Hmm does one tend one's fields, or tend to one's fields...

I would say tend to crops or cattle...?

Actually, the history of Rome was all about popular uprisings from about 220 on. A young tribune of the people would appear and make a commotion, and then the old moneyed interests of the Senate would quash and kill it.

But the Italians have their own crux to bear when they turn masc sg il uovo (< L ovum) into fem pl le uove (< L ova), the poor dears!

@Robusto Kind of yeah. But it didn't always get out of hand so badly.

@Cerberus You would more likely tend fields, not tend to them.

@Cerberus PAIN in LA.

@Robusto Right! But you would tend to your cattle, wouldn't you?

Also tend crops. To "tend to" something means to pay attention to it. Not precisely the same thing as tend, but related.

@Cerberus I believe you could do both.

@tchrist People of all Romance languages had trouble with neuter nouns...

@Robusto Hmm.

PAIN: poeta / agricola / incola / nauta

@tchrist I find it funny that a German slang word for testicles is die Eie — the eggs. Which they are decidedly just about the opposite of, if you think about it.

PANTS: poeta / agricola / nauta / tata / scriba

@tchrist Ah, but only the extremes are Greek.

Ah, yes, scriba!

Why can't we italicize next to an em dash in this chat?

And what the hell is tata?

@Robusto Los huevos is very common slang, Ranchero,.

@Cerberus An Indian car company.

@Robusto How so? They do not like being kicked.

@tchrist Forgot about that.

@Robusto Yeah that's the only meaning I know.

@Cerberus The thing that men want to be particularly large on their putas.

books.google.com/ngrams/…

APPIAN: agricola / poeta / pirata / incola / auriga / nauta

No tend to his crops, but, then again, even tend his crops is rare, apparently.

Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
Is music. It is like the strain
Waked in the elders by Susanna;

Of a green evening, clear and warm,
She bathed in her still garden, while
The red-eyed elders, watching, felt

The basses of their beings throb
In witching chords, and their thin blood
Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna.

@tchrist Ah, auriga is also not Greek, right? Pirata is.

@Cerberus Only now that we’re in a post-agri society.

@Cerberus I noticed that.

So, whence auriga?

Ich muß jetzt ein Spaziergang machen.

@Cerberus Daddy.

Also, bis später.

> Latin tata m (genitive tatae); first declension. “daddy, a term used by children for their father”. From Proto-Indo-European *tēt-, *tāt- (“father”). Cognate with Cornish tat (“father”), Ancient Greek τατᾶ (tata), τέττα (tr = tatā, tétta, “daddy”), Bulgarian татко (tátko, “dad, daddy”), Sanskrit (tātas, “papa”).

> Descendants: Aromanian: tatã; Dalmatian: tuota; Italian: tata; Neapolitan: tata; Portuguese: tatá; Romanian: tată; Spanish: tata, tato, taita

@Cerb You need more IT/ES/PT to round out your FR.

Tatas is low-register slang for tits on a chick.

I can’t figure out whether Aromanians smell funny or just don’t have much sex.

@tchrist But Ngrams know more than modern society...

@Robusto Viel Spaß.

@tchrist Umm no doubt from ago "to lead, drive". And some other word...

Auris is "ear".

What thing or things do the rancher, farmer, gardener, banker tend?

@tchrist I see... perhaps I have seen that word before, but it is at least not common in literature.

@tchrist Well, an auriga tends a cart, I would say?

I only knew it because of its present-day descendants having a “weird” gender.

> aurīga, ae (aureax, Paul. ex Fest p. 8 Müll.), comm. (cf. Prisc. p. 677 P.) [aureaago], pr., he that handles the reins.

We must have a word for that.

Coachman?

Drover?

Yes, or charioteer...

Right.

archimedes.fas.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/…

> aurĕa, ae, f. [auris], the bridle of a horse: aureas dicebant frenos, quibus equorum aures religantur, Paul. ex Fest. p. 27 Müll.; cf. id. ib. s. v. aureax, p. 8.

Ah!

I must confess I did not know aurea.

I'm sure you can read the explanation.

So from auris "ear" after all.

The poetic usage of auriga accords with κυβερνήτης < κυβερνᾰν.

Steersman? Hm.

Sure.

There are many, many such words...

Kubernetes = governor.

The duke.

Yes.

Or the rex.

There is a difference.

Rego, to direct.

A duke leads, a rex directs.

In poetry, there would be little difference.

All can mean "leader".

A dux is usually military.

Or perhaps I should say that a rex reigns. I dunno.

@Cerberus Yes, that’s what I was getting at.

Yes. Rex is a taboo word. Until the Middle Ages.

But in poetry, you could use them freely.

@Cerberus Because of the pre-Republic days?

Although a rex would sooner be tirannical.

Yes.

There was a tyrant here last night.

Just as tirannos in Greek merely meant "autocrat" or "monarch" rather than "tirant".

A tygre?

Funny title.

A superb title.

Especially considered the name of the last King, Tarquinius Superbus.

Superbus, omnibus, hominibus.

No infrabusses that take the subways though.

> Tarquinius commenced his reign by refusing burial to his predecessor Servius, thereby earning for himself the name "Superbus" ('proud'),[9] and then putting to death a number of leading senators, whom he suspected of remaining loyal to Servius.

Because subbus travel is reserved for the metro.

@tchrist Probably entirely unrelated, a (different) suffix.

@Cerberus Duh. Just riffing.

One never knows...

-ibus != -us

Maybe the origin of -bus in the plural dative/ablative could be related...?

To...?

After all, the adjectival suffix -bus bears little meaning of itself...

Hm.

I'd say 90 % chance unrelated.

Ok. that’s an interesting notion.

There are only so many syllables.

But I have yet time to consult the OLD before I must hurry off.

incubus, succubus

Taking the bus almost always sucks anyway.

> Superbus: root *bheu "to grow", cf. fui.

Huh.

So also related to physical, from phuô "to grow".

Aorist (or was it perfect? I forgets) often "to be".

And living in a cube ain’t that much fun, either.

Could also be related...

(Though probably still all unrelated to dat/abl -bus.)

We’re playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with PIE.

OLD also says "for formation cf. probus ", in the article on superbus.

I know not this person.

And I must away.

@Cerberus The less pop-culture version is one’s Erdős number.

But people have trouble pronouncing it, so stick with the Bacon they know and love.

> The Erdős number (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈɛrdøːʃ]) describes the "collaborative distance" between a person and mathematician Paul Erdős, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers.

> The idea of the Erdős number was created by the mathematician's friends as a tribute to his enormous output. Since then, it has gained prominence and several projects are devoted to studying connectivity among researchers, using the Erdos number as a proxy. The average Erdős number of Fields Medalists is 3.21, with a standard deviation of 0.87 and a median of 3.

“Weird” Spanish -a masculines: anagrama, analema, anatema, aroma, atleta, axioma, bigrama, carcinoma, carisma, cinema, clima, cometa, crucigrama, diagrama, dilema, diploma, dogma, drama, eccema, emblema, enema, enfisema, enigma, esmegma, esquema, estigma, fantasma, fibroma, fonema, glaucoma, hematoma, idioma, idiota, indígena, israelita, lema, lexema, magma, mapa, . . .

. . . melisma, morfema, panorama, papiloma, pijama, pirata, planeta, plasma, poema, poeta, problema, profeta, programa, quiasma, reuma, sema, síntoma, sistema, sofisma, telegrama, tema, teorema, trigrama, and zeugma (also written ceugma) are all masculine in Spanish, as too are tranvía, día, and mediodía.

Most of those are also masculine in the other Romance tongues.

Most but not all are from Greek. Día has its own tattered past, for example, from the fifth declension.

@tchrist Ah, that sounds better.

I knew you would like it. :)

@tchrist Almost all Greek...

Yep.

And almost all with perfect cognates in English.

But at least three different Greek suffixes.

Yes.

Esquema?

Scheme

Ahh OK.

I thought maybe some kind of foam.

Espuma.

Which is feminine.

Yeah.

Because it's Latin.

@TimTimmy I emailed his answers to you. Did you not get them?

But there is Germanic scVm- "foam".

It’s also the famous last words of many a dying Mexican: ¡Es puma!

So I was hoping for something unusual.

Is there an exotic one for English?

Maybe in Scots?

Scum.

Oh.

At least I should hope so.

@Cerberus but no

In Dutch you could translate that as schuim sometimes, with somewhat similar pejorative meaning.

I think we have spume. Not sure.

Yes, OED says we do.

Sometimes I can’t remember which words I’m just stealing.

Brume is another good exotic word in English.

With an obvious meaning that few know.

> The Teut. word was adopted in Rom. as OF. escume (mod.F. écume), Pr., Sp., Pg. escuma, It. schiuma. For the shortening of the vowel (which, as the spelling scome shows, had taken place already in the 14th c.), cf. thumb, plum.

So I was hoping esquima =~ escuma. But no.

Nope, sorry.

Not to be confused with esquina, which is a corner.

Pr. = Provençal? Pg = Portuguese.

Specifically, it is the outside corner. Rincón is the inside corner.

@Cerberus Yes.

Ah...

I have a feeling I should know where esquina came from.

A city block has an esquina upon which one stands.

A house has a rincón from the inside but an esquina from the outside.

It’s like roof and ceiling.

Dutch only has hook.

Hoek.

@Cerberus That’s because it’s from a Germanic language!

Indeed.

Does this SE do technical jargon?

Although, who knows, maybe unca is related to hook...no idea.

esquina.

 (Del gót. *skĭna, barrita, tibia; cf. a. al. ant. scina, tibia, alfiler).


 1. f. Arista, parte exterior del lugar en que convergen dos lados de una cosa, especialmente las paredes de un edificio.

 2. f. ant. Piedra grande que se arrojaba a los enemigos desde lugares altos.

@Anonymous Sometimes. It depends on how technical.

I am just wondering, because recently a question about Business Law got closed.

So, from Gothic.

@Anonymous Legal questions are usually off-topic, so we don't get sued. We can't give legal advice here; we're not lawyers.

las cuatro esquinas.

 1. f. Juego de muchachos. Cuatro o más se ponen en los postes, rincones u otros lugares señalados, quedando un muchacho sin puesto; todos los que lo tienen se cambian unos con otros, y el que no lo tiene trata de llegar a uno antes que el que va a tomarlo, y si lo consigue se queda el otro en medio hasta que logra ocupar otro puesto.

@KitFox OK. Can you ask about religious jargon then?

@Anonymous What's the question?

@JohanLarsson Haha very relevant.

@tchrist So then where are the modern Germanic reflexes?

not relevant but perhaps a Sunday is a decent fit for some easy listening?

@KitFox Here's the question: "In Christianity, what is the difference between 'essence' and 'person' in regards to the Holy Trinity?"

I presume Greek scene is not related.

@Anonymous You probably want to ask that on the Christianity site.

Good question.

I have no Gothic dictionary, let alone an etymological one.

Could be from *skeu- "to cover", actually.

But not esquina.

A scene is the screen behind which one hides what happens behind the stage. I think...

Well, since it can only be an outside corner, maybe it covers something.

I am reading this book by professor R.C. Sproul. It's "What is the Trinity?". I expect that it would be an introductory book, but heck, I don't even understand this guy's vocabulary. :(

But such a long stretch...

Maybe I should stick with something simpler, like Christianity for Dummies.

@Anonymous Well, a dictionary might help get you started.

OED has all kinds of words starting ske- which I’ve never heard of.

And not just skeleton or skein, either.

He's probably using words and then defining them to fit his concepts, so it might not really matter.

The e-book is one of the free items that showed up on Amazon shop.

Amazon Kindle already comes with an OED dictionary, fortunately.

Plus Wikipedia.

Gods there’s skene, skeen, skein, all different.

I'd suppose that 'essence' equates with the holy spirit and 'person' equates with Jesus, but I don't know much about the Trinity.

Or Christianity, for that matter.

I can’t find any.

How do I lock the pages together in Excel? What's that called?

@tchrist Skênê (Doric skānā) comes from PIE *ska[i]- "shine, shadow" (something like that—it's hard to understand, because the explanation is in Greek, with lots of Greek abbreviations I don't know).

@KitFox No, it is known that the three persons of the Holy Trinity as accepted by orthodox Christianity are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

I am not sure why that has to be the order.

So essence is something different than that?

Because Jesus is often referred to as the "Second Person of the Trinity".

Well, the author mentions that essence is being used to refer to the triune God, which is composed of three persons.

Huh, well. OK. Then there's your answer, eh?

Hence, the author uses the "law of non-contradiction" in philosophy to say that God is one and three at the same time.

@tchrist Okay I have to go, bye!

kthxbaime2

@KitFox Not exactly. I still haven't figured out what essence is. :P

I mean, he could have used the term "entity".

But he doesn't.

I think it may be a technical term with its own nuances.

Or just so much bunk to confuse you into thinking you need to read a whole book about it.

@KitFox You are using the second definition of bunk. thefreedictionary.com/bunk

Yes, short for bunkum, although I don't think anyone uses bunkum anymore.

Hi @KitFox!

Hi @Jasper. I was just writing you an email.

I can just ask you a question here, if you don't mind?

Yes.

Do you have a college degree?

Yes, I got a second upper class honours.

University?

Yes.

Do you have a master's?

No.

Is there a particular branch that you are interested in?

Not at the moment.

A particular program that interests you?

Well, I have shortlisted several universities to apply to, but I don't think that list is important now.

I am just wondering how specific your plan is. Sounds like you are doing a good job of researching it.

It's just that people might not accept me given that I have mental illness and not been working for many years.

Also, when I eventually do apply, I will be older than the others.

These are my two main concerns. They might be disadvantageous to me.

But I will try to write about these factors positively when I do apply.

I wouldn't worry about the age thing. Lots of people enter programs well after they start a career.

As you know, my main priority now is to get well.

And I don't know when that will happen, if at all.

But I will keep trying my best and hope it is not too many years from now.

OK, well, I will finish writing you.

OK, take your time.

@KitFox Danke and Danke! I was finishing my project today and tadaa! Something in the mail ;)

RIP Philip Seymour Hoffman.

@KitFox Wait...can a person be sued for giving legal advice when they are not a laywer? Or rather, can they be sued for having said something that is then used in a legal manner (supposing in either case that bad things happened for taking it as advice)?

stops talking altogether

@Mitch If you say something that...I mean, if it could be construed as...uh. stops talking

I have an API whose 9 different but related function names seem to be a bit on the long side. Should I leave them as is or try to find some regular abbreviation that still coheres but is faster under the fingertips?

Version A is the original, and the others are alternate proposals:

A1: seconds_to_date14
A3: timeval_to_date14_3
A2: timeval_to_date14_6
A4: seconds_and_milliseconds_to_timeval
A6: seconds_and_milliseconds_to_date14_3
A5: seconds_and_milliseconds_to_date14_6
A7: seconds_and_microseconds_to_timeval
A9: seconds_and_microseconds_to_date14_3
A8: seconds_and_microseconds_to_date14_6

B1: sex_to_date14
B3: timeval_to_date14_3
B2: timeval_to_date14_6
B4: sex_and_millisex_to_timeval
B6: sex_and_millisex_to_date14_3
B5: sex_and_millisex_to_date14_6
B7: sex_and_microsex_to_timeval

Which of A–F do you prefer?

Is version A truly too painful?

At least it’s clear.

what does the 14_3 mean?

what is the returntype? double?

maybe return a timespan that can be queried for seconds, totalseconds etc?

the you can name them time_to_

is overloading an option?

@tchrist is that order intentional?

Kinda.

I prefer A but would not write them like that

@Mitch WTF?

@JasperLoy You are back???

@SȱɳɨȼƮħeǶḝÐɠḝħȱɠ Hey Mr Kimchi!

Woo!

Woo!

@SȱɳɨȼƮħeǶḝÐɠḝħȱɠ and you too are back

@Theta It's been a long time