hamburg, Lübeck, Lüneburg, Rostock, Stade, Stralsund and Wismar still call themselves Hanse cities. Lübeck, Hamburg, and Bremen continue to style themselves officially as "Free (and) Hanseatic Cities."

Cool, free hamburgers.

2:51 PM

Free hamburgers! Sounds like a revolutionary slogan.

@tchrist Oh, we have more. It is now a random commercialised epithet for towns that are in all respects utterly boring and insignificant.

I see.

Of course it is only used by towns that actually were connected to the Hansa, but still.

@Robusto As July 14th forever marks the day that the Bastille was liberated, let us all storm MacDonald’s restaurants everywhere on April 14th demanding that they free the hamburgers before Tax Day.

@tchrist It's the least we can do.

2:55 PM

What is the Greif part of Greifswald?

Is there a *greifen?

Grab.

Forest Grab? Grab the Forest?

Hmm.

No, touch.

No idea.

Like the forest’s edge.

Greifen is to grab, yes.

Your hypothesis is...amusing. I don't know.

2:58 PM

you know what there is to know about fitting a model to data right?

A branch of my family was ennobled by the Swedish King in Greifswald. Far removed.

Hey Johan, could you Google "etymology gry" for me, see if you can find anything about the Swedish etymology?

> Cotswold, Yorkswold

Sure, wald must be forest.

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