English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2011-06-23 (page 2 of 2)

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6:01 PM

i'm disappointed with my answers to this question

5

Q: Referring to past times with "hence"

From Tor.com, an interesting use of the word hence: Minutes ago, J.K. Rowling finally announced her plans behind Pottermore, the mysterious website that appeared a week hence with only a “Coming Soon” sign to warns readers and fans. For me, the word hence can only be used to refer to times ...

meaning-in-context adverbs tense

i got lots of people agreeing with me, but no one citing real references. and one completely irrelevant ngrams graph

I know the feeling. The highest-voted answer on my küszöbgörcs question is totally useless.

Mr. Disappointment

@JSBangs Naturally I don't believe I am wrong in my answer, I think maybe I didn't convery my point very well, though, you would need to bear with me until I can sit down and do a little extra research on the matter.

@JSBangs — Yeah, the thence doesn't make any sense there either.

I'm glad you agree that the NGrams is superfluous.

@MrDisappointment i didn't downvote you. if you can produce evidence, i may even accept your answer

Mr. Disappointment

6:09 PM

Let us see. I'll do what I can, when I can.

@MrDisappointment I was inclined to agree with the use of hence as from now, which theoretically could mean either future or past, but your answer needs some work to make that clearer.

Hey, so what is the difference between "hence" and "thence"?

@Martha ...oops, the numbers have changed, and the highest-voted answer is now @Robusto's "dieseling". Still not quite satisfying enough, but better than dilly-dally.

from now can only be used for future events in english, and insofar as hence is an exact synonym of "from now" it too should only be used for future events. but i'm open to being shown that hence has a history of being used for past events, as well

@Martha that's cos i just voted. i hadn't seen your question before

@Kit hence = from now, from here. thence = from there, from then

i would interpret something like "a week thence" to mean "a week after that", although i don't think that thence is normally used in quite this way

I shall meet you in Paris, one year hence. I met you in Rome, one year thence?

@Kit that's the idea

6:12 PM

Hmm.

though i am, again, unsure that thence is ever actually used that way

Heh, I just noticed there's a deleted answer to my küszöbgörcs question. It's actually not a bad answer. Wonder why the owner deleted it.

Mr. Disappointment

@Kit Indeed. Unfortunately work is always intervening with my dedicated input to EL&U, or SE in general.

it's much more common in the spatial sense. "three miles hence is a grocery story. but when i went to my sister's house, it was ten miles thence to the nearest store."

Ooooh. I like "dieseling." Upvote!

@JSBangs Oh, that feels better. Thanks.

6:15 PM

@JSBangs I found something about your "hence" question, I guess...

personally, i wish the word thither were more common. it's so much fun to say

0

Q: Proper article to use for acryonyms?

Should I use "a" or "an" before an acronym? Does it depend on the first letter? For instance, I might say "the customer has a PIN for accessing sensitive account information." But on the other hand it sounds right to say "this file has an MD5 checksum." What is the proper way to handle this?

grammar indefinite-article acronyms

Need two more, please.

Speaking of dieseling and upvotes, @Robusto, didn't you mean "dieseling happens when a ~~gasoline~~ diesel engine is switched off..."?

@JSBangs I like thither and yon too.

@Kit voted

see you later guys!

Mr. Disappointment

6:16 PM

@JSBangs Reminds me of my grandma: 'Come thither, sonny.'

@Alenanno Catch you later.

@Kit Meetings. Endless meetings. Save meeee!

@MrDisappointment Wouldn't it be go thither? Come hither, go thither?

@aedia I do believe I've failed you.

Mr. Disappointment

@Martha You're most likely correct, I managed to recall a fond memory, though, so I'm not unhappy that I'm wrong : )

is there an equivalent to whence for hither/thither?

i like whence too

It could be whither I guess!

6:21 PM

Hmm. Whether? No, that's a different word. Wither?

@z7sg thence?

Hmm yes whither is a word! All these awesome words we have lost!

@Martha whither

where whither whence
there thither thence
here hither hence

Oh, yes. Whither.

it's actually a very neat system, once you know it

6:23 PM

Whither went thy manhood?

@JSBangs Ah, yes, thanks!

@Kit I mean, isn't that from Shakespeare or something?

so related to this: blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/06/blog-overflow -- does anyone on el&u want to start a blog?

– I just realized that this is just the triads of movement.
Hol, hova, honnan
ott, oda, onnan
itt, ide, innen

Mr. Disappointment

@JSBangs I noticed something about this a while back, think Robert Certaino (is that right?) posted something on meta, or something.

Time is the decider. But does it have to be only one user?

6:29 PM

@MrDisappointment actually, it's supposed to be the community. if we decided we wanted one, we could invite anyone we wanted to contribute

we have a really good chat community here

which is why i bring it up, since there's a pretty good group of regulars who theoretically could be tapped to create content

if they want to

I think there is a lot of good content for a community blog. But I wouldn't have time to contribute, nor do I feel expert enough to really be useful anyway.

Ok, this sentence in the blog post really bugs me. "Have someone driving the reigns." Ouch.

Mr. Disappointment

I think a good number would actually want to...

But again, time.

To some extent, there are already community blogs for English language: languagelog and languagehat.

@Martha Apparently 45 other people on the internet think that's just fine to utter.

Mr. Disappointment

6:33 PM

I'm with @Kit, inasmuch as not necessarily being an expert.

Is it an utterance if you write it?

@Kit i actually feel the same way. i like the idea, but i don't know if i would actually be able to contribute much. anyway, i thought i'd bring it up

Mr. Disappointment

Indeed, much of what I say (or type) is fairly irrelevant.

@Martha I saw that too. It's been on a slow burn in the back of my brain, just waiting until tonight for me to close my eyes, so it can pop out and go AH-HA! And I'll sit straight up in bed and say "WTF? That sentence is completely wrong!"

help me, EL&U: what words are appropriate for expressing my feelings about people who write catch {} ? (apologies to non-programmers)

Mr. Disappointment

6:37 PM

Beneath contempt!

@Martha — Perfectionist. =P

Oooh, eevil parentheses!

@JSBangs g-deasley swine is not strong enough to convey my disgust

@JSBangs — The only possible way to write this is catch(e) { //noop }

@z7sg Excellent, excellent!

6:38 PM

@Robusto Thank you for the compliment.

Mr. Disappointment

@Robusto That won't compile?

i think that @z7sg gets the accepted answer here

@JSBangs maybe summarily dismissed? @Kit :D

@MrDisappointment — IDK, what language are we talking about.

Mr. Disappointment

@Robusto Likewise, hence the question mark.

I figured that if it is a 'C-Style' language then we could safely say that the last brace would be part of the comment.

6:40 PM

@JSBangs I'm not sure what the issue is here. What is offensive about catch {}?

@Kit it silently traps and ignores all errors. this is death, DEATH in any software system

@Martha Never mind. It's more like 20 people who've uttered it. Half my google results are spam. Hilarious snippets, though. I'll punctuate, for effect: "I delete like nerve, the one driving the reigns, mostly. And... anyone? This potassium requires aspect!" "Make like cirrhosis - the one driving the reigns perfectly!" "And I haven't. Why, replacement, the weaning? I kill like syringe, the one driving the reigns medicinally, and reason this house requires."

@JSBangs Oh. You mean as a concept, not as a statement. I'm with you now.

@aedia WTF? Is that English? I feel despair setting in.

@Kit It was me attempting to turn spam into English. I hope no one thinks I'm a bot.

@aedia it looks like auto-generated text from a markov chain generator

i once wrote a little answerbot for SO that generated answers based on an n-gram corpus of existing SO answers

6:45 PM

@JSBangs That makes me feel better. I am slack about try ... catch and have always felt like this was a personal failing.

Now I can say it's because I'm a good programmer.

@Kit when in doubt, let errors propagate. catch only things that you expect and need to handle

@JSBangs Oh my DORK!

@JSBangs Why is it so close to something I can parse, like, with my brain? It's almost poetic.

I love you, @JSBangs!

@Kit well, now i want to do the same thing for el&u

6:46 PM

@JSBangs I think I love you.

@Kit Okay, a threesome.

@aedia Hmm. When you put it that way, let's just — never mind.

ladies, i'm taken anyway

DO I NEED TO BREAK OUT THE BABY PICTURES AGAIN?

@JSBangs Yeah, me too.

@JSBangs Me three!

:)

6:49 PM

That means no to JSB.

no to baby pictures?

user image

☺

@Vitaly AH!

@Vitaly that's actually gorgeous

though it's not a baby picture... i hope

@Vitaly EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK! But wow. But eeek.

6:50 PM

@MrDisappointment — True. I would never write that on a single line except in chat.

Cute baby fly.

I figured you all knew what I meant.

@Vitaly Is that a musca domestica?

Mr. Disappointment

@Robusto I trust so. : )

@Kit — I dunno.

6:52 PM

@Vitaly If you're going to post insect porn, you really ought to know what diptera you're showing.

wags finger

try {
// do stuff
} catch(e) {
// noop
} finally {
// tell the perfectionists to GO F*** THEMSELVES!!
}

F*** = FOOL, of course.

(I used to be an amateur entomologist, which is oddly how I got into etymology.)

Entomologists ... don't they study the walking trees of Fangorn Wood?

@Robusto Don't you need a semi-colon there? ☺

@Robusto thwack!

@Kit — no comment (in the sense of no, comment)

6:56 PM

Ok, folks, I really need to do something more useful today than look at baby pictures of bugs. Have fun!

@Martha Tchuß

@Martha Later.

Bye, @Martha!

cya

user image

6:59 PM

Oh! Sweet!

Just wanted to leave you with better baby pictures than what Vitaly posted. (That's uncle George. Not really an uncle, but we love him anyway.)

We have "bonus" uncles in our family.

0

Q: 'Shelled' vs 'deshelled'

Are they interchangable? Do they really mean the same thing in this context? As in the sentences: I really enjoy these already shelled pistachios. I really enjoy these already deshelled pistachios. They are both saying the same thing. Why are these terms ambiguous?

antonyms ambiguity

Deshelled is a word, isn't it?

Shows up in Dictionary.Com as a variant, but only in the Random House dictionary.

@Martha — Srsly?

user image

@Vitaly — Those are ants, not uncles.

Don't you see a loving mum in the centre?

And how all her family cuddles up against her?

7:09 PM

@Vitaly That's not a mum.

Mum ants are huge and bloated and they don't cuddle.

A queen ant is an adult, reproducing female ant in an ant colony; generally she will be the mother of all the other ants in that colony. Some female ants do not need to mate to produce offspring, reproducing through asexual parthenogenesis or cloning and all of those offspring will be female. Ant offspring develop from larvae specially fed in order to become sexually mature among most species. Depending on the species, there can be either a single mother queen, or potentially, hundreds of fertile queens in some species. Anatomy The anatomy of a queen ant is very similar to other ants of...

Asexual parthenogenesis. Going in the dirty talk notebook.

> As with other ants, queens have a hard outer covering called the exoskeleton, and their bodies are divided into three main sections: the head, thorax, and abdomen.

@Kit what? it has both the word asexual and the word partheno- (virgin) in it. how could that be dirty?

Ants are of the family Formicidae, because they produce formic acid. Pretty interesting, huh?

@JSBangs "Asexual" contains the word "sex" and I won't comment on my feelings about virgins.

7:12 PM

In other words, it is a mum. And if you don't find that cute, you are simply evil.

Unless you live close to the Mexican border.

@Kit now that was dirty

@Vitaly Not convinced. Could be a soldier.

@Kit — A soldier without enlarged jaws?

@Vitaly Shudders you may bee certain it's adorable, but it makes me want to flea.

3

@aedia THWACK!

7:15 PM

@aedia that deserves a star

@Vitaly Touché.

@JSBangs Aww, thanks.

@JSBangs thwack for encouraging this egregious display of pun

7:32 PM

How did I get 3 of the top 5 starred?

Am I really that witty today?

My head aches and I have company tonight. sigh I am going to sneak out early. You guys got me covered?

@Kit Plenty of uses in books to talk about deshelled or de-shelled eggs and such. Keeps making me think disheveled, though.

@Kit i'll make sure to star most of your chat backlog in your absence

have fun at your party tonight

@Kit Have fun!

"The determinations were done on deshelled snails." (some paper) Man, poor snails.

Isn't a deshelled snail just a slug?

@Vitaly I think a slug's a disheveled snail. You know, one that's been out too late and maybe lost some clothes on the way home.

7:39 PM

user image

@Vitaly your fascination with luscious close-ups of invertebrates is getting kind of creepy

| image = Grapevinesnail 01a.jpg | image_caption= Air-breathing land gastropod Helix pomatia, the Roman snail | authority= Cuvier, 1795 | subdivision_ranks = Clades | subdivision = "Paleozoic uncertain …" "Basal taxa …" clade Patellogastropoda clade Vetigastropoda clade Cocculiniformia clade Neritimorpha clade Caenogastropoda clade Heterobranchia }} The Gastropoda or gastropods are a large taxonomic class within the Mollusca. They are a group of animals that are more commonly known as snails and slugs. The class Gastropoda includes snails and slugs of all kinds and all sizes from mic...

TIL a slug kind of is a snail without a shell, because sometimes people use "snail" to refer to all slugs and snails. Only, you can't just de-shell the snail and get a slug. I hope. I don't want to try.

@aedia maybe you can't deshell a snail and get a slug

@JSBangs — You want some vertebrates?

@Vitaly actually i think i've had my fill of luscious close-ups for the day

7:45 PM

Here is your vertebrate anyway:

user image

@Vitaly These slugs are vertebrates. It's an infestation, actually.

@Vitaly what is that?

Psychrolutes is a genus of deep-sea fish of the family Psychrolutidae (fathead sculpins). In June 2003, During the NORFANZ Expedition north-west of New Zealand, scientists trawled a specimen of the fathead Psychrolutes microporos at a depth between 1,013 meters and 1,340 meters on the Norfolk Ridge. References

The blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus) is a deep sea fish of the family Psychrolutidae. Inhabiting the deep waters off the coasts of mainland Australia and Tasmania, it is rarely seen by humans. Blobfish live at depths where the pressure is several dozen times higher than at sea level, which would likely make gas bladders inefficient for maintaining buoyancy. Instead, the flesh of the blobfish is primarily a gelatinous mass with a density slightly less than water; this allows the fish to float above the sea floor without expending energy on swimming. Its relative lack of muscle is not a d...

@Vitaly It's in danger of extinction? Due to fishing? Who would want that thing?!?

@Vitaly Oh. I see. It gets caught accidentally. That makes more sense.

Warning, frightening blobfish photos: dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245955/…

8:01 PM

yup, trawling doesn't differentiate between fishes

Ohhhh nice

user image

Thanks that's a better picture

@Vitaly Yeah, I found that pretty nightmare-inducing.

Bogdan Lataianu

i like this place because i get answers to my questions about how to use stackexchange; i always have questions

And by nightmare, I mean, I wish I could wake up and ... I'M ALREADY AWAKE.

Bogdan Lataianu

somebody should create a chat room only for how to use SE or a comprehensive faq/blog

trawling is horrendous; there have recently been some BBC series featuring some footage of their sea floor

thanks to trawling, the sea floor looks like a barren desert

with pieces of corals, molluscs, and so on

when it should be covered in seaweed and corals (intact)

Bogdan Lataianu

8:07 PM

i saw "fish trawl" yesterday and didnt know the meaning

=to fish with a net that drags along the sea bottom to catch the fish living there

@BogdanLataianu I now learned there's a Sandbox for chat at least: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/1/sandbox

8:24 PM

That blob looks really sad, whatever it is.

@Vitaly Oh cool, is that Yuri Luzhkov?

8:42 PM

Somebody, anybody, cheer me up. I'm reviewing test defects I filed two years ago for simple accessibility fixes that no one has made because they say it's too hard, and I'm tired of arguing for it. Everything is hopeless. I think my soul has burnt out.

Well, how'bout a lily?

user image

@RegDwight Awwh. Looks delicious. I'm feeling better already.

I am sure there is a cute insect too somewhere in the picture.

@Vitaly No! No more bugs! I'm going to eat it, crawlies and all, before you can find them.

9:22 PM

Ok, folks, I'm serving spicy peanut curry tonight. It's a red curry with carrots, potatoes, and chicken served over rice. The perfect wine would be a dry, warm and buttery white wine. What would the perfect mixed drink be?

@aedia I'd invite you if you lived anywhere near me.

Please say gin and tonic, because that's what I'm hankering for right now.

@Kit Aw, thanks.

Gin and tonic is one of my favorites. It goes with everything, right?

If you happened to have a ton of mangoes around, you could make alcoholic mango lassi, I bet.

I don't know what else to have with curry. I usually have a light-colored beer (like a hefeweisen) or white wine.

@aedia Yeah, but it's mango sorbet for dessert.

I'm sure light-colored is a very technical term. Brain's a bit fried.

@aedia A wheat beer would be pretty good.

@Kit Oooh. Om nom nom.

9:28 PM

Aight. Gotta finish the salad before my peeps show. Catch you tomorrow. Chin up!

@Kit, Thanks! Have a good dinner :)

9:51 PM

1

Q: Best practice for reply to thanks?

When somebody emails me or sends me thanks, I just reply "You're welcome." So what will be the professional and good alternative for that?

15

Q: Response to "Thank you!"

In my school and university I was taught to say "Not at all" or "Don't mention it" in response to "Thank you!". Now I rarely hear these phrases, but rather something like "You're welcome", "It's OK", "My pleasure", "No problem". My real life conversational experience is very poor. I often listen...

word-choice politeness esl

10:17 PM

Gevoted.

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