English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

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00:10

@Robusto So it's about diddling (or not diddling) some broad from Luxembourg?

Robusto

00:57

I take the song to be about the commercialization of sex through the ostensible lens of transactional sex acts, a/k/a prostitution. The lyrics really aren't clear (what EC song really ever is?) but I think we can say at least that much about it. So much of his canon involves lovers taking pieces out of each other in one way or another, even while they're drawn together, but I guess in this case they're paying for it.
So ... why Luxembourg? Beats me. Never been there, only ever really thought about it while listening to *Trust*.

2 hours later…

Feeds

02:33

Q: What is a word for fake seriousness, especially when you are intending to be funny

I'm looking for a word that means saying something with an insincerely serious tone, usually for comedic effect. I feel like the word facetious is close to what I'm looking for, but not exactly. "Surely, you can't be serious," they said. "Of course I'm serious," he replied [word-ly], "And don't ...

single-word-requests

2 hours later…

SmokeDetector

04:38

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] URL in title, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, blacklisted website in body, blacklisted website in title, +2 more: gomusclebuilding.com/testx-pro/ by Kylemiax on english.SE

8 hours later…

tchrist

12:11

@Mitch Just ask a mod to do it.

tchrist

12:59

The word of the day is aphakia, pronounced as you might imagine.

Robusto

13:35

@tchrist With the ph as in uphold or aphelion? See, I can imagine a lot.

tchrist

The English pronunciation sounds like it has FAKE in it not FUCK.

But that won't come readily to mind for someone whose mind is attuned to "Continental" values for the Roman letters.

I always thought that "FIMA" was the spelling for the pronounced acronym for what I later learned was the Federal Emergency Management Agency, because I only heard it spoken at first.

I'm broken.

3 hours later…

sumelic

16:21

@tchrist Interesting. The variant form "aphacia" is also in some dictionaries, although it seems to be quite uncommon. The related adjective "aphakic"/"aphacic" is transcribed with the FAKE vowel by the dictionaries I've seen so far that give it, which is theoretically irregular for an -ic adjective: they're supposed to have short vowels, like "static".

tchrist

ponders

sumelic

This seems to support a hypothesis I've had that people have a tendency to use the same vowel in an "-ic" word as the vowel in the corresponding "-ia" word: this can either be accomplished by leveling the "ia" word (as in "hysteria", often with "short e", I assume from "hysteric(al)" or the reverse, as in this case.

tchrist

anthracic

< anthrax

sumelic

@tchrist There's also "thoracic" and "boracic"

tchrist

All -ax derivatives.

sumelic

16:26

@tchrist but there's no acic for "ax".

tchrist

Axe isn't Latin. :)

sumelic

I wonder, what is the Latin for "ax"?

tchrist

ascia

Do you really not write that word with an "-e"? When did that start happening?

"Looks wrong" is all I can say.

Hence the question of epoch.

sumelic

@tchrist Either spelling is considered correct, IIRC. But the three-letter one seems to be more common. Might be related to the supposed tendency to reserve two-letter spellings for function words.

tchrist

All I said is that it "looks wrong". Looks funny, to me.

sumelic

16:31

I think some style guides like Fowler have expressed a preference for the e-less version because it's more etymological. But that counts for little, as shown by the typical British English spellings of "kerb" and "tyre".

@tchrist Hmm, that's more similar than I was expecting. I guess the adjective would be "ascial". That sounds a bit silly though.

tchrist

Sicilian and Italian retain ascia. Spanish has aja, azada, azuela and Portuguese archa, enxada. French is lost.

@sumelic Common PIE root.

But I thought Portuguese was aixa!

sumelic

@tchrist Is "hache" in French a separate derivation?

tchrist

@sumelic Yes, from a Germanic tongue.

Oh Catalan is aixa and Galician aixada. No wonder I had the Portuguese wrong in my head.

sumelic

@tchrist Oh, weird, it looks like the "ch" in "hache" is actually from "ppj"! Like in "sache".

tchrist

yes

You learn to to expect certain morphologies in Latin's daughters, but it isn't completely regular.

Of course hatchet isn't too far from axe.

sumelic

16:36

@tchrist Yeah, it's annoying when that happens.

Hmm, it's time for my lunch. Nice talking to you @tchrist!

tchrist

See ya!

Did you move?

I just finished lunch but it's only 10:30. I thought you were in PDT.

sumelic

@tchrist Yes, that's right, I'm currently in the Central Time Zone. But I grew up in the PDT and still have family there, so I go back and forth.

tchrist

caub

17:09

In Spanish, would 'jajaja' be pronounced 'rarara'?

sumelic sounds like turmeric to me

Feeds

Q: word that means generally knowledgeable

I'm looking for a word that means knowing about lots of different things, across different fields of study. The idea behind Renaissance man. This might be a noun or an adjective. Mrs. Jones is (a) ____________. Although she teaches Spanish, she can tutor any student at our school in any subject.

single-word-requests

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@Robusto Well oh well well well.

caub

deep well

caub

17:33

[4, 16, 37, 58, 89, 145, 42, 20] find the relation between numbers here

sumelic

17:58

@caub Hello! I think it depends. My impression is that French "r" is usually a voiced sound [ʁ] unless it is adjacent to a voiceless sound--then it can be voiceless [χ]. But Spanish "j" never represents a voiced sound, as far as I know. Also, in some varieties of Spanish, "j" tends to be pronounced as [h] instead of as [χ]. I have noticed some people spelling my handle as "sumeric" in comments

Mitch

18:36

@caub 'less than'. take any two of those numbers. One of them is less than the other.

Feeds

19:05

Q: What is a 7 letter preposition that has a and w? NOT TOWARDS

I am doing something, which requires me to know a 7 letter preposition containing the letters A and W. It is not towards, sadly. Can I get some help? I toured the internet tying to find it. It would be nice to get an answer ASAP Thanks, Ali (Here is the actual text: The actual answer is the sev...