« first day (2170 days earlier)      last day (2752 days later) » 

12:03 AM
@WillHunting It's 24 now and more than I ever got, although I anticipate getting more for that suffixes answer since the questioner put a bounty on it meaning it'll be in the featured questions queue for another six days just about.
 
user227867
@Tonepoet Probably put a bounty to reward you for your brilliant answer. There is nothing more to be answered.
 
@WillHunting He commented that he wants more opinions, which is fair. I think there's more to be said on the subject myself, esp. regarding if there's any overlap.
 
user227867
@Tonepoet What do you think of my answer? I am a little unsure here:
 
user227867
1
Q: Meaning of "ubiquitous as the humble sheep"

Francis DrakeIn the foreword for a knitting book there's this passage: Knitting has become as ubiquitous as the humble sheep. Which is followed by a couple more sentences on how great it would be to learn how to knit etc. I've googled "the humble sheep", and haven't had any success. Is the phrase roug...

 
@WillHunting The first assertion that sheep are ubiquitous is reasonable. The humble part seems more like a random guess. It lacks reference altogether. I'd be more willing to guess it's because they're literally the very definition of sheepish, if you catch my drift. Now you have two votes though, so you also have to consider your constituents. XP
 
user227867
12:16 AM
@Tonepoet Wait, does sheepish mean humble???
 
@WillHunting My impression without checking a dictionary is more along the lines of meek and shy, which are humble traits in a sense.
 
user227867
@Tonepoet Oh well, nonetheless I think what I typed is one reasonable interpretation. =P
 
@WillHunting Here's how Noah Webster defines it:

SHEE'PISH, adjective

1. Like a sheep; bashful; timorous to excess; over-modest; meanly diffident.
2. Pertaining to sheep.
 
user227867
@Tonepoet In a way, modulo many things, sheep = humble = meek = generous, something like that...
 
"Overmodest" and "humble" are very closely related concepts.
I can't really get over how much I like the Fine Dictionary website. Putting the C.D.C. and Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary together makes things rather convenient for me, plus they put in so much effort into compiling extra data.
I wish I knew which edition of Chamber's 20th Century Dictionary they used though.
 
user227867
12:36 AM
@Tonepoet Isn't there only one edition of that? I am not sure.
 
I'm not so sure either.
 
user227867
I think there is one Chambers 20th Century Dictionary, and also one Chambers 21st Century Dictionary.
 
user227867
Now the current Chambers Dictionary actually is the successor to the 20th Century Dictionary, and the 21st Century Dictionary is out of print and has only very few entries.
 
How strange. 20th Century Fox kept their name throughout the century.
 
user227867
Maybe Kit Fox is the owner of 20th Century Fox?
 
1:19 AM
@WillHunting They should change the name to 21st Century Fox.
 
@tchrist The second exemplary sentence reminds me of this for reasons none of you will understand:
 
🍌 🍌 🍌 👺 👺 👺
 
2:23 AM
@tchrist That emoticon is called Japanese Goblin? That's funny because it looks more like a tengu than an oni. Also a word to the wise, I doubt any of you will actually like that video in that second link so click at your own discretion. XP
 
3:23 AM
I would guess this is where the phrasal verb fan out comes from:
 
user227867
3:52 AM
Finally got 1000 rep, phew!
 
6:10 AM
hello everyone
 
6:33 AM
@tchrist The time when the world stops trying to passivize things is wanted to be seen by me.
 
 
2 hours later…
user227867
8:05 AM
Aaaaaah
 
8:38 AM
@Mitch Fuck science!
I would like to defend my answer though, as silly as it admittedly is.
 
user227867
9:03 AM
I got 29 votes for a double line answer, lol.
 
user227867
The consolation is that at least it is not a single line answer, lol.
 
user227867
Also, the number of lines may depend on the font size in your browser, lol.
 
user227867
I set mine to size 12 in Mozilla Firefox which is quite small, lol.
 
user227867
9:48 AM
There are some very good questions on the site now.
 
Knu
10:55 AM
Hi, I am searching questions about "or" and its usage for list of 3 items or more.
But I can't find them since the keyword OR is not search query friendly…
Anyone got a clue?
 
Nope. SE search isn't very good. What are you trying to answer though? Yes, using or for more than 2 items is absolutely fine and normal.
 
Knu
Do I have to repeat it every single times? @terdon
 
Will John or Dick or Mary or Harry or Sue please help me
 
Knu
> Please pick an apple, orange or oatmeal.
 
@Knu That's not a sentence
 
Knu
11:01 AM
@terdon better?
 
> Please pick either an apple, or an orange or oatmeal.
The devil's in the details though. For example: Please pick one of blue, red or green
But not *Please pick one of apple, orange or oatmeal.
That's because oatmeal isn't countable. It will always depend on the exact sentence you want to say.
 
Knu
well I guess Ill first have to know how to formulate my question. Thanks anyway.
 
@Knu You'll probably have better luck getting your answer if you ask on English Language Learners instead.
 
user227867
11:19 AM
@tonepoet I rep-capped yesterday and again today. Whee!
 
12:43 PM
@terdon To be honest, your answer is much better than all the others. That's why I bothered to give information to make it better. Negatives are difficult to support (you can't give all possible instances where something doesn't work).
 
1:18 PM
What’s the difference between spigotry and spiggoty?
> “What is a plate that talks and sings?” demanded LeRoy, waving the pillow.

“ ’S that a con-undrum?”

“A phonograph record, you gump!”

In less than half a minute Warren was up fumbling in his trousers’ pocket. “Four dollars spiggoty for donkey hire,” said he, “that leaves two—four—five—seven. Can we get a phonograph for fifteen dollars”
Poor gump! Sure takes him a long time to stand up.
Wait, what’s a gump, greenwood?
> The big legislative initiatives included a transcontinental railroad bill, the first effort at a comprehensive revision of the tariff, tax and revenue cuts, “spigotry,” as budget-cutting came to be known, and establishing a Justice Department.
wonders how one pronounces ’S that
That doesn’t help me much with spiggoty dollars.
Wait, no. It’s postpositive!
It’s actually dollars Spiggoty, and is used that way more than once in the cited source.
SP$15
Ok, now guess what a herring choker is!
Aw come on, you guys are no fun!
Snoosers!
Snoosers and herring chokers are actually scandihoovians!
 
1:36 PM
Aw, I would have guessed that a herring-choker is a wanker
 
Of the male persuasion, or of the female? :)
 
I didn't know masculinity was a persuasion.
Who persuaded you?
 
Errol Flynn.
That’s footnote 4 from the herring choker cite.
Wow, this gets even better!
 
Ah, is the capote that old?
 
This is, of course, HL Mencken writing here.
@Cerberus Which one is that?
 
1:43 PM
Your first image.
Speaks of the capote before the Entente Cordiale.
Which was...I forgot.
Around 1890?
Perhaps it was made of gut.
Like tennis rackets.
 
Oh wait, you mean capote Anglaise, not Truman. :)
 
Truman?
 
@Mitch I find your point about the adjective interesting. I'd always thought that parts of speech are as parts of speech do. So if I'm using something as an adjective, then that's what it is.
 
Wasn't Truman around WW1 or 2?
 
Truman Garcia Capote (/ˈtruːmən kəˈpoʊtiː/; born Truman Streckfus Persons, September 30, 1924 – August 25, 1984) was an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and actor, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966), which he labeled a "nonfiction novel". At least 20 films and television dramas have been produced of Capote novels, stories, and plays. Capote rose above a childhood troubled by divorce, a long absence from his mother, and multip...
 
1:45 PM
Ah, never read him.
 
So, I think he's fucked is very much like he's fast. However, you're quite right that the fucked man doesn't quite work, unlike the green man. How about the made man though? As in "our friend", made. Isn't that an adjective?
 
Isn’t what an adjective?
Made?
In a made man?
Yes.
 
@terdon Some adjectives cannot or are preferable not used before their noun. But what about it?
 
Context:
Sorry to piss on the parade, but I have to call you on a couple. That's not a conjunction and that's not a pronoun. Or if they are then every interjection I can think of could act like a conjunction. Likewise many nouns like a pronoun. Also, your adjective is not modifying a noun, it's a verbal past participle. Also... you can't think of 'fuck' used by itself as the plain primary verb from where this all came? We've all been entertained thoroughly; I humbly submit this in the interest of science. — Mitch 19 hours ago
 
I never want to hear a man grown again.
 
1:47 PM
And the rest of that comment thread between Mitch and myself.
 
By "our friend", you mean our homo not-quite novus?
 
@Cerberus No, I mean mob-speak for "one of us".
 
Ah, I thought you meant Trump.
 
Heh, no. He's just fucked.
 
Heh.
 
1:49 PM
@terdon We. Should. Be. So. Plucky.
 
Yeah. . . Here's hoping.
 
I've posted a counter-comment.
 
All you guys’ comments are so much unindelible flag bait, alas.
 
?
Seeing all of those questions closed really demotivates me.
 
@Cerberus It only takes a single flag from anybody to zap them out of existence, and I can't fix those.
 
2:01 PM
Then the censorship system is entirely broken.
Oh, well.
What's new.
 
@Cerberus Which ones would you see reöpened? I ask not to argue but to fix.
 
I saw a question about whether aristocracy and Aristotle are related.
 
Was it closed for GR?
 
It said "too little research".
Which I think is stupid.
But w'evs.
The result of this policy is that it basically breaks the way SE should work: instead of in an answer, the desired answer will now come in a comment.
But I suppose that doesn't matter.
Nobody but SE really cares about answer scores and such.
 
2:05 PM
@Cerberus That comment is more general. Is a noun-adjunct (a noun modifying another noun) a noun or an adjective?
@MetaEd Thank you.
 
@Mitch I'm sorry, I can't parse your sentence.
Is it a question?
 
ftfmyself
 
Gracias.
But my comment was not about whether it was a noun?
 
but likewise for any word with a primary part of speech.
so is 'fuck' in 'fuck face' an adjective or a verb or what?
 
@Cerberus "Answer scores"?
 
2:07 PM
Oh, well, I wasn't commenting on that one.
 
Oh.
Then which one?
 
Ok, time for $job. I need to trust the rest of you to fix any prurient chat flags that come our way for all this.
 
@tchrist If there are no answers, you can't see how many people voted an answer up or down.
Good luck.
@tchrist For all this?
Did something happen?
@Mitch You said he is fucked is not an adjective, and I disagreed.
 
Fuck face tends to attract flaggers.
 
Oh, puh-lease.
 
2:09 PM
@tchrist oh. should we 'f*' everything then?
 
The best way to live with censorship is to ignore it and move on.
 
@Cerberus I'm sorta OK with past participles being both verbs and adjectives, sometimes.
 
As long as it happens afterwards, you can do that and be none the worse for it.
 
But 'fed' is not the same word as 'f'
 
@Mitch Thank you.
 
2:10 PM
and the question is about 'f*' not some derivation of it.
 
The Federal bank thingy?
You commented on Terdon's classification of fucked as an adjective, didn't you?
 
@Cerberus There's censorship of the 'The King should be deposed because of his isolationist policies' kind and there's censorship of 'my teacher crossed out my use of "f*-face" to describe the king'.
@Cerberus yes
 
@Mitch As long as they can't imprison you, you can just put the thought out of your mind and speak like you normally would.
 
I'll grant that 'f*-ed' could be an adjective (I'd kind of like more support, but I'll accept that for now. But 'f*-ed' is not the same word as 'f*' and that is what the question is about.
@Cerberus They know what I'm really thinking though.
 
But your comment was also about fucked as in he is fucked.
 
2:14 PM
I did an experiment where I thought real hard and I was imprisoned. But when I stopped thinking I got out.
 
@Mitch You must stop worshipping your censors like gods; it's the Stockholm Syndrome.
 
@Cerberus Let's put aside 'f*-ed' for the moment.
 
But that was all I was talking about.
 
@Cerberus But what if you really like Stockholm? Maybe your captors are very convincing.
 
Oh, and about fuck as a conjunction, about which I agreed with you.
Stockholm is nice; its syndrome less so.
 
2:15 PM
Also calling out Stockholm syndrome is traitor-baiting. maybe the other side is right.
 
Traitor?
 
@Mitch Yes. And, in fact, fucked was explicitly forbidden. I must have missed that.
But if not a conjunction, what is fuck in I went swimming, fuck the cold?
 
Yes. Team A calls out team member A51 for when captured by team B for turning to team B. A51 can be seen as a traitor to A
 
I quite agree that the sentence wouldn't be quite street legal in an English Lit department, but it is something that is used.
 
@terdon I have no idea how to read that sentence, parse it, put emphasis, to get meaning.
 
2:17 PM
@terdon A verb, at least originally.
You have two main clauses separated by a missing semicolon.
As a verb it would be an imperative.
 
@Mitch Imagine it being said by Avon Barksdale.
 
As in 'f* the poe-leece'?
 
@Cerberus I'm thinking of something like I'll do it and fuck the consequences. But contorted into I'll do it, fuck the consequences.
 
I went swimming. [Go] fuck the cold, as a sign to show that I disregard its feelings.
 
@Mitch As that sort of register, that dialect.
 
2:19 PM
how can that possibly be a conjunction between two parallel objects?
 
@terdon I understood why you phrased it like that.
 
@Cerberus I'm trying to force fuck to do the job of despite. I freely admit I might just be failing. Miserably.
 
Despite is a preposition.
 
@Cerberus What?
Really?
 
A conjunction introduces a full clause, i.e. a clause with a finite verb.
> *She killed me, despite she loved me.
 
2:21 PM
'f*' has many subtle variations in semantics/usages. But it doesn't readily cross POS borders. 'set' 'get' and 'run' are super polysemic but pretty much just verbs. POS is one aspect of semantics, but there are an infinite nuumber of other dimensions to work with almost entirely lexical (vs grammatical)
 
You will see that this is wrong.
Although is a conjunction with the same meaning.
@Mitch I find your self-censorship offensive!
Although your words are wise.
 
@Cerberus haha. * you -, you *-ing *
 
@Cerberus Hmm. OK. Well, I admit I had to first look up about half of those POS to figure out what they are and then tried to fit fuck into them, so I'm not going to defend the answer too much. It was fun to write though :)
I really think that using f*ck on this post is stretching reasonable propriety to its breaking point. The whole post is about fuck and its linguistic versatility, I think we should be allowed to write it. At the very least, it makes absurdly incomprehensible sentences like @long's example a bit easier to parse. — terdon Mar 6 '14 at 2:37
 
@Cerberus @tchrist just told us to. I'm OK with that. it's not like anything is lost. Don't want to step on toes.
 
@Mitch You fucksquare!
 
2:24 PM
He told us to be careful. However, the use vs mention distinction clearly applies here.
 
@Mitch He didn't!
 
@Cerberus That's use! Dammit!
 
@Mitch No, I didn't mean to say to do this. I simply warned you that you might get an auto-chat-suspension if you aren't careful.
 
He just warned us that there might be crazy flaggers.
Jinx.
 
At least, that was my thinking.
 
2:25 PM
@terdon There are lots more POS's than those latinate 8. Or rather, the classification is not so cut and dried, and each language should have it's own (even if it is like the structure of phonetic features, each language has its own subset and accent).
 
@terdon You did a fun job.
 
@Mitch Yeah, I figured that one out.
 
@Cerberus I don't know what that is so I'm hurt even worse!
You... you... person!
 
@terdon And so what!
 
@Mitch There's enough azulejo in here to fix it should things go a whiskey and rye.
2
 
2:26 PM
@terdon I would have thought that use/mention would cover all manner of 'egregiousessnesses'.
 
@Mitch I'm sure it'll be some sort of implement.
 
But what if quotes are only sarcasm 'quotes'?
 
Here, I fixed the banned -ed verb form:
> Verb: "I love to fuck while eating duck."
 
@Cerberus Oh. well fuck that then
 
Indeed.
@terdon So that is a verb?
 
2:28 PM
Uhm. It has a to!
I love to run?
 
Although infinitives can be analysed as nouns.
 
Uhm. I love running.
 
What are you trying to say?
 
Come on, do I need to write I fuck, you fuck, we all fuck for Peking Duck or something?
 
No, but I don't know what you're trying to do here.
 
2:29 PM
@terdon You missed thou fuckst not.
 
Just demonstrate a clear use of the word fuck as a verb.
 
Ah OK.
 
@terdon Yay! That works. And poetic too! So sublime! Ozymandias...pfft
 
@tchrist I wouldn't presume to know.
 
I was trying to confirm that.
It was clear enough for me.
 
2:30 PM
@Mitch Isn't that the guy who bit the head of a live bat?
 
@terdon I recommend not. Duck is very greasy and it could get quite messy.
 
user227867
@Mitch I see you rejected an edit on my answer. Good. That edit did not serve any purpose. Perhaps the editor wanted me to conform to American punctuation, not knowing that British punctuation differs.
 
I've heard
 
Mexican ducks.
 
2:31 PM
@tchrist he fuckth the sixth sick quick chick
 
Mexicans ducking.
 
user227867
I just had a huge dinner again.
 
Mexicans royal-ducking.
 
@WillHunting Oh. That guy was editing things left and right to put punctuation inside quotes.
That's crazy.
I don't care British or American or Martian, it disobeys all manner of use-mention processing.
 
user227867
@Mitch I am sure he means well, but has not read at least 9000 books on punctuation like me.
 
2:33 PM
@WillHunting title = "this is a problem;"
 
@WillHunting What was on the menu?
 
@Mitch pato y pavo
 
@WillHunting It's annoying.
@tchrist peacock paws? eww... chewy as rubber
 
user227867
@Mitch Hotdog bun, yam pie, soy sauce chicken, breaded shrimp, fried egg, tender broccoli, cold water. All this followed by a visit to the bathroom to flush everything out, and a cold shower to refresh body and mind. Woo!
 
2:36 PM
pato=duck pavo=turkey pavo real=peac*ck
 
@tchrist I used to pronounce it as 'awe - ree'. I never knew!
 
pata=mrs duck or your paw
 
@tchrist "every time we see one of those fine-feathered fellows strutting around the local zoo, we can't help thinking how handsome he would look on a silver serving platter!"
Ewww again
 
@Mitch Yes! I only found out a few years ago and was mortified. I'd been reading the word most of my life and it always rhymed with hairy or airy in my mind. It took me ages to shift to awRYE
 
or if you're a cannibal, going to a theme park must seem like a fountain of luxury
 
2:38 PM
 
a luxurious fountain of dipping chocolate
@tchrist peacack? enough with your shitty legumes
 
@tchrist Oh, wow. That's Trump as a bird!
 
No cacophony in this chat.
 
@terdon Another example of sometimes people just won't tell you.
Except somebody did tell me with 'awry'. So I guess there's hope for civilization afterall. Except I think that person who told me is a jerk.
Sep 8 at 18:44, by Mitch
I cock my hat at you, good sir!
Let's not pussyfoot around it
Pussy Riot's music sounds like a cat-fight
 
Just don't bring up niggardly.
 
user227867
2:47 PM
@Mitch I learnt from SE that the jerk is the derivative of acceleration with respect to time.
 
Pances pouces, et pousse pencées
@terdon I'm hearing 'denigrate' a lot.
@WillHunting and snap is the ... oh other way around, acceleration is the derivative of jerk.
Jerk is the derivative of snap
I'm working on more 'pussy' puns, bear with me.
It's hard work.
Nope that's all I got.
@tchrist Pensée, poussée, pouce et pincée
Chat is a catastrophe
 
3:40 PM
@tchrist I knew you wouldn't like that Japanese Goblin video. =P
 
4:13 PM
> What does it matter?
> What is that your business?
> ...
These are more of why rhetorical questions, right?
I mean the whats mean why more or less.
 
 
2 hours later…
5:47 PM
Which one is more better as a validation error message?
- Your comment should made of at least 10 characters
- Your comment should be at least 10 characters
- Your comment should be containing at least 10 characters
 
6:05 PM
@Shafizadeh I think #2 is often used. Personally I'd prefer if it said "long" afterwards but error messages never were good at making complete sentences.
 
6:24 PM
@Tonepoet ah ok, thx
 
7:13 PM
@Færd correct
The first one is like 'So what?'. Usually to say 'that's irrelevant'. But it could have a response even though it is intended to shut things down.
 
7:52 PM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Repeating characters in answer: Writing out heartbeat sound by elizabeth on english.stackexchange.com
 
user227867
8:21 PM
Never got so many upvotes in a day before. Seriously overcapping now.
 
user227867
They should have a feature where if you cap, you can give some of your votes to a friend.
 
user227867
@Tonepoet My familiarity with dictionaries came in helpful in my "youth" answer, lol.
 
user227867
I cannot believe that "ang moh" has trickled down into oxforddictionaries.com
 
10:04 PM
@WillHunting Actually I think you may've acted a little prematurely there. Esp. isn't only. It means the word is more likely to apply in those cases. Noah Webster's definition includes males and females in the third sense, while the Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia's definition of "A young person; especially, a young man. In this sense it has a plural" more clearly marks it as a mere implication.
 
user227867
@Tonepoet Yes. I know especially isn't only. It's all about the corpus data. They write the entries as such because of the majority of cases.
 
Thinking back to the contexts I've heard the word in, gender often is not a relevant distinction. In recent decades the words "male youths" have even been used, which seems to indicate that youth does not sufficiently note masculinity.
Although the gender specified cases are comparatively rare.
I also learned that humble has a meaning of hornless.
 
user227867
@Tonepoet I think I will edit my answer to give more weight to the female case then.
 
@WillHunting Don't be too hasty. I'm having difficulty fully affirming it with context.
 
user227867
@Tonepoet I have edited my answer. I think it is better now. I did not really change my mind. I merely emphasized different things more based on the dictionary entries.
 
10:15 PM
@WillHunting I see.
 
user227867
@Tonepoet Please take a look to see if you like it more now. =)
 
It looks like there are deleted comments under your answer. What's Edwin going on about?
 
user227867
@Tonepoet Nothing. He just did not know what Oxford calls various dictionaries, and I shared my expertise on dictionaries with him and deleted the comment after that. =)
 
Yeah, Oxford's naming scheme is beyond ridiculous.
 
user227867
@Tonepoet Thank you for your input. I really like my answer now that I have edited it. It is also closer to my heart. I really want youth to refer to both sexes, because I am not sexist. =)
 
10:25 PM
@WillHunting No problem, although it should be noted that a word signifies what it signifies irrespective of personal preference, unless it's defined by personal preference. =P
 
user227867
@Tonepoet Well, that is a deep topic, about descriptivism versus prescriptivism. I cannot comment on that since I have not read 1860 pages of the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. =)
 
@WillHunting So you have read 1859? ;-) More importantly though I don't think it's the sort of debate a textbook can conclude, even if it is a highly scholarly work.
C.G.E.L. is definitely descriptive though.
 
user227867
@Tonepoet I am waiting for your 1870 pages of grammar to be published in a decade. =) You write the book and I will design the front cover, which will be monotonic blue.
 
Recently I learned that blue is the color of Munchkins.
And that only witches where white...
 
user227867
@Tonepoet "The Tonepoet Grammar of the English Language (cover design by Will Hunting) --- the most comprehensive grammar of English today"
 
10:35 PM
More like the least comprehensive. I know virtually nothing about the subject.
Maybe you should write the book and I should write the glossary. =P
 
user227867
You can compile the index, which is different from the glossary. =)
 
user227867
@Tonepoet I watched three very nice movies, Blue Car, Blue Desert, and Blue Velvet. =P
 
user227867
Oh I forgot, there is also Blue Lagoon: The Awakening.
 
user227867
And I forgot, the Tonepoet grammar will also be the most "authoritative", LOL.
 
I rarely ever watch movies.
 
user227867
10:51 PM
I am very happy with my now edited "youth" answer. I can now retire from this site. =P
 
Hmm, that reminds me, you haven't been saying as much on hangouts lately. XP
 
user227867
Oh, well, I have some reasons, which I must keep secret for now. =)
 
I see.
 
user227867
It is well known in this chat that I have many secrets, and that I am bad at keeping secrets. =)
 
It's easier to keep a secret if nobody knows you have one. ;-)
 

« first day (2170 days earlier)      last day (2752 days later) »