zompist bboard

...I never knew there was supposed to be anything wrong with "on accident". You learn something new every day! Both "on" and "by" are acceptable to me, but I think I prefer the former. The latter sounds a little stuffy and formal to my ear. edit: also yes, I agree with Nort, that use of "from" is so...

Yeah. This is a matter of it being unidiomatic, not ungrammatical. The phrasing is well-formed but awful.

Split from the Quotes thread.

In general there's surely nothing wrong with some conversation about the quotes that get posted in here, but the "octopodes" issue a) has gone on long past its sell-by date, b) was cluttering up everything, and c) was originally my own fault anyway. Thus I have split it out, with all related posts.

ObsequiousNewt wrote:I love how the mods aren't breaking this up because it's too hilarious to let stop.

Lurk more.

That's a perfectly fair and reasonable distinction to draw. It's just the term you drew it with - "unnatural" - while correct in the literal sense still carries the implication that the practice of having urban parks is undesirable or even abominable, which rather interfered with what you were tryin...

I think that rescue could be adequate for making the results meaningful, provided you tag the pragmatic status of each bit of information - at minimum, which bits are the part you're trying to convey and which bits serve other functions. Because it's important to make certain you're comparing apples...

There's still something off about it. And it has to do with the last phrase - the "on" really should come at the very end, except there's something blocking that from being a possibility. Perhaps just the sheer distance from "date", or perhaps there's a conflict between discussing one date in the mi...

I'm not sure how to write this post. On one had, I'm very sorry for irritating you all and I absolutely want to promise I'll go off and buy and read T&K before I go any further, but on the other hand I don't feel that Radius's post addresses what I've been trying to say. A moment's passing irritati...

Zompist already told you that linguists aren't entirely dim. They aren't, and neither are we. You are arguing against an extreme view of the tree model held only by crackpots. I do realize that you are not trying to be rude and that you are probably not entirely dim yourself; however, if you're goin...

I wasn't specifically talking about you. But I noticed that people from most places say something like their ethnicitiy is Catalan/French/German/Russian/Flemish or whatever, but Americans say stuff like I'm white or mention their hair colour (as you did). So That left me wondering. What does the wo...

Don't worry about that. Perhaps some will see it this time who missed it previously.

"Most linguists" would tell him to quit making shit up and claiming they'd agree.

You're welcome to tell him we have borrowed lots and lots of words from French, since we have.

It might be worthwhile to rename this thread with a plural -s and move it to NOTA, because a) trials and tribulations people have run into in the past will still be on record to help anyone else who runs into the same ones a year later, and b) half the time it's something we can answer for each othe...

Out of twenty-two who have given their ages thus far, I'm getting a mean ZBB age of 24 and a median of 23.

Oh dear, time again already? Basics Username: this field is completely useless Name: Aaron Other nicknames: -- Birthplace: Seattle, USA Place of residence: near Seattle, USA Occupation: domestic overlord Identity no Measurements Age: 36 Height: 6'0" Weight: 185lbs Shoe size: 10.5 Blood type: B+ Hand...

36/m/Seattle, USA. Born and raised here, though I did once spend three years in Arizona. PNW English is boringly similar to standard American. My German has rusted almost to the point of complete uselessness; I can still just about manage to say "Guten Tag!".

whatchoo mean only three man there's loads of words with a plural in -i Ones that are unambiguously correct and dominant in Standard English? Cacti, octopi, and fungi are the only three I could think of. If you know more, please say! edit: and aren't technical/jargon words only people in specific f...

Oh, is Welf one of those principled anti-octopi-ists who refuse to "mix" "latin and greek" while speaking English, as if source languages were relevant to doing so? Such a shame. As one of our only three words with a correct -i plural, "octopi" is cultural treasure and must be preserved, defended, a...

Bob said I went could be an unpunctuated quote of the words Bob said about his own going, or a correctly punctuated report of what he said about my own. Another first person pronoun could clear that right up. In the real world, with the possible exception of Twitter and comparable circumstances, pe...

Just came across an article describing a legislative deal as "shrouded in optimism" . At the very least, that strikes me as some sort of horrendously mixed metaphor. I would have liked to have seen that, but they must have corrected it already: neither "shrouded" nor "optimism" appear in the curren...

Even though I normally advocate to just leave our damned pronoun system alone, I have to admit that gender-neutral "he" has come to feel unnatural to me too. Like "she", it fails to actually feel gender-neutral when I read it; my natural assumption is to assume a male is being referred to, and then ...

Though not all, I think a lot of the examples given, and a lot of the instances in usage, are not mass nouns but telegraphic style, in which the article can sometimes be done away with.

edit: this does go with the cooking example, though. "Fill bowl with mixture and place on rack", and so forth.

[And of course this was not at all helped by my Mom's thoroughly Midwestern seasoning habits (best summed up by Marge Simpson's reaction on seeing a "cute spice rack" at the county fair: "EIGHT SPICES? Some of these MUST be duplicates!) My sympathies. If I were limited to Midwestern habits of spici...

the best chicken is fried -- this is the fundamental error with chicken that people are making in this thread, perhaps because you are all racist. i had some karage chicken yesterday and it was delicious and not dry at all (except on the crispy surface) No, it is because fried chicken is practicall...