Word of the day: tsukushi (hormone secreted by the liver that supposedly dampens energy expenditure)

Since when has this been the case? Whenever I heard it used this way, I assumed it was a mistake. Are MW being ...overly descriptivist? Then again, some of my online friends from the US did find my have/had drunk odd on occasion.

Eh, whatevs.

@userr2684291 Check a few American dictionaries to find out if unsure. I don't know about this.

collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/drank says (for drank in AmE) "pt. & often informal pp. of drink".

@CowperKettle Also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsukushi_(wrestler), apparently.

Lol, they call it puroresu.

@userr2684291 I usually don't check Collins anymore. Its definitions are one of the worst. It is the largest single volume dictionary though in terms of number of definitions, and the paper version is updated very frequently.

Word of the eve: Puʻu ʻŌʻō

@CowperKettle What does it mean?

@Jasper I think it's an okay dictionary. Sometimes there are things there that you can't find in other dictionaries (and vice versa).

And I like their German dictionary.

@userr2684291 I find many of their definitions incomprehensible. If I don't already know the meaning of the word and don't check other dictionaries, sometimes it is very hard to figure out what the definition is saying. Sometimes, it feels as if the person writing the definition is just trying to write it in a hurry to get the job done. But the ODE doesn't give the pronunciation of every headword, and the Chambers has humorous definitions and doesn't use IPA.

@Jasper Can you give an example of an incomprehensible definition?

@userr2684291 is Zen a word translated from Chinese?

Dunno.

@userr2684291 thefreedictionary.com/zen talks so much about the origin of Zen. But it doesn't definitely write out that word. If it writes out the word, I would know easily. I guess Zen is translated from 禪. If it just writes 禪 out, I would know it clearly. I really can't recognize the phonetic translation of Chinese.

because English characters can't exactly present the pronounciation of Chinese characters.

@userr2684291 You can compare the entry for presumptuous or patronize with that of ODE, for example.

Oh, by the way, it seems that definition I quoted comes from Webster's dictionary.

Eh, I guess I see what you mean, but I think only the first word can be a little difficult because it's not clear which definition of patronize they're talking about. But dictionaries sin in that way often.

@CaptainBohemian Looks like it was taken from Japanese (which probably took it from Chinese). See this.

Definitely. It's a Chinese character, haha.

@userr2684291 Yes, and it is read as Chan.

WRONG. WRONG. WROOOONG! :/

We need an answer there that combines the first and second answer

Leaves out the wrong parts of the first and adds its emphasis of what option the examiner had in mind.

@Jasper if you read 禪 as Chan, there is a big possibility that I can't understand you unless you include sufficient contexts.

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ The comment under the top-voted answer says it all, so everything's gucci.

And you have to realize they probably mentioned the pattern be new to something somewhere and that knowledge is what the test is trying to elicit.

Be new to some environment, rather, I suppose.

Well EYE'm saying we should, haha.

Basically, all writing systems should switch to the IPA.

All... languages.

Yeah, of course.

You have until 2020.

But I mean... hm. Are there really any other prevalent methods other than pinyin for writing Chinese (characters) using a standard keyboard, for example?

So I think most people already know pinyin nowadays, so it wouldn't be that big of a deal if everything began to shift towards that.

Interesting. They could switch to that instead. Chinese would still look arcane, but if anyone wanted to learn the writing they wouldn't have to spend a lot of time on the characters.

Eh, I don't think their government's reading this, though.

(:

Yeah... anyway, I think I've pondered enough for today. I'll come back tomorrow night, though and try again.