English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

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choster

00:59

Was I overly harsh with my comments? I hate to drive away any new member who seems to have a genuine desire to learn, but I was definitely feeling tetchy. english.stackexchange.com/questions/430838/…

tchrist

01:50

@choster Very considerate of you to ask.

But in no measure did you merit this response:

@choster You're ok.

He just took it a bit bad.

choster

02:15

As the kids say, cool, thx

Færd

02:42

Trump could actually benefit from waging a war with whoever and setting off a sense of alarm in the American people.

Rally 'round the flag effect

The rally 'round the flag effect (or syndrome) is a concept used in political science and international relations to explain increased short-run popular support of the President of the United States during periods of international crisis or war. Because rally 'round The Flag effect can reduce criticism of governmental policies, it can be seen as a factor of diversionary foreign policy. == Mueller's definition == Political scientist John Mueller suggested the effect in 1970, in a landmark paper called "Presidential Popularity from Truman to Johnson". He defined it as coming from an event with three...

Mitch

03:18

> I’ll spew undoubted bullshit till you’ll swear that it’s veracity, Sometimes vocabulary gets confused for perspicacity.

2 hours later…

Feeds

05:26

Q: Is female an acceptable term to describe a woman?

I sometimes hear people refer a woman as a "female", but some people say it's derogatory to call a woman a "female". Is it acceptable to call a woman a "female"? P.S I'm not a native English speaker

3 hours later…

CowperKettle

08:54

> The group looked at tissue from people who had any of five diagnoses: autism-like conditions, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and alcoholism.

Why isn't there the before "five diagnoses"?

SmokeDetector

09:07

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected: A person who finds peace or pleasure in seeing other people in same trouble that he is in by Dahan on english.SE

Feeds

09:30

Q: Is there a word which means "something which may or may not be visible"?

I'm trying to find a word that means "something which may or may not be visible", sort of an adjective variant of the word visibility. A (very contrived) example sentence would be "The x object could be either visible or invisible." If there isn't a word that means this, how would I go about cr...

single-word-requests

Feeds

09:47

Q: What is the best word to describe vendor?

Just like we say "Comprehensive solution", what can be used for "vendor"?

single-word-requests word-usage alternative

5 hours later…

Mitch

14:26

@CowperKettle there could be a 'the' (which sounds normal) but there doesn't have to be (it sounds normal without. I'm sure there is the slightest of nuanced differences in meaning but I'm having trouble coming up with an explanation.

Tonepoet

14:43

The Online Etymology Dictionary is broken! (and not just for me, that's an archive.is screensho generated by another computert) I hope this is just a temporary state of affairs, otherwise, we are going to have many broken links on our website.

2 hours later…

choster

16:31

@Tonepoet Just the search is broken; the individual entries seem to be fine. etymonline.com/word/panic

Tonepoet

@choster Oh good!

choster

The URL format has changed, but those links redirect correctly, e.g. etymonline.com/index.php?term=whew to etymonline.com/word/whew . Presumably they had a major system change and are working through the bugs. I would think the search to be the single most important feature, however, so it's too bad whatever happened wasn't caught in testing

Feeds

17:26

Q: Is there a word or a phase to use to describe "The moment you realize your assumption is wrong"

Is there a word or a phrase that can be used to describe "The moment you realize your assumption is wrong" Or similar, the moment you realize you don't have a clue on how something works when you previously thought you did know how it worked. I'm not talking about the 'aha' feeling when you fi...

single-word-requests phrase-requests

1 hour later…

Mitch

18:54

@DanBron Hi Dan!

skullpatrol

hi pal

Mitch

!st, theoretically, Of course you can prove a negative. There's lots of mathematical theorems that say 'You can't do that'. These proofs are harder to find than an existence proof. 'You can do that' (existence) is easier because you just provide an good example and do the minimal check that it satisfies all criteria.

"You can't do that" is harder because you either have to enumerate all possibilities and check that the criteria fail for all of them, or you show that a universal property is logically impossible (this takes a bit more thought, but less time overall, enumeration can be tedious)

But that's math. We're talking about 'proof' about natural laws (and language phenomena are natural, experiential things).

skullpatrol

huh?

Mitch

Now for the usual case at hand, an SWR, eg "Is there a gender neutral word for brother and sister?", the existence proof is "'sibling' is it (and the 'proof' is that you check that it works)" For an ESL student 'sibling' is a magical rare word, never ever seen before, and must rely on a native speaker's expert knowledge to have found that word.

@skullpatrol taking a meta comment to chat

skullpatrol

what does "SWR" stand for?

Mitch

19:11

The same thing goes for the negative proof "Is there a word for a gender neutral word for niece/nephew?". A proof might go through all words ever and check each one (obviously a silly task, but listed for completeness). Or you could list all family relation words, more feasible, but also has problems ("Are you sure you got them all?"). Or you could ask an expert (sort of a magical oracle that you trust).

skullpatrol

answer: no solution

Mitch

Are you absolutely sure? Of course not, but all natural laws are like that, are you sure gravity works exactly the same everywhere in the universe? No but I trust physicists locally, and outside of moonlandings it's all beyond what will affect me.

@skullpatrol Dude. How long have you been on ELU? Chat? Single Word Request.

Tonepoet

@skullpatrol single-word-requests The most loved and detested question category on this website.

skullpatrol

thanks

Tonepoet

@Mitch V2C Gen. Ref. =P

Feeds

19:57

Q: A Latin word that is like the word "trinity" but for "five fold" or "five as one"

I read that the word "trinity", a Latin based word, literally translates as "three fold" or more specifically "three as one". That being the case, what Latin based word would I use to express, "five fold" or "five as one"? Notes: I found a similar question on this site but it had been closed as,...

single-word-requests latin attributive-nouns

Q: Which is the correct word to use? Were or Got

My wife is very good at English and I severely struggle at knowing which words to use at any given time. I'm working on a custom Valentines Day present and I want to make sure I use the correct words for her present. Could anyone here tell me the correct words to use? Thanks! We were engaged or ...

single-word-requests word-usage grammaticality differences phrase-usage

Feeds

20:50

Q: Is there a word or phrase for an insult that is presented as "I would never call" which is a meaningless denial in context?

I have heard some people insult others explicitly with the rider "I would never call" which is a meaningless denial in context because the person is effectively calling them that right then and there, as in I would never call you a dull, idiotic bigot... I would never call him fat, ugly ...

single-word-requests phrase-requests

2 hours later…

M.A.R.

22:36

@Mitch @nd

@Mitch let's see if that'll be true if a supernova happened outside the solar system

Faking a supernova using fireworks

Feeds

22:53

Q: Is there a word or phrase for when you lead people to believe something obvious is about to happen but it doesn't

I'm looking for a word or phrase which best describes the idea of making someone think something is about to happen but it doesn't. To put that into context: Lets say a director essentially wants to copy a scene of a famous movie frame by frame, and that scene ends with a famous quote. You know ...