> Notre époque urbaine aime fatalement la nuit, à onze heures du soir les ados se préparent pour sortir, on fixe un rendez-vous à deux heures du matin, voire trois, voire plus, à un moment où les aiguilles ont dégringolé du cadran. Mais moi je crois que Rome donne ce qu'elle a de meilleur à l'aube.
I give up: why the hell is Portuguese renhir defective while Spanish reñir and Catalan renyir are not so? The defectivity is that any present indicative or subjunctive forms that would change its radical stem in Spanish are completely blocked in Portuguese. Yes 1pl and 2pl are fine.
I knew Portuguese hates stem changers but didn't realize it would defectivate them.
> These verbs are often referred to as "inchoative" verbs, because the -eix- infix descends from the Latin suffix -ēscō which was used to form inchoative verbs. This name is a misnomer, though, as these verbs are not necessarily inchoative in meaning in modern Catalan.
So, same as with the Spanish -zc- verbs like conocer.
Hm, the Portuguese one also lacks the "scold" sense, and has only quarrel/argue senses.
Casi me indispongo: querella is straight from Latin but quejarse can be both to quarrel/complain (as in bitterly) and to present some (physical, mental) compaint (as in ailment).
@Criggie I must admit that those videos seem insufficiently dignified and respectful to creatures of our caliber. Please be aware that nonconsensual booping is considered a form of assault.
I've got a question that I'm not sure if I should ask on the main site, since it's quite vague. I'm looking for a single word that is vaguely menacing in an unspecified way. It should convey a sense of foreboding, but not detail exactly why it is foreboding. An example sentence is, "If you don't pass that exam, you'll have to go to the [mystery word]". Currently my best candidate for the mystery word is 'maze'.
You can read it metaphorically though, in which case "maze" is just a place where you need to figure your way out. That compares to words like "cage" (where you are clearly trapped)
Well if you visit a friend who's trying to teach their child, and you hear that sentence - presumably you wouldn't think the maze is an actual physical maze, but rather some kind of punishment
@Allure I would indeed be confused; that word isn't often used metaphorically, and when you hear "That place is a maze" it typically means "difficult to navigate through," not something particularly mysterious or dangerous
Moreover, it'd go well beyond vaguely menacing/foreboding; it'd be substantially more specific
@Allure If you're writing (say) a work of science fiction or fantasy, people might assume that e.g. "the Maze" has some sort of specific meaning, granted
@Allure You could ask it on the main site, but you'd need to provide a lot more context--like the surrounding story/paragraph--to explain exactly what you're looking for, since I don't think your initial question does enough to explain what sort of word would fit exactly
@Cerberus Well you know the place is foreboding, but you don't know why. Like, you know you don't want to go there, but you don't know (e.g.) that you'll be eaten by monkeys there (which is a highly specific bad thing that happens there)
Mostly the asker just needs to provide the full context--e.g. the whole plot/situation surrounding the usage--to explain why certain options would or wouldn't work. This is a fairly common issue--you need to provide all the parameters, so to speak, for a question to be answerable
Otherwise, it might get closed--or you might get answers that you find unsuitable, in which case people may get a bit miffed if you suddenly add in more requirements in the comments
Speaking of which, what do we do about this question:
I'm watching a movie and a girl says "see you in class tomorrow" to a friend. She appears to be in her 20s, and so I'm wondering if class can be used for colleges.
I assume move it (the "class" one, not Allure's) to ELL. The trouble is: if we want to give a full answer (beyond just "yes"), we'd want to resolve the source of the OP's confusion, which we don't have
Thing is there's a 99% chance this is from a non-native speaker and thus not ideally suited to this site
Unless people don't use that term in not-America, in which case it could be a not-American getting confused, but I doubt it.
Also: answers here need to cite reliable sources (not "I'm a native speaker, trust me bro"--which is sometimes OK on ELL)--not hard to find attestations but still
@Cerberus Indeed, it's a fairly easy-to-solve problem. I think you see so many bikes with stolen wheels because they're the only ones that people leave on the bike rack indefinitely after the theft; I'm not sure what the actual rate is.
Certainly here we have sex ed classes, though the form depends quite a lot on the school, and in parts of the country it's mostly about how you'll die of an STD unless you reserve sex for your lawfully wedded opposite-sex spouse.
My school did something where you could submit questions to the sex ed teacher anonymously; they'd then be answered to all of that teacher's classes to help obscure the source. As you can guess, it was about 50% legitimate questions and 50% attempts at trolling.
At any rate, I keep returning to the idea that someone needs to be either quite attractive (to me) or able and willing to do things that I like a lot (while not being repulsive).
When it is neutral-neutral, I don't feel that good afterwards.
There can be a certain reflexive dislike of things seen as British here.
Some people still aren't over the events of the 1770s.
I have heard that e.g. the form gotten has begun to catch on in the UK; I think Geoff Lindsey mentioned this somewhere.
I've also heard that the British can have an equally reflexive dislike of Americanisms in speech. "This is OUR LANGUAGE and it shall not be POLLUTED with VILE FOREIGN INFLUENCES" and all that.
@Cerberus I think it's mostly due to the version of history you get taught in school, which tends to portray the British as malign evildoers who tried to suppress our precious freedom.
Does crayon rhyme with rayon and spray-on, or with plan and bran, or with neither set? Does creole start like crazy and crayfish, or like creed and create, or like neither set? Do crayon and creole have the same first syllable, or are they different?
Wiktionary, that site of infinite jest, belies the OED by suggesting the /e/ pronunciation is found only in Puerto Rico, where it is clearly a contact contamination.
@Robusto Rhymes with Play-Dough for me. I sang too many Latin Credos in my lost youth before ever considering using the word in English.
So it just means a lot of people all over the world are more excited about US Election (hence more prepared/groomed) than they would at their marriage.
@tchrist Nope. It just means the guy at left doesn't care about what to wear for a special occasion and the right one is more careful like you do when you go to a party.
@Vikas Interesting how closely people in other countries seem to follow American elections. I assume it's because American foreign policy has an outsize impact on how screwed up the world is?
Or daytime, depending on the time zone. I'm guessing it'll be a late night, though the result may become fairly clear once the Rust Belt has had its say.
1. An object will continue moving in a straight line or remain at rest unless an outside force intervenes. 2. An object will continue moving in a straight line or remain at rest insofar as an outside force intervenes. 3. An object will continue moving in a straight line or remain at rest to the extent that an outside force intervenes. 4. An object will continue moving in a straight line or remain at rest only as an outside force intervenes.
I dunno. Those are all harder than they need be.
I feel like there's some missing negative particle might make it clearer.
@tchrist Funny how all English speakers believe the é sound sounds like 'ay' ([eɪ]) while pronouncing that diphthong immediately categorize you as an English/American speaker. The closest English vowel is just the monophthong [ɪ] of 'kit' so Gideon should suggest 'kaffi' and not 'kaffay'.