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Post by Dave Miller on Feb 18, 2020 13:32:34 GMT
It’s not a pattern I usually use (like Vv, I tend to say the day and date, when it’s important), but it’s a fairly common distinction.
Oddly, on a Thursday, say, “next Monday” can be taken as ”Monday of next week” (that is, what Twod would call next Monday) and “this Monday” can be taken as “the Monday we’ve just had, this week” or “this coming Monday”.
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Post by Twoddle on Feb 18, 2020 21:16:12 GMT
I'll have to remember that my next-door-neighbour is two houses away, and that when I'm leaving a parking space and trying to avoid touching the next car, that's the one on the other side of the one beside me.
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Post by Verbivore on Feb 19, 2020 7:49:13 GMT
OT (so what's new?). Here's an excellent and very visual summary of the recent Australian fire season. When the British authorities transported my g-g-grandfather Paddy Muldoon to the penal colony of New South Wales on the Fourth Fleet to do penance of seven years' hard labour they told Paddy he was going to Hell. How could they have known? Hell indeed: 40 million acres / 62,000 sq miles were burned. That’s an area greater than Bangladesh (55,500 mi 2); Greece (51,000 mi 2); England (50,300 mi 2); or 102 other nations. Football fields and Olympic swimming pools just don't make it as size comparisons.
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Post by Verbivore on Feb 20, 2020 13:28:58 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on Feb 21, 2020 22:04:42 GMT
A new word (to me): petrichor – the distinct smell of rain. The warm, earthy scent is called petrichor and it comes from a compound secreted by soil and rocks when it rains after a dry spell.The term petrichor was first coined by two CSIRO * scientists in the 1960s, who discovered a compound called geosmin was a key ingredient in the smell of rain. *Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, an Australian federal government agency responsible for scientific research. The word has Greek roots — petri meaning 'stone' and ichor meaning 'the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods'. After our recent big fire season and prolonged drought we had flood rains (already in the first three weeks of February we've had more rain than in the entirety of 2019!) and with the first of those rains the odour of petrichor was overpowering – but beautiful. It's good to have a name for it.
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Post by Verbivore on Feb 21, 2020 22:33:22 GMT
The saying “a few rotten apples” is tired.
My response when people say that has often been along the lines of "That means nothing when the whole barrel is rotten". (It's a retort I've often given to defenders of the church, who tiresomely say “it's just a few rotten apples” in relation to clerical sexual abuse of children.)
Here's a new twist on the idea in a phrase I just found on the news: A spoon full of sewage in a barrel full of wine makes a barrel full of sewage. Given the church's fixation on wine, a most apt expression methinks.
I have added that to my lexicon and shall apply it at the next appropriate opportunity.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Feb 21, 2020 23:25:58 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on Feb 22, 2020 0:02:04 GMT
Don't you just love those enterprising types who sell bottled air? I suppose that air freshener is slightly less a take than canned mountain air sold in certain tourist-trap spots, or bottled "spring water" that's sourced from city taps. My pater (born 1889 and somewhat a sceptic) used to say that if They could find a way to make us pay to breathe They surely would. Even though we weren't biologically related I surely inherited his sceptic gene.
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Post by Verbivore on Feb 22, 2020 22:02:14 GMT
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Feb 23, 2020 14:19:39 GMT
I am afraid the pore/pour error is all too common. I wonder how one might discover how common.
Visitors to this forum will recall my question about the colour change when clicking on posts. I have not knowingly done anything to anything but it has spontaneously reverted to the usual mode. I despair of ever understanding computers!
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Post by Verbivore on Feb 23, 2020 20:07:15 GMT
I am afraid the pore/pour error is all too common. I wonder how one might discover how common. Visitors to this forum will recall my question about the colour change when clicking on posts. I have not knowingly done anything to anything but it has spontaneously reverted to the usual mode. I despair of ever understanding computers! Another pair of frequently confused homophones: lead (the noun, a metal) and led (the verb, past tense). I see lead for led almost daily in news reports and other documents.
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Post by Dave Miller on Feb 23, 2020 22:59:34 GMT
Another pair of frequently confused homophones: lead (the noun, a metal) and led (the verb, past tense). I see lead for led almost daily in news reports and other documents. Oddly, I stumbled over that one yesterday and again today. It’s becoming so common that I had to stop and think for a moment: was I actually right that it should be “led”? I suppose part of the problem is that it’s lead/led, but read/read. And of course the rhyme with dead, thread, dread, stead, bread and so on.
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Post by Verbivore on Feb 23, 2020 23:35:38 GMT
The wonderful (?) inconsistencies in English include these verbs, some strong, some weak:
bead / beaded (not bed) bleed / bled (not bleeded) cede / ceded (not ced) deed / deeded (not ded) feed / fed (not feeded) flee / fled (not fleed) head / headed (not hed) heed / heeded (not hed) knee / kneed knead / kneaded (not kned) lead / led (not leaded – but gasoline can be leaded) leap / leaped or leapt (not lept) need / needed (not ned) pee / peed plead / pleaded (but in US pled) read / read (not red) say / said (not sed, though some say say-ed*) seed / seeded (not sed) spey / speyed (not sped) spray / sprayed spread / spread (not spred) tee / teed (not ted) thread / threaded (not thred) wee / weed (not wed).
I'm sure others exist, but those were just off the top of my red head (read hed / well-read red head?).
* The people I know who use say-ed and says (i.e. say-z, not sez) all attended Marist or Christian Brothers schools and are the same folk who pronounce film as fillum; perhaps a hangover from the days when those schools' teachers were imported Irish religious?
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Post by Verbivore on Feb 24, 2020 6:14:11 GMT
A friend sent me this today:
Blogging isn’t writing. Blogging is graffiti with punctuation!
I've a few folk I can use it on. ;-)
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Post by Verbivore on Feb 24, 2020 19:56:12 GMT
I was pleased this morning to find mention in the latest AP Stylebook newsletter the following directive (one that I'm sure I've previously posted about on here):
Use "who" for references to people and to animals with a name. Otherwise, use "that." For example: "The woman who bought the car," not "the woman that bought the car." "The company that hired me," not "the company who hired me."
I thought my mission on the matter was a lost cause, but if the AP Stylebook directive helps newspapers to avoid the rampant errant use of the relative pronoun for the personal I shall continue, encouraged, to bang that drum.
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