English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

12:27 AM

So there are lots of words for describing dimensions of objects... narrow, broad, tall, wide, slender, thick...

Sometimes these words pair up nicely into opposites, sometimes they don't.

I think it's generally agreed that short has two opposites: long and tall. Meanwhile, long and tall both have the same opposite, which is short.

The opposite of thick is thin and the opposite of thin is thick, so those make a pretty strong opposite pair.

But what's the opposite of slender? Is it broad?

Broad seems like it's the opposite of narrow. But if broad is the opposite of narrow, what is wide the opposite of?

Jasper Loy

What do you mean by slender here?

Tanner Swett

Maybe broad and slender are opposites?

I just mean the English word slender in all of its literal senses.

Jasper Loy

Well, I would consult a dictionary and a thesaurus if I wanted to look for good answers to these questions.

Other than that, I don't see where this is going.

However, although I had lots of dictionaries, I never got a thesaurus, because I am not really into them, lol.

Tanner Swett

Hey, lemme ask y'all a question, assuming that you're not familiar with aviation jargon.

What would you call the dimension of an airplane wing measured from the front edge of it to the back edge?

What adjective would you use to describe a wing where this dimension is large? One where it is small?

Jasper Loy

What is front edge and back edge?

Tanner Swett

12:37 AM

The... edge that's toward the front of the plane.

Usually called the leading edge and the trailing edge, actually.

Likewise, the edge that's toward the back of the plane.

Jasper Loy

Well, without knowing aviation jargon like you said, I would call it broad or narrow I think.

And I would call the other dimension long or short I think.

Tanner Swett

Yeah, I think those terms all make sense.

Jasper Loy

And I would call the other other dimension thick or thin I think.

Tanner Swett

The good news is, thick and thin happen to be the actual terms used in jargon for that dimension.

Jasper Loy

Look at those long, broad, thick wings! LOL

Tanner Swett

12:40 AM

Of course, usually I'd just call those "big wings". :D

Jasper Loy

Look at those short, narrow, thin wings! LOL

Of course, usually I'd just call those "small wings". :D

Tanner Swett

I like broad wings too, but I wonder if the opposite of that should be slender wings rather than narrow wings.

Jasper Loy

Is there any reason you are doing this survey?

Tanner Swett

Not that it matters all that much.

I'm just trying to think of what to call these things myself without sounding too technical.

Jasper Loy

Are you doing some kind of writing to hand in to the teacher? LOL

Tanner Swett

12:43 AM

The jargon terms for the dimensions themselves are span (length), chord (breadth), and thickness.

Nah. :D

Jasper Loy

In technical writing, one should use technical jargon. But if you are writing for the lay person, then one needs to avoid technical jargon while conveying the idea correctly at the same time.

Tanner Swett

Right.

Jasper Loy

That is almost impossible to do in mathematics, but then one should not write mathematics for the lay person, IMAO, LOL.

I mean seriously, who really benefits from reading Hawking's A Brief History Of Time?

Usually after reading these popular science books, people just walk away with even more misconceptions.

So maybe in this case, the author and publisher benefit the most, LOL.

Tanner Swett

Although I found this book on knot theory for the layperson that's, like, surprisingly technically correct.

I guess knot theory is a pretty tangible thing.

Everything in the book could, in principle, be done with strings that have been spliced together.

Jasper Loy

What is this book you refer to?

Tanner Swett

1:05 AM

I don't remember the book, but it was similar to The Knot Book by Colin Adams.

Feeds

1:51 AM

0

Q: A word to describe someone who is bad at handling their emotions?

I'm looking for a word or phrase to describe someone who doesn't handle emotions well. Not someone who has no emotions or is bad at relating to others, but someone who does not cope well with powerful emotions (mostly negative, but could be positive as well, like if they're afraid of relationshi...

athos

3:03 AM

discomposed?

KannE

3:56 AM

So, someone gives the OP the answer he/she is looking for in the 1st comment (not in an answer because it's unclear what the OP wants at that point (for multiple reasons); a few comments later, someone else repeats that same answer, and the OP is like--What a good suggestion; put it in an answer, please--??? What...how...why...

athos

8:38 AM

there are two kinds of math books that are quite interesting, one is something like peter winkler's "math puzzles", where there are puzzles that could be smartly solved without advanced knowledge; the other is something like Carl Linderholm's "math made difficult", which might trap advanced users. Both are not easy to find, maybe mathematicians prefer to speak to peers.

Færd

10:32 AM

@Cerberus You may find this article interesting: theintercept.com/2018/10/20/…

It expands on the role of a very powerful church in Brazil, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, founded by one Edir Macedo, who apparently also owns a media empire there. He and his church were mentioned in the Bloomberg article you shared here before.

He's also among those who tried, unsuccessfully, to push another candidate (Alchmin) to prominence, and when the public opinion didn't budge, flocked to Bolsonaro's campaign as their second best choice.

Nevertheless, according to the table below, the largest church in Brazil is, by far, the Catholic Church: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

So while Macedo's may be the largest evangelical church, it may be less (directly) influential than the Catholic Church. I would also like to know about the stand that the latter takes in this election. Maybe Protestants wield larger power in the media. Maybe they are more assertive or aggressive when pushing monopolistic policies, as you suggested. I don't know.

All I know is that B seems very likely to win.

Jasper Loy

What a big rectangle you have made @Færd!

Færd

Feast your eyes!

If you want.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url in title, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, blacklisted website in body, blacklisted website in title, +4 more (690): topsupplementlist.com/dermavix-cream-za/ by Leonlasley on english.SE

Feeds

11:14 AM

0

Q: Word for a hollow body part beneath the shoulders?

What do you call the hollow part lying beneath the shoulders? I thought I could call it a capsule, but it denotes a connective tissue of shoulder joint, not a hollow part. Moreover, my research was to find the hollow parts of human body; I could found only one word denoting a hollow part (of be...

single-word-requests phrase-requests nouns noun-phrases

Feeds

11:45 AM

0

Q: "part" or "element" or ... in the mentioned context?

When talking about the moral status of persuasion, we should have in mind that forms of persuasion are inevitable parts of our human lives. For such things as "persuasion", it sounds to my air a bit non-idiomatic to use "part" or "parts". What would be a more idiomatic options?

single-word-requests idioms

Robusto

1:53 PM

@RegDwigнt I don't have time to read the hidden meanings in all your shit. Cuz you didn't really come out and say what you say you said.

Zebrafish

Robusto, do you know what happened to user Wordsmith?

I noticed some people have their account suspended, I've mostly seen like periods of about a month, but in their case the suspension ends in 2019.... they've been suspended for an entire year?

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer (86): What is an action (in one word) that makes you say "goodbye"? by lol on english.SE

Mitch

@Zebrafish I vaguely remember that publicizing reasons for closing is not only avoided but possibly forbidden by and for moderators. @MetaEd can confirm (or not, if by confirming or denying exposes any information about the banned person (which is not to say that not confirming or denying would also expose any info (even not even acknowledging this may expose some which he would want to do, expose or acknowledge or omit acknowledging or

@Zebrafish usually if you were following questions and comments that person was active in, there is some reason for banning, like confrontational behavior. If what they wrote was bannable, those writings may well be deleted so you can't see the exact offending words.

Feeds

0

Q: A word for petty enforcement of rules

The word you'd use to describe a 1940's middle school where kids would be spanked for not having the proper haircut or tucking in their shirts. Not "strict", because strict implies necessary discipline.

single-word-requests pejorative-language

Mitch

2:10 PM

Of course, gossipy wise, I'd love to know what offending thing that got them booted, but that kind of discourse doesn't tend to be very ... let's say, sober.

Zebrafish

2:25 PM

@Mitch Wow, that's a lot of nested parentheses, you think on like multiple levels.

As to keeping a discussion sobre, sounds boring. Also I can see it being gossipy, but as I understand it gossiping usually is talking about other people as a regular pastime, I'm just curious. A year's suspension seems very long.

Like what did he do, kill someone?

Mitch

3:20 PM

@Zebrafish I think there are suspension levels. 1 day, a week, a month, a year, that go in order by number of times suspended (if you've been suspended already for a month, and then after that suspension you do something that merits suspension, then it is automatically the next one, a year. So you could conceivably get suspended for a year starting from scratch in ... calculates ... 1 month + 1 week + 1 day.

Or your first 'offense' could be annoying enough to start off at a later stage.

As we're all just communicating through electrons hitting a screen and then hitting our eyes, an actual direct murder seems unlikely.

Scanning through that users full activity (mostly comments) there is an obvious pattern of ... irascibility? which seems easily redirected towards tendentious confrontation with others. (I think other reasons for banning are plagiarism and sockpuppeting).

It is only my conjecture that to get a year's ban (others have gotten such in the past) a direct epithet was probably used against someone.

Feeds

4:15 PM

-2

Q: people are wanting to watch the most awaited TV show

Please say what is wrong in the sentence.

single-word-requests

Cerberus

4:34 PM

@Færd I'll read it!

I have indeed heard of this church, and I believe B. is a good buddy of theirs despite officially still being Catholic.

It is true that the Catholic Church is still by far the largest, but its flock is declining rapidly.

By contrast, the extreme Protestant churches (evangelical, Pentecostal, basically all the crazy churches they regrettably imported from the Big Satan) are growing rapidly, probably to a large degree from former Catholics.

So they are not (yet) mainstream, but they are gaining influence rapidly.

And they are commercial empires just as in America, I think, so they have money to buy extra influence.

Who knows, perhaps B. will convert to crazy church.

My Brazilian friend's family support Alckmin.

I think he is mainstream centre-right.

It's terrible how Latin America is taking a few steps back again.

In Venezuela and now Brazil.

The rest seems somewhat stable and on the right track, for now. But I don't know enough about all the countries.

Feeds

0

Q: A word or phrase for something cruel whispered behind someone's back

I need a word that means the above. I have a character who is a bit of an outcast and people whisper horrible things about her whenever she's around. Any ideas?

single-word-requests phrase-requests

MetaEd

4:53 PM

@Mitch @Zebrafish @Robusto This answer at SE meta does a great job of answering that question.

18

Q: What could cause users to be placed in the penalty box for an entire year?

Just for curiosity I'd like to ask what are the reasons that a user can have their account suspended or placed into the penalty box for one year? For example, this user, although I've seen it several times now. This account is temporarily suspended to cool down. The suspension period ends on...

discussion account-suspension

Mitch

also @Zebrafish

13

Q: Why would a user be suspended for almost 7 years?

Possible Duplicate: 4960 days in the Penalty Box I just noticed a user who has apparently been penalty-boxed until April 27, 2019. The notification over his/her profile reads: This account is temporarily suspended to cool down. The suspension period ends on Apr 27 '19 at 8:17. ...

discussion account-suspension

and comments to the effect:

The subject isn't taboo as such, but it could be that Meta users are tired of talking about whoever was hit with that suspension (I assume it's either a Chet, a Rich, or an Evan). No reason not to ask though — Pëkka Jun 3 '12 at 23:17

Feeds

0

Q: What is the word for a scenario in which all choices lead to the same outcome

Does such a word even exist? If not, what should I use as an alternative?

single-word-requests

Mitch

hm...I feel like I just read it but now can't find it, a comment addressing "It's uncool to publicize someone's 'crime'"

tchrist

5:31 PM

@Robusto Here’s yet another installment in my series of likely futile attempts to teach proper typesetting to the Stack Exchange web programming crew:

0

Q: Tracking set too tight on uppercase text-transform CSS

You have a bunch of CSS elements that include: text-transform: uppercase But you are not correcting the letter-spacing at the same time — and under your setup, you need to. That’s because normal letter spacing metrics for a font’s uppercase letters are set up to fit tightly in against lowercas...

bug design responsive-design typography

I’ve also just updated my responsive-design post where they’re using mobile-sized faces for desktop sites because I had an epiphany that these guys are all Kool-Aid–drinking Microsoft weenies, so they don’t realize how bad their CSS makes things look on Macs.

9

Q: Static, unchanging font size, leading, and measure incompatible with dynamics of responsive design

In the new, would-be “responsive” design, the actual font size used does not vary as a function of the width of the viewport. Neither do any of the other measures that should in turn be scaled as a function of the font size, such as line-spacing or letter-spacing. That means the same invariant f...

bug design fonts responsive-design font-size

@Robusto Shouldn't the ratio be 96/72 or 4:3 between a Windows box and a Mac? I keep getting 3:2 instead.

Feeds

6:37 PM

0

Q: Not big but not small (objects)

I'm looking for a child-friendly word to say that a certain object is [neither big nor small]. It's for dialogues of the kind: A: My pencil case is big. B: My pencil case is ?????. C: My pencil case is small.

single-word-requests

CowperKettle

7:00 PM

I wrote an acrostic about a bicycling friend

Feeds

7:25 PM

0

Q: Alternative Words for Show, Hide, Done, or Collapse?

I am working on a computer application and from a design aspect, I would like my application to be as intuitive as possible. I currently have a panel that is displayed via a menu strip and that panel has a button that says "Done" used to collapse the panel. The panel is used for loading data and ...

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…