When I was in my American English class, I learned a new definition. The official term for inserting one word inside of another word is called an "in-fix." Most of the time, this occurs with swear words.
In-fucking-credible. The fucking is an in-fix.
I would call that tmesis. Or, at least, it's a subcategory of tmesis.
Which is an unusual word in itself. If I'm feeling a little vicious while preparing a quiz for students I'll sometimes add a question along the lines of 'name a word beginning with tm AND a word ending in mt.'
This post was sponsored by Tom Cruise.
0
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
No, I mean saw!
Obviously I refer to the problems caused by carving things into signs using a saw...
Few things make me lower my opinion of someone quicker than when they use "is" instead of "are", especially because they are so consistent in using it that way.
Sodomize is the language of freedom
Sodomise is the language of crumpets
Ugh I just woke up and I have a headache, too early for banter
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Jeffe, it is incorrect to insert however as a conjunction. It's not used in the same way as "but", which is a coordinating conjunction that joins clauses together.
Correct:
I am green; however, you are blue.
I am green. However, you are blue.
I am green, but you are blue.
Incorrect:
I am green, however, you are blue.
I am green. But you are blue.
I am green; but you are blue.
The latter two incorrect ones are largely permissible informally, because starting a sentence with a coordinating conjunction is a common stylistic choice with a real function. Using however in the first error example, though, is a glaring error (a comma splice).
I would never use that particular incorrect usage of "however" and would bludgeon those who would.
Do "however" and "but" actually have different connotations? Me, I choose between them entirely based on stylistic and aesthetic considerations.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Few things make me lower my opinion of someone quicker than when they use "is" instead of "are", especially because they are so consistent in using it that way.
Lucid on
0
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Few things make me lower my opinion of someone quicker than when they use "is" instead of "are", especially because they are so consistent in using it that way.
Hey guess who has two thumbs and never really cared much about Aerith?
Off the top of my head are "eerie" and "aerie" and I'm guessing there are more.
So, uh.
No.
Only 5-letter q word with 4 vowels!
qaoya
Kana on
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
I don't understand the phrase "have your cake and eat it too." I mean, I understand the concept of it. I understand its meaning. But I don't understand why it means what it does.
What is the purpose of cake if not to eat it? The cake would most likely not even exist if someone wasn't planning on eating it.
My understanding is that it is synonymous with "you can't have it both ways." So what other way is there to have cake other than to eat it? Why would you want to have cake if you didn't want to also eat it? Is there some sort of cake hoarding thing that I don't know about that makes this all make sense?
0
AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
I don't understand the phrase "have your cake and eat it too." I mean, I understand the concept of it. I understand its meaning. But I don't understand why it means what it does.
What is the purpose of cake if not to eat it? The cake would most likely not even exist if someone wasn't planning on eating it.
My understanding is that it is synonymous with "you can't have it both ways." So what other way is there to have cake other than to eat it? Why would you want to have cake if you didn't want to also eat it? Is there some sort of cake hoarding thing that I don't know about that makes this all make sense?
It means that you want to eat the cake but at the same time keep it around. Say you have a cake on a table, you want to keep it there but also eat it at the same time.
Schrodinger's Cake would be a resource that you may or may not possess, but don't know if you have it until you actually check. For example, you were expecting a reversal on a credit card charge - you know it's supposed to take place, but you won't know if you've gotten it yet until you verify your balance.
Schrodinger's Cake would be a resource that you may or may not possess, but don't know if you have it until you actually check. For example, you were expecting a reversal on a credit card charge - you know it's supposed to take place, but you won't know if you've gotten it yet until you verify your balance.
True. To borrow your example, the "have you cake and eat it too" there would be keeping a product and still getting your money back.
Schrodinger's Cake would be a resource that you may or may not possess, but don't know if you have it until you actually check. For example, you were expecting a reversal on a credit card charge - you know it's supposed to take place, but you won't know if you've gotten it yet until you verify your balance.
True. To borrow your example, the "have you cake and eat it too" there would be keeping a product and still getting your money back.
Today replaying some Empire: Total War I found out that "shrapnel"'s source is from Henry Shrapnel, british inventor and army officer.
His exploding shells were such a big deal the British army gave him the equivalent of more than 100,000 pounds a year for the rest of his life.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
My English teacher at university is a really cool guy.
We start every lesson by watching a video (the first lesson started with a video of a kid doing about 20 or 30 different accents, for example) and then spend the rest of the lesson discussing it, doing (very few) exercises and learning about various figures of speech.
I was completely dumbstruck when I learned that "dude" was originally an insult.
My English teacher at university is a really cool guy.
We start every lesson by watching a video (the first lesson started with a video of a kid doing about 20 or 30 different accents, for example) and then spend the rest of the lesson discussing it, doing (very few) exercises and learning about various figures of speech.
I was completely dumbstruck when I learned that "dude" was originally an insult.
My English teacher at university is a really cool guy.
We start every lesson by watching a video (the first lesson started with a video of a kid doing about 20 or 30 different accents, for example) and then spend the rest of the lesson discussing it, doing (very few) exercises and learning about various figures of speech.
I was completely dumbstruck when I learned that "dude" was originally an insult.
What do you learn? Are the videos on literature and improving your English skills and the like? What sort of class is it, a gen ed or a higher level course? I am hesitantly interested in learning about this new approach to English but also quite skeptical.
My English teacher at university is a really cool guy.
We start every lesson by watching a video (the first lesson started with a video of a kid doing about 20 or 30 different accents, for example) and then spend the rest of the lesson discussing it, doing (very few) exercises and learning about various figures of speech.
I was completely dumbstruck when I learned that "dude" was originally an insult.
What do you learn? Are the videos on literature and improving your English skills and the like? What sort of class is it, a gen ed or a higher level course? I am hesitantly interested in learning about this new approach to English but also quite skeptical.
It is a required language course for advanced students that everyone who studies electronic engineering (or, in my case, information system technologies) has to take.
We are supposed to learn how to communicate technical aspects and things like that to other people, but since this is the first semester, we are practising general listening comprehension for now.
The videos are sometimes related to engineering, sometimes just random but interesting things our teacher stumbled across.
0
AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
My English teacher at university is a really cool guy.
We start every lesson by watching a video (the first lesson started with a video of a kid doing about 20 or 30 different accents, for example) and then spend the rest of the lesson discussing it, doing (very few) exercises and learning about various figures of speech.
I was completely dumbstruck when I learned that "dude" was originally an insult.
What do you learn? Are the videos on literature and improving your English skills and the like? What sort of class is it, a gen ed or a higher level course? I am hesitantly interested in learning about this new approach to English but also quite skeptical.
It is a required language course for advanced students that everyone who studies electronic engineering (or, in my case, information system technologies) has to take.
We are supposed to learn how to communicate technical aspects and things like that to other people, but since this is the first semester, we are practising general listening comprehension for now.
The videos are sometimes related to engineering, sometimes just random but interesting things our teacher stumbled across.
Huh. That's an oddly specific course but it sounds very useful.
I thought you meant like "English 101" for all students where you just sit around watching videos and talking about them.
In which case I'd want to smack your English department across the collective face.
I've always thought that the language of sailors from the Renaissance up until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution was particularly fascinating because if the English language at large is a slow blending of various linguistic influences, the lexicon of the sea is a violent crash-course along the same vein. In an age where few people ever ventured more than 100 miles from home, you could find representatives of ten different nations and languages all sleeping in quarters so tight that their hips bumped as their hammocks swung. And when those sailors finally returned home, they influenced the language at large in very interesting but not readily apparent ways.
Which brings me to one of my favorite words: poop. When I was growing up, my grandparents would frequently describe themselves as tired by saying, "I'm pooped," which seemed bizarre to me because I was only familiar with the scatological connotation. The Online Etymology Dictionary says that the origins of this use of the word are unclear -- but dudes, I can totally tell you where it comes from!
During a particularly rough storm, one of the great dangers was to have a tall, following wave break across your transom. The kinetic energy of the wave breaking was sufficient to force the ship to slew 90 degrees either port or starboard fast enough to kill your forward momentum, leaving you helpless to the next tall wave, which would catch you on your beam and roll you over. The easiest solution is to steer into every wave so that its impact is redirected by your bow; however, this isn't always an option for a wind-powered craft, particularly if the wind and the seas are both coming from the same direction. In that case, your only real choice is to travel in the same direction as both wind and sea with enough forward momentum that when each wave reaches you, it continues along under your keel rather than breaking over a relatively stationary stern.
Traveling at speed during a storm carries risks of its own for a sailing vessel, however. Your sails could tear free from their boltropes or you could lose a spar with a particularly fierce gust of wind, which would leave you without maneuvering power. If either of these things happened, and you couldn't restore sufficient momentum before the next wave reached you, it would crash into your transom and flood your aft decks as it swung you about and then killed you. Sailors refer to this specific series of events as "being pooped," from the French "poupe," meaning the stern or aft quarter of a sailing vessel.
And so when they returned home, if they felt fatigued to the point of being incapable of coping, they would describe themselves as "pooped."
I think it's amazing that you can trace a phrase like that from a bunch of terrified foremast jacks (and presumably a few foremast Jacques) through the centuries to my Scottish socialite grandparents.
I think the best word is "be." Not only is it incredibly useful, it's also incredibly short, a verb, and when you conjugate it it becomes an entirely different word!
Despite my love of the English language, and figuring out where sayings come from and what words mean, I do find myself to not be a prescriptivist. Language changes, rules change, and I find that trying to establish an authority just leads to dogma for no reason. It's more interesting, to me, to see how a culture, region, or people are using language than to force them to speak correctly. I mean, we could have arguments about how American English is more "pure" than British because British has too much French influence (use of "-re," too many vowels, softer pronunciation), but what's the point? It's more interesting to talk about how they're different now and how that came to be, accepting that we're seeing two approaches to the same language.
Besides, with a word like "manoeuvring," it's hard for the British to be correct.
Anyway, I'm also anti-prescriptivist because my ex-wife's aunt made a hoity-toity correction to a statement I made once, casually, about leaving the "-ly" off an adverb. It's stuck with me, and when I come across great sayings like "All men are created equal," I think "Where's your -ly now, bitch!"
Posts
It was free to me. Paid for by the college.
Warm ales all round!
qaoya
You mean Say, not saw, my friend.
I would call that tmesis. Or, at least, it's a subcategory of tmesis.
Which is an unusual word in itself. If I'm feeling a little vicious while preparing a quiz for students I'll sometimes add a question along the lines of 'name a word beginning with tm AND a word ending in mt.'
Obviously I refer to the problems caused by carving things into signs using a saw...
Juggernaut.
Or perhaps tankard.
Why would you care? You still understand completely what they mean.
It sounds as wrong as using "is" instead of "are" when using plurals to pick a random yet similar point of comparison.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
SON OF A BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETCHHHHHHHH
Sodomize is the language of freedom
Sodomise is the language of crumpets
Ugh I just woke up and I have a headache, too early for banter
I would never use that particular incorrect usage of "however" and would bludgeon those who would.
Do "however" and "but" actually have different connotations? Me, I choose between them entirely based on stylistic and aesthetic considerations.
Curses!
At least half of that ('it's' vs 'its') is due to poor iPad typesmanship.
The other half may be ironic given that it was a topic of conversation within the thread. A lesson for us most.
stop it with your animes
Hey guess who has two thumbs and never really cared much about Aerith?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
What is the purpose of cake if not to eat it? The cake would most likely not even exist if someone wasn't planning on eating it.
My understanding is that it is synonymous with "you can't have it both ways." So what other way is there to have cake other than to eat it? Why would you want to have cake if you didn't want to also eat it? Is there some sort of cake hoarding thing that I don't know about that makes this all make sense?
It means that you want to eat the cake but at the same time keep it around. Say you have a cake on a table, you want to keep it there but also eat it at the same time.
EDIT: Though that assumes your interpretation of the meaning behind that phrase is accurate.
It simply means that you want to use up a resource but keep the resource around for the future. It's Schrodinger's cake.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
True. To borrow your example, the "have you cake and eat it too" there would be keeping a product and still getting your money back.
Quite so!
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Terse is a terse word.
Sibilant is a sibilant word.
There must be a term for this.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
His exploding shells were such a big deal the British army gave him the equivalent of more than 100,000 pounds a year for the rest of his life.
We start every lesson by watching a video (the first lesson started with a video of a kid doing about 20 or 30 different accents, for example) and then spend the rest of the lesson discussing it, doing (very few) exercises and learning about various figures of speech.
I was completely dumbstruck when I learned that "dude" was originally an insult.
You'll love this, then.
What do you learn? Are the videos on literature and improving your English skills and the like? What sort of class is it, a gen ed or a higher level course? I am hesitantly interested in learning about this new approach to English but also quite skeptical.
It is a required language course for advanced students that everyone who studies electronic engineering (or, in my case, information system technologies) has to take.
We are supposed to learn how to communicate technical aspects and things like that to other people, but since this is the first semester, we are practising general listening comprehension for now.
The videos are sometimes related to engineering, sometimes just random but interesting things our teacher stumbled across.
Huh. That's an oddly specific course but it sounds very useful.
I thought you meant like "English 101" for all students where you just sit around watching videos and talking about them.
In which case I'd want to smack your English department across the collective face.
Which brings me to one of my favorite words: poop. When I was growing up, my grandparents would frequently describe themselves as tired by saying, "I'm pooped," which seemed bizarre to me because I was only familiar with the scatological connotation. The Online Etymology Dictionary says that the origins of this use of the word are unclear -- but dudes, I can totally tell you where it comes from!
During a particularly rough storm, one of the great dangers was to have a tall, following wave break across your transom. The kinetic energy of the wave breaking was sufficient to force the ship to slew 90 degrees either port or starboard fast enough to kill your forward momentum, leaving you helpless to the next tall wave, which would catch you on your beam and roll you over. The easiest solution is to steer into every wave so that its impact is redirected by your bow; however, this isn't always an option for a wind-powered craft, particularly if the wind and the seas are both coming from the same direction. In that case, your only real choice is to travel in the same direction as both wind and sea with enough forward momentum that when each wave reaches you, it continues along under your keel rather than breaking over a relatively stationary stern.
Traveling at speed during a storm carries risks of its own for a sailing vessel, however. Your sails could tear free from their boltropes or you could lose a spar with a particularly fierce gust of wind, which would leave you without maneuvering power. If either of these things happened, and you couldn't restore sufficient momentum before the next wave reached you, it would crash into your transom and flood your aft decks as it swung you about and then killed you. Sailors refer to this specific series of events as "being pooped," from the French "poupe," meaning the stern or aft quarter of a sailing vessel.
And so when they returned home, if they felt fatigued to the point of being incapable of coping, they would describe themselves as "pooped."
I think it's amazing that you can trace a phrase like that from a bunch of terrified foremast jacks (and presumably a few foremast Jacques) through the centuries to my Scottish socialite grandparents.
Despite my love of the English language, and figuring out where sayings come from and what words mean, I do find myself to not be a prescriptivist. Language changes, rules change, and I find that trying to establish an authority just leads to dogma for no reason. It's more interesting, to me, to see how a culture, region, or people are using language than to force them to speak correctly. I mean, we could have arguments about how American English is more "pure" than British because British has too much French influence (use of "-re," too many vowels, softer pronunciation), but what's the point? It's more interesting to talk about how they're different now and how that came to be, accepting that we're seeing two approaches to the same language.
Besides, with a word like "manoeuvring," it's hard for the British to be correct.
Anyway, I'm also anti-prescriptivist because my ex-wife's aunt made a hoity-toity correction to a statement I made once, casually, about leaving the "-ly" off an adverb. It's stuck with me, and when I come across great sayings like "All men are created equal," I think "Where's your -ly now, bitch!"
It's always funny to discover words that seem so natural and appropriate are actually just some dude's last name.
Like "sandwich" or "volt" or "crapper".