The Innovative Usage Thread

[Radius Solis]

I certainly don't have it. In English as I know it, "by" requires the third party to be a location - that is, it means you are telling someone to go stand next to the third party and then think about you.

[Drydic]

Remember me by [means of] the locket I gave you.

This usage is unknown to people? o_O

And I've never heard to used here either...

[Yng]

Remember me by [means of] the locket I gave you.

This usage is unknown to people? o_O

And I've never heard to used here either...

No, 'remember me by Charlie if you see him'.

[Astraios]

I've only ever heard it in Remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine...

[Thry]

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme...

Well I though to was the natural thing, but that's just corruption from Spanish (or something). By it is, then.

[Whimemsz]

I've never heard either of those usages, ever (except for the song). I was not aware they existed. :\

[Thry]

How do you express it then?

In Spanish we go, "dale recuerdos de mí (or: de mi parte) cuando le veas" [lit. give them memories of me (or: from my "part") when you see them] and I had been told the most natural way to say it in English was "tell whoever I said hi / send whoever regards from me"

[Whimemsz]

Yeah, I'd say something like that. "If/when you see so-and-so, tell them I said/say hi".

[linguoboy]

In Spanish we go, "dale recuerdos de mí (or: de mi parte) cuando le veas" [lit. give them memories of me (or: from my "part") when you see them] and I had been told the most natural way to say it in English was "tell whoever I said hi / send whoever regards from me"

I'd be more likely to say "give so-and-so my regards" or "my best". "Say hi to so-and-so" is definitely more common nowadays.

[Drydic]

OH

wait what the fuck that's a thing? @the whole schebang

[Yng]

I would be more likely to say 'remember me to', yeah - if I were to say any of these as opposed to 'say hi to X for me'

[Drydic]

wait, is this a truncation of remember to mention me to X?

[Thry]

I don't think it is.

[Shm Jay]

Anyone else in a country which drinks milk from refrigerated jugs refer to those jugs as a "bottle of milk?"

No, because they aren’t glass. I refer to them as "gallon of milk" or "quart of milk" or whatever the size is.

[Ser]

In Spanish we go, "dale recuerdos de mí (or: de mi parte) cuando le veas" [lit. give them memories of me (or: from my "part") when you see them]

I have never heard this, so it might or might not be confined to Spain. In El Salvador we say:

• Dale mis saludos. / Dale saludos de mi parte.
  Dale mis saludos a tu mamá. / Dale saludos a tu mamá de mi parte.
  Give my regards to her/to your mother. / Give regards to your mother from my part.
  
  Saludala de mi parte.
  Saludá/Saludala a tu mamá de mi parte.
  Say hi to her from my part.
  
  Me la saludás.
  Me (la) saludás a tu mamá.
  I tell you, say hi to her/to your mother for me![/i]

[Drydic]

Anyone else in a country which drinks milk from refrigerated jugs refer to those jugs as a "bottle of milk?"

To provide a slightly-less antiquated response than Jay, only when they come in a container resembling a plastic soda bottle.

[Thry]

Serafín, your first and second options are also commonplace here (though saluda and salúdala, ofc).

[Qwynegold]

I'm just wondering how long before it becomes necessary to specify "cow's milk" in general discourse. Right now, this is a usage I only see among special needs folk (vegan, lactose-intolerant, etc.).

Haha, in my family we used "cow's milk" to refer to milk that comes directly from our relatives' cows, as opposed to processed milk.

[linguoboy]

Went to a game night yesterday evening and everyone there but me (including the real gamer geeks) used dice as the singular of dice.

[clawgrip]

I heard "remember me to" in one of George Carlin's routines when he was making fun of that type of phrase, but that's the only place I've heard it (he mentions it at around 3:28).

[Yng]

Went to a game night yesterday evening and everyone there but me (including the real gamer geeks) used dice as the singular of dice.

the 40s called they want their innovation back

Does anyone in real life say 'die' as the singular except prescriptivists who want something to correct other people on?

[Thry]

Non-native but... don't think so. "Roll the dice" sounds natural to me referring to rolling one dice (but upon second thinking that may be because in Spain we usually roll one dice).

The only place where I'd use die is in "the die is cast" (alea jacta est), but that's that...

[Radius Solis]

Went to a game night yesterday evening and everyone there but me (including the real gamer geeks) used dice as the singular of dice.

the 40s called they want their innovation back

Does anyone in real life say 'die' as the singular except prescriptivists who want something to correct other people on?

Yes, of course there are. It's in my active vocabulary, and I played AD&D for most of a decade, back in the day.

But it's true the word has an odd sort of feel to it. It might be a slight hint of taboo avoidance considering what the verb means; or it might just be that the verb, and the noun "dye", are so much more frequently used than the singular of "dice" that there's a motivation to avoid confusion.

Another issue is that there's more going on with the wordforms than just grammatical number in its typical use. There's a sort of collective/singulative thing going on. This first came to my attention when, one time, I got laughed at for re-pluralizing "die" as "dies"; but, considering what I'd said, I realized I had intended a semantic distinction. I was trying to refer to more than one of the chunks of plastic in question, without treating them as a set - very much in the manner of how "persons" exists as a different pluralization than the usual "people".

So, going out on a limb here a bit, but I would speculate that the four wordforms mentioned fit into a table thusly:

Code: Select all

             SG   PL
collected    dice dice
individuated die  dies

[Drydic]

Die is dying and when it does dice will be another deer.

[Yng]

Your usage as collective/individuated sounds like an innovation, yeah - but I have never heard 'die' used except by people correcting others using 'dice' as both singular and plural (which is well-established). Perhaps 'die' is used by gamers, though - wiktionary suggests that may be the case and I guess it would make sense because of all the manuals using 'die'.

I don't think there's anything taboo-avoidance-y going on. I think it's just that 'dice' doesn't look like, or sound like, a plural form of 'die' (it has /s/ and <-ce> when you'd expect /z/ and <s>), and so was reanalysed as a singular with an unmarked plural.