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Post by Verbivore on Aug 11, 2021 10:48:31 GMT
My Chilean friend pronounces it CHI-lay.
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Post by Trevor on Aug 11, 2021 11:32:01 GMT
Hi folks, just seen this query from a primary school educator on Twitter... "Looking at the difference between 'tall' and 'high.' We would measure a teddy's height by putting it on the floor and measuring the distance between floor and the top of teddy's head. If I move teddy to a shelf, teddy is now higher but not taller. He cannot become taller, right?!"
It's an interesting distinction, and I'm sure she's correct in her summary, but it occurs to me that in some contexts the words may be somewhat interchangeable, but not in others. We might talk about buildings being "tall" or "high", but not people? Or if we do say "high buildings" are we just a bit wrong? Thoughts to add to the discussion? Or, if you're a twitter user, feel free to join in here:
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 11, 2021 12:09:25 GMT
Wow, Trevor. That's deep for Twitter, n'est-ce pas?
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Post by Trevor on Aug 11, 2021 14:41:35 GMT
Wow, Trevor. That's deep for Twitter, n'est-ce pas? Not at all. My wife finds Twitter an amazing tool for sharing and finding good practice in education, and I'm sure it has much intelligent discussion in all fields. Yes, there's a lot else on there too, but don't dismiss it.
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 12, 2021 5:59:33 GMT
Trevor: Perhaps there may be some value in Twitter, but I've not seen it in my three visits there. When I looked, it was full of twits twitting about nothing of consequence.
I'm glad that someone finds value in Twitter.
I must admit to being seriously dismissive of the (anti)social media including Twitter, Fakebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, their analogues, etc because in their early days they were full of such deep information as what diddums had for breakfast and bugger-all else.
I shan't, however, bother to revisit any of them to confirm because (a) they hold no interest for me, and (b) as a bit of an internet-security freak I refuse to allow corporations to exploit my personal data for their nefarious reasons any more than I can avoid. I use a VPN – even when accessing YouTube – to minimise outside access to my Mac, which itself is fully encrypted.
PS: About 12 years ago I set up a Facebook for a rare car I owned, in the hope it would drive traffic to my similarly themed website. After one year I killed the FB because, for the first time in my decades of using the internet. I was overwhelmed with dozens of spam emails daily when previously I might have received one a week (yep, I'm a control freak! lol). I know it came via Fakebook because I'd set up an email address solely for FB use. It took five years after I cancelled that FB for the spam to cease, and that was perhaps only because I took down that associated email account.
I was the 53rd Aussie to connect to the 'net when it first became available here (1989), and have often been an early adopter of things I find useful. When I find them less than useful I dump them. I'm also very fussy with what information I consume and hold most "news" and other media in contempt. If that confirms my high-school headmaster's assessment of me as an intellectual snob, I can live with that.
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 12, 2021 22:07:32 GMT
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Post by Twoddle on Aug 15, 2021 12:07:07 GMT
Have any of you had any problems with your PC since the most recent Windows 10 update? (I know you use a Mac, Vv.) My desktop PC is running much slower than before and it's developed a peculiarity where it often needs two or three mouse-clicks to persuade it to react - it's as if the first click warns it that I'm about to require it to do something, and the second click issues the actual instruction.
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 15, 2021 13:03:18 GMT
Twod: Perhaps the installation of Windoze 10 also infected your PC with Mr Gates's COVID microchips!
A friend recently installed Win10 on his laptop and the machine promptly died, never again to boot. Sorry I can't help.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Aug 16, 2021 13:33:37 GMT
I have had a few days off recently, looking after family visitors. This morning I couldn’t remember the word metonymy and so I looked up “figures of speech” in Google. Much to my surprise I discovered that there were more than 200 different figures of speech mentioned. I wasn’t sure that some of them are really figures of speech but I came across one: paremvolia, which was defined as “Interference of speak by speaking”. I have no idea what this definition meant so I looked up paremvolia in several places and they all said the same thing. Please can someone help me?
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 16, 2021 20:33:51 GMT
LJH: The half-dozen references I found (none in a dictionary) all gave exactly the same definition as you found. In most instances the term was listed under rhetorical devices, but that leaves us none the wiser.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Aug 18, 2021 10:28:55 GMT
I wonder if Paremvolia is a copyright trap? I haven’t discovered any definition other than those already discussed. Those don’t make sense, at least to me. I have never before discovered a word which is not in my dictionary (unless it was American slang) and my brother has looked up the word in his big dictionary and it isn’t included. It does sound like a word, indeed it sounds like a word which might be a figure of speech, but I am beginning to have serious doubts.
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 18, 2021 11:25:17 GMT
I wonder if Paremvolia is a copyright trap? […] A plausible notion, LJH. Even dictionaries have been known to include such traps for plagiarists. Some years ago the local weekly newspaper I worked for laid such a trap for the regional Murdoch gutter rag. We knew that the Murdoch paper was directly copying our entertainment guide, which was by far the most comprehensive in the region and entirely compiled by our staff, but how to prove that in the courts was the challenge. We published three consecutive weeks of entertainment guide containing deliberate fallacies, and the Murdoch rag reproduced them faithfully. We sued that other rag for a very considerable sum – and won. That paper ceased forthwith to publish an entertainment guide. Perhaps it was a paremvolia moment. 'My' little paper is still going, but the Murdoch toilet paper has since ceased to be.
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Post by Twoddle on Aug 19, 2021 9:27:37 GMT
Twod: Perhaps the installation of Windoze 10 also infected your PC with Mr Gates's COVID microchips! A friend recently installed Win10 on his laptop and the machine promptly died, never again to boot. Sorry I can't help. It turns out that hidden deep within the bowels of the Windows 10 settings is a gizmo whereby one can choose between single mouse-click and double mouse-click. Somehow, in a manner known only to the gods and Bill Gates, and definitely without involvement by me, my machine had switched itself from single to double. A case of unintelligent software? I've switched it back. We're soon to have Windows 11 inflicted on us. May the aforementioned gods have mercy on our computers.
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 19, 2021 22:18:58 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on Aug 19, 2021 22:22:15 GMT
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