Read his doctrinaire comment on a question Kosmonaut (another linguist) and I put together to field the many questions we got on time expressions in English. He couldn't get around his notion of tenses being used "incorrectly" by us.
EDIT: Added past continuous, trimmed image so it would be slightly larger, and gave it a transparent background.
EDIT: Added middle line, made some adjustments per @Kosmonaut.
I ended up sticking a small pin in him. Or his buddy.
@GastonÜmlaut: I guess that's just one more piece of evidence that linguistics isn't settled science. — RobustoApr 14 '13 at 11:30
@Cerberus even once suggested (possibly jokingly) that languages should only use IPA alphabets. Which would mean that pen would be written differently in Michigan and Alabama.
That said, I get along well with Jews. They tend to be smart and have a good sense of humor. If they don't take the religion thing too seriously, it's all good.
I'm an atheist, but I wore a yarmulke to a friend's wedding last year, if that gives you any idea.
@DavidM Yeah, that's the one thing that makes me tired. One of my Jewish friends insists on taking every one of my jokes out to six decimal places and explaining in what contexts it doesn't work.
@Robusto He's just an ass . . . It's not his religion . . .
1590s, formed from dilate on the mistaken assumption that the -ate in that word was the Latin verbal suffix (it is instead part of the stem); the proper form, dilatation, is older (c.1400).
@DavidM There's precious little proof of anything religious being "true" in a scientific sense. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if truth were gasoline, all the religions in the world wouldn't have enough to drive a piss-ant's go-cart around the inside of a Cheerio.
I did say I don't believe. I just cannot rule out for lack of evidence either way. The experiment is still collecting data. The day I die, I will conclude my study.
The Greek poet Simonides used to write epitaphs for people. Two of his that I remember (somewhat) are: "My name is Brotachos of Euboeia, and I did not come here for death but weighty business." And: "Sir, you are not looking at the grave of some great Lydian king, for being poor my gravestone is small — yet still too much for me."
Simonides is the one who wrote the epitaph for the 300 Spartans: "Tell them in Lakedaemon, passer-by, that here, obedient to their will, we lie."
In the medical profession we use the terms dilatation and dilation with great frequency.
And, yet I've never gotten a sufficient answer as to why we use one vs. the other. Some, try to claim that dilatation is an active process (like dilatation and curettage), and dilation is a passive process....
@JohanLarsson I've been looking at that, for work. We have an open source c# implementation, but I'm trying to understand it because of the weird things that inverse FTs do.
> About this Add-on Comment Snob filters out undesirable comments from the Web. It comes with support for YouTube by default, but you can add support for many other sites by installing Comment Snob rules. For each rule that you install, you can choose from the following filtering parameters:
Number of spelling mistakes All capital letters No capital letters Doesn't start with a capital letter Excessive punctuation (!!!! ????) Excessive capitalization Profanity Filtering on custom words and phrases
So apparently if I download Visual Studio Express (for Desktop) from here: http://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/download-visual-studio-vs#d-express-windows-desktop I need a microsoft account and if I go to here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40787 I don't need one?
Um, could anyone tell if both the downloads are the exact same?
They do look the same.
Not sure why Microsoft would make it so that it is impossible to download from the visualstudio.com site without an account but provide a no-restriction download from its download center
@JohnLawler: I responded to the the title and the first sentence only. Part of the new Summer of Love tolerance program. Peace and love, brother. — Robusto8 secs ago
@MattЭллен I don't even remember the maths, hacked and dumbed my way to something that worked. Broke it now :). Get 2013 man, I think the trial for VS is 90 days.
@EdwinAshworth Yes, but one-off is a comparative newcomer to these cisatlantic shores. Previously it was strictly British, and still sounds somewhat foreign to my ears. The first OED citation is only from 1934, and all citations through the 1970s are strictly British. In America, it would be a one-of-a-kind widget. Sometimes, just a one-time thing works, too. There’s no working around the fact that unique has a unique meaning that has no one-word synonym in English, a word that’s truly sui generis in its uniquity. It’s the onliest word you’ll ever need, or have. :) — tchrist46 secs ago
What is the word/phrase to mean something that just happens once? For example,
I have often been told/expected to do this and not to do that. I become aimless
and gradually lose the idea of who I am. I ask myself "What is the point?" If
life is just once thing, why can't I live my life in...
BEN ZIMMER, On Language The Origins of ‘One-Off’:
The New York Times (Magazine) July 2, 2010
… this British usage of off typically appears with a number to indicate a quantity of items produced in some manufacturing process. The Oxford English Dictionary, … takes this back to a 1934 quotation...
I am reading some technical documents and there is a list of items that make up the product. Throughout the document where there are multiple items, they are listed as 2 off, 3 off and so on.
For example it would be similar to this:
My product comprising of:
2 off card 1
1 off card 2
1 off ...
The OED says (s.v. off, adv., prep., n.1, and adj.:)
12 Used with a preceding numeral to represent a quantity in production or manufacture, or an item or number of items so produced.
Usu. as one off: see one-off n. Cf. once-off adj. and n. at once
adv., conj., adj., and n. Special uses ...
What do you call an event that occurs only once in its environment?
For instance, birth and death are two events that occur only once in the lifetime of a living thing.
I am looking for a word or phrase that would be synonymous to "non-repeating".
Consider the following:
One-time, one-off, one-shot, singleton, nonce.
Some other perhaps-less-suitable words suggested in Antonym of "recurrent" [closed] include
isolated, seldom, infrequent, non-periodic.
I voted to close the original question because "rackers" (people who rack/torture) was Shakespeare's poetic/metaphoric usage (torturers of orthography/spelling) over four centuries ago, and there have probably been few if any related usages ever since. I don't particularly mind ELU addressing metaphoric usages in current newspaper articles (that might be repeated, and which native speakers would normally understand). But one-off Shakespearean usages that haven't become well-known to later generations seem to me to be well and truly off-topic (basically, they're Lit. Crit.) — FumbleFingersApr 14 '12 at 19:57
Look, it even finds them in comments, and on meta no less!
I voted to close the original question because "rackers" (people who rack/torture) was Shakespeare's poetic/metaphoric usage (torturers of orthography/spelling) over four centuries ago, and there have probably been few if any related usages ever since. I don't particularly mind ELU addressing metaphoric usages in current newspaper articles (that might be repeated, and which native speakers would normally understand). But one-off Shakespearean usages that haven't become well-known to later generations seem to me to be well and truly off-topic (basically, they're Lit. Crit.) — FumbleFingersApr 14 '12 at 19:57
I am looking for a word or phrase which can describe the situation in which you order a valuable thing (maybe unique) such as a Ferrari or jet or something else. My friend told me that it should be called a custom car (or jet). I agree about that but I know there is another word which sounds much...
I am wondering if there is a single word that describes things that can be used only once. My focus is links that usually sent to our emails in order to activate accounts or reset passwords. However, I do not mind to find a word for all kind of items that can be used only one time (e.g. Bullets, ...
@Cerb You have access to better etymological sources than I do. Perhaps you could look for a PIE connection here:
That’s not true about the origin of ravenous: what you have stated is a mere folk etymology for which I can discover no evidence. The (surface?) evidence is that ravenous is not related to raven at all: think raptor not raven here. The common word raven for the bird Corvus corax comes from OE hræfn. Ravenous in contrast derives from medieval French ravine or medieval Latin rapine, both ultimately from Latin rapere meaning to sieze and whence we also derive our own word rape. Whether these is a PIE link between these, however, I have no idea; I suppose it is possible. — tchrist47 secs ago
Ravenous means rapacious, not “raven-like”. I just don’t know if the oldest forms we find for raven and for rape are related through a PIE sound-change.
Hm. Actually, I don’t see how raaf, raven, hræfn might have come from corvus, corax, κοραξ at all. Aren’t your sources just pointing out corresponding words, not related ones?
> The Common Raven was one of the many species originally described by Linnaeus in his 18th century work, Systema Naturae, and it still bears its original name of Corvus corax.[5] It is the type species of the genus Corvus, derived from the Latin for "Raven".[6] The specific epithet, corax/κοραξ, is the Ancient Greek word for "raven" or "crow".[7] The name "raven" has been applied to several other (generally large) species of the genus Corvus, though they are not necessarily closely related to Corvus corax. Some, such as the Australian Raven and Forest Raven, are clearly closer to the other…
So the Proto-Germanic is *khrabanas, a far cry from rapio, but perhaps not so far from corvus.
@TimTimmy - stereotypical means he was like them, a member of the same group. His comment about fat people doesn't identify him as a member of any group.
is this phrase correct grammatically? "They identify themselves as Pacifist, but the EU as a arrogant power"
i mean, there is no need a verb in the second part?
@DavidM well, to be fair I had not known about the resection back then.
@Robusto things is good, though I am somewhat royally bored. Possibly somewhat more than even yourself. In fact now that you mentioned you are bored as well, I am twice more somewhat royally bored still.
@DavidM BTW, what Prof. Lawler says there is actually quite in line with the general SE stance. Getting questions is trivial. Especially rubbish questions. Getting answers is harder. Even rubbish answers.
@skullpatrol sadly, I've already seen all of the Internet. And let me tell you, most of it will bore you to tears, or possibly death, without resurrection. Children beware.
So anyway. That whole discussion, or indeed those whole discussions, always miss the point. They only ever talk about newbies posting questions. They never deal with newbies posting answers. Which is because newbies posting answers don't get anywhere as much snark. Unless they are just awfully wrong, in which case more often than not it's a hit-and-run type of answer anyway and you could call their mom a ho without them ever coming back to notice.
Note how medica, who is angsty about inviting her friends over, makes do just fine herself. 15k reps in three months.
Surely her friends could, and would, easily pull off just that. Rather than posting off-topic questions and getting flak for them.
EDIT: Added past continuous, trimmed image so it would be slightly larger, and gave it a transparent background.
EDIT: Added middle line, made some adjustments per @Kosmonaut.
In the medical profession we use the terms dilatation and dilation with great frequency.
And, yet I've never gotten a sufficient answer as to why we use one vs. the other. Some, try to claim that dilatation is an active process (like dilatation and curettage), and dilation is a passive process....
What is the word/phrase to mean something that just happens once? For example,
I have often been told/expected to do this and not to do that. I become aimless
and gradually lose the idea of who I am. I ask myself "What is the point?" If
life is just once thing, why can't I live my life in...
BEN ZIMMER, On Language The Origins of ‘One-Off’:
The New York Times (Magazine) July 2, 2010
… this British usage of off typically appears with a number to indicate a quantity of items produced in some manufacturing process. The Oxford English Dictionary, … takes this back to a 1934 quotation...
I am reading some technical documents and there is a list of items that make up the product. Throughout the document where there are multiple items, they are listed as 2 off, 3 off and so on.
For example it would be similar to this:
My product comprising of:
2 off card 1
1 off card 2
1 off ...
The OED says (s.v. off, adv., prep., n.1, and adj.:)
12 Used with a preceding numeral to represent a quantity in production or manufacture, or an item or number of items so produced.
Usu. as one off: see one-off n. Cf. once-off adj. and n. at once
adv., conj., adj., and n. Special uses ...
Consider the following:
One-time, one-off, one-shot, singleton, nonce.
Some other perhaps-less-suitable words suggested in Antonym of "recurrent" [closed] include
isolated, seldom, infrequent, non-periodic.
is this phrase correct grammatically? "They identify themselves as Pacifist, but the EU as a arrogant power"
i mean, there is no need a verb in the second part?
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…