The language thread

Carnifex said:

That's a brand of couch/sofa, if I remember right. Or if not a brand, urban slang for the same.

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Yepp, got that one. It's the other thingies I don't get.

Aye, recently moved to Ormond Beach, FL. Traded out the snow for sunshine and hurricanes

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Fixed that for you,.

and not a moment too soon!!! They had snow showers hit three days after I left Edmonton, in early September.

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pibbur who, surprise, surprise, … , surprise, looks forward to the period when the everlasting rain comes down as snow. And temperatures below 273.15.

A couple of hurricanes looked my way, but decided to go after easier game. Who am I kidding, I got frigging lucky with that!!

Carnifex said:

That's a brand of couch/sofa, if I remember right. Or if not a brand, urban slang for the same.

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It used to be a brand, yeah, but they are long out of business. Now its just ubiquitous for a couch.
@pibbur who; still needs to guess the right answers on the other two. Or else I will throw his toque down the garburator.

pibbur who said:

Sometimes I sit by myself thinking. Sometimes I solve crossword puzzles. And sometimes I do both. The other day a disease (7 letters) turned out to be "myalgia" (painful conditian in muscles), which made me think:

The suffix "algia" comes from Ancient Greek "algos" (pain, grief distress), and is used both as a symptom and a condition/disease. So we have "arthralgia" (pain in joints), "neuralgia" (pain due do neuropathology), "polymyalgia rheumatica", a rheumatic disease affecting mutltiple muscles.

So.

What about "nostalgia"? It derives from Ancient Greek: "nostos" (a return home) and was introduced in the 17th cenrury as a diagnosis for severe (unhealthy) homesickness. For some reason, according to https://www.etymonline.com/word/nostalgia it was "originally in reference to the Swiss and said to be peculiar to them and often fatal" Also: "a military medical diagnosis principally, and was considered a serious medical problem by the North in the American Civil War " (2588 cases, 13 deaths).

Today (after 1920) the meaning has been transferred to the well known "wistful yearning for the past".

Yet another example on how the use of words change over time, while still to some degree related to the original meaning.

pibbur who now understands why some watchers considers nostalgia harmful.

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Very interesting. I didn't even know that.

yesterday, I made an observation of my own.

There is a plant called "Linse" in Germany. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linse_(Botanik)

Wikipedia translates thas into Englisch language as "Lentil".

One can do very tasty soup out of that.

But now, "Linse" means, literally translated, "lens". Yes, "Linse" actually means BOTH the pland AND the lens in German language !

Its "fruit" indeed looks like tiny lenses.

So, my thought then was : "Hm, maybe because of its look, this fruit (and then the whole plant) was named after the lens."

And then, I wondered : "What was the name of this plant / its fruit BEFORE the lens was invented ?"

I’d think it is the other way around. The lens was named after the plant.

Mmmm, lentils. But I thought the origin of lentils was more towards Asia. Germans shouldn't take credit for everything!

The Latin word "lens" means lentil so no doubt the origin of both.

To me, a chesterfield is this particular style of sofa.




I like them, and have one at home. They have a sort of "Sherlock Holmes' study" vibe.

pibbur who got it eventually and therefore decided to post it in the languge thread.

PS: This one belongs here too:

DS.

Eye said:

I’d think it is the other way around. The lens was named after the plant.

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Interesting idea.

Ripper said:

To me, a chesterfield is this particular style of sofa.

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Sometimes, things are named after … who invented it, or the firm which sold it first. Like the … vaccum cleaner … what was that name again ?

On nthe other hand, sometimes things are named after the region where they come from. Like Cheddar, for example. Or Worcester Sauce. Or Cologne.

pibbur who;1061537197 PS: This one belongs here too: [IMG said:

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/words_for_small_sets.png[/IMG]
DS.

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A couple always means two. I don't know why, but this is the second time I've seen people try to say its more than two. Of the rest, only a handful is exactly five or less - except when its a collection you can hold in your hand, like sand. However, it can also mean one thing if it refers to a person or something that is temperamental, like a child or this darn Windows 10 PC. In those cases, its a metaphor for all the hands you got (hopefully two).

Several means more than a few. I never picture it less than five.

How long is a moment?

Here, I learned that "a couple" means more or less the same as "ein paar".
German language has with "paar" a special thing :

"Ein Paar" with "Paar" written with a capital letter always means "two". Rin Paar usually means a couple of lovers, or a bride and her husband.

"Ein paar" written without ( ! ) a capital letter means "a few".

You might probably mean this :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_(grammatical_number)#Germanic_languages


Since we are already there with numerals, I just found (through "article-hopping") this interesting piece here :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_Tan_Tethera
The German-language article shows how the system works : https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_Tan_Tethera

When I saw the title I thought maybe folks would be talking about Bliss or pascal or ada or even algol but then i read a few posts and remember this is an rpg forum. Oh well I barely understand what these posts are about. Life is so much better before we learned to type.

you said:

Oh well I barely understand what these posts are about.

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I would be able to barely understand posts about Ada, C++ , Pascal … :lol:
(Even although I once learned a few of them … Oh my, how long ago …)

Be happy that we don't talk about Quenya ! :lol:
(I haven't learned that.)

the only time I can see a couple ever refer to something other than two is in the phrase "a couple of years". The person saying it is often saying it because they don't know its two for sure (but not always). Regardless, they are implying "around two".

This is my dad's kind of math though. A couple of minutes is 30; 30 minutes is two hours; two hours is all day; a day (or two) is the next week - especially when he has to wait for the bush plain to fly the new head gasket in.

But when he underestimates the time anything takes, he really does underestimate.

Good tweet by Lyangelo Vasquez
@Lyangelo

Advanced Dutch:
he he = finally
ja ja = i don’t believe you
ho ho = wait a minute
zo zo = well well well
poe poe = wow, medium impressed
nou nou = slightly less than medium impressed

https://twitter.com/Lyangelo/status/1057287771369492481

Others responded and added:
Tut tut = please stop trying to impress me.
hoi hoi = hurray!
doei doei = jolly way to say goodbye
ra ra = guess
Kom kom = It’s not that bad
Bah bah
ai ai = oh this isn't good
man man = slightly above medium impressed
man man man = impressed, but not in a good way
nou nou nou nou nou = let's not exaggerate
gottegottegottegot = i'm in trouble
hee hee hee hee = hey you, stop that
About ‘zo zo’:
if a solution is 'zo zo', it's a poor solution. If you just say 'zo zo' with an enthousiastic tone, you are reasonably impressed. With a sarcastic tone it means 'yeah right…'

Etc. Etc.
——
Eye: hoi hoi is not just hurray, but when meeting someone it is also a jolly way to say hi

What about sleutel sleutel?

pibbur who learned some Dutch from maintaining the database of an Agfa RIS/PACS installation (Belgian).

That is what you say when you are impatient getting the key.

Yesterday or the day before that I was musing on the title "Red Dead Redemption".

From a language point of view, that's an incredibly slick made title.

Red Dead Redemption

I assmume that its *original* title was slightly different, though.

Following the pattern of using the "red" in every word, its original title might have looked like this :

Red Dread Redemption

THe end result looks really to me like a decision made in upper management going like this : "No, dread doesn't sound that good. I want something … more action ! More deadly ! More like a spaghetti western !" And so, "Dread" was changed into "Dead".


I have tried to come up with similar titles, using the same pattern.

My results were :

Green Great Gremlin
Green Great Gremlin

Or :

Blue Blood Bluelagoon
Blue Boat Bluelagoon



It still sounds silly, though.

Red
Dead
Redemption

It even sounds a bit racistic to me :

Red - American Natives
Dead - an old saying says "only a dead [native] is a good [native]"".

Redemption … Uh. An really fanatical racist would probably say this : "We redeem those red natives by making them dead."

Other than that, I cannot find any way to make the word "Redemption" fit into that pattern of letters and words.