English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2012-11-13 (page 1 of 4)

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12:00 AM

beseech /bɪˈsiːtʃ/, v.
Pa. t. and pa. pple. besought /bɪˈsɔːt/. Forms: Inf. 2 bisec-en, 2-5 bisechen, bysech-e(n, 3-6 beseche (3 -secchen, 4 bezeche, bicheche, 5 bysuche), 6-7 beseeche, 6- beseech. Also north. and n. midl. 2-4 biseke, 4-5 be-, by-, (4 bezeke, 5 besike, beseyk, 5-6 Sc. beseik, 6 bezeik), 6-7 beseek(e. Pa. t. 3 bisohte, 3-4 -soȝte, -souhte, -souȝte, 4 bi-, bysought, -sowght, besoght, 5 -sougt, 5-6 -soughte, 5-9 Sc. besocht, 6- besought; also 6- beseeched (now regarded as incorrect).

And then there’s think, thank, thunk.

thunk /θʌŋk/, dial. and joc. pa. t. and pa. pple. of think v.2 Cf. thunk sb.1
1876 C. C. Robinson Dial. Mid-Yorks. p. xlii, ― Think··(Thuongk) The last form is less employed participially than in the past, in which tense it is of constant occurrence.
1887 Lantern (New Orleans) 15 Oct. 3/2 ― Who’d a thunk it?
1908 N. Duncan Every Man for Himself ii. 60 ― Leastwise, he thunk so, admittin’ ’twas open t’ argument.
1939 Joyce Finnegans Wake 504, ― I then tuk my taken‐place lying down, I thunk I told you.

@tchrist Yes, of course. We still have plenty of those in (idiomatic but living) English, like albeit and and if he be rich...

Be it early or late, you shall complete this project, sir.

The past tense of thank used to be thonk.

@tchrist The present subjunctive is even slightly deader in Dutch than in English, so no "if he have", except in very few idiomatic phrases.

During the 14th-16th centuries.

Present subjunctive is pretty dead in English, too.

Provided it be spoken English we’re talking about.

@tchrist You can use it with many more auxiliary and modal verbs...

12:07 AM

Although of course I would say that in speech, too.

Had she told me, I wouldn't have...

Well, maybe not many.

I was looking for others.

None appeared.

Were, should, had...

With other verbs it sounds archaic. I believe it used to be possible.

Did he but cast his vote for Obama, he would today be celebrating his victory instead of drowning his defeat in wasted champagne.

Not sure I could bring myself to say that.

Lived there a man in Lancaster rich enough to pay the ransom, I would not be here.

12:10 AM

Would he but ....

Yes, would he but is good.

user19161

Did I just enter the Subjunctive Room?

So be it.

@WillHunting Would that you had! This is the woody-butt room.

Be that as it may.

So mote^Wmay it be.

By the way, there could be a connection between the inversion with only etc. and that with but.

Although they seem quite different.

12:14 AM

Hm.

user19161

I like this sentence in Great Expectations: The effort of resolution necessary to the achievement of this purpose, I found to be quite awful.

There are uncountably (by me) infinite examples of English subjunctives here in Visser.

More profitable it were to scan backwards than forwards.

@WillHunting Ugh!

That is so wordy...

Other troubles, too.

> I found the effort required quite awful.

Still far from pretty.

12:36 AM

Hmm what's the Dutch word for warehouse?

I can only think of the English word.

Silly.

Warenhuis is not the same.

Magazijn...

Still not the same thing.

Opslagplaats? Nah.

Distributiecentrum, yes, but that's hardly a pretty word.

I think it has to be magazijn.

Oh!

No, it is pakhuis, of course.

Jesus, I'm stupid.

A tiny bit old fashioned, but good.

1:34 AM

Packhouse?

1:47 AM

Yeah.

Hm. Storehouse.

We don’t use magazine that way — anymore.

We once did.

Ah, depot?

Yeah, but depot is subtly different.

Stuff in a warehouse is usually meant for shipping. Stuff in a depot is meant to be stored there for a while.

A museum can have a depot but not a warehouse.

Wares are connected to trade, I'd say.

A magazijn is usually connected with a shop.

I think of depots has having a military component. Or something to do with the railroads. Hm.

Een warenhuis is like a large department store, oddly.

Well, it’s a house of many wares.

1:58 AM

Yeah, a depot has a very...utilitarian ring to it?

Or perhaps one housing rabbits. :)

As in a warren?

Ew, look up depot in your OED.

If those words are related, I will eat my hat.

Yes, as in a rabbit-warren.

1:59 AM

Why?

I warrant you would. :)

The ew is that it was for POWs.

POwhats?

Prisoners?

Of war.

3. Mil. a. A place where military stores are deposited. b. The head-quarters of a regiment, where supplies are received and whence they are distributed. c. A station where recruits are assembled and drilled, and where soldiers who cannot join their regiments remain. d. attrib. Applied to a portion of a regiment which remains at home when the rest are on foreign service.

e. A place of confinement for prisoners of war. The name used both in France and England during the War with Napoleon.

4. a. A place where goods are deposited or stored; e.g. a coal depot, grain depot, furniture depot; a store-house, depository, emporium.

Depow?

Uh ho.

Would you like salt and pepper on your hat?

Warren is indeed related to ware . But it’s to a verb ware, so there is still hope of better repast.

2:02 AM

Is it really?

Ware as in guard, watch over?

You can read as well as I.

...Looking...

I would rather not.

(Wow, the Scots used ware to mean spring!)

Scotch words are weird.

Yes, that ware.

ware /wɛə(r)/, v.1
Forms: 1 warian, 3 ware-n, 3-6, 8-9 dial. war, 3-4 warr(e, 5 waar, 7-9 ’ware, 4- ware.
Etymology: OE. warian = OFris. waria, OS. waron, OHG. be-warôn = beware v. (MHG. waren), ONor. vara (Sw. vara, Da. vare):-OTeut. *warōjan, f. *warō ware sb.2 In ME. the native word coalesced with ware a. OFr. (north-eastern) ware-r (= Central OFr., mod.Fr. garer), of the same meaning, adopted from Teut. The interjectional imperative ware! used in hunting is prob. to be regarded as of Fr. origin. In OE. the verb had, in addition to the senses illustrated below, certain other meanings (‘t…

Which is where warren had me haring off to.

Etymology: a. AFr. warenne, North-eastern OFr. warenne, waresne (whence AL. warenna), corresp. to Central OFr., mod.Fr. garenne, game-park, also (now chiefly) rabbit-warren, Pr. garena; of Teut. origin, f. root *war- to protect, guard: cf. OFr. warir ware v. The suffix is obscure, and it is uncertain whether the word is of Teut. or Rom. formation. The OFr. type *warande (garande, -ende), whence the (M)Dutch warande park, may be a mere variant, or it may represent a Teut. pr. pple. OFr. had also a form varene (perh. due to the med.L. varenna of charters) which survives in mod.Fr. varenne moo…

Lots of Dutch there if you expand it.

2:05 AM

Funny.

dances a Mexican hat dance

Hah! I tricked you.

I do not have or own a hat.

The hat’s in the mail.

But I will concede a symbolic defeat, if it pleases you.

I’m from the home office and I’m here to help you.

2:07 AM

I will deposit any packages from Denver, USA in my depots and pakhuizen.

Unsigned.

(Insert famous 3rd great lie in the series on your own. You cannot get me to say it.)

I have no idea what you're saying, but sure.

You don’t know the Three Great Lies?

They’re proverbial.

The first is always that the check is in the mail.

The second is that someone is from the government, or home office, or headquarters, and that they are here to help you.

Is this from a film or something?

The third one is too much in the way of ribaldry for duplication here.

No, not from a movie.

2:10 AM

The third not being "I will divorce my husband/wife for you"?

But gosh, now you make me wonder when it started. It is very old, older than living memory.

That is hardly risqué, now is it?

@tchrist I.e. from a film, for you Americans.

I do not think it is from film.

It may antedate film.

Google: "three great lies check is in the mail"

"I never have one-night stands, except now"?

Close.

2:11 AM

I always practice safe sex with everybody else, so it's OK"?

The least seedy version is that sure, I’ll respect you in the morning.

That is a bit of an anticlimax.

It gets worse from there. Like you can’t get preggers the first time.

Or don’t worry, I’ll pull out.

But the most common one is "I won't come in your mouth."

I am not making this stuff up.

Google it.

"I'm from the home office" certainly sounds like a film.

Eww.

I thought everyone knew those. Ask @MετάEd.

2:13 AM

Okay, definitely American.

I TOLD YOU!

No offence.

@tchrist Knew those what?

How can you tell?

@MετάEd The proverbial three great lies.

Oh. Let me guess.

I see "the check is in the mail".

2:14 AM

Cerb thinks they’re American. I don’t know where they’re from though.

"I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."

See, everybody knows them!

Stop now.

I'm not buying "I won't come in your mouth". It's "I'll pull out, I promise".

user19161

WTF are you guys talking about now?

@MετάEd Buy what you will. :)

I’m afraid finding its origin is outside of ELU’s purview.

But I still wonder.

Looks like Johnny Carson used to tell it.

user19161

2:18 AM

english.stackexchange.com/questions/91032/… and english.stackexchange.com/questions/91031/… should be closed.

But Googling finds a multitude. UD has it.

Even Urban Dictionary.

@WillHunting I was the first closevoter, I bet.

He self-deleted! Yay!

Great, I get skald and zeitgeist right, and misspell minstrel. How duh.

user19161

I think those two are so badly written on so many counts that it is quite pointless to answer.

Oh wow.

The lawbooks call a common scold a communis rixatrix!

There is a law about rixatrices?

Rixatrix is a cool word.

There is.

2:24 AM

Odd.

And what does communis mean? For it should not mean common.

Yeah, well.

In the common law of crime in England and Wales, a common scold was a species of public nuisance—a troublesome and angry woman who broke the public peace by habitually arguing and quarreling with her neighbours. The Latin name for the offender, communis rixatrix, appears in the feminine gender and makes it clear that only women could commit this crime. The offence, which was exported to North America with the colonists, was punishable by ducking: being placed in a chair and submerged in a river or pond. Although rarely prosecuted it remained on the statute books in England and Wales ...

Haha.

I guess you can use communis to mean "common" as in a common whore.

Websters 1913 had “rixatrix: (noun) (Old Eng. Law) A scolding or quarrelsome woman; a scold.”

Rixatrix is a very obscure Old English legal term. It is Latin for scolding woman or shrewish female quarrel-maker. It is the Latin feminine of rixator ‘contentious person.’ From the Latin verb rixare ‘to quarrel’ derive a number of other rare terms, some English, some manorial Latin:
rixation = ‘brawling’
rixa = ‘debate, contest’
rixor = ‘contestant, disputer’
rixosous = ‘quarrelsome,’ from the Late Latin adjective rixosus

Oops, false lead:

rix-baron. Now Hist.
Etymology: ad. G. reichsbaron.
A baron of the German Empire.
A. 1849 Mangan Poems (1859) 138 ― Thou knowest him well, The proud Rix-baron.

So rixosous mean querulous, does it?

But rixation is a pugilant word.

Perhaps less organized.

I know only rixa.

Which usually means fight/argument with words.

How come we now cite Latin verbs in the infinitive instead of the normal 1s ind active?

The citation form was always sum, not esse. etc.

2:33 AM

Both ways have been used for a very long time.

rixa = quarrel?

Yeah.

Maybe it can be used in a somewhat broader sense too.

But I would look at quarrel first.

Not a lot of words with two x's in them.

> I. A quarrel, brawl, dispute, contest, strife, contention (class.; esp. freq. after the Aug. period; "syn.: contentio, altercatio, disceptatio, jurgium)"

> II. In gen., a battle, contest (very rare)

coxendix exciplex executrix exlex exonarthex exotoxin exterminatrix extispex maxixe oxyhexact oxyhydroxide paxwax saxitoxin sextuplex taxwax toxophylaxin xanthoxenite xanthoxin xanthoxyl xanthoxylaceous xanthoxylene xanthoxylin xanthoxyloïn xanthoxylon xerox xeroxed

jurgium? hm.

2:36 AM

Probably from iuro, to swear, curse.

But the other jokes are from jocular, so that is a false lead.

Like ius.

Right.

It looks juridical.

coxˈendix.
Pl. coxˈe.ndices.
Etymology: L., f. coxa.
The hip or hip-bone; also the ischium, the ilium.

Hmm I wouldn't say so.

Iurgium is indeed from ius.

Words that start with jur- make me think of jurisprudence. Surely that is related to ius and iuro.

I wonder whether coxendix and coccyx are related.

2:39 AM

Yes, iuris prudentia is ehm knowledge/wisdom about law.

> L. coccȳx, a. Gr. κόκκυξ, -ῡγ- cuckoo, also in Galen the os coccygis, or cuckoo bone, so called because in man it was supposed to resemble the bill of the cuckoo.

Ius comes from the same root as junction: binding.

Greek cuckoo. Learn something new every day. Must be time for bed. :)

Coxendix sounds Latin?

Right, and coccyx looks Greek.

2:41 AM

Yes, y is always Greek.

Except in a few rare weird semi-misspellings.

Does Dutch preserve that?

Some languages lose it.

Y?

Yes, unless the whole word is Batavified.

Right. Some respell to Latin i.

Bat...?

That is more like Italian.

Yes, Italian can be pretty bad.

2:42 AM

Batavi = Celtic (I think) people who lived here during the early R. Empire.

Spanish keeps h’s, but normally rewrites y’s. Italian dumps the h’s, too.

And a common Latinised name meaning "related to the Netherlands" from probably the Renaissance onwards.

Italian dumps everything.

Batavifed sounds like a crime.

English is very faithful, I'll give you that.

Don't you know Batavia?

It bellrings, barely.

2:44 AM

That's what Jakarta was called until they gained independence.

And had been for centuries.

I somehow thought Roman Batavia was easter than it is.

And, when supporters of Napoleon came to power here, we were officially the Bataafse Republiek.

Perhaps the Batavi came from the east?

I don't know when they arrived in the area.

> Batavia being the Latin name of the Low countries

But not really in Roman times, I believe.

The Batavi were marked on the map, that much is true.

Batavian /bəˈteɪvɪən/, a. and sb.
Etymology: f. L. Batavia, f. Batavi an ancient people who dwelt on the island Betawe, between the Rhine and the Waal, in part of what is now Holland. See -an.
A. adj. a. Of or pertaining to the ancient Batavi: see above. b. Pertaining to Holland or to the Dutch.

I absolutely did not know it as a fancynym for Dutchers.

2:47 AM

Oh, right! The Betuwe. I had forgotten.

Belgae is also often used for the Dutch.

That was the only one I knew.

Even after our independence.

Have you ever noticed that Brits tend to use a hard g in algae, but Americans a soft one?

They probably stopped using it when Belgium was created.

A soft g, really?

Yes.

2:49 AM

Hmm.

Sample with fungus > fungi.

I always thought soft g was a mistake in fungi.

I would use the soft g there.

Fungicides have hard g's though, don’t they?

Do Brits pronoune it funguy?

Yes, they do.

Sounds academic, somehow.

2:50 AM

I don't know. I would probably say funji and funjicide.

But algay.

OED has /ˈfʌndʒaɪ/.

> alga /ˈælgə/. Pl. algæ /ˈældʒiː/.

I definitely hear people using hard g’s in those.

> "fVndZIsaId

al-jee

Hm, fungicide /ˈfʌndʒɪsaɪd/.

Ugh, it won't copy my OED properly.

That's what I had.

My OED doesn't give plurals, alas.

2:52 AM

It doesn’t? What do you mean?

@Cerberus I'll speak to the copyist.

Please.

@Cerberus Your OED doesn't give plural, ala.

Ohh it's under "spelling".

You can’t search for fungi as a headword?

2:53 AM

Okay, so OED says /dʒ/ everywhere. Then so be it.

Mine yields fungus, and oddly, imperfect.

Oh weird: Of a stage in the life cycle of a fungus: not producing or not known to produce sexual organs. Of a fungus, having (apparently) no sexual stage: belonging to the group designated imperfect fungi (or formally, in mod.L., Fungi Imperfecti), in which are included all those fungi which, because a sexual stage is missing or unknown, cannot be assigned to other taxa.

@tchrist I guess I could. I just didn't see it in fungus so I stopped looked, but that was only because I didn't have Spelling expanded.

I just did a headword search, and it gave both fungus and imperfect.

imperfect fungi shows up in italic smallcaps, so it is their headwordy thing.

fungible.

Headword search doesn't work, so I would have had to do a full search.

2:55 AM

Exchangeable.

Full search takes forever, but finds interesting things.

I don’t have an inverted text index built, because I want to be able to do regex searches.

I suppose I could do both. Hm.

Why does headword search “not work”? The software doesn’t allow it?

          <DEF>Of a stage in the life cycle of a fungus: not producing or not known to produce sexual organs.  Of a fungus, having (app
arently) no sexual stage: belonging to the group designated
            <IL>
              <LF>imperfect fungi</LF>
              <SF>imperfect fungi</SF>
              <MF>imperfect fungi</MF>
            </IL> (or formally, in mod.L.,
            <CF>Fungi Imperfecti</CF>), in which are included all those fungi which, because a sexual stage is missing or unknown, cann

I think I index all the SF or something.

Oops, time to run.

Ah no. I index <LF> and <VF>.

The SGML tags are very kind. They are always simple allcap text immediately surrounded by angle brackets. That makes searching much easier using regexes than in HTML or XML, which is notoriously difficult.

Bye!

bbbye

5 hours later…

8:06 AM

Hello all,Is it okay to post a essay for review in this website?

2 hours later…

10:17 AM

@SteveIrwin no, that would be off-topic on the main site. If you have a specific question about a specific grammar issue with a specific sentence, that would work. If you want people to review a sentence or a paragraph, I think (I think!) that is on-topic on our sister site Writers, — but again, you'll have to be very specific about the review criteria. And if you want people to review an entire essay, that would certainly be off-topic there. But you might have luck in their chat.

The Overlook Hotel

General discussion for writing.stackexchange.com. Writing exer...

10:54 AM

@RegDwighт- Thanks for clearing that up.Your help is much appreciated.

You're welcome.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 a Romney supporter on German TV showed his Freudian slip: he labeled Obama's reëlection a "Phallic victory".

I think @kitfox will actually agree. Also @jsbձոգչ and @robusto. And why not @Cerberus.

Direct link to two seconds before he says it. Some discussion thirty seconds later, when the host finally gets a chance to call him out on it.

Journeyman Geek

I don't get how it'll be a pyrrhic victory, its not like he can stand again ;p

11:19 AM

@RegDwighт I would agree that you should have a comma before "Writers" in your explanation to SteveIrwin. Not after it. Freakin' pineapples ...

@JourneymanGeek He didn't say Pyhrric, did he? So maybe it wasn't a Freudian slip after all.

He should have said, "I stand by my words!"

@Robusto I would disagree on the comma before. Makes no sense whatsoever. The comma after was obviously a typo. I replaced it with a dash except I forgot how replacing works.

user19161

@RegDwighт Which sentence?

Scroll up a wee bit.

Journeyman Geek

@Robusto: It is, in fact a perfect case of 'THAT WORD, IT DOES NOT MEAN WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS'

and even if it wasn't he has no idea how to use it

user19161

11:35 AM

@jou Is that your dog?

Journeyman Geek

ya

user19161

Hello @jsb you are early today.

12:03 PM

@RegDwighт Oh, I forgot — you're never wrong. Sorry.

Why so grumpy? I explained what actually happened.

12:19 PM

Commute.

12:43 PM

@RegDwighт Agree that he said Phallic? Sounded like it to me.

That was not the question.

Well, I see that.

I thought it was funny to say so though.

I see.

Don't mess with me, Rob already tried.

Oh. I shouldn't mention that I was thinking about your only English slip-up ever just this morning as I was driving in to work.

Why would you think about that?

Also, why do you keep insisting on the only part?

I haz much misstake.

12:48 PM

I was thinking about how that would have revealed your secret identity and ultimately lead to some sort of dramatic fracas. And it's the only one I ever remember.

Well yeah, if not being a pea farmer counts as a secret identity, I've been properly busted.

Maybe you make mistakes, but you make them like a native speaker.

Rob begs to differ. Probably rightfully so. It's next to impossible for me to use "Kit and I" in the object position even on purpose.

Fine. Screw you and your stupid pineapple English. You talk like a idiot.

Stupid Google changed their GUI again.

12:52 PM

I'm done being nice about it.

I can barely understand anything you say.

It used to be easy to search for videos, now it's hidden under "other".

Guess they want you to stick with YouTube.

And then it was easy to search for videos on a specific site. In fact the videos came neatly pre-sorted in categories.

@KitFox exactly.

Except it's a crime against humanity that will backfire.

Matt Эллен

@RegDwighт hmmmm, it's on the left, under maps for me

Or maybe most people just stick with YouTube, so they figured "why bother?"

12:54 PM

Because guess why I have to search for videos not on YouTube in the first place?

Because not a single fucking YouTube video is now available in my country.

It's infuriating.

Matt Эллен

because you're crazy and can't spell youtube?

oh

that was my third guess

They forced me to switch from YouTube to other sites, and now they are forcing me to switch from Google search?

Idiots.

Matt Эллен

OIC, before you get your results

don't you just use the search bar in your browser?

then choose video afterwards

Where afterwards?

I should mention that every second YouTube video that I am allowed to watch crashes as soon as I move the mouse.

Matt Эллен

user image

12:59 PM

That started happening when they switched to that HTML5 shit.

@MattЭллен that is exactly what I no longer get.

Matt Эллен

!!

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