English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2018-01-19

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Færd

00:32

Oh there was a Star Wars movie a couple years ago. So @Mitch is not talking about the past century every time he brings those up.

(Don't shame me for my Hollywood impairment please. Thanks in advance.)

((That ^ means please do so we'll have a laugh))

M.A.R.

Ha ha Hollywoodly impaired

Pointing at @Færd, laughing

@Færd my biggest movie pet peeve is Star Wars

I don't get what's so special about it

That why The Force Wakes up is ranked higher than The Departed is beyond me

Why does Star Wars demand so much attention? And why should Lucas be more successful than King Spielberg?

The world makes no effing sense.

Downgoat

00:55

I have this stanza in a poem:

We will bind our pains among our veins,
nor tie these chains on your ordain.

is it grammatically incorrect not to include "neither" after the 'will'?

I understand that in a formal context it would be, but in the case of a poem is it important?

Faheem Mitha

01:15

@M.A.R. Star Wars is crap.

I don't get it either.

I also thought "The Force Awakens" was particularly dire. It made the earlier films look like masterpieces.

3 hours later…

Færd

04:06

@M.A.R. Ooh that tickles my masochism.

@M.A.R. OK. If it doesn't make sense to you then I must let my hat be the judge.

(The above sentence is not meant to be understood by non Farsi speakers)

Tonepoet

04:52

@M.A.R. How would the system determine which answers are duplicates, and how does it know if there's not some subtle difference that would cause me to vote the other way? Also, this is predicated on the notion that everybody use the vote = agreement rationale on meta, instead of the vote = good post rationale.

Feeds

0

Q: Term describing the "in good standing" conditional

As I understand it, the phrase "in good standing" describes a person or entity having complied with all their explicit obligations and therefore has no negative history so far. Being "in good standing" or having "lost good standing" are the two possible conditions, what is the umbrella term that ...

single-word-requests word-choice

Tonepoet

05:28

Dear Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (©1994): Nobody else has said "appurtenance of the infinitive" since 1660 in A Shortcut to Cambridge [A Latin Grammar.] on page 36, and it seems like nobody ever did it before too. Was that intentional? Signed Tonepoet.

1 hour later…

CowperKettle

06:54

Word of the day: bullfinch (a hedge too high for a mounted rider to cross)

> The course was the devil! A start on the level,
And then a stiff breather uphill;
A bank at the top with a four-foot drop,
And a bullfinch down by the mill.

My rhymed birthday greeting has been starred 3 times. Is it really nice, or is it just out of courtesy? Are there some awkward things in it?

2 hours later…

CowperKettle

08:33

Lord Byron on Top Gear:

> Now there is nothing gives a man such spirits,
Leavening his blood as cayenne doth a curry,
As going at full speed -- no matter where its
Direction be, so 't is but in a hurry,
And merely for the sake of its own merits;
For the less cause there is for all this flurry,
The greater is the pleasure in arriving
At the great end of travel -- which is driving.

CowperKettle

09:16

..

> Alas, how deeply painful is all payment!
Take lives, take wives, take aught except men's purses:
As Machiavel shows those in purple raiment,
Such is the shortest way to general curses.
They hate a murderer much less than a claimant
On that sweet ore which every body nurses; --
Kill a man's family, and he may brook it,
But keep your hands out of his breeches' pocket.

1 hour later…

Feeds

10:39

0

Q: Word meaning to repeat what another person is saying as a form of mockery?

For example, when a kid repeats what his/her mother is saying because he/she is angry.

single-word-requests

NVZ

11:28

@tchrist english.stackexchange.com/questions/425923/…

Someone closed my question as duplicate without even reading it to see that I had referenced that very same thread... Please reopen and stop anyhow downvoting posts carelessly! — user21820 Jan 12 at 2:52

2 hours later…

CowperKettle

13:48

> Plastika exhibition to open on January 30
Plastika exhibition opens on January 30

Which is better as a headline?

Provided that today is January 19

Feeds

0

Q: What is the best word to use in place of "unique, but due to your setup", without attributing blame?

At work, we believe one of our customers experiences problems with our product due to their infrastructure. Their network is very busy and requests often time out. We suspect that this is the cause of the problem and we've attempted to remedy it blind. We can't reproduce the issue using our own...

single-word-requests

Matt E. Эллен

14:06

@CowperKettle the second one

Frrank

Hi everyone

skullpatrol

heya

Frrank

can I ask you guys a very simple question?

skullpatrol

askaway

Frrank

I'm looking for a synonyms of "experience reality".

Preferably with some history.

skullpatrol

14:12

sentence please

Frrank

there is no sentence. A short slogan might be "experience reality your own way"

Matt E. Эллен

live

skullpatrol

@Frrank so you're looking for an advertising slogan with a similar meaning?

What are you trying to sell?

Frrank

not really I'm looking for a single word which reflects the meaning of experience reality.

Matt E. Эллен

live

Feeds

14:20

0

Q: A word like sporadic but meaning 'most of the time'

I'm writing a bug report, at first I thought the bug happened all the time but now I realize that occasionally it works correctly. I was going to say that the bug was sporadic, but actually, that would imply that most of the time it worked and the bug was occasional, which is the opposite of wh...

single-word-requests synonyms

skullpatrol

why does it have to be a single word?

Matt E. Эллен

onelook.com is a site you can use as a reverse thesaurus

3

Frrank

not trying to sell anything just to find a unique historically accurate word that expresses the idea of my essay. Here's a short story a man married a royal after saving her kid from drowning and at the ceremony he says we experience reality in our own way or something like that.

skullpatrol

"live life in our own way"

Frrank

Just trying to find a shortest word with some mass to it. Live is t simple and also it don't justify the context of full sentence.

skullpatrol

14:29

perceive

Matt E. Эллен

then please give us the context of the full sentence

skullpatrol

19 mins ago, by skullpatrol

sentence please

Frrank

Here is the full sentence. Groom looked into her eyes and said "we experience reality in our own ways but after meeting you i created my own reality"

@MattE.Эллен the site you shared is good man.

Matt E. Эллен

no worries :)

Frrank

mysticism

Faheem Mitha

15:17

@Færd Indeed it doesn't. That's a curious idiom. Care to translate?

Tonepoet

15:36

Does anybody remember reading the prohibition on split infinitives in the Chicago Manual of Style 13th edition? I want to read what it said, since it's the last edition prohibiting the practice, but actually finding where the term is located in my copy is proving to be a difficult task. The only thing I can find in the index regarding infinitives is Infinitives in Titles, which regards capitalization.

Other attempts to find potentially related information regarding errors have been confusing.

MetaEd

Mornin, campers.

skullpatrol

Heya

Tonepoet

@MetaEd G'mornin'.

Matt E. Эллен

16:10

Hi-de-ho!

skullpatrol

1970

Matt E. Эллен

Hi de hi!

skullpatrol

gonna get me a piece of the sky

Cerberus

@Tonepoet I wouldn't know. But I could look it up in The King's English for you, or in Fowler's.

Tonepoet

@Cerberus Nah, that's easy enough to find on my own. I specifically want one of the most recent anti-split opinions for a historical perspective. I thank you for the offer though.

Feeds

16:20

Active questions tagged single-word-requests - …: Word for a message that most people find plain but a smaller group see as supportive

posted on January 19, 2018 by C Bauer

I feel like there's an idiom for this, such as if someone makes a comment that might seem innocuous at face value so you dismiss it, but another group of people who are more extreme might see as a sign that the person is on their side. Something like "Well, some people, criminals, who are coming into this country don't belong here.". Where a racist or a white nation…

Tonepoet

@Cerberus The Fowler Bros are kinda neutral about it, maybe mildly against it. They call it something ugly, but suggest you shouldn't let it preoccupy your thoughts in consideration of much more ugly things.

Matt E. Эллен

you alright @Feeds? you seem to be putting the questions in the wrong place

Mitch

@Frrank Is that like the whirlwind romance of Harry and Meghan?

It's so beautiful

@Frrank I do not recommend creating your own reality. Ther's just a lot of details you don't want to have to worry about.

YOu should buy your reality off the rack and then take it to someone to get any changes made

I'm not a professional but I've sen other people have troubles with it

Matt E. Эллен

16:36

you're not a professional reality experiencer?

you do this for free?

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен That's an amazing app that should be more well-known. I keep forgetting about it. It really couldn't exist on paper but it seems like a writers necessary tool right next to (maybe even before) a thesaurus

Matt E. Эллен

yeah, it's pretty great :D

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен What>? Don't twist my words.

I'm not a professional reality creator

I mean I dabble a bit

Matt E. Эллен

oh! well, OK. That does make sense.

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен um.. how much would you be willing to pay?

Matt E. Эллен

16:38

I'll let you have the air you breathe

Mitch

A bitcoin? I'd do it for a bitcoin from last summer

@MattE.Эллен Deal.

skullpatrol

it craashed

bit coin

Mitch

@skullpatrol and sold in early december

skullpatrol

cool

Matt E. Эллен

I can give you a bitcoin at the value they were in 2010

wait, that wasn't when they took off was it?

Mitch

16:40

@MattE.Эллен now that the deal is set, what sort of reality do you want created? Or would you just prefer a minor tweak to the current one. I'm pretty sure I can do minor tweaks

@MattE.Эллен THat was when they didn't exist yet

so the markup would be infinite

so yes, I'll have one of those

Matt E. Эллен

:D

my reality doesn't have enough sleep, so some more of that

Mitch

I'm looking forward to your reality change request

Matt E. Эллен

lol

Cerberus

@Tonepoet Indeed.

Mitch

Would it involve like a change in a universal constant?

like the planck length?

that would be cool

just twiddling say a really insignificant bit

Matt E. Эллен

16:42

> [July 2010] In five days, the price grew 900%, rising from $0.008 to $0.08 for 1 bitcoin.

Mitch

Sleep? Oh.

Hm... I suppose I could change the rotation speed of the earth

I mean it would be weird of me to change just your sleep cycle

Matt E. Эллен

yeah, slow the earth. my sleep cycle is complex and unpredictable

like the orbit of Uranus if the Earth were the centre of the solar system

Mitch

The cows might get a little ... chuffed?

YOu don't want to meet a cow that is chuffed

YOu know how relaxed cows are all the time?

Matt E. Эллен

AFAIK chuffed means happy

Mitch

When they're upset, it really goes off the rails

Matt E. Эллен

16:45

@Mitch I do

Mitch

@MattE.Эллен Oh

sometimes...

Matt E. Эллен

e.g. "I just got a raise, I'm well chuffed"

Mitch

wait... does 'table the motion' mean to you to put it up for consideration or to take it away from consideration?

Matt E. Эллен

I don't know. I suppose it means put it up for consideration

Mitch

oh.

Oh.

Oh......

Shocking

takes your breath away

like looking in a mirror but seeing someone else

like seeing an upset cow, one who is bothered by not knowing what 'chuffed' means

because all he's ever done is hang around with other cows

Matt E. Эллен

16:49

poor cow

Mitch

Stupid cows

Matt E. Эллен

*she

Mitch

well that's another reason why this cow is confused

Matt E. Эллен

lol

Mitch

society has all these expectations

Matt E. Эллен

16:50

so many

Mitch

there's some cartoon in the US something something barnyard where the main character is a bull

but he walks upright

and has a huge udder displayed all the time

when put into words it seems very inappropriate

but you turn on the show and it's funny

OMG that's all life is nowadays

until you want some milk, and it doesn't taste right

If you haven't noticed, I'm in a meeting

Right before lunch

It would be hilarious if I were leading the meeting

but I can't truthfully say that

because I'm not

Matt E. Эллен

Olly the Ox?

no, that's not it

@Mitch you're not a bull with udders?

Mitch

Back at the Barnyard

Back at the Barnyard is a Nickelodeon computer-animated television series that is a spin-off from the 2006 film, Barnyard. The series premiered on September 29, 2007 on Nickelodeon. The show is produced by Omation Animation Studio, in association with Nickelodeon Animation Studios. The last episode aired on November 12, 2011 on Nicktoons. == Plot == The plot generally revolves around Otis, a cow, and his barnyard friends. Otis wants to horse around, but has to be responsible and protect the inhabitants of the Barnyard. He and his friends Pip the mouse, Abby the cow, Pig the pig, Freddy the ferret...

@MattE.Эллен No I'm not

Just to clarify

Matt E. Эллен

ok. good to know

Faheem Mitha

@MattE.Эллен chuffed is closed to "pleased", I think. It's British slang.

Matt E. Эллен

17:03

@FaheemMitha I know. I'm British :)

yes, pleased is a better synonym than happy

Faheem Mitha

Actually, a search shows both happy and pleased. But those have quite different meanings.

Matt E. Эллен

17:26

@Mitch I guess udders are less controversial than testicles

1 hour later…

Mitch

18:27

@MattE.Эллен As anatomical features, they presumably just are. As stylistic accoutrements, Greek statues tend to favor one over the other.

2 hours later…

Tonepoet

20:33

Bah, I spent hours searching for the mention of the split infinitive in the Chicago Manual of Style 13th edition, and it's nothing of interest. V_V It's under section 2.92 Watching for Lapses if anybody else is curious, and just barely a mention.

Matt E. Эллен

20:50

does it say "Split infinitives are reserved for Star Fleet captains."?

A periodic animation: http://mellen.github.io/coloursine/

Tweeted by MellenTheNerd on January 19, 2018 at 8:53 PM

Feeds

21:53

0

Q: Antonym for rationalization

I have always been wondering what an accurate or loose antonym for this word would be. I could not find anything by googling: Thesaurus.com and Merriam-Webster do not directly provide antonyms for it.

single-word-requests antonyms

Mitch

22:12

FINALLY!

1) For most dialects w/ "y'all," it is always plural. 2) Singular "y'all" has been attested in TX/OK/KS, but there are not any clearly singular uses in available corpora. 3) Outside of (2), "y'all" is used for 2+ individuals. "All y'all" can only be used for 3+ individuals.

Tweeted by linguajinks on January 19, 2018 at 4:46 PM in reply to linguajinks

Someone who actually knows something

instead of talking out of their ass. Which is difficult because the formants for all the different vowels and consonant places of articulation are difficult to mimic with the compromised anatomy

M.A.R.

22:44

@Tonepoet well, yeah. I have had second thoughts about it

Tonepoet

@M.A.R. I see. how are you anyway?

M.A.R.

Thankses. You?

Tonepoet

@M.A.R. I'm okay. I just wasted a whole bunch of time researching an answer for a question I knew was going to be closed for a lack of research, but that's alright. I don't usually publish my answers anyway. XP

Worst thing is, I probably would've gotten it in before closure if I didn't follow a false lead, but oh well.

M.A.R.

@Tonepoet I'll just help your pain by saying

BUUUURRRRRRNNNNNN

Feeling better?

Tonepoet

@M.A.R. Ah, the warmth takes the aches away. ;-)

M.A.R.

22:53

But increases global warming

And floods and famine.

Do you want that?!

What is wrong with you?!

Tonepoet

@M.A.R. Everything: I like anime, Star Trek, and many old things almost nobody else cares about anymore. XP

M.A.R.

I care about old stuff.

Like yesterday's celebrity tweets

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Jan '1819

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…

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