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Post by Verbivore on Nov 2, 2023 9:25:56 GMT
The Collins Word of the Year is … somewhat unsurprisingly: AI. I particularly enjoyed the animated cartoon where words are fed into the computer and the silly results displayed.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Nov 2, 2023 17:41:13 GMT
The world is changing is it not? When did an abbreviation become a word? Apart from bazball, the only word I had encountered was "nepo baby" but I am glad to say it is not recognised by my spellchecker. Anyway, it is two words. The world is not only changing, it is going to pot. I only wonder how all these organisations choose their word of the year. I went on one website which listed the words of the year for several years for a number of organisations. Only one, the American Dialect Society, seems to have chosen "Covid" for any year but I would have thought that was the neologism which overtook any other word in popularity in recent years. Maybe one's word of the year depends on the particularities of one's customary reading rather than a reflection of emerging, public usage.
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 9, 2023 1:21:33 GMT
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Post by Dave Miller on Nov 9, 2023 5:46:15 GMT
I like the non-chemical approach. But surely the idea is to charge the batteries in the daytime and let the batteries run the machines at night. And that that works if (during the day) there are sunny conditions.
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 15, 2023 9:48:13 GMT
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Nov 15, 2023 21:53:25 GMT
Than you Vv. I often muse on the pronunciation we attach to spellings in British English. Here is a single (admittedly somewhat contrived) sentence which I wrote to show twelve different pronunciations of OUGH. I may have shared it before?
Although the lough wasn’t rough, the wind soughed (soohhed) in the rigging and the oughly (ugly) boat ploughed through the waves in a thoroughly unpleasant manner which not only made me hiccough and cough but also broke a hough (hock) of the horse I had bought.
[See The Chambers Dictionary, 1993 (reprinted 1994), Chambers, Edinburgh, for the words and pronunciations]
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 16, 2023 10:16:08 GMT
How do grammarians console one another?
Their, they're, there.
(Nicked from the latest RobWords newsletter.)
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 19, 2023 5:07:18 GMT
Post on a forum discussing certain fetishes: I asked that poster if his homocide was an intentional spelling but no, it was accidental – however not inappropriate in the context of the full story, methunk.
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Post by Dave Miller on Nov 19, 2023 8:15:55 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 19, 2023 20:17:14 GMT
In 1966, shortly after the adoption of OCR scanning in mail sorting, the AU Geographical Names Act was amended, thereby eliminating terminal apostrophes in placenames / addresses because those marks allegedly confused the OCR system and misdirected lots of postal items. Why initial apostrophes, such as in O’Brien, didn’t cause similar OCR confusion was never explained.
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Post by Dave Miller on Nov 19, 2023 21:05:57 GMT
Punctuation can certainly confuse machines. My partner’s Glasgow tenement flat is “third floor, flat one”, traditionally written as:
3/1, 20 (name of road) Glasgow (Postcode)
The Post Office and Glaswegians have understood that for a hundred years, but the satnav of my new Merc (pulling the address from my phone), directed me consistently to a specific house about 20 miles away. There was no similarity in house number, road name, town name or postcode. I removed the “3/1” from my phone and all became well.
I blame the Scots. 😄
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Post by Twoddle on Nov 20, 2023 10:57:38 GMT
That's always a useful ploy. I have a camel-case Scottish surname: McWhatever. That's how I've always written it, and it really hacks me off when Websites persist in "correcting" it to Mcwhatever. I've been known to cancel what I was doing and switch to another Website that's more co-operative. I'll decide how my name's written, not some bloody machine.
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Post by Dave Miller on Nov 20, 2023 11:47:44 GMT
That's always a useful ploy. I have a camel-case Scottish surname: McWhatever. That's how I've always written it, and it really hacks me off when Websites persist in "correcting" it to Mcwhatever. I've been known to cancel what I was doing and switch to another Website that's more co-operative. I'll decide how my name's written, not some bloody machine. My middle name begins with “E”, so I’m D E M~~~~~ Occasionally, a machine will address me as “Mr de M~~~~~”. I quite like it. (Yes, I know you know my surname, but I’m unwilling to give netbots a hand.)
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 20, 2023 21:43:59 GMT
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Post by Verbivore on Nov 21, 2023 8:26:44 GMT
‘Typo’ on Chapel Royal ceiling? On the ceiling of Hampton Court Palace’s Chapel Royal, a reversed N in Dieu et Mon Droit. I’ve not been there, but found it on a documentary called Fortress Britain. Apparently Henry VIII didn’t engage a proofreader.
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