English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

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1:10 AM

@RegDwigнt well I was never suggesting that words weren't a combination of sounds

I simply asked for other usages etc. You may not care, that's fine But you can't logically prove that there's no reason for anybody to care which seems to be what you are trying to do with your 'cat' example.

9 hours later…

Færd

9:57 AM

Low-ball

The low-ball is a persuasion and selling technique in which an item or service is offered at a lower price than is actually intended to be charged, after which the price is raised to increase profits. An explanation for the effect is provided by cognitive dissonance theory. If a person is already enjoying the prospect of an excellent deal and the future benefits of the item or idea, then backing out would create cognitive dissonance, which is prevented by playing down the negative effect of the "extra" costs. == Studies == Cialdini, Cacioppo, Bassett, and Miller (1978) demonstrated the technique...

Nice. There's also the opposite scenario where it's the buyer who offers an unfairly low price to the gullible seller. Dunno if there's an English term for that. In Farsi we call it بزخری (literally: to buy a goat), based on a story where a bunch of swindlers fooled a poor peasant into believing that this animal that he's brought to the market to sell is not a cow, but actually a goat.

8 hours later…

RegDwigнt

6:12 PM

@Færd to be fair, if you can be convinced that your cow is a goat, you don't deserve to get any money at all. It's a tax on stupidity.

Also, isn't it funny how even your detailed explanation for people from a different culture/time/place still relies on them being at least somewhat from the same culture/time/place. Meaning to say, they won't get it if for them a goat is not cheaper than a cow.

Speaking of which, I had no idea a goat was cheaper than a cow. And it probably isn't, maybe not even in your own culture of today. Like, cows are ubiquitous. Everyone holds a thousand of those. But who holds a goat? Let alone a thousand goats at once?

Anyway. I don't know a term for what you describe, but I'm convinced there must be one.

In German, there's a similar idiom, "to make someone believe that an X is a U". It has a very similar origin, supposedly dating back to the Roman times, when you'd have ten drinks, so the waiter would put an X on your tap, but then you'd pretend it was a V so as only to pay for five drinks.

Nowadays it's just used in the broadest sense, "to deceive someone". And so the origin is lost on most people. Or maybe the other way round, first people forgot what the idiom meant initially, and then started applying it more generally as a result.

2 hours later…

SmokeDetector

8:06 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer, mostly dots in answer (120): What does the idiom "to be known for" mean? by Sneha Ghatekari on english.SE

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Mostly dots in answer, blacklisted user (103): What does the idiom "to be known for" mean? by Sneha Ghatekari on english.SE