@RegDwigнt so it's so obvious that water is fertile that people don't say it? (though that definition of fertile 'causing or promoting fertility' is a bit obscure!) For example people take fertility drugs not fertile drugs.
If by single pathogen you mean a strain of virus or bacteria and not a single specific bacterium or virus, then Yes. We already have an existing example - Rabies. Rabies only affects mammals. If your strain is easier to transmit via multple methods (air, water, soil) and harder to kill (e.g. b...
@barlop Maybe. Maybe not. My whole point is that it's beside the point. It doesn't matter why people don't say it. All that matters is that they don't. There is no knowledge to be gained from wondering why. There is no why. There is no reason.
Why do people use the word "cat" to mean a cat? That's not what the word means.
But it's pointless to try and understand why they do it, or try and insist that they don't. There is nothing to be gained from that. No insight, no advantage. Just a waste of time.
Consider this sentence:
The solution to this question should no more difficult be obtained than that to the other question.
Is this sentence grammatical?
Is difficult here used as an adverb?
@RegDwigнt what do you mean cat doesn't mean cat? And i'm not asking a why question, i'm asking what other usages of 'fertile' meet that definition of 'promoting fertility'?
What I want for christmas a few years ago is to only get national news from some not terribly important country, like say Uruguay or Thailand, and see what kind of problems they have. Maybe everything is going swimmingly there? Maybe they're beheading people who make jokes about the deputy housing minister's hairline? I just want to know that everything is falling apart somewhere else in a much worse way. Or that it's possible to not totally fall apart because people aren't always idiots.
@Mitch indeed.. it's that definition of "promoting fertilty" that s strange(producing vegetation definition fine so fertile ground no problem), but it's the "promoting fertility" definition that is used for ash and i'm not sure what else the "promoting fertility" definition is used for (and it still sounds strange 'cos it's so obscure). I've seen one person argue that we don't refer to fertile water or fertile air because it's so obvious.
But i'm not convinced.. We refer for example to fertility drugs, not fertile drugs. So fertile ash seems to be the only example I see for that usage of fertlie.
@barlop cat does not mean "cat" because no word means anything in and of itself. It's just a random collection of sounds. It has no meaning. The meaning is assigned to it artificially. If we agree that cat means "orange", then that's what it means. If we agree that it means "to sell your pants", then that's what you get. The word itself has no say in what it ends up meaning to us.
We take a word that thinks it means "a door", and we say lol screw that, you mean "a scandal" now. Easy.
If by single pathogen you mean a strain of virus or bacteria and not a single specific bacterium or virus, then Yes. We already have an existing example - Rabies. Rabies only affects mammals. If your strain is easier to transmit via multple methods (air, water, soil) and harder to kill (e.g. b...
Consider this sentence:
The solution to this question should no more difficult be obtained than that to the other question.
Is this sentence grammatical?
Is difficult here used as an adverb?
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…