Language Overflow

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CowperKettle

3:08 AM

Word of the day: to pock (mining pocks the sand, speeding erosion)

6 hours later…

skillpatrol

8:53 AM

The frequency of the letters of the alphabet in English

2 hours later…

userr2684291

11:12 AM

Etaoin Shrdlu?

userr2684291

11:42 AM

Sangfroid has quite an enlightening etymology: the sang part is the same as the root of exsanguinate, and froid is French for the Latin frigidus, heh. In the animal world it would mean "poikilothermy", and in the human: "cold-bloodedness", "equanimity". MW contains a little synonym discussion on these terms.

(Of course, this particular word is used in the human sense only.)

Within the discussion is this lovely little phrase as well: habit of mind.

CowperKettle

> For every 1000 Indian patients he treated there, another 1000 couldn’t even afford to fly down.

What's the meaning of fly down?

userr2684291

@CowperKettle Just that they couldn't afford to come there (by plane).

Does that make sense in the context?

Anyway, back to sangfroid. The OED contains this as well: “In the 17th c. the expression was in France often written erroneously sens froid, as if it contained sens ‘sense’ instead of the homophonous sang ‘blood’.” So, like, "cold-sense", "cold-thought". Feels like that established eggcorn butt naked (in lieu of buck naked) (or, well, any other established eggcorn, really).

2 hours later…

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

1:45 PM

@userr2684291 Found @Cowper's context

@Cowper are you sure the writer of those sentences has a good enough English to be analyzed?

They wrote "advance" instead of "advanced" in the very next sentence.

CowperKettle

1:56 PM

@snailboat, did you feel the earthquake? The 7.1 scale one?

> A second earthquake hit Southern California in as many days. It's five times bigger than Thursday's

There is georgaphy-oriented advertisement line in that magazine.

It says "This cheap air conditioner is taking Russia by storm". Hahahahahaha

It's + 19C right now

The ad engine apparently just puts in the name of any country that the visitor is from

skillpatrol

2:11 PM

cool tweet

CowperKettle

@skillpatrol So you are Italian?!

Mamma mia

znak.com/2019-07-06/…

A man celebrating the restoration of his driving license, which was suspended for drunk driving, got drunk during the celebrations, got behind the wheel and struck a house.

Just another Russian news report

userr2684291

3:00 PM

Sounds like a Darwin Awards story, though a little less morbid.

CowperKettle

3:21 PM

Turns out that Richard Nixon spent several months of his life near Yekaterinburg - in the town of Degtyarsk, in the summer of 1925.

Degtyarsk

Degtyarsk (Russian: Дегтя́рск) is a town under the administrative jurisdiction of the Town of Revda in Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia, located on the Vyazovka River (right tributary of the Chusovaya), 67 kilometers (42 mi) west of Yekaterinburg, the administrative center of the oblast. Population: 15,522 (2010 Census); 15,869 (2002 Census); 18,394 (1989 Census). == History == It was founded in the 18th century; town status was granted to it in 1954.The town is notable as the site of 1960 U-2 incident, where an American Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft (and pursuing Soviet MiG-19 'Farmer') were shot...