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The awesome (and awful) nature of natural language: It's strange to ponder the contrast that (1) human minds master fluency of natural language so easily (that is, it is the norm for one's native natural language, and it often happens for additional ones, too), and yet (2) exhaustively documenting it in dictionaries and thesauruses is such a vast task. How does each of useffortlessly know so much that each of us by ourselves is almosthopelessly hard-pressed to write it all down?
The foregoing thought (awesome/awful) also makes me think of the science of natural language acquisition (i.e., humans' attempts to figure out how such acquisition works), where we face the paradox whereby children's vocabulary grows so fast during certain phases (of development) that it doesn't even make sense, from the viewpoint of acquiring lexemes by exposure, that some of these lexemes are acquired at all. The thought is mentioned in one of Pinker's books. My own hunch is that the paradox is resolved by the idea that human knowledge is more triangulated than the exposure notion suggests. Which is to say, some of what humans know is interpolated by triangulation between nodes, involvingfuzzy pattern analysis performed upon the blizzard of neuron firings. I don't pretend to understand or explain that thought entirely; I just have a hunch that it's a component of the truth. Which is to say that I guess my brain triangulated a fuzzy notion of it.
That line of thought is about the contrasts of human knowledge versus communication thereof within any one human mind, but the foregoing thought (awesome/awful)also makes me think of the contrasts of human knowledge versus communication thereofin aggregate, across many human individuals. For any topic that you can name, there are some people who are knowledgeable experts, and there are more who are semi-knowledgeable laypersons, and yet many more who are sadly ignorant about it. But the extent to which the latter two groups canquickly andeasily find acogent yetcomplete summary/overview of (the important upshots of) the knowledge of the first-mentioned group—and ideally one without cost at the point of access, regardless of creation and maintenance costs at upstream points of the value stream (which of course must be paid somehow, but the question is which models for how)—is still lamentably primitive and incomplete in our era. Granted that you can find a sea of low-quality bits and pieces in our era, content-farmed and COI-filled and otherwise, but we still have far to go before we have a really excellent solution as defined herein.
Ontology begins at home. And then never stops. (Lifelong learning.) "As opposed to what?" "Is that the same thing as [X]?" "And things like that." "And so on." "Not to be confused with [X]." "Also known as [Y]." "A type of [Z]."
People who are masterful (in work, in life, in whatever) have cognitive mastery of—that is, familiar grasp with instantaneous application of—such framing and plumbing and wiring; they do not experience the world as just a basket of randomblack boxes, as others often do; rather, they inhabit systems, with some clue of the systems' structure.
Yes, I am aware that this is a waste of my time from various valid viewpoints; but one must understand that I take bites from this apple the way you eat candy from your candy dish:
It'sdiverting (in a polysemically delicious way: temporarily and entertainingly digressive);
It's often trivially easy (which makes the fact that almost no one does ittelling, inan ironic way);
I keep reminding myself that no one cares — which is to say that out of about eight billion meatbags, fewer than about perhaps a hundred thousand or so truly seem to give an actual real logical fuck about avoiding being moronic, where that activity is defined from some angles that are useful and have some important value,^^ whereas the rest are just spitballin bullshit and smashing one another over the head (shooting from the hip, and building ever-better robots to hallucinate yet more confabulated hip-shooting because they're too lazy to spew all the mindless hip-shootery themselves) — but I've been having some trouble strangling my last shred of give-a-fuck about humanity (it keeps stubbornly refusing to choke to death), for whatever reason. Some might say I'm just a sucker, or a pussy, but to my mind it seems that there's no point infast-forwarding from89-seconds-till straight to the plunger-killswitch event itself, and as far as I can tell, most of these other meatbags agree with me on that, even if they don't consider accurate and completereference works to be worth a rat's ass or an ounce ofshit.
The standard pros and cons apply. For example:
Cons:
Cons: fuck əm: leave əm to their own devices, their just deserts, handwave etc
Pros:
Pros: fuck əm: put əm to shame, run rings around əm, over and over and over again
Granted that you can't shame someone who is shameless, which is to say, unshameable. But you can reveal their state for the lols.
Pros: be the change you wish to see; model the state you wish to handwave etc
Pros: amuse oneself, build a shelf, note to shelf, handicraft handwave etc
Cumulative weighting: current status: continue embarrassing them; continuerelishing this special species ofvicarious embarrassment for them, as a counterweight to the tiresome smugness and self-righteousness that they often exhibit (albeit often merelyoverprotestively, as a defense mechanism)
Addendum, a month or so later: my mind detects the presence of analogy with a seed or microbe landing on fertile soil nearly alone (i.e., one of very few landing there): there is so much potential for the propagation of its genome within this space (i.e., generation of biomass) — essentially an amazing magnitude of such potential — but only because of, and precisely because of, the somewhat surprising lack of any competition from other seeds or microbeswhere there ought to have been more, according to some respectably sensible modeling. Thus, somewhat surprising, and from some viewpoints counterintuitive, although probably not paradoxical if enough circumspection can be arranged. But there is a rub there, right in that spot. The amount of zen or zenlike whatever that it takes, both to see and to accept the reason for that dearth (upon the earth), is problematic for someone who is able to detect the existence of the dearth.
Also: Here's a useful TLDR: lots of people do lots ofpastimes that don't produce anyvalue except for the personthemself, plus or minus theirhousehold, and that's fine: they're doing it for their own pleasure/happiness/amusement, which is fine (e.g., crosswords, tetris, sudoku, puzzles, reading fiction, streaming shows or movies, videogaming, spectating on Twitch, and on and on). My own analogue/counterpart just happens to be a pastime with theincidental effects of (1)improving certainresources of thecommons (bonus), (2) having somenotetaking effects forpersonal information management/personal knowledge management (bonus), and so on. My Wikimedian pastimes areat least asjustifiable as anyone else's pastimes, and from some viewpoints,more so.
'Sides which, it's just as well that I'm willing, because there areso many who needso much help; SZ has subclasses, one of which is handwave-spare-their-feelings·related
There is so much blatant stupidity here, which in many cases lasts many years before being corrected (e.g., 5, 10, 15), that indeed SZ is the only explanation for why I keepnot leaving. A funny little epistemic situation. TBD how it plays out.^
Each visit starts with just a bite but of course "betcha can't eat just one";
I know I should stop, but the bites are tasty and (like many other people) I like me somecomfort food, to take a diversion and blow off some stress;
Because procrastination (e.g., whether betweensets or [sometimes alas] instead of them);
Set examples of whatcan be achieved at Wiktionary, regardless of whether the worldbothers to achieve it at Wiktionary;
During online meetings, I may sometimes multitask when listening to the presentation is only taking half of my cognitive bandwidth (I am far from alone in this);
On the other hand, after a long session of work that tookall of my cognitive bandwidth (plus mopped the floor with it), it helps to decompress for a few moments with something constructive but also pretty easy. The cognitive equivalent of thecooldown walk after a long race. Regarding any counterargument about wasting time: hey, any physical trainer can tell you that skipping the tapering/cooldown is false economy.
A slightly paradoxical inverse relationship: sometimes the more insanely chaotic things get IRL, the more Iblow off steam by making some Wiktionary edits, whereasyou would think that it might be less. But I do it for the short bursts of escapism. My brain is built to pay close and calm attention to one mental landscape for a long time on end — both longer and closer than most other people's, in various ways, more often than not. The more the rest of the world IRL insists on acting like twitchy/tweaky toddlers with ADHD who are on crack — a phenomenon that has gotten noticeably worse in the 21st century, by the way, although it wasn't invented in this century — the more I need to take some breaks from their ceaseless error-riddled bullshit. It's ajourney and it's aprocess: one of putting up with as much as one can find a way to manage to put up with.
Things likeChatGPT, as impressive as they are (regarding their nature, and the nature of their output, as far as it goes), are mereconfabulatory mechanical ducks (and dangerous ones at that,buzzsaws with no guards and no PPE); what will be more helpful is when they are hitched to (wired up in sequence with) semantic/ontologic sanity tests, and Wiktionary and Wikipedia can help with that, if they are built well enough. (In other words, just as AI builders already know thatworld models for physics might helpfully coexist and interact with LLMs and SLMs, ontologic models that capture the dynamically sketched mental ontologies that humans use innatural language seem like they might helpfully coexist and interact with LLMs and SLMs.)
The above concerns Wiktionary'smainspace. Here's a bit of note about thisuserspace, in all seriousness (notwithstanding all the jokery elsewhere herein): This is my place to go swimming and stretch my legs all the way out, neverpulling any punches orwasting half the water down the drain. Elsewhere I must (constantly), but not here in my littlefishpond. Hopefully, dear reader, you'll gather that I'mspeaking of swimming in a nonaquatic way. In this pond I explore all the way out to the outermost limits of my ability toabstract, in some places herein. In other spots I also justclown around, but there is usually a layer ofabstraction that is tingling while I do so. The common theme that you may detect isfactiveness — there is an external reality that I am mapping as hard as the mapmaking will take me (that is, mappingmy ass off,if you will, and some ofyou will more than others). Mind yourmap–territory relations, dear reader; your safety (and mine, and that of all) may depend on whether humans can do soto a sufficient extent (even justhalfway might be enough).
PS: The degree to whichyou find myuserspace worthreading orskimming — anywhere fromnot at allup tosomewhat — will vary quite widely depending on whoyou are. (Carrollian caterpillar's aside:whoareyou?) My userspace is of a weirdgenre that has no name yet. It is asandbox containing a mixture of (1) notes to self; (1a) partially redacted notes to self; (2) stuff that is holding my interest in recent days and that I am experimenting with writingexplications of because (2a) my own self later could possibly find them partly interesting and partly useful too, as feedstock for future extensibility (possible later iterations), and (2b) other people could possibly find them partly interesting and partly useful too; (3) parametricsandboxing (or in some casesbeatboxing) that sometimes happens to bepartially andcoincidentallypoeticness-adjacent; (4) partAdvent calendar;^ and (5)part other shit that I lack time and reason to list exhaustively here becausehandwave etc.
PS: I'm aware that some of these characters are one-dimensional, and that's OK; as with various other semijocular genres, it's accepted that some of the characters are developed with less depth than others. Relatedly, I well realize that some people will be annoyed by the way my scribblings loop back to themes and turns of phrase repeatedly. Closing circuits,shorting them out for kicks sometimes just to see the spark, and recognizing or tracing connections and finding common ground (riding the bus) is part of what this odd genre does. To escape the forms of a genre, one can choose not to read, view, or listen (choosing something else instead), or one can do some more shorting and pull in other regions of material that formerly were insulated. Those are the sorts of options that are available if one wants a change of scenery.
PPS: Oneaspect of theAdvent calendar aspect is theconsequence that this genre is ahypertext-native genre, to the point that there's no reason even to read a lot of this page at all ifone is not going to hover, click, or tap (thus,preview orclick through), which I find funny, because I've ended up surprising myself in that respect.
PPPS: TheAdvent calendar aspect works excellently on the desktop version of the site when being run on a good late-model machine; it doesn't work as well on the mobile version of the site, because that version has bugs regarding how the browser's back button's behavior operates (or at least iOS's running of it does). The hypertext itself is well-formed, irrespective of which instance or implementation is used to run it; the instances and implementations for running it will inevitably come and go over the years; there'd better continue to be at least one version of the site that works properly, because if that condition goes away, it will be a sad day in handwaveland, andlook what you've gone and done, you've made baby Jesus cry.
For internal use only:
Reminders: jotted at 2022-03 (SZ); 2024-02-05 (shittiness calibration)
There are leaves, and there are trees, and then there are forests; there are byways and then there are highways (and landmarks). A personis not a motorist-trip, although one can be said tobe many such trips,in a manner of speaking.*
Then:
On another level of why: Just take a look around, and see how low the fruit is hanging.It's everywhere you look, if you know what you are looking at. If one can amuse oneself with crosswords or sudoku or tetris or puzzles, with no betterment of the outside world thereby, then one can also amuse oneself here, and simultaneously help build a better set of free resources for the rest of the world. Plus, I just enjoy chipping away at ignorance, and I enjoy continually refining my own and others' command of things like ontology, semantic relations (which amount to the same thing), and critical thinking. For various reasons, I do nonetheless go back and forth on whether to simply stop bothering to contribute to Wiktionary at all, but so far I keep landing on continuing, because a fact about most paywalled reference works, as regards most contexts, is that almost nobody uses them despite pretending that they do, which leaves Wiktionary and Wikipedia as the best places where correct information needs to be/exist, to be found when most people go goo-goo-googling their way through life (both their work life and their personal life; emphasis on thegoo-goo, in terms of epistemologic prowess). I should clarify here, though, that people who aren't foolish (and exactly how narrow of a cohort isthat, one might well ask) will and should consult good-quality noncrowdsourced reference worksfirst and then consult Wiktionary and Wikipediain addition to them; and besides the various quite nice ones that areavailable for free, depending on one's location (e.g.,e.g.,e.g.,e.g.,e.g.), anyone who is notdestitute should alsopony up for access to the ones that cost abit of money but not much, and anyone who can pay to send their kids to expensive schools but can't fork over abit more for the rest (that cost somewhat more) is not as clever as they might think.
You don't have to not feed or not husband/shepherd; rather, you just have to do it right.
Analogue: Anyone with half a head can tell you: By far, the best way to treathardware disease is to prevent it.
Corollary: Yougotta keep shitoutta there. Corollary: Ralph said that the doctor said that his nose wouldn't bleed if he'd keep his finger outta there.
Corollary: Swine and cattle need feeding—and they love it too; and it's fun to feed them. (Regarding cows' barnyard cousins, the hogs,they often talk about wasting one's time and annoying the pig, but the opposite is also true: a pig loves to eat and a swineherd likes to feed him. The difference between love and annoyance lies merely in what's on the menu today.) And it's OK for the feed mixer/blender to keep vitamin powder canisters in thefeedroom, but the measuring cup is an important intermediary between the shelf and the bin. What the animal knows or experiences is tastiness and healthiness. She knows not of other stuff, and doesn't want to, or need to.
Corollary: When the system fails and there's a nail in there, why doesn't she realize it before she swallows?
It'sbecause reasons.She doesn't eat quite like we eat. And that's only natural, and she is quite lovable (that is, we love her anyway), although it inherently predisposes her kind to GI distress. (Even in a world without wire and nails there are sticks and stones and thorns.)
Corollary: Who is each person who helps her, either preventively or Tx-wise? Are they a farmer, a rancher, a herder, a vet tech, or a vet?
Corollary of the fact that she doesn't eat quite like we eat: the fact that she doesn't eat quite like we eat doesn't mean that she's not good at eating; after all, on some dimensions, she'll kick your ass at eating; for example, she'll eat morejust for breakfast than you'll eat all day (and kicking someone's ass is also eating someone for breakfast, or eating their lunch). It also does not mean that the feeding of her is inherently unprofitable, even though our world is inherently unstickandstonable. Multiple dimensions of quality exist for the nature of the eating and feeding.
Corollary: For mere herders who were hired to reduce the incidence ofhardware disease, what are the scope and parameters of that process? They are determined by its constraints. A good engineer can tell you the difference between a problem and a constraint. It'sserene.
Counterpoint: Tabby knows a degree of cheat: he's (ever)clever with alever. You don't have to not lift, you just have to do it right. It's just acoinstantiation of whatthey say: Salix ventorum.
— *Refined pearl diversion saves your time and placates the pig. Hog husbandry varies. YMMV.
PS: Loving the sun is one thing; chasing the sun is another. I sometimes wonder whether the static will snow me under. If I ever disappear, that's where I'll have gone.
In a world of more than a billion English speakers (E1L and ESL/EFL), these are some of the many many words that are attested in many publications (scores, hundreds, thousands) but yet not one single person has ever yet bothered to enter them in any nonpersonal dictionary (that is, neither in any reference work dictionary nor in any of the majorCOTS spellcheck dictionaries in extremely widely used apps (MS Office, major browsers, and similar);
Regarding "yet": that is, as of the moment that I encountered them as they stood in the way of gettingmy work done.
I don't even have time to enter each one as I encounter it, because there are so frickinmany of them; I don't any longer want to solely add them to the sea/ocean ofoughta alone (pending entry later), because when that was all I did then I did not have them marked as shortlisted for entry later (during downtime) (that is, I would lose track of them in the sea/ocean of oughta, and would have to find them again by repeated re-skimming); thus, list them here first, as mere chaotic triage (which BTW is apparently all the more that most people'sentire cognitive/conscious experience is, judging from the evidence), which allows for the shortlisting function as well.
Corollary: If it is here, then yes, it is already attested (in technical content if not lay chatter), which is why it is here.
Another corollary: People who want to build a competent COTS spellcheck dictionary for English (as opposed to incompetent ones, such as those that ship with MS Office and major browser apps) would do pretty well if they took the population of en-Wiktionary entries that have H2 English, subtracted things such asthis,this, andthis, and dumped to a .DIC file. It wouldn't be perfect, but it'd be much better than any spellcheck dictionary that Big Tech has supplied so far.
Is it odd that the most comprehensive dictionary of the English language in existence — the English Wiktionary·ʷᵖ — has more than half a million headwords (way more than even the OED or MWU have·ʷᵖ), and yet one can still easily find another workaday, well-attested word to add to it almost every single time one cracks a book, newspaper, or magazine (digital or print)? It strikes me as counterintuitive. And yet here we are.
This little set has special academic interest for old no-eyes, in ways that some percentage of needlers may possibly lack the circuitry even to conceive: ways that are interesting and also pseudointeresting aka pseudo-interesting
To a person blind since birth, a discussion of a comparison offorest green withjade green might perhaps mean nothing except "I realize that they're comparing and contrasting two members of a set or class" (but not "I can see what they mean, or I can envision what they mean"); and so it might possibly be with this setas well,in a way (a way that is interesting and also pseudointeresting aka pseudo-interesting)
A component of this discussion: you can't explore the juncture of poignancy and pseudopoignancy without exploring the juncture ofmaudlinness and pseudomaudlinness
Saw it in the wild today, where it was unremarkable within a logical context. I'll enter it sometime if the spirit moves me. Of course it has absolutely zero hits in OneLook as of this writing, because 99.9999% of humans don't actually give a shit about lexicography even though a sizable subset of that sample (perhaps 5% to 15% thereof?) falselyclaim that they care about it. Liars are legion.^
As of this writing, Wikidata conflates each pair (eachray/radiation pair) into a single UID, at least for several of these pairs (I didn't check them all yet).
I can fix that by a round of deconflation bothering, if I decide to spend the pastime on it.
"I just realized that Wikipedia covers this all nicely atw:binary prefix and atw:Template:Bit and byte prefixes. This is actually a project that will take me some hours at Wiktionary to cover them properly. I hope I will do this soon."
Worked up here but then redacted. F 'em. I can sense outlines of what it's all about. But it is not for here and now though. All I'll say here for now is that humans make their own beds, and on top of that fact, some people do a lot more bedmaking than others do.
PS: The next day: It's weird that yesterday I stepped through my redacted little snit (above) and then this morning I was skimming (the transcript of) Krugman's and Ritholtz's recent conversation and I ended up glancing as well at Smith's mentions (circa 2021) ofepistemic trespassing andepistemic squatting, and the open question of how one even defines the boundaries thereof or therebetween. It'sall one, all of this jam session. It has to do with the boundaries and limits of expertise (which is not the same as any so-called death of expertise: merely a logical modulation regardinghow to do it right), and how the IT of the 21st century has forced humans torecombobulate themselves regarding that ball of wax.
pill+cam: a camera in the form of a pill, such as those used for video capsule endoscopy (since 2001)
Hypernym:smart pill in its sense of any electronic device in the form of a pill — a field of endeavour with a lot of developments in the pipeline in the 2020s (and some developments in the pipeline are further along in the movement than others, and some movements are smoother than others lol)
Assemble citations of the naturalized usage and enter it
I doubt that I'll get around to doing so, but at least I noted it here as something that anyone could do anytime anyone was willing
PS:dunkelflaute andglobal dimming are conceptually separate/independent things that might overlap in the sense that the latter can perhaps influence the former — anyclimate change can potentially alter the average weather patterns in any region — butdunkelflaute andglobal dimming have a shared parameter:shading of thesunshine, in one way or another
There are various well-trod pathways in human thought that touch on themes such as (1) "it's funny they call it common sense because it ain't really common" or (2) "sometimes we ought tothink outside the box, and common sense (being orthodox) doesn't incorporate enough ofthat dimension."
Notwithstanding the fact that various authors have lightlyproprialized·proprialized·proprialization the collocationuncommon sense by making it the title of their books or articles, it remains enough of a lexicalized collocation ofcommon noun nature (albeit mildly polysemic) that it ought to be handled by dictionaries. Perhaps Wiktionary will be one of them that handles it, eventually.
PS: Somepathways are morehoof-trod than others, and somecommons are more heavily grazed than others.
basal cognition — cognition in cells and tissues outside neural circuits and indeed not requiring brain tissue — explained by Jacobsen 2024 (https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0224-44), which asserts that the name for the concept was coined by Lyon in 2018
Well established usage;RSs are readily available for citations.
As some of those RSs explain — and it had already seemed obvious to me (in my own mind) before I ever had seen any writeups about it (recently) —food swamps are probably a larger problem thanfood deserts in the United States because they are more common/widespread. The usual problem that most Americans face in this regard is not that they cannot obtain affordable vegetables anywhere nearby — rather, it is that they are inundated with foods of thejunk food andultraprocessed food types on top of the basic meats and vegetables and fruits that are also easily enough available. Having so much choice available is not a "problem" except for in one (big/important) respect — it makes it difficult to do the right thing when one is stressed out in daily life and food offers basically a form of substance misuse as a crutch for dealing with stress. It is not a substance use disorder, but in the long term, the cumulative track record of food choices has a huge effect on health (exposure × duration of exposure; exposure × number of exposure instances).
PS: The obvious corollary that some job roles are paid to vigorously deny: it isprofitable to sell delicious things to people who definitely want that delicious thing (for the businessperson, it's the perfect combination of high product desirability plus high-volume demand potential), and this fact is not anentirely different theme from thedrug dealer class of instances. But you cannotprohibition your way out of it when the instance isfood, as opposed tohard drugs. This fact makes it a difficult problem for policy design. Just because the challenge/problem exists doesn't mean that any easy answer/solution does. Themes likenudging andnannying andregulatory burden inevitably come up, because outright prohibition andcommand and control would be untenable (unless you worship or emulate people with names like Kim Something or Other).
Encountered incidentally, a sense of the termtea bag homologous to the lunch bag of asack lunch, no doubt the bag in which to carry a snack for thetea break. It seems to be rare, though, as indicated by preliminary search results so far.
Maybe I'll enter it later, if I can scare up some more attestations without the main sense of the term drowning them out in my search results.
There is now (here in the age of commercial 3D printing) a sense of the adjectivepostprint referring to any of the (myriad)postprocessing steps for 3D-printed objects.
Regarding Stabilizer aka Stabiliser, a breed of cattle: so far, WT and WP don't enter it yet (but WP has a red link waiting for it, within a list of cattle breeds), and I'm not worried about how soon they add coverage of it, but I wrote it here because I experienced aTOT moment in trying to recall it, and those annoy me, and writing it here will probably save me from reexperiencing the same one later (the only thing worse than TOT items is having the same TOT item repeatedly).
PS: One of the interesting things about this term,radio room, is that it strikes the public as dated and yet it remains in current use anyway (by the people who run such rooms; as the attestations show). This is unsurprising, though, as one can detect that such inertia of established terms is not rare, if one bothers to pay attention when one sees it.
It is likely that the name for political and marketingspin began by metaphor with putting some spin on a thrown ball (e.g., baseballs ascurveballs and other tricky pitches, oblong footballs stabilized by rotation in flight). In American English (most especially in its turns of phrase that originated in the 20th century), baseball metaphors (and othersportsball metaphors) are common in spheres such as business and politics (where peopleplay hardball, playinside baseball,throw someone a curve, and so on). Someone who delves intoRSs, to find out whether any support is given there for the assertion of political and marketingspin's name having come from that metaphor, might be able to dig some up. I have a few dictionaries of idioms that should be consulted if I ever bother with this particular item. WP s.v.Spin (propaganda) doesn't yet have any assertion of the origin nor any reference citation about it, as far as my hasty skim today found, but that's not at all surprising, simply because it's only WP after all, and all WP is is whateverRandy in Boise happens to have bothered with yet.
Admittedly the metaphor of spinning X into Y (at thespinning wheel) also suggests itself in connection with political and marketingspin, when it comes tospinning a tale, especially spinning atall tale. Quite true, but my gut still leans toward the spin on acurveball as the likely origin of thespin that aspin doctor applies to an event, because it is widely said that they "put some spin on it", which is clearly from thesportsball metaphor and not the fiber-spinning metaphor.
I took a sniff at PDEI 2e (Gulland and Hinds-Howell 2001), but its entry forspin doctor is tied todoctor/Medicine and gives nothing on explainingspin. Its entry formoney spinner is tied toMoney and gives nothing on explaining the spinning, but I've no doubt that the metaphor is fiber-spinning. This unmistakablyRumpelstiltskinish scent is obliquely but helpfullyreinforced by Wiktionary's assertion that a sense ofmoney spinner is (syn)money spider, which is (syn)sheet weaver, and we all know that spidersspin webs from their silk and thus some of them are calledweavers. One fact that this thread's (heh) existence demonstrates is that where Devlin cites Fowler in claiming that everyone both should and can figure out such shit (as this) for themselves, he's not wrong about the leg of the elephant that he's touching, even though he's wrong about the wider elephant. Thehappy medium is that recognizing the original underlying metaphor underpinning any given idiom is in fact something that natural language speakers both should and can do for themselves to a large degree, especially when duly cross-checking their own hypotheses and remaining consciously and humbly on guard againstfolk etymology misapprehensions. You don't have to not lift, you just have to do it right. Furthermore, as for abdicating the responsibility, it is one thing for a given person to decide that they can't do it because they know (about themselves) that they don't have much of a head for it — OK, that makes sense and is fair, if they're in fact right about that assessment (of themselves) — but it would be another thing to claim that almost no one else has the authority or standing to do it, either, according to some misapprehension that only certain experts are expert enough to have the epistemic authority even to attempt it. Such misapprehensions sometimescrop up at places such as WP and WT (at the interfaces ofw:WP:Verify andw:WP:OR andw:WP:Blue), but the appropriate level of clearance is duly cross-checking hypotheses and remaining consciously and humbly on guard againstfolk etymology misapprehensions — not anyappeal to authority per se. Hell, if "the authorities" want to build dictionaries and thesauri and encyclopedias that render WT and WP superfluous, they're more than welcome to get busymaking with such output (and have been welcome for 20-plus years now).I don't see any flying cars around, do you? I see a 2001 Toyota Camry,as it were, yes, and it's a perfectly fine car (as far as it goes), but it ain't flyin me to the moon meanwhile.
Apparently many people either trollishly or thickheadedly misapprehend that this phrase must have something to do with exceeding the speed of light; they are either trollsyanking someone's chain or duncesa few Xs short of a Y.
Speaking of semantic degradation and human thickheadedness and outrunning things, outrunning human thickheadednesswas mentioned earlier.
Quoted fromWP s.v. polysemy as follows. Initial cursory checks see attestations. At some point I willrun out of steam on, ortime for,fucking with them, but they can sit here and stew inredness for a while if that happens:
autohyponymy, where the basic sense leads to a specialised sense (from "drinking (anything)" to "drinking (alcohol)")
automeronymy, where the basic sense leads to a subpart sense (from "door (whole structure)" to "door (panel)")
up stakes(verb), as a well-known variant ofpull up stakes andup sticks (well-known in AmE; possibly in other varieties too) (attestations are demonstrated by, for example, www.google.com/search?&q="who+upped+stakes")
cot:get up early (shared parameter: morning prep to get ready for a long-ass day) (i.e., if you're planning to F with them, then you'd better get up early and pack a lunch)
Relatedly: The definition set (sense population) atsee you in hell is too close to &lit alone at the moment — needs one bit of augmentation, because in many (albeit not all) uses of this idiom, there is a semantic theme of "you may defeat me butyou'll get yours too" — which is the cognitive setup for how the two antagonists will both be in hell when they next meet. [Update many months later: I was back in that neighborhood again, so I fixed it.]
PS — the foregoing assumes a parametric environment in which the speaker freely asserts their ownstonecoldbadassery. "Yeah, I'm one bad mthrfr, you got that right. I'm not denying that I'll be in hell — and I'll damn sure see your ass there, too, mthrfr."
Theme of this subclass: They are all definitely attested (per ghits), and furthermore I think many of them probably would pass CFI (with the right corpus sifting), but I am not yet well enough versed in the advanced art ofquickly confirming that hypothesis for any given term (in cases where mere/trivial googling and Google Ngram-ing is not quite enough), and thus it is not worthwhile to me to pursue them right now; if I improve my skills in that regard (sometime), reassess later; in the meantime, if anyone with those higher skills wants to enter any of them, godspeed:
Population of this subclass:
diagrammably (diagrammable+-ly) — a lexical gap that has only rarely been filled by nonce inflection — so rarely that meeting WT:CFI is wobbly enough not to bother with entering it
anticipably (anticipable+-ly) — a lexical gap that has only rarely been filled by nonce inflection — so rarely that meeting WT:CFI is wobbly enough not to bother with entering it
MWU enters each one, although not all of their alt forms
Low priority for me at WT, because: I'm notknee-deep in the content that uses these terms; as for the rest of the world, they can't even be arsed to care
Others, done:
✓a bit of empiricism
A glance atsuperempirical prompted the thought that a glance in the corpus would no doubt find thatultraempirical akaultra-empirical andhyperempirical akahyper-empirical would be plenty well enough attested albeit uncommon. Yup, the gut was right as usual. But I won't bother to enter themfor now because no one else on Earth can bearsed either and handwave etc.
I'm more practiced and thus both faster and better than I used to be when I noted those as to-do items; once I finally chose to do them, they only took a few minutes within my current state.
Why am I literally the only lexicographer on Earth who has ever yet given a shit about these?fta
Should I continue to care? If so, why, and if not, why not? What are the mechanisms by which humans continue to care about Sisyphean shit?Discuss.^
I have thoughts about this, and maybe someday I'll collect them herein. It's the same set of underlying forces as withoatlage,ryelage, et al. It may not be worth belaboring, because the problem does have bounds: the population of overlooked terms does have its limits. Just morepetulance management, lol.
✓(archaic)day man,day-man,dayman — a worker paid by the day — which is to say, aday laborer — OED knows (it enters the solid form of the compound noun); MWU too (accessed 2023-06-01); the rest of the lot are clueless. Evans 1971 contains attestations of the hyphenated form in the plural. At the moment this one falls into a subclass of "I won't bother right now, since most of the world hasn't bothered either." Humans run their mouths an awful lot about dictionaries, considering that 99.9999% of them shirk the load of even basic lexicographic recording of their own language. An example I just touched: Is there any dictionary in the world other than Wiktionary that concisely ties together thehyperlinked semantic relations ofanagram,antigram, andsynanagram? Even Wiktionary didn't until today. At least now one of them does, although evidently no other yet. PS: Note to self: Regarding a day-man, when you're at it, while you're at it, make sure thatman-day is listed as rel. You're the only nonmachine mthrfr on earth who'll bother, and the relation is both etymonic and semantic, as well as dirt-obvious, as the cost of a day-man per day is a man-day's worth, and the output that it pays for is a man-day. What it's worth is a fair question, but one that gets answered with an unfair answer whenever the payer can get away with it. Hogs aren't stupid in all ways; just some.
✓Whereasday shift andnight shift are a broad dichotomy (sometimes but often not corresponding strictly to 2 × 12 = 24), the trichotomy offirst shift,second shift, andthird shift (usually corresponding strictly to 3 × 8 = 24) has been and is so durably important inwork life that those three terms meet WT:CFI.
✓Do the needful.
✓A few more intestinal segment connections: Meeting WT:CFI for the following is probably a cake walk (confirm that), but regardless, my motivation for bothering to enter them is ebbed at the moment:
✓drayloads of cargo; production by thedrayload: This shortlist is a case ofshooting fish in a barrel; just about every time I so much as pick up a book or newspaper (the digital ones and otherwise) I encounter another good solid word that should long since be in any good dictionary and yet is in none or hardly any. Which of course brings to mind the wordpathetic. The obviouscot items:wagonload,cartload,truckload,LTL, in the first 3 seconds, before I even switch my brain on.
✓specialty crop — this one is an interesting polysemic (broader/narrower)term of art (technical term), and it's one that meets Wiktionary's CFI and is worth having its senses boiled to their essences at a place like Wiktionary. Some herb essences are more essential than others.
✓let it be andleave it be have synonyms oflet it alone andleave it alone, certainly in AmE and possibly in other varieties too. Their degree of formality or informality (e.g., casual, colloquial) can be adjudicated and labeled. At the moment I am placing them in this bucket as red things that I might bluen someday.
✓Add 3 citations, from among the many available attestations
PS — In my haste with the following forms, I accidentally entered some adj and adv forms before checking which ones have an attestation level that is marginal or zero; this is a fuckup for the "Shortlisted toward oughta" section, whose main concept is to be a holding pen (queue) for definitely attested forms. Checkmarks below indicate "yup, enough good attestations are seen [at least three; in some cases, hundreds]". The obvious ones are not reevaluated here.
Those few red links are no loss, even if you're speaking solely in an allowlisted vocabulary, because the general case of adjectives and adverbs is that anything said or done Adj-X-ly is donein an Adj-X way, whichgets the job done adequately tersely.
PS: yes, I know, I'm just a lousy stinkin loopcloser; but: CUNH3LL lol
Corollary: an endless list of loops needing closing sets up a potential for anendless loop of loop closing
It could make oneloopy if one weren't equipped with extraloopular loops that deloop the relooping
Lol fta
This loop loops back to a loop in which interlooped scarcity is contemplated, one of the potholders of which isbottomless venality of a sort. Fortunately though, at least,loop the loop.↑⟳↓
the only wrinkle is variable opdef ofsubordinate clause: look into how much buy-in there is for the alternative schema in which it is cohypo torelative clause rather than hyper to it
well, yes-but: fuck əm, because if they suck so bad atgrammarizing anyway, then they most likely can't even articulate (nor think clearly about) the semantic relations within their own grammarizing schema, anyway
As late as 2024,·2024-03-18 almost no dictionaries enterhistotype except Wiktionary. I won't list the many that failed to enter it and the single other one that I found that did enter it, except that I will point out that not even theNCI Dictionaries did.
These are topics for which English, as of the time of their entry in this list, does not have an established term but for which it probably ought to, considering the socioeconomic importance of the topic. They are thus topics that are worth a word, in more than one sense: worth having a term for, and worthhaving a word about (i.e., worth discussing).
sustainwashing =sustain +washing [Update: It turns out that the word already existed when I added it here, but it is new enough that I hadn't heard anyone use it yet. Google ghits are incipient but may be predicted to increase.] = thesustainability analogue ofgreenwashing (or subset thereof, in ecologic subsenses). The problem can often be real, even though there must always be some practical limit to how close to ideal/perfect any real-world process can get. But the distinction is gross deception (or not), including gross self-deception (or not).
humanewashing =humane +washing [Update: It turns out that the word already existed when I added it here, but it is new enough that I hadn't heard anyone use it yet. Google already shows 10k ghits, corresponding to many real attestations.] = thehumaneness (animal welfare) analogue ofgreenwashing. The problem can often be real, even though there must always be some practical limit to how close to ideal/perfect any real-world process can get. But the distinction is gross deception (or not), including gross self-deception (or not).
One of the great advantages, and chief pleasures, of a hyperlinked dictionary is that the pervasive polysemy and homonymy (especially acronymic homonymy) of natural language can be bridged to a convenient degree: there is often no good reason (besides haste in editing) not to link to particular word senses rather than to the top of an entry—most especially a long-ass entry, but in fact almost any entry. Thus,cut to the chase with link landing.
Such link targeting precision has two classes of applications, both interesting: (1) as both a substantial pedagogic aid and a substantial convenience to the human users (net: betteruser experience on Wiktionary), and (2) perhaps as a sort of de facto semantic map for the benefit of machines who areNLPingtheir asses off, trying to speak human languages (or at least topull a mechanical duck or idiot savant in specious simulation of that trick). For the human users, one of the components of the aid and convenience is that the hover-popups over the link are much more useful when the link is sufficiently targeted. Under that condition, they are often capable of providing on-hover short glosses of word meanings without the user even leaving the present page view. That's a whole other level of usefulness to a human user beyond the mere implication of "here's a link to what that means, if you feel like packing a lunch for the trek after the landing (as it were, cognitively)." But even without that consideration (as for example onmobile), to click a link and actually land where the semantics should take you, instead of in the lobby at the front desk with a thicc-ass fine-print directory and a long walk down the hall in front ofyou, as it were, is such anobvious improvement overyour basic basic-ass wikilink.
The main tools available to us for this purpose are (1) the anchor-link syntax of wikilinking generally (like [[this#Pronoun|this]]), which is delicious and which has seamless interwiki operability with Wikipedia (i.e., as a target to send to from there), but which is limited to subheading level of targeting precision (rather than sense-wise level); (2)template:senseid, which is delicious,albeit of limited interwiki integration with Wikipediaand I just learned that it works both intrawiki and interwiki, as long as you use the "English:_" interfix; and (3)template:anchor, which has seamless interwiki operability with Wikipedia and any degree of targeting precision, although one better perhaps explain oneself when invoking it (for example, "<!--interwiki link target-->"), lest other editors feel some misplaced need to challenge its use. Fortunately, a link to Wiktionary from Wikipedia usually is precise enough just by use of the anchor to a subheading (#), so the latter consideration can be neatly side-stepped.
Oneacknowledgeable disadvantage of this level of construction of the dictionary's wikitext is that the wikitext is somewhat less inviting to newbie editors (i.e., new to wikitext markup), but (1) that speedbump is clearly solvable if a goodWiktionary:VisualEditor should be made available (as it is for Wikipedia), and (2) besides, aren't we all, by now, quite tired of the argument that content development should be hamstrung by the limitations of any given app or content management system? Did any inventors of the typewriter leave off the "H" key and then say to their clients, "Well, if you weregood (and worthy of using my "fine" invention), you would simply internalize the flaw, and decide to just avoid using any words with the letterh in them"? No. That's abass-ackwards attitude. So link away, with precision targeting. Right down the chimney from 10klicks away, as it were.
Anotheracknowledgeable aspect of this level of construction of the dictionary's wikitext is that it represents a vast mountain of potential work to do (or a vast plain of fruit to harvest) and thus will not get done (i.e., become finished) anytime soon. That's fine. I submit that we should nonetheless improve incrementally in this direction (anyway/regardless) and allow the bits that have been achieved so far to serve as exemplars of the goal, role models for emulation in further incremental improvements of the same type. It is conceivable that AI may become good enough to start helping (to harvest the vast orchards), but I'm not holding my breath regarding how soon that might happen. There's a lot of obtuseness and a lot of not-my-problem-ism around to get in the way of that (among both the AIs and the humans who seek to improve and apply them), and those factors don't promise to disperse anytime soon.
TL;DR: The TL;DR version of this context is that some people think that Wiktionaryitself needs to be entirely and exclusively the TL;DR version of metalanguage, whereas others see additional use cases besides that one. Theskins idea would solve the discrepancy. In the meantime, this vessel exists for the nonlive content, should it ever be of interest to anyone anywhere later and should it ever become live later.
This distinction (i.e., valid insights but sacrificed to terseness), and the question of setting its cutoff threshold, raises the possibility of building a unified Wiktionary with content that is XML tagged for multiple output skins, with XSL/XSLT filtering for each skin:
… with each skin displaying a different filtered subset of theunified content dataset.
A common theme of a college dictionary's use case (i.e., of its chief user persona's needs) is "just give me theCliffsNotes version and spare me from encountering anything else." Wiktionary has never yet been sure whether it aims to be like a college dictionary or like an unabridged. It depends on which Wiktionarian's opinion overrules which other's opinion (and some would pick a third option, anadvanced learner's). Most of them agree that a goal in any case is comprehensiveness of entryexistence, if not entrydevelopment. Thus, in the respect of entering any descriptively valid lexeme—as opposed to avoiding entering countless rare lexemes, which is what print dictionaries were forced by practical necessity to do (for page-count reasons); but in contrast, how much to say about any particular lexeme, that is, how much to write inside any particular entry, is (at Wiktionary) currently subject to each person's personal calibration about whatthey find to be too much information, which they perhaps assume is too much information for anyone else as well, and that assumption is (as I duly grant it) correct for at least 70% or 80% of instances and persons, which makes it an acceptableheuristic, but it is of course nonetheless still aprocrustean bed. The idea of various skins would be the much better solution instead of that procrustean heuristic. But it is unlikely that I myself will ever be the one to make it happen, by cajoling everyone else into building it. In the meantime, I may choose to capture here some of the bits and pieces that the procrustean bed chopped off. Why? Various reasons: (1) because they're cognitively interesting, fun for some minds; (2) because maybe they'll get reexported back to live content someday, if an appropriate vessel is ever built to receive them; (3) in short, for the same reasons why good content management systems provide various ways to save potentially useful (i.e.,reuseful,reusable) bits of content from the cutting room floor.
If you need to write in the course of your job and have it seem like you're an informed and careful writer (even if you're not), don't rely on Wiktionary alone, which is not allowed to advise you completely in that respect; see some other excellent resources such as (for example)American Heritage Dictionary (which has many great usage notes). But Wiktionary will especially help you at spellcheck and sense check for technical vocabulary, though, because it is much better at entering valid words that other dictionaries (reference work type and off-the-shelf spellcheck type) fail miserably at covering (the latter unaccountably, except via chronic incompetent blind spots in management at software companies). Wiktionary's coverage of spelling is excellent; its coverage of word senses is less so (still has plenty of gaps), but is continually improving.
The relevance or irrelevance of any of the entries hereproceeds from the current state (that is, state of conditions) of which analytical level is operative; none of them are irrelevant onall ontologic channels, and minds that are capable of tuning to multiple ontologic channels simultaneously can see both the relevances and the irrelevances of any entry simultaneously, whereas ones that are not can see only the irrelevances and thus have the experience of perceiving apparent non sequiturs, for the same reason that most ofthe blind men groping any given elephant would (angrily) think that any mention or discussion of mammalian anatomy was "completely irrelevant" to the heated discussion of tree trunks and ropes that they are currently engaged in. The hysteresis is analogous also tostate-dependent memory andcontext-dependent memory with regard to human cognition's ability to interact with the concepts (but again, people who cannot see how that is true will misapprehend that the mention of those things here constitutes a non sequitur).
Usage notes / Althoughglass isnoncrystalline, there is a long history of natural language calling itcrystal, and the short answer as to why is that this natural languageusage predates modernmaterials science: glass and crystals seem similarmacroscopically, and thus bothprescientifically andnonscientifically they have been, and remain, conflated. This makes the "glass" sense of the wordcrystal amisnomer, which does not mean that it is "incorrect" — rather, it just means that it is well known to suggest a meaning that is different from its (firmly established)idiomatic meaning.
Per my current best understanding of Wiktionarian consensus, Wiktionary is not the place to provide this particular (short, clear) piece ofremedial help to laypersons. I disagree, but that's OK; it simply lives here instead of in WT mainspace.
Speaking of short and clear, the glass crystals of a crystal chandelierfit the bill; they'recrystal clear.
Admittedly, theblinder one is, the lesscrystal clear any little crystal can possibly be or seem to one, no matter how much anyone else polishes it.
Do not confuseallogenic ("ofnonself intraspecies origin") withallergenic ("generatingallergy"); the two concepts are often related (because allergic reactions can potentially be caused by anyantigen and usually/especially by nonself antigens), but the similar sound of the two words is due only to partialcognation of the word roots.
[This one is great because it tersely explains why the two are nonetheless often connected/coinstantiated (despite not being equal/conflated).]
Do not confuse a phytoncide (a substance made by a plant to discourage insects, animals, or bacteria from eating it) with aphytocide (an herbicide to kill plants).
Hasty readers can easily misreadcausal ascasual (or vice versa) andcausally ascasually (or vice versa). Writers can consider usingcausative andcausatively instead, as they often will work interchangeably and may reduce hasty misreadings.
Compare the adjectivesmesial,medial, andmedian, which overlap in meaning but are usually idiomatically non-interchangeable. Each is used in certain contexts, and shades of differentiable meaning are sometimes ascribed. Most uses ofmesial are in dentistry, but not all (for example, as with the mesial aspect of the brain's temporal lobe).
[Before anyone whines that the usage note is unnecessary because no one would confuse those two words, no, shut your gob, because the thing that even prompted me to write the usage guidance at all was hearing someone misuse the wrong word in a context where they definitely clearly meant the other.]
[This instance instantiates the class of natural language's practical limits onhaplology. That class is interesting, and the fact that acronymy exponentiates homonymy is another instance of it. Semiotically speaking, the theme reduces to triviality/truism when you sum it up with the fact that one can't elide alphanumeric symbols (of any type) without impairing sense differentiation to some degree, whether more or less; the practical question is judging the instances where that degree is small enough for the elision to be deemed acceptable "enough". And when you frame it that way, you realize that it is but yet another instance of the concept of lossiness in data compression. Which is also true of the theme mentioned elsewhere herein regarding "predictable for the same reason that polysemy and thus polysemic ambiguity are pervasive in natural language: a limited set of symbols mapping to a vast set of potential semantic concepts and differentiations will inevitably produce such effects, as a logically natural instance coinstantiating both thepigeonhole principle and themap–territory difference."]
Phrasal verbs with the particlesdown andup tend toconnote aprocess that takes aspan of time and contains multiplesteps, whereas those with the particlesoff andon tend to connote anevent that happens instantly, in apoint of time. This nuance of cognitive schema is merely connotative, not denotative or rigorous, and therefore the phrasal verbsshut down andpower down are broadly synonymous withshut off,power off, andturn off, as well asstop andkill. However, the fact that turning a computer on or off requiresbooting andunwinding, which are multistep processes (albeit black boxes to the user in modern operating systems), influenced the origins of power management commands such asshut down rather thanturn off orswitch off. Similarly, power plants and ship engines arefired up andshut down, and not so muchturned on andswitched off, inidiomatic usage. Nonetheless, any process (no matter how complex) can be triggered with a single command, which is why an executive officer or legislature can simplykill a multi-billion-dollar government program, or a laptop user can simplyswitch off their computer, even if the program takes a while towind down.
Theconversion of thecombining form-ostomy to yield the standalone nounostomy began in the mid-20th century as medical jargon that was treated as too much acasualism for formal writing, but by the early 21st century it was well established even in formal register, and various respected dictionaries now enter it. Before this transition of acceptability, medical English already had a word for artificial bodily openings created surgically:stoma, directly from the New Latin, based on the ancient Greek. But today such an opening is just as likely to be called an ostomy as a stoma.
Risk management and risk mitigation experts (such as actuaries, systems engineers, and others) generally do not approve of calling motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) "accidents", because they advisedly reserve that term for things not directly caused by human recklessness or negligence. Because it ispredictably obvious (and directlycausal) that distracted driving (e.g., texting, IMing/DMing, videogaming, or intoxication while driving) produces MVCs, those MVCs are not "accidents". Nonetheless, among the general public, MVCs are quite often called "accidents" rather than "crashes" or "collisions", not only byidiomatic inertia but also becauseconnotatively, it steers clear of broaching the topic ofblame assignment, whereas a phrase like "he crashed" connotes blame.
The polysemy of the term in current usage (referring to dishonesty both for malevolent reasons and for misguidedly well-intentioned reasons, as well as even looser use referring merely to biased efforts at persuasion) has contributed to a degradation in its usefulness in counteracting the malevolent behavior denoted by the original (stricter) sense. For more details, see alsoWikipedia > Gaslighting > Excessive misuse of the term "gaslighting".
Someone who isimpenitent (unremorseful, not ashamed) may beimpertinent about it (rude, insolent).
[A semantic connection shared by words that also look similar, which has validity (not unrelated), but itsrelevance is not quiteproximal enough for a terse entry.]
The wordpsychopathology in its sense referring to a psychiatric condition (as opposed to its sense for the field of study and its application) is hypernymic to, not synonymous with, the wordpsychopathy, even though that differentiation is idiomatic rather than etymonic. The derived adjective,psychopathologic, etymonically strongly seems to suggest the meaning of "relating to psychopathy" (psychopathic)—that is, nonexpert readers will predictably sometimes or often mistake it for meaning that—but it does not. The ambiguity here is directly related to the polysemy of the wordspathology andpathologic themselves (explained atpathology § Usage notes).
Some house style guides for medical publications avoid the "illness" sense ofpathology(“disease, state of ill health”) and replace it withpathosis. The rationale is that the-ology form should be reserved for the "study of disease" sense and for the medical specialty that provides microscopy and other laboratory services (e.g.,cytology,histology) to clinicians. This rationale drives similar usage preferences aboutetiology ("cause" sense versus "study of causes" sense),methodology ("methods" sense versus "study of methods" sense), and other-ology words. ¶ Not all such natural usage can be purged gracefully, but the goal is to reserve the-ology form to its "study" sense when practical. Not all publications bother with this prescription, because most physicians don't do so in their own speech (and the context makes clear the sense intended). ¶ Another limitation is thatpathology(“illness”) has an adjectival form (pathologic), but the corresponding adjectival form ofpathosis (pathotic) is idiomatically missing from English (defective declension), sopathologic is obligate for both senses ("diseased" and "related to the study of disease"); this likely helps keep the "illness" sense ofpathology in natural use (as the readily retrieved noun counterpart topathologic in the "diseased" sense).
Related terms ¶neurosis [{{q|morphologically parallel but semantically divergent}}<!--(for reasons that are interesting and can be explained in 2 sentences but are perhaps nonetheless too much information for the Wiktionary context for now)] ¶ Usage notes ¶ Although the wordsneuropathy (neuro- +-pathy) andneurosis (neuro- +-osis) are morphologically parallel, the difference between the nervesas physical structures andas the psyche is reflected in theidiomatic differentiation whereby those two words signify quitedifferentiable concepts, even though the nerves andbrain are inevitably somehow related to themind via the mysteries of themind–body problem and theneural correlates of consciousness. The great difficulty of fully solving that problem and fully understanding those correlates is reflected by the usage difference, as is the fact that the collocationscentral neuropathy andCNS neuropathy mean something quite different frompsychopathology orneuropsychiatric conditions.
[This one was excellent for the person who asked about it and for anyone else to whom the same obvious question may occur, even though some other people have included it in the class of usage notes that "add nothing useful".]
Like manyterms for places where humans urinate and defecate, the sense of the wordouthouse referring to an outbuilding housing acesspit haseuphemistic aspects to its origins (just as withprivy,toilet,restroom,bathroom,water closet, and indeed most of thesynonyms of this sense), as the sense ofouthouse meaning any outbuilding predates the cesspit-building (sub)sense; regardless, as that sense is now the dominant sense, writers now tend to sayoutbuilding when they mean an outbuilding without further specification, to avoid invoking either confusion or (even merely) connotation—which is to say, to avoid even a whiff of the dominant sense.
[Regarding beauty being in the eye of the beholder (and scents being in the nose of the be-smeller), seethis edit about this usage note.
There has been some confusion in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries caused by the fact that the termcast steel referred to crucible steel, and other steel poured from vessels while molten, before it later increasingly came to refer to steel castings specifically (that is, net or near-net castings of steel, which were developed many decades after the earliersense was already established). Eventually the newer sense of the term came to dominate to the extent that the earlier sense is now classifiable asarchaic, although even today, the action of acontinuous caster retains a connection of steel mills to the action ofcasting. A 1949 monograph on the history of steel casting in the foundry sensecited reference enforces the distinction in senses, as technical literature often does for terms that havenarrower technical senses coexisting with theirbroader general senses.
[This usage note may be gone (having been deleted, thus cast out of the vessel holding it) by the time you read this here, so I'm doing the backup here now.]
The English wordmeat in its main modern sense, referring to theflesh ofanimals used asfood, has tended over the centuries to beidiomatically restricted to, and thus to implicitlydenote, nonfish animals, such thatdisjunctive mentions ofmeat versus fish, ornot meat but rather fish, are common (seemeat § Usage notes). Nonetheless,natural language is flexible enough in its variable semanticontology that the wordmeat can be extended to comprise fish flesh when acollocation specifies it, such asall meats including fish ormeats of both fish and nonfish origin. The desire to restrict the wordmeat to its nonfish-only sense is a factor that sometimes helps to drive the use of ahypernym, such asprotein orproteins, instead, and such hypernymous use can be still more useful once all protein-rich foods, evennonanimal foods (such as nuts or dairy foods or plant-based meat substitutes) are included in a discussion. But this natural ontologic flexibility is similar to that seen with the natural coexistence of the schema offinger versus thumb and that ofall fingers including the thumb (with the hypernymous option beingall digits including the thumb), as well as the natural coexistence of the schema ofcar versus truck (in which light trucks are not cars) and that ofall cars including light trucks (with hypernym options beingall automobiles orall light motor vehicles). Such variable ontology, which human minds handle effortlessly, is of interest tonatural language processing by machines because it must bemodeled and successfully handled if machines are someday to speak and read human languages reliably with human-like fluency.
[The kind of analysis exemplified here is necessary to people who want to competently study usage prescription, linguistics, NLP (natural language processing), or any overlapping combination thereof, but Wiktionary either may or may not turn out to be one of the places where it is allowed to be exemplified, depending on whether Wiktionary ends up being quasi-owned and, if so, by whom, in any given era.]
By extension from the idea of confined space, the idiom thatone can't swing a cat without hitting an X conveys that the relevant context islousy with X. Thus, the statement thatyou can't swing a cat without hitting a fool around here conveys that fools are (superfluously) plentiful around here.
[Presumably this one is at risk of disappearing, too, by the same allergic reaction, despite explaining an important facet of the phrase's use.]
Readers guessing the meaning of the wordofficious from context have sometimes guessed that it referred to the excessive bureaucratic formality ofofficialdom, but its connection tooffice,official, and the Latinofficium(“service”) is with the kindly andsolicitous aspect thereof rather than with the bureaucratic chill. Thusofficious is not to be confused withpunctilious.
Mostsenses of the termsmaster copy andmastercopy have the semantic notion of "the copy thatis the master version", but thefine arts sense of the terms instead has the semantic notion of "a copyof the master version". This sense difference puts the pair into the class ofcontranyms, albeit it a little-used example of that class.
The wordpruritus does not contain the suffix-itis (which denotes inflammation), but owing to the similar sound (with areduced vowel in either case), many writers misspellpruritus, even in the medical literature.
In common usage, the nounintegrity is much more common than its adjectival form,integrous.[reference cited in original] Most speakers and writers opt for an etymologically unrelated synonym — such ashonest,decent, orvirtuous — when trying to express the adjectival complement ofintegrity in its moral and ethical sense. Even when the structural or analytical sense ofintegrity is meant, constructions such as "has integrity" or "retaining integrity" are more commonly heard than the adjectiveintegrous, indicating a species oflexical gap in which an apt word is not nonexistent but is rare enough that for most speakers it usually does not arise in the word-finding aspects of cognition during speech or writing. Another adjective related tointegrity isintegral, but that adjective usually focuses on a part (conveying that the part is built in) rather than applying to the whole (conveying that the whole has integrity). To convey that one is of or marked by integrity, other adjectives may be used includingupright andupstanding.
Because the wordseulogy andelegy sound and look similar and both concern speeches or poems associated with someone's death and funeral, they are easily confused. A simple key to remembering the difference is that an elegy is chiefly aboutlamenting whereas a eulogy is chiefly aboutpraising (andeu- = "good").
The wordproclivity starts with a syllable that is cognate with the English prefixpro-, not withpre-; however, quite possibly by speciously temptingcognitive analogy with both the idea of temporal precedence and (relatedly) the synonympredisposition, sometimes people tend toward starting the wordproclivity withpre-.
Finitude is rather formal and used in philosophy, whilefiniteness is used in mathematics; however,infinitude is used in mathematics more thaninfiniteness. Less formal is to reword to uselimited: “(the fact that) life is limited” rather than “the finitude of life”.
You knowthat guy in that one scene, and you know thatother guy in thatother scene? Well, it turns out thatthey use the same costume and props for both of those guys, and it's the same actor^ (which is to say, the same finger; and as we know, somefingers arefingerer than others^).
It is useful to be aware of the existence of this particular instance of threadbareness of the fabric when your eyeballs are being blasted with attention-economy fearbait and ragebait.
PS: Regarding thelong–always axis: Both the Reign of Christ (theMillennium) and any givennew agemillennium (or most specifically theMillennium) have beenvariably predicted to last either a thousand years or forever,(which is kinda like when the weatherman predicts that you might get six or you might get twelve or you might get nothing) mostly because most humans can'talways be mucharsed with a precise difference between those two. This, too, is threadbare puppetmaking.(the zero–near-zero axis) But in their defense, though, they're right that it's thesame difference,in a practical way: we'll all be deadlong before that difference can becomemanifest; and most humans have a hard time caring about thattime scale, although a lot of them can'tshut up about it. But I think part of the weakness for not shutting up about it is exactlybecause of that difficulty.Some say that the thingsyou bitch about the most regarding other people's behavior are the things you hate the most about yourself unconsciously.Don't ask me — psychology isabove my pay grade. I'm just a lousy stinkin fingerpuppettheatergoer.
shopping at thedollar store, in a nonprocuratory way
stock characters infinger puppetry = computation-efficient cognitive cornercutting for serial sceneshifters and their audiences
A pattern has developed: As a needler simulator I have developed a groove (lol, how meta) wherein truisms are interesting under the local conditions, which entails that they are pseudointeresting at other levels (i.e., on other layers). (This fact itself islikewise a truism, as I have been a needler simulator all my life.(since I was young, I've handwaved) But I digress. Onward:)
Another item for the department of things that everyone knows or that are adjacent thereto and yet I feel the need to restate them for local purposes (a theme that is in continuity-contact with the obviousness–pseudoobviousness axis):
A related reflection: there is a common theme whereby the serial sceneshifters will make stronger distinctionsproximally —foregrounded ones — and theweighting parameter value tapers off as one approaches theperiphery, then drops to a low state at the periphery, comprising zero–and/or–near-zero (with those two being differentiated only when necessary). This is whyperennial is eitheryearslong ortimeless (or an unjudged catbox containing both, meow) in any given utterance (some durabililty is more durable than other durability), and it is also what most early- and mid-17th-century English-speakers most often did cognitively with theIndies. Even people who were aware that theWest Indies are not theEast Indies were not necessarily clear on how those two related to each other: exactly where they met each other, whether they even did so, etc; and it didn't matter anyway, thanks to the fault tolerance of the one weird trick. Meow.
I wasstopping by theoil patch (justpassing throughOil City [meow])on business) when I realized more consciously (i.e., became more consciously aware of and able to describe [via newly reduced ineffability]) something that is obvious aboutcontextual lexicalization: serial sceneshifters do it all the time, and it's trivial yet powerful, and powerful yet trivial. The kernel of the thing is that your audience understands within the context of the scene that a certain collocation names an ontologic node that we both know within that context (i.e., recognize as a node in the [mostly] shared dynamic ontology when working within that context).
Here's a quickly sketched analysis of the instance that made me reexamine the general theme. I'm currently not going to try to enteroil country into Wiktionary as a synonym ofoil patch (even though that's what it is dialectally) because it is not lexicalized quite widely enough (which is likewise why a search for it at OneLook predictably found no results among current dictionarydom). But even someone who is unfamiliar with itsdialectal lexicalization can easily be an audience member who watches your scene and follows along with the plot, because within the context of your scene they'llcotton on without ado. This is because their mind knows the general formula of[noun adjunct]-plus-country (for example, "you're in Dallas Cowboys country now!", orwhat have you). (Lol: sidebar: even if you live in Dallas Cowboys country and are a jersey-wearing member of the Dallas Cowboysnation, there isno use in attempting to apply for federally recognized and/or state-recognized tribal status.) But the point that I came here to sketch a quick note about today is the fact that the serial sceneshifting done by serial sceneshifters includes contextually dynamic lexicalization just as it likewise includes contextually dynamic ontology (with provisional/interim ontologic nodes). I would say "shared" as an adjective before those noun phrases because "shared" islargely true of them, but there is an important caveat though — an asterisk on thedegree of sharing: serial sceneshifting is fault-tolerant regarding the degree of ontologic (and lexicalizational)cottoning on that each audience member achieves (i.e., the degree of it that each one has achieved by any given minute of the scene's runtime [or any given hour or year or decade of that runtime lol fml]). And as we have previously established,it is possible to be fault tolerant to a fault. But the point for this casserole today is not the cases where the process performs poorly. The point here today is in fact to observe, and even marvel at, howwell it works inmostgarden-variety cases.Mmmm, garden-variety casserole. Is that the kind with the squash and celery added? Don't mind if I handwave. Lol. Actually I would bake this particular casserole a bit better if I had more time for it at the moment. But I don't, so I'll have to bake another and better version of it later.
There's a self-reinforcing cycle whereby people with mediocre talent for writing and editing reinforce the idea that good writing and editing are not important anyway,so who carez amirite lol (i.e., becausethey aren't able to care about them, they apparently misapprehend thatno one is able to care about them).
As I moved from one news article to the next today, I just hit icebergs of stupidity or sloppiness at every turn, in every article, one after another. I got miffed and left.
In a strange way, I actually would respect youmore if you just peppered your writing or editing with the very stupiderest mistakez posible, becuz then@ leest neether of us ispretending: rather, you're a moron and we both know and openly admit that fact, so we agree to move forward on that mutual basis.
But the ones I ran into today included one where someone had obviously meant "It was not because they were X, however, but [rather] because they were Y" and instead wrote (or else damn-you-AI-autocorrected to) "It was not because they were X. However, because they were Y." That's the kind of mistake that is made only by one of the following: a clown, an untalented hack, a scammer (who's claiming to work carefully while defrauding the client by working hastily and sloppily), or a mindlessly vacuous mimickry-spewing parrot (hi LLMs! tellur mom i said hi & thx!). There was another one like that in the same article (that is, where "the sentences are 'shaped right' (as it were) and contain no misspellings" but are stupidly mispunctuated versus their intended meaning), at which point I angrily closed the tab, because "why waste my time thinking about words that the writer or editor themselves didn'tbother to spend any time thinking about", and "why try to learn alleged facts from someone who isn't even paying any attention to their own words at all", and "the people who pumped out this garbage don't deserve a readership at all; let their ship sink (as punishment for their scam)." Then I move on to the very next article and read that "the importance of [thing X that the writer considers very important] cannot be understated [sic]." Fuck you, you're done, there will be no more reading of your flunker bullshit.
Hey, look, I get it: news reporting hasnever been totally free of typos and hasty mistakes; people are on deadline. I'm not claiming otherwise. But what annoys me in the 21st century is that it has gotten worse (versus the historical baseline established in the 19th and 20th centuries) just as all of Big Tech's precious technology is supposed to be making it better (versus that baseline). And people are trying to pretend that the theme that "the sentences are 'shaped right' (as it were) and contain no misspellings" is all that matters, even when (1) they're stupidly mispunctuated versus their intended meaning and (2) if they contained a subtle/plausible factual error (versus a glaringly obviously nonsensical one),no one in the news room would even notice, because this shit is evidently not being readmindfully byany humanat all. That one there is thedangerous one. More generally: the people who aremost impressed with what LLM chatbots currently do withnatural language are the people who aren't good enough atreading comprehension orcritical thinking to notice when "a bucket full of character strings that is 'shaped right' and where no individual word is misspelled" is not the same as a well-writtenand also wholly accurate summary of information, even though itlooks about the same when you stand back andsquint at it from a distance [which is a metaphor for the cognitive analogue, i.e., what their brain is actually doing with it when they [allegedly] "read" it].
The word "someone" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, for it meanssomeone more than it meanssomeone. (Someones areoner than others.) The word is working overtime, for this instance is merely the tip of a parametric iceberg among humans, which is why the same duality is (sensewisely) traceable across several of the synonyms (i.e., several of them have both senses, in parallel with the same structure at the others, and several others have one of those senses plus some other tangentially related one, in a kind ofpredictable(heh)para-parallelism^^^). The reason why can be shorthanded, if one is shorthanded: to a needler,one often looks like the other, as the wisdom-driven onemay as well be the psychic one for all a needler can tell (or care). This is interesting because it is the mirror reflection ofwintersport hypersynonymy: in one case you have multiple names for the same thing because needlers mistook it for a different thing; and in the other case you have the same name pullingdouble duty polysemically because needlers mistook two things for each other. Common thread: needlers couldn't see the parametricwarp and woof either way. The point here isn't thatsome people are needlers whereasothers aren't. No: rather, the point is thatsome of us are needlersmore often (and harder) thanothers are.
nuggets floating on or in a cloudy cloud of cloudy iterations
This is trivially obvious from some viewpoints (semieyeless or otherwise) and yet I'm pretty sure that I've neverrestated it in that particularlapidary form until today.
Think about it: it's so true. And it's fun to step through thethought experiments that are needed totest it out (take it for a spin).At least, fun is what it isright now,up front, while it's still new and we're stillkicking the tires. Probe its edges: what do you find there?Edge cases? Probe its far corners: what do you find there?Corner cases? I've been poking and prodding for some minutes now and haven't yetturned up anything but thepleasant surprise ofthat feeling when every instance can successfully be generated by the formula (which is not a juncture that can be arrived at trivially),and the formula is simple (besides, as thecherry on top). Willmy parade get rained on if Ikeep going? Will the thunder and rain start a few minutes from now? Tomorrow? Next week? Next month? Next year? Insert value of time interval N. Maybe report back here later regarding the empirically derived durability parameter value.
Meanwhile, also: In the flurry of serial sceneshifting, the parameter has perennnial latent potential to be reintroduced at future junctures (that is, on future occasions), which is the very nature of the parametric placeholder that memory provides for that dimension. (Asterisk: some memories provide more than others do;some assembly required; not available in all areas.) That's the very nature of azero; and the times when the parameter's value drops to either 1 or 0 are the interesting times. In some classes of instances it allows for atavism (thus, latentness for recovery), and in other classes of instances it allows for the temporal opposite thereof (thus, latentness for novelty). This is the parametric linkage by which synonymy and parasynonymyebb and flow over time on any given particular circuit.
Goddamn that's one tasty sandwich. Even if it's halfassed it's got some juicy meat to it. More can be done with this later.
PS for now: Probably this dish merely recapitulates what some KRR stiff already did umpteen years ago. Yeah, but fuck him though, because he collected his paycheck but never delivered any flying car.
PS2: The first postsession PS: This set of circuits is ever-so-preciously connected withthis other one. It's interesting that the first thing that my poor brain presents to me as the explanation for why they are various facets of the same gemstone is the image ofskiers at aski lodge playing in the cold while wearing many layers of insulation (e.g., shirts, pants, overpants, jackets, coats, overcoats, caps, hats, gloves, scarves, mufflers, even balaclavas): you can't see much about what each person looks like under all thosebrightly colored layers, so you don't know which pairs are twins or not until you get back inside the building (hot cocoa fireside time!) and everyone unwraps their coats and scarves and hats and gloves and snowsuits etc. Isn't it strange how my mind already knows the answer and the first approximation that it offered me as an explanation was a sunny winter Kodachrome snapshot.Well I'll be handwaved! The human mind can sometimes be handwave etc! But the first box that I will open with this key is the cigarette-typewriter red-brown handwave etc: the insulation in that case is not different from these overcoats and balaclavas! It's another avatar of the same thing! Is thishypersynonymy aswinter sport, lol?Sure as shit, my theoretical edifice is holding up (the ski lodge has good bones):I said in recent days that the further you go into various axes (e.g., abstraction, speculative portrayals [abstraction-construal-hypotheses!], petulance, Bierceness), the more ephemeral the localized ontology is, and indeed, such is the case here:hypersynonymy aswinter sport is just a metaphor,no more and no less (that is,for what it's worth, which is something, not nothing — and yet also not everything, either).
PS3: The second postsession PS: This set of circuits is ever-so-preciously connected withthis other one, too, I just realized. Anything can be a metaphor under the right circumstances, but some metaphors are morelexicalized than others. Tellur mom I said hi and thanks.
PS3.1. A minute or two later: My brain just caught a Kodachrome glimpse of another facet of this gemstone. If you wanted to, you could use hyperparametricality to generate hypersynonymy of a ridiculously baroque kind (via parametric insulation layers), and this fact has a certain analogousness to the cryptography example (whereby the silver fox's identity was further masked). But then my brain also quickly realizes: isn't that what made the Navajo code so difficult to break: even after you'd broken the encryption itself (if you ever did), you were then still faced with another layer of barrier via words that didn't make sense to you. I would say plaintext words, but is that really what they are though? They'renotnot in code (of a sort) even still. Speaking of cigarette-typewriter red-brown so-and-sos, I'll be darned.I was doing the thing when I was doing the thing. This is what makes genuine theoretical insights so delicious. They solve other Rubik's Cubes besides the ones that you were working on, and you realize it retroactively. Moreover, they make you realize that things that you thought were unrelated are actually not so. Which is pretty damnmeta in the context of this particular ski lodge (a ski-less one). The funny thing about this,again with the Kodachromes, is that Bierceness itself, with the funny equating that is skewed, is eerily parallel with the baroquely forced hypersynonymy. It gave me the heeby-jeebies just now because it just gave meyet another Kodachrome. This particular snapshot is a bit dark, though. The induced theme isyou probably didn't get to be so similar without sharing some genes, and the snapshot is of two strangers who met on the ski slope and thought they'd found a cute date but then they realize after chatting awhile that they are both cousins with the same people (third parties, third variables) and that they themselves are probably cousins too, to more or less of a degree, which quenches any romantic spark for them.
PS3.1.2. A minute or two later: This is also part of the same thing whereby (1)ontology begins at home and (2) the more of a needler one is, the less one unmasks both (a) hypersynonymy and (b) any other semantic relations as well."Just a bunch of black boxes"" (poof, another Polaroid);"skiers too bundled to differentiate or identify" (poof, another Polaroid).
PS3.1.3. Minutes later: Here is the first concrete exemplar of Bierceness–wintersport-hypersynonymy unification that ever came frommy brain, as opposed to anyone else's either before or since: We might imagine facetiously that Brønsted and Lowry spat derisively (and independently but contemporaneously) thatyour precioushydrogen ions are nothing but lousy stinkinprotons from lousy stinkin proton donors.Qs–As So much for"all it takes to get from one to the other is the right set of parameters" etc. This also explains why Bierceness class 2 and class 3 entailfeeling so sure that you're right even though you're not entirely right etc. You may as well be on the Lavoisier–Davy–Liebig segment of the path toward Brønsted–Lowry: you're not wrong about the grain of truth that you perceive; rather, merely, you can't see the other coexisting grains yet, and you might get 30 years (or whatever other time interval parameter value) out of the state in whichno one else knows any better either. Thus, the things you think are synonymous might even begenerally accepted as synonymous in durable fashion, for decades on end, albeit not perpetually.
PS3.1.4. Minutes later: One asks oneself: What are some exemplars (or classes thereof) where the two concepts arenevernot coinstantiated and yet humans nonetheless choose to retain the memory-of-a-parameter-only in the way that is analogous to azero in language mechanism (even despite thetypically human proclivity for high needlerism quotients)? One begins to wrench on some answers. Things that come up first, as candidates that either may or may not work out, begin to accrue: probably not theTrinity; probably notconjoined twins, for the same reason; hmmm. Drawing a blank. I have a gut feeling (1) that there are some that do exist and (2) that thinking of them is going to take both time and the kind of mild cleverness that makes you feel annoyed when someone tells you the answer and you see in retrospect likeoh I see what you did there.
PS3.1.4.1. Minutes later: I think I just laid hands on the first one: "half-empty" is synonymous with "half-full". Sure enough:oh I see what you did there, you smartass.
PS3.1.4.1.1. A minute later: Lmao: "All your precioushalf-full glasses are nothin but lousy stinkin half-empties."
a restatement about the serial sceneshifting
iteration 2777
Each ontologic sketch isas if ahologram, construed for any of various purposes, and its durability varies by those purposes.
Some construals are known consciously to be temporary/ephemeral (with subclasses dichotomizable as brief or medium-term,and the deeper into the Bierceness gradient, the more likely to be known ephemeral), whereas others are believed consciously to be permanent/eternal; and sometimes there is no conscious judgment about the durability parameter's value, and in those cases, often permanence is [uncritically ± correctly or incorrectly] assumed.
Sidebar:
The deeper you go on axis X, the more the trait Y; in this instance, the axes are (1) abstraction and (2) Bierceness or snarkiness or petulance (any of those or some combination), and the trait is durability (or shelf life) of the relevant ontology (growing shorter the deeper you go); these two axes bear a relation to each other but are not at all the same thing; as for what the relation is, some tentative beginnings: you can't have Bierceness without abstraction; youcan have petulance without abstraction, but only certainkinds of petulance.
Where serial sceneshifters get into trouble is (1) in failing to realize that there is more than one relevant ontology, (2) in uncritically assuming that one sketched/construed ontology equals another when in fact it doesn't, (3) in mistakenly believing one ontology to be true and another to be false when in fact another state applies (for example, when the truth is vice versa, or when neither is wholly accurate), and (4)and so on (handwave etc).^
Some holograms are cruder, fuzzier, or flatter than others;^ and that thought connects with such things as aphantasia and its neuropsychological analogues.
Serial iterations of holograms are likewise subject to the trait that some holograms are cruder, fuzzier, or flatter than others;^ and we can tolerate the faults of iteration 2777 because (1) it is a worthwhile landmark despite its flaws and (2) it beats any available competition as far as I can tell, which is to say,in a land of garbage, a half-decent thing is a good thing, somewhat like how in a land of the blind, the one-eyed man can see enough to tell that old no-eyes somehow has him beat, the bastard. (Hint: it's those damnfingertips,prayer beads, andbreadcrumbs thatwhup yə.)
PS: A durable nugget, to date: what is the precise nature of the difference that explains the outlier quality of one who is good atcomparative ontology?({{coi}}) It's easy to claim that it is some analogue of aphantasia (that is, the absence of such analogues instead of the presence of them), but there might be other layers at work too, especially because aphantasia or things analogous to it can't explainall the cases (of the norm) as opposed to onlysome of them. Maybe one of the other layers might be powered by the choice to terminate attention, in some cases, or maybe an inability to continue attention, in other cases? You have to be bothable andwilling to hold the loops open, and some might have poor ability, and others might have fair ability but poor willingness. Both would yield sparse results in certain categories despite long runtimes. This may be part of the nugget. It is hard to guess, so far; that'sthe nature of an obdurate nugget.^ But there is something to do withjudgments about relevance either way though, and blinders in that dimension, and it doesn't smell like it is completely unrelated to the ability to maintain channels of attention, or breadcrumbs of attention. Meanwhile, it would be easy to accuse the outlier of misjudged relevance except that he keeps undermining your thesis in that regard with a substantial fraction of useful insights. It is like telling a goldminer that's he's wasting his time at a certain creek or vein: you would be totally right except for the fact that hekeeps showing up in town with a fat little bag of nuggets to spend, the bastard. Relatedly: what if various weavers ownpunch-card-operated looms (sure enough) but most of them refuse to run certain decks of cards? Outcome: certain textiles remain sparsely instantiated. The locus of scarcity is then not the deck but rather the decision to keep it shelved.
the dummy–proximity axis
… whereby dumdums misinterpret proximity. In passing today, I happened across another instance of the well-trod theme whereby someone who's ignorant hears a term and stupidly assumes that the speaker whose lips (or writer whose pen) they heard it from is the person who coined the word. doy 💀
Closely related is a (21st-century) moron who hastily internet-searches a word that was heard from those lips or seen from that pen but is also too stupid even to competently sift and interpret the search results, such that they come away with the most laughably and obviously(to others) stupid conclusions about what was meant or referenced. (The genAI variant of this phenomenon now exists too(2022–present): the moron who gullibly believes the first AI result even though it is obviously only a misguidedshot-in-the-dark hallucination.) I remember an instance of that moronicness that will forever leave a bitter taste on these lips when I think of it. Moreover, from a moron who imagined that they might ever get a professional recommendation from me.Lol, you'd need tonot beintellectually disabled for me to recommend you for the kind of job under discussion. The fact that you needed eventhat fact explained to you by someone else toochecks out (i.e., too stupid even to realizethat aspect oneself). Silly goose. 💀 Of course normally I'mcharitable about such things,provided that you haven't been stupid enough to disparage mefirst. Otherwise,pack a lunch, hon, you're gonna need one.
the hyponymy–instantiation axis and the mass–count axis
the hyponym–instance axis and the noncount–count axis
Here is a mere truism, but I feel the need to restate it at the moment:
The interesting and sometimes slippery relationship of hyponymy to instantiationat the moment seems to me to be^ governed by the noncountable–countable distinction. The instance that made me think more consciously about it again, after being of coursevaguely aware of it at the mere-truism level for a long time, isthe SL space.
Being able to crystalize this instance (of instances) allows me to easily touch base with it cognitively as I ride the elevators. One of the thoughts connected to it is that I ought tobe bold and make a sibling amongthe nyms template family for{{instance of}}.
PS: Speakingprecisely, the word for acoinstance (i.e., a fellow instance of a common theme) is not a cohyponym, because the cohyponym–coinstance axis is directly in parallel with the hyponym–instance axis, for the same reason, which is the noncount–count axis. But calling the word for acoinstance acoordinate term is reasonable because the thing named (versus its counterpart), and its name (versus the name's counterpart), are in factcoordinate (versus their counterparts), that is, equal in station (logical station),coequal in logical rank, albeit in any degree near-equal or unequal otherwise (equity is not alwaysequality although it sometimes is). Moreover, the selfsame word, when it has both noncount and count senses, is both the cohyponym and the coinstance name (as the SL examples show), and if it is acoordinate term in the first way, then it is also so in the second way, as a conjoined twin.
There ought to be a name for the urge to project illusory capitonymy onto what is instead an instance of the theme of mere underlying variety in orthographic principles and their application; and perhaps now, hereby, there is one: pseudocapitonymy.
It's a tricky topic though — the putative capitonymy–pseudocapitonymy borderline — because of how natural language (as she is spoke) works: usage differentiations do sometimes come into being, over centuries or portions thereof; also, it depends on whose conventions are being adhered to and whose aren't.(relatedly:whose process)
Don't ask me — cosmology isabove my pay grade. They raised me to be a problem-solver, a solutions provider, but they don't necessarily want to know all of the outputs produced thereby; they prefer selectively filtered solutions. One must grudgingly admit that the filtering itself, too, is a layer of solutions-provision.Mthrfking full-stack solutions providers.^
PS: Some months later: An important facet here: Considerif you will a type of scam (or a class of scams of the type) in which a superficially obvious answer is a trap.That's how they get you; or, more precisely,that's one of the ways in whichthey might getyou (whether yourself or someone like you). Refraining from falling for such a ruse is then both (1) how towin*(*albeit in awinless way, as Blackie wasn'tnot correct) and (2) how to get a certain type of revenge on the scammer (albeit a weak kind, albeit not notany kind). This is either a solid hack or a useful simulation thereof with solid applications-engineering potential.
just another shitty day in the thoroughly shittified and enshittified 21st century
Today was the first day since I began using commercial OCR, 20-odd years ago, that I witnessed an unmistakably frank hallucination, of the CrapGPT or SlopGPT type, show up in the output. I'm sad that it was Apple's OCR (their OS-native default OCR) in which I saw it, notMicroshit's, which is the identity that I would have predicted for this.
I'm used to commercial OCR being braindead-level stupid, of course, but only in thetraditional way of its being stupid: the way whereby it's so moronic that it looks at the word "the" and thinks it sees "tbe", for example.Way to spectacularly fail a basic-asshorses-versus-zebras test, moron.
Now that I have seen theeven worse mode of failure, though, wherebyit literally makes up (pulls out of its ass) a phrase that totally wasn't even there and not even particularly close but is hallucinationally plausible if you didn't know what the original was, I realize how much I love and miss the good old days of merelybasic failure instead ofinsidious failure. Because this new type of miserable failure is the type whereby many people are going to fail to even notice that it is present at all, which means that now, for the first time in history, the OCR software is nowa hallucinating liar that isputting plausible or pseudoplausible words in the mouth of the original source text, in a way that most humans are going to fail to catch.
The saddest part of the world we live in now is the smarmy way in which the people who are bringing it to you are falsely claiming, or acting like, youasked them to foist it on you.
a dumbdumb list
I started such a list the other day, but at the moment it seems to feel OK to discharge such items without queuing, as long as the straightforwardness is in order for the given item. (As for speaking its name aloud here: Gesundheit, lol.) As aball valve for hosedown finesse this metering approach shows promise.
Thoughts regarding how humans (neuro)typically talk about it and think about it, and how those constructs relate to what it in factis. It is a phenomenon of a wide subset of metabolism (of food and beverages and drugs) as subsetted by the wide subset of organisms in which it can exist (in its various forms, one of which is hepatoportal) andits chief practical importance to human conscious attention is because of its consequences to drug metabolism in humans plus in nonhuman animals that receive veterinary care. There are things that could be done even within the space of one simple phrase that would reduce the differential, such as "a phenomenon of metabolism with practical importance to drug metabolism". But this differential is currently not worth attempting to revise the short descriptions (either at Wikidata or Wikipedia). It's an instance ofthe theme, but there's no corrective action that will be taken by me now or soon. Perhaps you can fight City Hall sometimes, but you can't fight it all the time.
But it is bemusing to be a resigned spectator to the poor ability though.
Some days later: Speaking of that same theme, tonight I happened across an instance of another subclass, in an [allegedly] "edited" news article, and my brain did the dance again, for the millionth time: (1) alas, that's a shame that they let that flubbed bitslip through; (2) it could easily have been fixed; (3) however, most people aren't good at realizing that it ought to be fixed (and likewise aren't good at thinking of how to fix it), which is why "no one" cares (which is to say, most people don't care, and those few who do care are looking at a lost cause).
handwave's not a burden anyone should bear
It's funny the facts or nearly certain likelihoods that you know about that others aremore or less oblivious to when you have a radar that they lack (any of manyradars, of which each of us has only some). One interesting thing about this theme is that many people experience an instance (some instance or other) of this theme, and yetyour instance is likely substantially different from mine, andtheirs over there is different yet again. Another interesting thing about it is the extent to which you can tell people about the stuff that yours detects and they might often misapprehend that you are presenting a mere speculative opinion, which is problematic, as a nearly certain likelihood is qualitatively different from a mere speculative opinion even though it lies on a contiguous range of a quantitative spectrum with it (this is the very nature of spectra) and also can be difficult, via a wide variety of the mostwonderful kinds of subtle speciousnesses, to differentiate from it. I suppose that that's their wariness right there, tho: they ain't gonna trustyour ass to do the discernment in such a case; and can you blame them, really? You wouldn't much trusttheir ass in that regard, either, now would you? (right back at you, lol.) I had occasion to revisit a few of mine today; their details are redacted here, but for my own later self I'll just leave here the refrain that you can't telltheir asses anything, tho).
I'd bet I'm not the only one whose radar insights often enough have little practical importance even though they're no less real because of that. After all, that would have to be a theme of their nature, wouldn't it, for evolutionary reasons: facts that don't fit into that box are facts that human minds could not have evolved to be mostly oblivious to, generally speaking. Which is a species of (or maybe just an inbred cousin of)survivorship bias. Of course there are probably swamps of edge cases, tho, where the envelope is pushed regarding the theme thatthis one has some practical applications even though most people are blind to it, and I think my gut can sniff (even if just faintly from a distance) that those places are where certain kinds ofprofitability andcomparative advantage are mined or harvested most fruitfully.
If the parameter value scatter plots of these many diverse radars could be visualized as data visualizations, they would reveal latent neurodiversity that all of us are mostly oblivious to on a day-to-day basis. Its facets are dimensions of substantial difference (on many axes) that our earthly vessels mostly conceal behind invisibility. I've often had a gut feeling, an oneiric vision, about one kind of such data visualization. But the rest of this paragraph can't stay here, though. I probably ought to stop starting things here that can't be finished here, that must be finished elsewhere. But theblood running cold is essentially a function ofthis.
neural circuits
This was a good one — so good that it's not for here, for now.WWDD. TLDR:don't sweat it, and move on. Speaking of paste-eaters, a pastepot.
semiliteracy flirtation via gimmicks
People are various; people are different from one another. What annoys one person is lapped up by another.
It is certainly true,as they say, thata picture is worth a thousand words, and well-chosen pictures improve a news story. And yet: nowadays the news industry (as opposed to the journalism profession) does a lot of heavy flirtation with a grotesque exaggeration of that principle. It is the type of news article where you are forced to scroll (and scroll and scroll and scroll) through giant photo and/or video collages to gather each little sentence of the news report as an isolated caption, set apart from the others, a disconnected snippet swimming in a sea of flashy distraction.
It's not that I'm wholly against it, in all contexts. What I'm annoyed by is the way that some people, apparently, think it is inherently an improvement to just about any news article. It's not. What it actually is, is heavy flirtation with embracing semiliteracy and attention deficit as virtues to be reveled in, rather than what they actually are, which is unfortunate impairments to be crutched and (to the limited extent possible) remediated. And it definitely is very distracting (imposing a flood of mental microdigressions) and thus impairs convenient and efficient memory retention of concepts and facts. For someone with a mind wired like mine is, it takes a coherent narrative that was efficient at sharing information (including textual info and a handful of key/useful images) and turns it into a chaotic confetti blender becauselook, sparklies and flashes and bright colors!
Perhaps eventually we will reach the level of technology where each user can click or tap a button to choose which version of presentation they prefer in each instance/occasion: the clean and efficient one (for no-nonsense use cases/occasions), the confetti-blender one for the moron-self (for when you just want to turn off your brain and look at colorful sparklies instead of efficiently digesting and retaining information), handwave etc
the limits of caring
episode 463
happened across an etymology where the most important part of it, the central theme (and one that is plainly obvious to eyeless eyes), was missing, whereas the most shallowly superficial one was there, all in a way (a pattern) that has for me become predictable on the basis of known endemic degrees of dullwittedness; it is far from the first time an instance of this theme was encountered; but I left that instance alone,^ though, for several reasons, one of which is thatby myself^^ I can't wholly save the rest of the worldfrom itself
pumping en.wikt full of illustrations and wikidata IDs wherever obvious opportunities suggest themselves
bonus points for illustrations that move, light up, explain a movement visually, or otherwise fluster your mcguster or tiddle your middle
The statickiness isn't gone, but itwaxes and wanes. Who knows what might happen when most of thelow-hanging fruit of this fling has been picked. Of course, I've had that thought on every previous fling as well. But someday the parade of flings itself will be the theme whose instances are exhausted, though.
I can sense that the orchard is vast on this one, though. Which is odd for several reasons: chiefly, why does no one else on Earth consider its harvest worthwhile? Clearly this is true, because existence threw a certain party and almost nobody showed up but me. For someone who in some ways doesn'tgive a shit andin some ways gives less of a shit than others do, why do I give enough of a shit that I haven't already abandoned this particular fling yet? As with all my flings, I get a few days into it and my poor brain devises the naturally logical answer to the question of how one would go about it if one were to be dead-ass serious about doing a whole-ass job of it. In the case of this latest fling, I think about how neat it could be ifamong the potential dynamically filtered subsets of Wiktionary one would make a 5-language visual, such as Merriam-Webster's 5-language visual or DK's 5-language visual. Moreover, hell — the thing is, you needn't stop at five, because you could easily make it a 10- or 30-language visual. And that would be the interesting bit, really. Whereas, in contrast, if all you want is a 5-language visual, you should just go buy Merriam-Webster's 5-language visual or DK's 5-language visual (or better yet, buy both and then compare them idly).One easily could, butyou won't tho. Because here's the thing:no one cares tho. And thus:people could buy Merriam-Webster's 5-language visual or DK's 5-language visual, but most of them don't tho. Because here's the thing:no one cares tho. Humans are weird: they profess to give so many fucks about so many things, but they seem to be creatures whogive zero fucks about so many things that they claim to give fucks about. One might conclude that they're unserious, but I think the more accurate conclusion is that they're just richly hypocritical. Anyway, the vastness of this particular orchard can be subdivided into classes, some of which I would call cardinal or key and others I would call mere taxonomiccompletionism. The former interests me whereas the latter doesn't. This fact places a limit on the potential size of this fling. And then what? My gut already can sense how this thing (this parade of flings) will end qualitatively; the only thing that continues to resist analytic attempts is to determine how it ends quantitatively. Which is to say, my brain already knows thewhat and thehow, but it finds the durable insolubility of thewhen and thehow much–before/until to be idly interesting.
PS tho: I got so busy expositioning that I forgot to write down whatset me off here in this spot tonight: when I went todo the thing (of this fling) withSchrader valves andvalve stems and found them both to be red at WT (as of this writing), it reminded me once again that I really ought to justSTFU andpull the plug on all this.
PPS tho: Yeah, but then I stumble across a coal vein such asmya and I'moff to the races again tho.Someone is wrong on the internet, lol. Sigh, it's tough, this business of seeing things both ways at once.(Box cat swipes a claw to smack me for belaboring a truism.) Anyway, at least I avoid the lexicographer's pedagogical flaw of unduly distracting the student when selecting the optimal image choice. This is an important considerationamong the potential dynamically filtered subsets of Wiktionary, because Wiktionary as she is currentlyrealized must remainfamily-friendly and safe for work (i.e., not-not safe for work).^ It is idly amusing to imagine the potential filtered subsets of anadult nature, too, tho. For example, one of the potential options fordiving board waseasy on the eyes for sure^ but would have some of our ESL vocabulary learners asking,I'm sorry, what were we talking about? You were saying something about a swimming pool? We might call this maneuver a reverse Milhouse, because in Milhouse's case it was the pool itself that was distracting ("MILPOOL_____"). Lol. Speaking of reverse Simpsons maneuvers, perhaps "Someone is wrong on the internet" might be called a reverse Nelson: Nelson says dismissively thatif you hadn't done it, some other nerd would have, but in some circumstances it is the case thatI'm the one who did it only because none ofyou other nerds could bearsed. Lol: Simpsons reversals.You have selectedyou. That is incorrect; the correct answer isyou. Speaking ofcat states tho, for some images I can see it both ways at once, and some of them are just sweetly and wholesomelydelicious.^ (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.Why? What wereyou thinking?) Lol.
statickiness again
gettin some static again; perhaps ride that wave or train
the magnitude of this flare: not as rare asball lightning, but rare enough; perhaps ride the lightning
rarely (Q28962310) — "value for qualifier P5102 indicating that the statement is seldom (but not never) true"
often (Q28962312) — "value for qualifier P5102 indicating that the statement is true in many, but not necessarily a majority, of cases"
originally (Q53737447) — "should be used with qualifier P5102 to indicate that the statement refers to the subject in its original form or state only"
mainly (Q91013007) — "value for qualifier P5102 indicating that the statement is valid in a majority (but not all) cases"
official (Q29509043) — "information declared officially by a recognized person or authority (value used with qualifier P5102 and P7452)"
unofficial (Q29509080) — "information which is assumed to be well-known, but not declared officially by a recognized person or authority (value used with qualifier P5102 and P2241)"
PS: The above are the chef's tools, much like spatulas, whisks, spoons, knives, and so on. The next layer above this is the fact that what the chef creates through the use of such tools is a matter of each chef's job performance (or relative dearth thereof). The same can be said of musical instruments and orchestra seats versus what each conductor does with them.Borges mentioned this layer. The first step toward not being moronic about this layer is at least even duly comprehending (at all) the concept of what can possibly go wrong on this layer. From there, one can work toward still more.
"In such moments, one can sense that it isall one, even though one cannot lay eyes on all details of the mechanism at once. It is interesting to speculate about plausible evolutionary explanations for the arising of needle simulators, but dharmic ones are more entertaining."^^
Corny just punched out and hit the shower, and he got me going on the following:
LBJ (with semantically unique referent, thus although always pluralizable morphosyntactically nonetheless not pluralizable semantically except figuratively, for example,daytime LBJ andnighttime LBJ astwo LBJs*) was an instance of a president, andbasketball (uncountable) is a hyponym ofsport (uncountable); but now it is bugging me that my brain also wants to say thatbasketball (uncountable) is an instance ofsport (countable), and it wants to make a connection between [a type of] uncountability as it applies to the sport called basketball and [a type of] uncountability as it applies to any (cosmically unique) person called So-and-So. The former you can have a portion or serving or session of, and I suppose that you can have a portion or serving or session of the latter,in a way, too; and does mentalese (or something like mentalese) hold notionally that you do, under the hood? This thought reminds me of another from many moons ago.† Seems to meat the moment (an occasion) that there'ssomething to that, for sure. Even if I'm the only sniffer who is able to sniff it, it's not a phantom stench. You can't piss on my leg and tell me it's handwaving. The thing is, as we have seen,no noun (either common or proper) ismorphosyntactically immune from pluralization (as Past Mom and Future Mom can attest; as [too] can daytime David and nighttime David, the two Davids, who inhabit two different New Yorks and who mostly eat various butters and cheeses and breads and meats, and who also grow various wheats and barleys), but some nouns are semantically immune from it in the literal locale:basketball isbasketball (notabasketball, althoughlamb is [alwaysat least]alamb [if not parts of several], despite Homer's comicalmisconception), and David is certainly one of a kind, even if daytime David and nighttime David play subtly differentbasketballs because nighttime David's sport (countable) is bizarro basketball (uncountable), wherethe nets are woven somewhat differently andthe court is a slightly different size.
A tangent: The nature of oneiric constructions is often merely parameter value derangement versus phenomena that are normal, but that doesn't make the oneiric thingsparaphenomenal norparanormal, because the morphological gap for those two is by blocking from previous semantic commitments. Which is to say: Some ways of beingpara- arepara-er than others.
Another tangent: All this talk of daytimeLBJ and nighttimeLBJ reminded me of daytimeRN and nighttimeRN and of a story I once read thereon: sometimes nighttimeRN would get too farinto his cups and people would have to worry about his finger being on the button, which is to say,The Button (whereas some buttons arebuttoner than others).
Advertisement blah blah blah! Maybe this picture of a stranger's face would goad you into clicking here for no reason!
So, in conclusion, as you can see, we never did get to the point that the headline falsely claimed we would get to. We just hope that next time you're in the market for a cantaloupe, you'll remember what my Uncle So-and-So said: Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Observations
You know, when I wasin short pants, they used to teach us all about the value of theinverted pyramid. It has become painfully obvious to me that in the 2020s the goal of much of the news industry (which is notcognitively synonymous with the journalism profession) is to get a screenload of pixels in front of your eyes and then have your eyes linger over it, the longer the better. I do certainly enjoy reading analyses and explainers, but it is just annoyingly obvious that most of them could (well and easily) have a TLDR section at top butOH MY GOD NO THAT MUST NEVER BE ALLOWED because it would hurt the pixel-lingering thing, which isso painfully obviously the news industry'strue reason for existing. But you know what's going to happen next, though: it now seems inevitable to me. As soon as people can merely click or tap for an agentic-AI summary without having to do anything annoying or complicated, and the summary is reliably good enough (accurate, and insightful about what to highlight [core themes, underlying main idea, key details]), the applecart will topple yet again, regarding the business model crumpling anew. What I realize in retrospect that I didn't appreciate back in the day is that the physical constraints of the media of the day (i.e., the cost ofcolumn inches, the minute-counting limit of a broadcast timeslot) wereforcing the moneygrubbers to stick closer to honoring the inverted pyramid concept more often; the owners of those media weren't serving the reader properlybecause they actually believed in the ethical principles of serving the reader, doing excellent journalism, and giving the reader what they want; they were doing it because there were only so many paper pages or TV minutes available to cram crap into. Of course, they could try to make thenews hole as small as possible (i.e., more print ads per page and less news; more TV commercials and news radio commercials per hour and less news), but they were up against the constraint that the readers (as buyers) would revolt and tell them to shove their papers or airwaves up their asses if the news hole got any smaller than it already was. What's different today is that the way you tell them to shove their BS is by refusing to read long-winded walls of words. This involves cutting back scrolling time (screen time), and soon it is likely also to involve a single click or tap for an agentic-AI-supplied TLDR that the content producers refused to provide themselves. But what about killing the business though, one might counterargue? I get it. But perhaps the answer is going to be that people will just need to pay for subscriptions a bit more in exchange for not sitting through ads as much (or sifting through walls of windy words while ads are blinking at the sides and interspersions). Related here is the super-annoying habit of the news companies allowing the ads to be presented and sized in such a way that you can barely avoid accidentally tapping them on your smartphone screen when you dare to hold your phone and touch it and scroll it, and you sometimes fail to avoid that accident (because it is like playing a game of Operation to avoid touching them all). That's theirantipattern that lets them lie about (i.e., fraudulently inflate) what would be theirtrue (and dismally small) click rates.
Perhaps I will start applying a nickname to the explainers and analyses that fail to give a good TLDR properly up front. Say, perhaps, "dogtoe articles", written in the "dogtoe writing style", because you click on a headline about something important (such as, say, environmental impact of XYZ or supply chain difficulties of ABC) and what you get is "So let me tell you a story about how I got my dog's toenails painted last week. By the time you're more than halfway done wading through my umpteen thousand words, I might gradually get to the point about why I'm telling you this stupid mundane anecdote. If the point of the story is about changing a formula to avoid ingredient X, first I'll tell you a story about how the industry I'm covering got its start back in 1852 when a wily old character with bushy eyebrows named So-and-So invented a concoction at his kitchen table, and now let's flash forward to the nail salon last week where my dog's claws were getting apet-icure … " ENOUGH. GOD. TLDR: SUPPLY CHAIN IS KINKED BECAUSE BLAH AND BLAH. LIKELY FIX WILL COME FROM BLAH AND BLAH. Speaking of supply chains, I'm sick of people claiming that domestic alternatives "can't be created" when all that's really true is that "it would cost more than it does now." This BS about samarium, this BS about dysprosium, this BS about smartphone production. "We could have secured a non-China supply chain for any of these things by now, but someone would have had tospend some money, and end-users would have topay the real costs of the things that they want to buy. So you can see the bind we're in regarding all of this being ‘physically impossible’". FU.
PS: Some months later: Today I heard a nice quote from Casey Handmer: 'Well, so when someone says, "We can't do it, we won't do it, no way, no how," what they're saying is, "Write me a check."' Amen. Exactly.
ways of talking about the collocation strength axis
a parameter for{{co}} and{{coi}} such asstrength=, which measures the strength per the following codifications:
at leastX corpus attestations of the string (the collocation) with no missense parsing and no OCR error, where the minimum value forX would probably be 3
which operationally means: at leastX corpus attestations of the string (the collocation) with no detectable or likely missense parsing and no detectable or likely OCR error, where the minimum value forX would probably be 3
ways of talking about the hyponym–instance axis
Consider that for many a dict def, such as for a vernacular name for a kind of bird, you can structure it in any of several ways.
For the (hypothetical)common spotted whateverbird, for example, where that vernacular name corresponds to the taxonomic name (say)Prettybirdus spottilicious, you can say, "A bird, thePrettybirdus spottilicious, which lives in region X and eats mainly insects."
You could also say, "A kind of bird, thePrettybirdus spottilicious, which lives in region X and eats mainly insects; an individual of this species." The two units on either side of the semicolon are, respectively, "the common spotted whateverbird" (in general) and "a common spotted whateverbird", which is "the common spotted whateverbird" that is in front of you at the moment, which is to say, "this common spotted whateverbird", "that common spotted whateverbird [right there]", "this here common spotted whateverbird", and so on.
Wiktionary contains instances of both methods being used, because it is the work of many hands. I recognize that some people will argue that the first method is preferrable because "it is terser, and any reader will understand it as meaning the same thing as the second method." But I see certain advantages to the second method that are worth having. It preserves (reflects) the underlying parameterization structure in an unobtrusive way, and doing so is worthwhile from some viewpoints (for some purposes).
Daily wanderings sometimes bring us back to the neighborhood wherethe Buick dealership is.
It's kind of hilarious, in avicarious embarrassment kind of way, thesheer hugeness of the category of "mental mediocrities misapprehending that *everyone* else on Earth, rather than merely *most* people, is just as mentally mediocre as they are." One does at times feel the cringe on their behalf.
We keep seeing these claims nowadays, along the lines of "no human would do that", and they're recurringly hilariously inept,what with confusing the 95th or 99th percentiles with the 100th.
Recent examples have included the notion that no human would ever write with certain punctuation (especially semicolons, en dashes, or em dashes); no actual human would have anactive vocabulary that isn't crippled by mental mediocrity (example:they imagine that the word 'ostensibly' is so 'big' and 'hard' a word to most (ostensibly) non–intellectually disabled adult native speakers that it must always be circumvented, lol 💀); and no human wouldopt out of things like excessessentialization, excessethnocentrism, excesscruelty, excessmelodrama, excesssportsball — what else? (Uh-oh, did an em dash just rear its "alien" head?)
There's something uniquely affronting, though, to being accused ofunhumanity by such a typical instance of human mental mediocrity. It's so laughably moronic. Here's why. Speaking of the various and sundry ways to be mediocre, I'm a submediocre athleteon a good day, and even worse on a bad. I admit it; I can't help it (even when I try my hardest); and I'm not pleased by it (quite the opposite: I dislike it). But you know what that fact has nothing to do with? Seeing the athletic performance of someone who's an awesome athlete (for example, pro-level athletes on TV) and being so moronic as to imagine that they aren't real humans because most humans are mediocre athletes and, "therefore" (lol),all "real" humans are mediocre athletes.
Who's going to break it to them, lol?There there, no no, what'sactually happening, hon, is that you're just mentally mediocre. It's OK: it's not your fault, and there's nothing you can do to fix it, so the rest of us won't hold it against you, in a personal way; and you can take comfort from how much company you keep, as there're more of y'all than there are of us; so much more, in fact, that the lopsidedness is what confused you into mistaking "most" for "all". That's reasonable, because confusing you isn't too hard, hon, in some ways,after all. But as for accusingme of beingunhuman: go fuck your lamentably, embarrassingly, slow-wittedly mediocre self. Go look in the mirror and admit to yourself whatyou are, just as I've had to do regarding whatI am, anodd one out. It's not really that interesting or remarkable or dramatic,in the end: it merelyis what it is, no more and no less.
Update a week or so later: I saw a weird one today, from someone I wouldn't have expected one of these to come from (because of how smart they clearly are, usually). I am currently chalking it up to exaggeration for effect and (perhaps also) not thinking very hard or carefully in the particular moment when they put the thought into words. The claim, which I know to be counterfactual, is that "no" humans are able to durably maintain agnostic assessment of relative probabilities (about any particular question) and that they instead have days when they feel certain that the truth about a particular question equals yes and other days when they feel certain that the truth of it equals no. But c'mon man: you won't convince me that I'm theonly human being on Earth of whom that claim is false. The chances of your being right about that seem like billions to one. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying that there aren't going to be any days when I feel certain that you're correct about it, and there aren't going to be any days when I feel certain that you're wrong about it, but every day I'm going to consider it too far-fetched to be likely.
PS: Now that this instance landed in front of me, the theme is bugging me again. There would have to be either psychological or manipulation issues (of one kind or another) going on in the minds that make these claims? Something to the effect that they'relashing out somehow, and pretending to believe something that deep down they know is probably false? Or, otherwise, that they're lying and they know it, for one reason or another. The reason I think so is that some of these claims are so easily falsifiable, sort of a "you can't be serious" thing and a "you can clearly be proven wrong" thing, so then why claim something that can be so easily disproved. C'mon man: the one that claims that "no" "real" humans have nonshitty vocabularies? (Who do you think wrote the books of, say, Nassim Nicholas Taleb? Do youreally imagine that it was a robot instead of Nassim Nicholas Taleb himself? Do youreally imagine that he isn't in command of the vocabulary that he uses in that text, whereas instead he "really" just threw darts helplessly at an open thesaurus?) The one that claims that "no" "real" humans have competent command of the full suite of punctuation used in formal written English? (Who do you think wrote theChicago Manual of Style? Do youreally think it was a robot instead of the contributors and editors listed in the front matter?) Maybe these people are just trolling because it scores algorithmic engagement with their content.Ding ding ding, speaking of relative likelihoods, I think we're done here: mystery solved. At least some of them are just lying for money ($$$). Phew. At least now the theme won't be bugging me further.
Another, a week or so later, that I really had to laugh at (not with): another one of these "moronicness-enforcing heuristics" articles that I was skimming. It mentions how genAI bots often maintain semantic accuracy by specifying concepts such as "often" or "usually" and so on (I forget the precise listing of such strings that they gave, but I seem to recall thatmore often than not was among them — as it well ought to be, as a logically valid and practically useful qualifier). I thought to myself, "Right, so what you're telling me (without telling me) is that (you believe that) most meatbags avoid bothering to be logically and factually accurate when they talk or write or think, so if we see any well-edited and well-punctuated utterances that specify such qualifiers (to uphold high semantic and logical accuracy) rather than overlooking or forgetting to include them, then we're to take it as a sign that we're not hearing from a meatbag, because (1) many meatbags can't be fucked about it and (2) many other ones aren't capable of being fucked about it." Speak for yourself, hon. Don't be coming after me with accusations of being unhuman just because I can manage to keep track of some shit mentally when I speak. Some of these mouthbreathers apparently have a risibleP460 error in their brains: they evidently misapprehend that the relation (mouthbreather⊂human) (which is true) is identical to the relation that (mouthbreather=human) (which is false), so they misextrapolate that nonmouthbreather=nonhuman. A joke just occurred to me: we ought to start prompting LLMs to generate theirown "moronicness-enforcing heuristics" articles and see what they come up with. "So I've noticed that most of you humans are idiots. Let me dissect and count the ways you are moronic, as follows. Number one, you can't avoid misspeaking by misasserting that things that are often or usually true are always true. Number two, [etc]." But of course part of the joke here is that "I learned it by watching you",as they say: LLMs learned to string language together by reading shit that meatbags wrote. Including those meatbags who are capable of being semantically (logically and factually) accurate, besides the bunch of others who aren't. The LLMs wouldn't be doing it if the meatbags hadn't sometimes (not never) been doing it first.
Another, some days later: someone who told ChatGPT or another of its ilk to write a vignette about someone (an adult offspring) finding out that their father had recently died. The indignant prompter railed that "no" human would write the vignette that the bot returned upon the first iteration (from the first prompt) because it was "terrible" writing that didn't portray the adult offspring as a basketcase of chaotic spasms of emotion, which "any" or "every" "real" human would be. The indignant prompter obviously failed to imagine such humans as are estranged from their fathers because their fathers are assholes (con men, deadbeat dads, wifebeaters, child molesters, whatever), such humans as have never met their fathers, and others easily imagined by people with imaginations who actually try. Perhaps we should rail that the indignant prompterthemselves can't possibly be a "real" human, because they're obviously really bad at envisioning any person's circumstances and disposition and personality other than their own? No, that would obviously be moronic: it is obvious that many "real" humans are really bad at any number of mental activities. You can't be unhuman solely by being stupid, moronic, thick-skulled, dull-witted, etc. Then, on the other end of the spectrum, you also can't be unhuman solely by being smart: having a decent vocabulary, comprehending how punctuation works, etc (despite what some humans misapprehend). One thing that possibly does mark you asquite typically human, albeit notguaranteeing that you are such (as opposed to a machine aping typical humans), is having a near-complete failure of imagination about, and laughably weak power of conception for, comprehending and appreciating the scope and range of human neurodiversity.
Another, some weeks later. More on the em dash instance of this theme, which has become cliché. A writer points out that most humans don't bother to use em dashes not so much because almost none of them comprehend the uses of the em dash (not true) but rather merely because there's no key on the keyboard for it, which means that instead one must use some other keystroke, or paste; and what this writer is telling you without telling you is that almost all humans are either too lazy or too stupid to copy and paste, or to learn a keystroke, or to use any app for hotkeys. Well. Here's the thing: she's notwrong. Touché. At least she has brought the argument to the true root causes instead of the moronicness-enforcing notion that almost all humans are too stupid even tocomprehend em dashes.
cosmic uniqueness
A reminder for when I forget again:
Regarding the distinctions among semantic dimension in literal locale, semantic dimension in figurative locale, and morphosyntactic dimension:
Even names for cosmically unique entities (putatively cosmically unique, emically cosmically unique, etc) can always manage to have a plural form, morphosyntactically, for (the instance-specific homologue of) the following reason:
David was certainly one of a kind, but sometimes it seemed like there were two Davids: daytime David and nighttime David.
This fact is what kills any possible smartass challenge about "things that are countable but there's only one of them in existence." Every such candidate can be forced to yield such a corner case: theSun, theMoon, theEarth,God,Heaven, theUniverse, theWorld, theInternet — evenMom, that is,yər mom.
The point is that there is never a lack of a plural form, morphosyntactically, even though there can be a lack of any plural in the semantic dimension in the literal locale. Past Mom and Future Mom can attest to this fact, as can theUniverse and its arch nemesis, thebizarro Universe.
near-hypernyms and near-hyponyms
There can be said to be such things. The instance that made me think more consciously about it again, after being of coursevaguely aware of it at the mere-truism level for a long time, isFOODMO, which is a hyponym ofFOMO and can be said to beat least (i.e., neverless than) a near-hyponym of bothanxiety andworry.
A simple equivalence (a refactored formula) is that whenever you identify a hypernym, you can say that that hypernym's near-synonyms are the near-hypernyms of its hyponyms, and this formula will very often perform well. (Perhaps it rarely will fail. To be investigated more later.)
I don't expect Wiktionary to deal with this phenomenon at any formal level. And that's fine, because anyone who wants to be told the near-hypernyms of any given term can simply click through to its hypernyms and then, from there, click through to their near-synonyms. The homologoustwo-step is true of discovering any near-hyponyms. Nonetheless:
Imagine a Wiktionarylike thing that had achieved a comprehensive level of entering not only syn, ant, hyper, hypo, hol, mer, comer, cot, and near-syn but also near-hyper and near-hypo. It would be interesting. Of course the default value for the show/hide state (i.e., the expand/collapse state) would be hide (i.e., collapse). No duh. But it would be interesting to unhide that list at will.
Of course all of this is pie in the sky anyway, because most humans don't even bother to fully build humanity's existing dictionaries, let alone anything else with interesting additional features. Nonetheless, a nonidiot can have fun dreaming, even when that person is sitting alone doing so.
Update some weeks later: Last night when I was well towards bed, it started to occur to me, in half-formed glimpses, that I can sense the parametric structure whereby just as hypernyms bear a certain well-familiar relation to synonyms, and a cohyponym has a well-trod relation to that parent, so there must be a sort of antimatter-hypernym that has the homologous relation but in the flipped polarity — the antonymous polarity. A parent-antonym, or an antonym-parent. The weird thing, though, is that I'm having trouble fleshing out the corollaries, which is to say, uncovering the whole buried treasure of which these glimpses were just the tip. Why is that? It's strange that the structure is teasing me before I even dredge an example. How doesthat work? It goes to show what eyelessness is truly about, under the hood; it's not just hype. Let's dredge one now. Hmmm … to manage to do so we have to start with something easy on the positive-polarity side. How about an easy favorite such as trees. No, that won't work (will it?), for what evenis antonymy among trees? Hmmm … emotions? No … what about light and dark? Bring in a color parameter: declare red and green to be opposite enough for the purpose, for the moment. And shut down the coal mine, and shut down the SOPs. Now: the hypernym of light red is red, and the antimatter-hypernym is green; the hypernym of dark green is green, and the antimatter-hypernym is red. Very well. All well and good. Now: what does this get us? How does this benefit us? We don't yet know. We will put these things on the shelf, and they will sit there while the elevator car goes whizzing past, for some unknown span of time. Sometimes while we are in the elevator, busy going about our day, we will think of this shelf, and the shelf will coexist with these thoughts. This circuit of inductance is fascinating but also dangerous.You don't know the chances. I didn't either when I first innocently toyed with it, nor for many years afterward. The century-old headstone of a total stranger gives off more of this glow than most other objects do, which is not entirely a coincidence. No need to worry, though, as it is like gravity: we are all surrounded by it daily, we all comport ourselves in accord with its defaults, and all of this is the norm, so nothing about it is strange, except perhaps its contemplation.
Where: This curation focus/locus/entity could be moved elsewhere later.
Why: I bothered to put it here now for reasons of PKM.
How:
Its incarnation here will never be exhaustive nor even comprehensive; the inclusion criterion for this incarnation is usefulness to my PKM needsdu jour.
Its syntactic conventions are easily both deducible and propagable by nonidiots. I find instances of that theme unduly (unhealthily) interesting because of how often I encounter user error of this error type in the business world.
Valves built into systems for [diversion/release/sequestration-and-processing] of the [garbage water/bilge water] thatGoodhart's lawpredictably and reliably makes inevitable
The first layer of such valves and piping would be a simple statement along the lines that "we realize that subversion perGoodhart's law is predictably and reliably inevitable, and therefore, we will withhold the reward from subverters according to the following formula: the administrators have authority to test for and detect likely subversions, and they have authority to withhold the reward while (being required also to be) explaining publicly and cogently the fact that the withholding instance happened and a cogent exposition explaining the likely scam that the withholding instance thus disrupted."
No doubt many such valves already exist, in countless systems or subsystems. But the reason it bears labeling and defining is that there seems to be a genre of pointing out risibly egregious instances ofcobra effects (for clicks and attention) that fails to address the obvious follow-on questions, as follows: what are the Goodhart valves that were already in place (if any); if they existed, please analyze and explain why this risibly egregious instance slipped through those cracks; what are the Goodhart valves that should (obviously) have been in place earlier; what are the Goodhart valves that should (obviously) be implemented in this particular systemfrom now on?
Put another way: For every easy and obvious way togame the system, what is the move for rendering that scam unprofitable? And then how do you keep evolving the systems periodically after that, kind of like, "you have to keep giving the person a haricut periodically because there is no such a thing as a pill to stop his hair from growing without significant side effects, and the other obvious solution to not having to give any haircuts (kill the person) is not acceptable either." It seems like the aforementioned genre enjoys implying that "the ultimate lesson is to never build any system," but that seems like a childish and useless conclusion. In a world where systems must exist, what are the Goodhart valves that will be devised, and if periodic new systems and valves are required, well, so be it, if it is indeed inevitable. The never-ending arms-versus-armourarms race is relevant here: the lesson from the (risibly egregious) fact that such an arms race has always and will always exist^ is not "don't bother with defense technology because it is all ultimately pointless." The proper lesson is proper egregiousness management.
instances of types
azero morph marking (which is to say, not marking) the hyponym–instance distinction
singlewordform (within eachlexemic family) instantiating a hyponym or an instance (either and both)
This is one of the reasons why people sometimes have a hard time keeping the concepts of hyponym and instance straight. The zero morph status makes it harder to talk about clearly.
Many examples. There is a large class of them that ought properly to be captured lexicographically with two POSs, the proper noun POS and the common noun POS; but dictionaries have a long way to go on carrying out that idea.
A typical example out of many: Buick·Buick#Proper noun is the make; a Buick·Buick#Noun is an instance thereof; any Buick·Buick#Noun is an instance thereof. The LaCrosse·LaCrosse#Proper noun is a model of Buick; a LaCrosse·LaCrosse#Noun is an instance thereof; any LaCrosse·LaCrosse#Noun is an instance thereof.
Two things: (1) you could make a language that uses affixes to mark the difference; (2) even within English as she is spoke, you couldbuild out a dictionary to mark the difference clearly with POSs and senseids. Something that those things have in common: no one cares, you can't make them care, they won't care, they won't help (essentially because they can't help), you're a dork, and please pass the gravy and the TikTok and the porn and the murder, cousin. You sure do have a funny way of talkin. Must be pointless.
No shit, my dearCaptain Obvious (hey, do you knowSherlock? No? Oh; I thought all you celebrities knew each other personally). Thus, of course this isold news, but what made mereappreciate it earlier today was bumpingonce again intohey, there's another one (an instance exemplifying another class) my old friend (my old, old friend), the downward spiral that can result whendumbing it down takes a long, long, scary sled ride with no brakes intodumbing it way, way, way down, which we would label as a troponym or hyponym (take your pick) except that by an accident of our birth (namely, which particularnatural language we're hanging around in here), there is no separate non-SoP term for that troponymic type (only an SoP composite, aVP containing anAdvP). But my brain decides (without asking me) tospin up some tentative classes, just to see what happens:
Theway too long class, which mygrammarization here avoids discretizing further; which is to say, this classification will not make acategorical distinction between away too long class and away, way too long class, because theeye of the beholder is (a bit?way?)toostrong in this one (and possibly, more precisely,by my lights,^^(hey, why is thateye red? Don't you know Shakespeare?^^ No? Oh) even perhapsway,way too strong. (Strong enough, even, perhaps, to fall into my special class [discussed elsewhere herein] of hyponymy that collapses contextually into synonymy, or almost.)
It's funnyyou mention this potential but unrealized subclass, though, becausejust tonight I was mulling over my lettuce options at the supermarket when thespeaker voiced solaudably^ byAdam Duritz admitted to me (for perhaps the thousandth or so time in my lifetime)the following realization over the ceilingspeakers:
I been hangin around this town on a corner I been bummin around this old town For way, way,way, way, way too long way, way,way, way too long way, way,way, way too long way, way,way, way too long way, way,way, way too long way, way,way, way too long way, way,way, way toolong
There is a set of circuits that throbs with interconnections to the set mentioned above, regarding polysemy (most broadly, that is, polysemy of any possible kind), multiple causes thereof, and thus also types thereof (or possibletyping thereof). Various recent instances made me think more consciously about it again, after being of coursevaguely aware of it at the mere-truism level for a long time. Today is the first time that I am experimenting with recapping it or codifying it in the following (tentative) way:
There is the portion/subset/range of polysemy that is lexical (including the subportions that are lexically figurative, that is, figurativein a lexical way [for example, your mom is a heavenly star]); and then there is the portion/subset/range of it that is unlexically figurative, that is, figurativein a nonlexical way [for example, your mom is a dump truck with faulty brakes]; and then there is the portion/subset/range of it that is of other natures, includingarbitrarily but for a good reason, that is,arbitrarily, but arbitrarily in service of a practical nonarbitrary reason, which iscryptography [for example, your mom is the silver fox at noontime; or, ultimately, your mom is 10010110011101].
I believe that today is the first time when my brain ever succeeded in assembling atyping in which cryptography has any logically obvious parametric relation to metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche. Which is not to say that this parametric relation thus newly typified isdeeply meaningful ordeeply interesting — no, not at all, that's not what my brain is asserting at all. Rather, merely that itexists and can be consciously detected and noticed.
Somewhere out there, no doubt, are various minds replying,no shit, Sherlock. That's OK. Consider the genre of this page: DIY, build a shelf, notes to shelf.
It's fine without the anchorage because some ships areseaworthier than others anyhowz.fta
PS: I'm pretty sure I'd never before this moment ever wondered how a particularanchorage came to be calledAnchorage, but as soon as it occurred to me to ask, my gut knewmore or less what the answer wouldturn out to be when I looked it up. The only question would be the ID parameter value of the one whose dick was being swung about. Cook and Banks: I should have made a wager before looking; somebanks are morecooked than others.^^^^ Banks is to botanical taxonomy as Barney Gumble is to thesperm bank customer list. That's not whatpanspermia is, but it doesn't take many parameter dialings totune it in.
PPS: This little ditty is flawed, though: I just checked to see which of Cook's three big voyages Banks was on, and itturns out that he was only on the first one. He almost went on the second one, but he refused to acquiesce because he couldn't get anyone to color-filter his M&Ms,as it were.^ Anyway, the little ditty above still works as a fictionalizedallegory lol: let it be a lesson to us all aboutsomething,^ orsomeplace,^ and the dangers ofcomplacency,and so on lol.
PPPS:allegory andallegation are not cognate (merely coshittified^^), but they often share some parameters: (1) often,made-up stories, and (2) often, human dread and strife. But admittedly this connection's degree oftriviality is influenced by the fact that connecting humans with dysphoria and ill-treatment (thus, preventable dysphoria) islike shooting fish in a barrel.
This thought train sprouted upon a visit to the hypernymy nodes atThesaurus:god andThesaurus:Satan and blossomed upon a visit to the absence of any hypernymy node atThesaurus:entity, where we are instead tersely informed, "Notes: There are no hypernyms; "entity" is the broadest term." At the syn node, we findentity andthing, and really the latter is a near-synonym of the former, not a synonym (as it is in fact usually hyponymous, as parameterized by the animate–inanimate distinction), but that's forgivable becauseWiktionary:Thesaurus, in its currentstate of the art at least, lumps parasynonyms into the syn node.
My first reaction was to laugh and think that perhaps there should be a further note appended there: "Congratulations, you've reached the end of the thesaurus (and of all possible thesauri in this language, in many others, and perhaps in all others)."
Admittedly, though, reaching such a juncture is trivial: it isnothing more than crossing a messy room to arrive at a far corner. You can do it easily and repeatedly; you can go to that place and leave it again trivially; and there are multiple such corners that can be visited and left and revisited at will. Nonetheless:
Translational science, application development: This theme has practical applications in bureaucratic obfuscation. One might easily imagine a Pentagon spokesperson, answering reporters' questions,implementing someinstances (lol):
Well, some agencies are working on some programs, and some folks are in discussions of various aspects. That's about all I can disclose at this time. Lol fu2
[Later] A quick thought to scribble down. One-word sentences (or two-worders) are a subclass that has strength to compete for the vagueness crown (the crown that crowns theking of kings in that class). Some top contenders:
[Some months later still] On overorientation tolerance
Areprise of the theme regarding the broadest hypernym,entity, as parameterized by the animate–inanimate distinction. I redacted the first draft of this daydream in favor of the following replacement: The viceroys to the royentity includeobject,thing, andperson, and there is a slight difference in performance among them, as hypernyms not worth expressing in the upward chain of hypernyms for any given hyponymous noun (thus, governing the parameter value for the upper cutpoint), that follows the fault line of the animate–inanimate distinction. I don't want to belabor further in nonredacted form except to note that the needler/simulator distinction is related (in structural underpinnings) to why my visceral reaction to that slight difference is not a typical one: I am well aware of the typical revulsion (to overorientation) but do not experience it myself, for the same underlying reason why a machine doesn't, or, more precisely, because of a dose of the same reason, where the dose value admittedly is lower than a machine's but is (and this is the point) higher than most nonmachines'. The amount of [reestablishing that all systems are still nominal at the current timepoint] that it would take to viscerally repulse me exceeds the envelope that a typical nonmachine would predict, which is not to say that such an event cannot happen but rather merely thathoney,you aren't able to pack enough lunch to ever arrive at it, as it were. Of course, it is true that there are pros and cons to every tradeoff.Oh, the prices you'll pay! Anyway: never mind; but I just had to jot some shit down here tonight because it's one of those nights when the eyelessness, as it flirts with losing and regaining the handholds, proves that the handhold redetection is more than just an analogy. In such moments, one can sense that it isall one, even though one cannot lay eyes on all details of the mechanism at once. It is interesting to speculate about plausible evolutionary explanations for the arising of needle simulators, but dharmic ones are more entertaining.
[Some months later still] An update on vagueness level
I adjustedThesaurus:entity becausephenomenon is broader still: it is broader thanentity because it can be more abstract; for example, winning (or smiling) is a phenomenon but not an entity, unless under a rather special definition specific to certain purposes, situations, persons, or organizations.
PS: There are noChesterfield ads inChest,er, at least not anymore; but has thatalways been true though? Perhaps; one would have to check. But the standard joke today is that in the 1950s, you might choose the brand of cigs recommended by your doctor. Some forms of beingdoctor-recommended are morerecommendable than others.
Skimming an article debunking some of the morebreathlesslyunderinformed claims aboutPQC and Q-Day, and I think of course ofGell-Mann amnesia. (Disclosure: I'm hypoboffinous about advanced math and comp sci, so all I'm capable of doing is following along with my littlegrain of salt, sniffing the gists and hoping for the best [regarding mytakeaway understandings], when I'm reading explications either of breathless warning or annoyed debunking thereof [i.e., eitherargument orcounterargument].) Part of the seminal quote from Crichton is, "The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia." I think this is tricky and complex. Anytime you drag out the phrase "the only possible explanation", you should recognize it as a flag signaling "the only possible explanation *within the parametric space (the level) on which one is currently thinking*". I don't have time to plumb deeper right now, but for now what I'll jot here is thatepistemic amnesia strikes me, so far, as a differentiablyspecial kind of amnesia. Crichton rightly pointed out that the effect "does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say." Well, not literallyeverything, if you're doing it right; rather, instead, it is a process ofdeweighting, which is a vector ofweighting. Really all we can do even with journalism, even *good* journalism (i.e., good albeit imperfect), is deweighting, holding concepts lightly, always keeping them seasoned with thegrains of salt. But humans' resistance to doing this increases sharply beyond certain points, certain levels, because we tend to feel the need to make sense of our world and have more certainty than perhaps is rationally warranted, and when we've reached the end of any particular branch (the branch tips) practicably for degree of vetting (i.e., higher vetting is conceivable but is also *practicably unavailableat the moment*), we give up and take what we can get (i.e., the most that we managed to get in thecontext), then hop to a different branch of the canopy. We're fine with deweighting the claims of any one particular rando, but we encounter increasingly steep resistance as we try to get ourselves to deweight *every* possibility, even the most highlyvetted ones. Some of us are better than others at holding and deweighting rather than instantly either rejecting or accepting (i.e.,buying it, orbuying into it). I don't think that thismetathought pattern is unrelated to my littlefunhouse of mirrors and the fact that I seem to be nearly alone in visiting it. Which is to say, more precisely, I recognize that it *might* be unrelated but I also simultaneously deweight the scenario in which it is. Anyway, my point about it is that I hold various thoughts simultaneously there while weighting and deweighting them, and even the terminal "meh" is not a resolution: it is merely setting all the multiple balls down until the next time I pick them up again.All those balls in the air lol. The more accurate metaphor, though, for what my mind does, is that all of the balls are always in the air, and I just grab a few and hold them at any one time. Often I'm not making any claim that any of them have gotten "resolved" at the termination of thesession. But admittedly in life there are contexts where decisions have to be made and thus multiverses of possibilities must be set aside, resolved for practical purposes. Hunting, gathering, fishing, farming, business, warfare, and others:fish or cut bait, shit or get off the pot. A different metaphor for the holding and deweighting: an integrated circuit that some multimeter probes might intermittently touch in various spots, temporarily.Oh well, I'm failing to accomplish much with this little jotted thought train, so I'll desistfor now.
PS tho: box cat meows when he smells fish being cut into bait outside his box, and he asks you to open the lid so that he canhave it. If you decide tolet im av it, thenpart of himbuys it when you do, but the rest of him appreciatesa nice feeding tho. Then it is time to eithershit or getout thecat box.
The funny thing about mental mining schematics^ or building schematics^ is that a record of the breadcrumb trail is sometimes something that even the minerthemself must retrace if they are to reloadall the RAM; it is a flawedmental model to assume thatall the turns would remain in the fingertips. However, a difference is that the miner is well predisposed to the retracing, and they recognize various old friends among the rocks and landmarks as they go. This isso much like its physical analogues, inso many ways at once, that the similarity is more than just similarity: it is identity, somewhere down inside the machine. But one last thing, though: just because it can'tall reside in the fingertips doesn't mean that one won't get surprised by discovering some of the bits thatdo remain there. Again, this isso much like its physical analogues, inso many ways at once, that meh you know what I'm handwaving about, or if you don't then never mind anyway, and perhaps you will later, or not; either way, blah blah FILE NOT FOUND
PS:metaparameter: later on I will know much of this hallway instantly like the back of my FILE NOT FOUND
Man seekscatalysts for quick and affordable reactions. Must pay own way. Unusual candidates considered. Software apps to aid search are appreciated. Playing hard to get isOK, butunobtainables need not apply. No teasers. Limited appetite forplaying games. Cash paid for decent leads.
I lack time to flesh this out at the moment, but it's been percolating in recent days.I've talked before about dictionary-thesaurus balance points. Now I have an encapsulation, which can be further worked with later:
People often tend to think of dictionary and thesaurus as two poles dichotomized: dictionary as spelling and definitions [only or almost only] and thesaurus as treasury [read: gigantic grab bag, or kitchen sink] of every semantic relation under the sun. But the optimal solution for most use cases is a dictionary-thesaurus, and even more precisely speaking, a dictionary-thesaurus, that gives the top-ranked key relations and thenpoints (via hyperlink) to the kitchen sink (or bucket) where more can be foundif or when each use-instance wants them. This theme alone is fairly trivial (no shit, Sherlock; glancing over excellent examples [among published reference works] sees it in action), but what can be added here is that there should also be tightness, not sloppiness, within the top-ranked positions regarding which relation applies (in each sensewise pair).
Thoughts on happening across the user page of a user wholeft, and wholeft a parting shot: they asserted that this site will always be a kludge.
Of course they're right: It will never not be a kludge, on some or another parametric range of kludgeness. Whether it will ever not be a kludge is not the right question: It won't ever not be. The right question is: In a world of kludges, what will one choose to do or not do? There's not necessarily a right or wrong answer. I don't blame them for leaving; that was the right decision for the set of parameter values (in space, time, and other attributes) that governed it.
This theme has special academic interest for old no-eyes, as he's seen many kinds of valleys: some in which one might stay, and some in which one mightn't; some in which a coin might be flipped, some in which it cannot be, and some in which it already has been.
Somehalfhearted fails of orthographic standardization
No doubt this topic is more masterfully summarized elsewhere, in various reference works — and thus in some ways it is dumb for me to reduplicate here in any hasty/slapdash way — but it's one of those things that I don't really have time to address in whole-ass fashion but I don't want to ignore. So here goes:
To do shortly: fill in the analogous bit about /kænsəˈleɪʃən/ having preferred (first-listed) spelling ascancellation and second-listed variant ascancelation, even in AmE, despite AmE preferringcancel, canceling, canceled as first-listed variant, which accords with the stressed-versus-unstressed regularity (as do, for example, the /-ˈɛl/ series members with theirdoubled consonant, such aspropel,impel, andrepel, plusexcel [and whichever others can be rounded up]).
What I'm after here is to nail down the following: what is a comprehensive set of cardinal examples of the regular pattern (i.e., comprehensive even if not exhaustive), and what is a comprehensive set of cardinal examples of the exceptions? Both stated in a concise takeaway thumbnail, and then also with a mnemonic for the difference. Again, I realize that if I google for long enough I might find one, but this is the sort of thing where I get annoyed with the ocean of garbage among the google results and I might find it less annoying and more fun just to independentlyrecollate this information for my(own damn)self. We'll see — I might even invent my own acrostic for the exceptions.
Either a minimal pairphonemicity instance or damn close to one (/kænsəˈleɪʃən/ | /ˌkɑnsəˈleɪʃən/); to my mind, it is so, because that secondary stress difference, if any, is in the ear of the beholder (or, I should say at least,my own accent doesn't have a difference for it; but then again, my accent says/kənˈdɪʃən/, but I know of some British TV announcer/narrator/voiceover audio that says/ˌkɑnˈdɪʃən/, and that fact may be relevant here).
Another PS:As for the method ofrecollation: may as well buildinductively by starting with a raw assemblage of list items such as "/trăns-FÛR-əns/ is standardlytransference", times X dozen (=×X×12), then sort them by regularity or lack thereof, then induce a mnemonic.
Lol. But in all seriousness, as Smith 2014 shows, the right lesson to draw is not that all post hoc analysis is bad (no, it is not all bad), but rather, simply that (1) the hypotheses and theories induced thereby should be tested with new data (independent data sets), and (2) one should maintain a running channel ofsniff testing to recognize when any particular notion of alleged causality is actually just fucking moronic if you actually bother to stop to think critically about it for once, and (quite often) can be seen in retrospect to have been induced with a ridiculously (i.e., laughably) small sample of data that in some cases was also cherry-picked, massaged, mangled, or excessively wrangled.
Managed to lay hands on something today (in a nonmanual way) after a long time of catching glimpses of it (in a nonocular way). Decided to sketch notes about it here for later, not to lose the gossamer.
As Wiktionary already rightfully notes atAppendix:Glossary, for most purposesstrictly andnarrowly are undifferentiably synonymous. But there's a tiny itch that my mind sometimes senses, regarding optional parasynonymy of the two, and yet every time I tried to touch it, it was gone. Finally laid hands on it.
Somestrictnesses arestricter than others: regardingthe autohyponymy-versus-coordinateness disjunction, my brain has been caught trying sometimes to reserve the wordstrict for the coordinateness assertion side (including and especially emphasizing the no-true-Scotsman subset), whereas the wordnarrow is lemot juste for the autohyponymy side. The difference is in thecrotchetiness: it is the difference between (1) "no, that other entity isn't even covered by this term at all, in my conception of the world" and (2) "yes, that other entity is of course covered by this term, but it's outside the silent-level range of entities that I'm focusing on right now (in the current conversation); it's contextually extraneous." [Updated later: another encapsulation:broad andnarroware neutral statements offact, free of connotation, whereasloose andstrictconnote value judgment;broad andnarrow state whatis, whereasloose andstrict seem to state (or can easily betaken as stating) whatshould be: whatought to be, in someone'sopinion.]
Can follow up on this more later. Or not. Who cares lol. This optional differentiation of these two terms (speaking of optional differentiations for pairs of terms) is not useful practicably in interpersonal communication. That's OK. Small loss; but the interesting takeaway is the underlying mechanism.
Branch 1: Grant that any semiotic system with copious ambiguity must rely oncontext sensitivity fordisambiguation (no shit, Sherlock); but savor this facet: to do this requirespattern recognition. Again, no shit (truism); but the reason it seems interesting to me at the moment is real, albeit ineffable right now.
Branch 3: mostintegers areinteresting, but themost interesting integers are −1, 0, +1, +2, and +3.
Meh. Maybe later, maybe not.
Branch 4 (months later): what is thetrue nature of aprivative adjective? Which is to say, precisely howprivative is it: to what degree? It is easy to say that anyprivative a negates and excludes completely. But are there subclasses ofprivative adjectives? Which is to say (given that natural language speakers are butserial sceneshifters), can there reasonably be said to be subclasses? It is easy to say that a fake tire is not a tire, and this is usually true (under nominal-range parameterizations). Is a toy tire a tire? Sometimes, in some scenes, yes. Still, in others, it is not, given that in some scenes when one saystire one means a tire: atire tire, a real tire, as sometires aretirer than others. Speaking of tiring, am I boring you? Am I thus a bore, and does that make me also a borer and a tirer?
Meh. Maybe later, maybe not.
If someone's real name is Jane D. Smith, and she publishes a book or a journal article under the name J.D. Smith, she has not published it under apen name, and if you think that she has, then you do not properly understand what apen name is and whatinitials are.
Bonus points:J.H. Plumb: carpet department, third floor.
What does one have time for,really? I am trying to recalibrate.
Today may have already been a turning point for me in another way. So maybe I should throw in with the oldin for a penny, in for a pound lot, and draw a line under it in some other ways as well, simultaneously;easy come, easy go. And one can alwayscome again, if the wind is right.
Get real — I have time for the occasional rapid smackdown. What I lack time for is reference desk duty. As with many things, there are parameters as input to each decision instance. Which is but a truism, but truisms are true, and reminders pointing to them aresometimes useful, as parameters on parameters.
Get real ×2 — I also have time for the occasional nonrapid fuckaround. But there needs to be a loop count parameter tho.
The Collins Gem is certainly a gem. Skimming over it produces a nice feeling. It wields thumbnail concision like a scalpel. What's not there is, from the editorial viewpoint of the piece, not worth being there.
There's a certain implicitgtfo w/ ur details gestalt. It's making me smile at the moment. Guess I'm in a mood.
AHD5 tells me that Thomas Jefferson said, "Dictionaries are but the depositories of words already legitimated by usage." This caught my attention tonight because (huge if true) it shows that even as early as Jefferson's lifetime, at least some nonlexicographer people — users of dictionaries as opposed to makers of them — duly comprehended that this fact is true.
There might also be plenty of other coeval or older notable quotes that further corroborate it, for all I know. I'm just a mushroom hunter who knows how tokeep his eyes open and observe howone thing correlates with others. Old no-eyes justscoffs and asks whether I callthat anopen eye.
PS: Regarding things that are huge if true, and whether or not U.S. presidents said them: Didn't Abraham Lincoln warn us not to believe everything that we read on the internet? It's merely a series of tubes,after all.
The Collins English Thesaurus Essential sets a nice example with putting the top-ranked key/cardinal synonym or antonym first and in boldface, then continuing on with the others. It's natural, intuitive, the most useful approach, and so on.
Not infrequently I get flashing glimpses of how it's pointless for me to bother improving Wiktionary. In some ways, on some channels, it is true. And yet: not in every way or on every channel. Such is life in parametrization land; the gestalt effect is much like tuning intoairwave TV or radio (something most of us used to do in the old days, and some people still do today). One'sregularly scheduled program is in progress when somestatic flits across the scene. But I'm used to that effect, so it's OK; some static is statickier•·• ·+ than others, and my Cornish friend just scoffs and asks whether you callthat a troublesome doubt.
PPS: It's worth capturing here that one of the channels on which Wiktionary's development is quite worthwhile is that Wiktionary achieves a certain accomplishment with dispensing of certain kinds of map-territory questions preemptively in a very efficient way, once the entries relevant to that particular question are sufficiently refined. I lack time at the moment to work up a better description of it, but it sums up with an icon: So far, in my experience, I've seen one other dictionary (precisely, one other dictionary-thesaurus combination) that achieves the same accomplishment in essentially the same way — it is one explicitly based on an export from WordNet3 — but it is (naturally, understandably) limited inthe extent of its comprehensiveness — that is, its degree toward having near-completeness, as opposed to having substantially less than near-completeness, which is where it currently resides on that spectrum. Which makes sense, because completeness in this dimension is vast. Long story short, the more developed Wiktionary gets, the more it fills that gap in the world and also increasingly sets an example that will probably eventually force the world's other dictionaries to sharpen up their game a bit in this regard. One other thought that I will jot here about it for now is that there is a theme underlying it: any really sharp general dictionary has a certain degree of thesaurus component, because the sharpness involves showing exactly how word X is semantically related (or not) to word Y and word Z; which is to say, by corollary, that any really sharp general dictionary is in fact, precisely speaking, a dictionary-thesaurus, and even more precisely speaking, a dictionary-thesaurus; but there's an important qualification: one must understand what an optimal thesaurus is, or should be. An optimal thesaurus is not an undifferentiated laundry list of semantic relations, a random miscellany and grab-basket thereof, especially not one that lumps synonyms, parasynonyms, hypernyms, hyponyms, and coordinate terms under the single vaguely misused rubric of "synonyms". Rather, an optimal one is a map, or more precisely, a circuit board of logically arranged connections, with circuit paths that can be traced (including the tracings that lead back toground, and we'll let old no-eyes explain later a bit more about whatground comprises, besides rocks and dirt).
Lunchtime skimming. Perhaps, in some ways, the most important article I've read within the past few months:
The portion about aligning thectrl-flatent spacesctrl-f for translation (relates to how machines achieve the things that for us meatbags remain a case for a thorough mapping of semantic relations [yet more thorough than most humans have bothered to do yet]); the key ofctrl-fselective neglectctrl-f (compare my thought, from a while back, about negligibility meta-parameters);ctrl-f"anything that our brains would neglect as unimportant unless we were specifically watching for it"ctrl-f. The one note I have to scribble here for now is a crucial qualification of the idea that "intelligence is, if anything, the selective neglect of detail" — crucially, unusually intelligent people are not wholly ignorant of the existence of details but rather have channels for managing the degree to which they areconditionally andprovisionallydeweighted for conscious attention, and some clue/notion of their structural relation to the overall whole is maintained in the background. They are not black box mysteries floating randomly in a plum pudding but rather are held in backgrounded partial awareness as (to give a much more accurate metaphor, among various possible ones) leaves on limbs of trees (or glints on blades of grass, to invoke an example that Musser mentioned).
Perhaps this jotted note belongs more properly atReadings, and perhaps I'll move it there later. As usual, no time at the moment to follow up on what the mind is able to race through.
The trick is tolet shit slide as much as possible (to allow for the ambient ignorance, ambient stupidity, ambient carelessness, ambient incompetence, and so on) whilestopping short of allowing anything that's gonnacome back to bite you in the ass later.
five till twelve or five past twelve:syn ornear-syn, depending on thequibbler, but for most purposessyn is the practical answer (that is, it is superior in practice for most purposes)
🕓–🕔: circafour o'clock to circafive o'clock: near-ant orcot, depending on thequibbler, but for most purposes near-ant is the practical answer (that is, it is superior in practice for most purposes)
five till six or five past six:ant or near-ant, depending on thequibbler, but for most purposesant is the practical answer (that is, it is superior in practice for most purposes)
🕖–🕗: circaseven o'clock to circaeight o'clock: near-ant orcot, depending on thequibbler, but for most purposes near-ant is the practical answer (that is, it is superior in practice for most purposes)
From there,the rest is handwave etc (and more specifically,a wave of thehandsiest of hands: the clock hands·✋·✋·✋); justkeep in mind, though, that there are usuallytwo twelves:noon (🕛) andmidnight (🕛). Whether the difference matters, and (if so) exactly how, is subject to parameter values, including the identity, situation, and purposes of thequibbler.
Well, etically, yes, no doubt; emically, however, those last few words arenearly alexical gap andsquarely so (respectively), and it is interesting to think about why, orpossibly why. At the moment, my five bones are on the idea that it's because humans care about duly appreciating the degrees ofsame difference more than they care about savoring the fine gradations of more difference,practically (that is, forpractical reasons). And yes, some differences are samer than others, but thepoint is that it'sall the same.
PPS: It is true that theMerriam-Webster Thesaurus uses a heading "near ant", which its predecessor editions called "Con" for "contrastive". In that terminology, "near ant" covers all the things that the terminology herein wants to call either near-ant or [the contrastive segments of]cot [that is,cots that are south ofthree o'clock ornine o'clock rather than north of those].
Let's talk for a moment about where Wiktionary is now (2024) versusX years ago.
Now versus 6 or 7 years ago:
Mygestalt sense is that while of course it remainsfar from perfect — and it will never be perfect because (1) it doesn't need to be perfect to be goodetc,etc,etc,etc,etc,etc and (2) nothing is perfect — it seems to me to have a certaincritical mass now that it lacked then;je ne sais quoi, maisquelque chose.
Now even more than ever, I encourage anyone who seeks the smart move (apro tip) to use the other wonderful dictionaries that are readily available, at prices anywhere from gratis to clearly affordable, in digital or in print, as the first thing that they reach toward, andthen to turn to Wiktionary and Wikipedia and web search in addition to those. By corollary, I reaffirm the theme (already stated elsewhere herein) that Wiktionary will retain for the foreseeable future the role of a sort offarm team for the other dictionaries, working up miscellaneous bits of lexicographic coverage that they can take well-grounded, well-justified inspiration from (or even simply crib from) —for the most part, all the terms that they have failed to enter yet, and should have entered by now, can be found in Wiktionary (barring only a subclass of lexicalized collocations that its CFI preclude), and Wiktionary sets a good example andprimes the pump in this regard. (More specifically, they shouldn't fail to use it as a pump primer.) Furthermore, there are spots here and there where Wiktionary even outshines other dictionaries, because someone gave enough of a fuck to really do it up (right) in one spot or another.
Follow-up: I hadn't been aware of this aspect until today, but it seems that apparently (or so I have read) Collins already cracked that code (the pump-priming one), starting in 2012, a fact thatprobably isn'tnot an important portion of the explanation for why theirbig-ass flagship currently has 700k+ headwords (rather than, say, 500k) and generally kicks ass and takes names (which it clearly does, as noted recently earlier herein).
This line of thought is interesting for an especially intriguing reason: It throbs on the same set of circuits as the whole story of which models for the use of crowdsourcing, as applied to the extensible growth and revision ofreference works, would be most useful and mostadaptive (versus the alternatives that would be somewhat less adaptive, that is, somewhat moremaladaptive). Recall that the earliest model, the earliest variant of the concept for Wikipedia, was Nupedia, which would use the crowdsourced input (a firehose of fodder) as feedstock for the grown-ups, who would duly apply grown-up curation to it before outputting the net result. As opposed to the crowdsourcing being the whole shebang, end of story. Well the curated model does in fact remain a smart idea, even now, but it has certain nontrivial and enduring challenges regarding who gets to be in charge of the curation (and have the ultimate vetoes within it), which explains both (1) why we ended up with Wikipedia instead of (something more like) Nupedia or Citizendium and also (2)why we humans can't have nice things. But my point that I want to scribble here (before I stop wasting time on this thread) is the theme of (1)more power to them (to Collins) if in fact they're successfully using Wiktionary as an appropriate input source for feedstock (there ought to besome competent grown-upssomewhere who are, andthe more the merrier) and (2) they ought to be commended for making the model work, given that it never did manage to work (at least yet) regarding Wikipedia as opposed to any possible thing more like Nupedia or Citizendium. I think its reasons for failing to fledge in that instance are complex and have just as much to do with epistemic disagreements as with profitability potential. But that's a vast backstory that isn't worth broaching here though. Anyway, this whole train of thought at the moment is just a hasty daydream.
I hadn't quiteproperly appreciated until recent days quite how muchCollins kicksnearly every other ass in the mthrfkin room and then wipes the floor with the crumpled rags that are left over. Thebig old 200k title is so juicy and delicious that I looked over at thegreat big 700k title and started feelin kinda itchy, in anonpruritic way.The rest is handwave etc.
What can I say, a whole-assed job appeals to me. I like me some meat on them bones.
Circling back toschools of thought on order of senses, tonight I read that the Collinsbig old 200k title lays out explicitly an order of senses that is of the ranked-by-practical-factors type (e.g., heaviest weighting for most common and core meaning).
Goes to show that there is many a good idea and good example regarding the available options.
Having stumbled acrossThe Merriam-Webster Thesaurus (2023) at the screaming bargain of USD 7.99, I bought it straight off the bat without hesitation, having learned my lesson about wordbook addiction (which is: fuck it, buy yet another anyway). Thetagline on the cover is still (as with the 2022 [2005] edition)America's Best-Selling Thesaurus, placed in the position of a subtitle, albeit not that. Well we've got totart it up a bitsomehow if we want tocajole humans intobuying a thesaurus, haven't we. I haven't had time to study its front matter yet, but I see that itno longer gives, as anepigraph to the work, the delicious quote from Mark Twain. The way he waxessyn-aesthetic aboutsyns in that moment shows something that old no-eyes can taste too (handwave etc), which is why I was sorry to see that they'd axed the epigraph page for the new edition. Well we've got toslim it down a bitsomehow if we want to keep the page count increase to only +40 and not a bit more, haven't we. Sigh. Iget it, but IMHO they should have kept it, because even if it doesn't give the joint moreclass, it gives it moresoul. They even could haveshoehorned it onto a blank spot within the existing front matter layout, without adding a page. Not anews hole but an epigraph hole.Oh well. But this instance justgoes to show whyone needs toseize the day, and I'm glad I did last fall — I would have missed thebell ring from old Clemens if I hadn't. Since they scrubbed his words from their joint, I decided to add them to mine, below.
"A powerful agent is the right word: it lights the reader's way and makes it plain; a close approximation to it will answer, and much traveling is done in a well-enough fashion by its help, but we do not welcome it and applaud it and rejoice in it as we do whenthe right one blazes out on us. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt: it tingles exquisitely around through the walls of the mouth and tastes as tart and crisp and good as the autumn-butter that creams the sumac-berry." — Mark Twain[2]
MWCD's convention is that senses are always listed in diachronic order (i.e., chronologic order of development). It states this fact in its front matter, just in case a few human users of that dictionary have enough brains to come across it ("the senses of any word having more than one are always presented in historical order"). As far as I am aware, Wiktionary doesn't have a strict rule about this list order; many of its entries list the senses in diachronic order, but others list them synchronically in the order of practical importance to a present-day user of the dictionary. A third factor is grouping two or three senses that are especially closely semantically related so that they are adjacent to each other in the list order. That factor, too, is about practical usefulness to the main target user. The special case of that factor is outright (exceptionless) autohyponymy, which fortunately also can be marked with subsense numbering (although it sometimes isn't so marked, depending on predispositions of whoever happens to have edited the entry yet). Both sorting orders (diachronic and synchronic) are useful in their own way; I lean toward the "synchrony for practical importance" approach for the case of Wiktionary's instantiation (as contrasted with other works elsewhere that are tailored to a different chief audience). Sometime I should scour through the WT namespace of WT to see whether any guidelines are offered for this aspect. This aspect is not mentioned atWT:LAYOUT#Definitions as of this writing. (Update a few weeks later: I should have looked awee bit harder than I did, by also clicking through from the link there; it leads to the answer atWiktionary:Style_guide#Definition_sequence, where we learn that Wiktionary wants the practical importance (e.g., most common, core meaning) top-ranked. Good on Wiktionary for that; I agree that that's the best choice for most users of Wiktionary.) Imagine if there were parameters that could simply be assigned so that the user could toggle the sorting (i.e., sort by either diachrony or synchronic importance) at the touch of a button. That's a great example of a feature that a digital dictionary should have but that humans are too busy making TikToks and porn and murder and robbery to bother working on implementing.
Clarification of that last point: not that there'sno one tocrew the efforts — rather, the point is that they are several orders of magnitudescarcer than they ought to be. The things that could easily enough be achieved at a Wiktionarylike place (such as Wiktionary) would be further realized already (i.e., further along down the spectrum of potential realization) if the crew weren't askeleton crew.
Also: An asterisk on MWCD's "always" claim: it explains some pages later that there's one special class of exception. Butyou knew that, though, becausethere usually is.
Theaspect ratio of the length of a highway to the average thickness of its pavement is a thing worth appreciating.It is what it is, but one does well to appreciate what it isn't.
There are analogues that one may beblind enough to consider surprising at first appreciation, but there are viewpoints from which truisms cannot surprise, albeit viewless ones. Pale blue dots and 18-kilometer GD&T surface finish tolerance zones on 12700-kilometer-diameter objects are examples. A specious perception of profundity can be subject to a certain kind ofvicarious embarrassment, but one must be careful with such construals, for the same reason that one must be careful with a kitchen knife (or a ladder, or an electrical cord). The parametric difference between a nicely diced salad and an exsanguination emergency has a certain thinness that typical consciousnesses usually find unremarkable, which may be odd given the tendency for differences in their reactions to a pale blue dot and a bug on a windshield. At any rate, do not confuse the identity and existence of any given roadbuilding contractor with the difference as to whether any particular highway gets built, and do not confuse the pavement thickness with remarkableness.
There are parametric dialings that suggest themselves, but one of the reasons whyone refrains is when thegenre doesn't call for it.
This is a theme with many coinstantiations in life. In fact it is a meta-theme, as it echoes all the way up to the top, or down to the bottom, depending on one's [redacted resonance].
Some of the instantiations are easy to keep in mind, whereas others are less so. I just reappreciated, though, that a throughline with (at least one class of) neurotypical consciousness is the extent to which one need not keep in mind (remember to enforce) the forms of any given genre (as it were) because one cannot escape them within the operating levels anyway. Everything just is what it is, and one couldn't even think of things else. There are physical analogues for this. The theme of analog versus digital is relevant. A needle in a record groove is one model. A reflex arc is another. The difference (or at least one class of difference) with another flavor of consciousness is not that such an arc isn't operative but rather that more than one of them is. Which is to say, parallel processing of some kind or other. This explains a lot. More could be done with this but I am falling asleep. Maybe later.
One little trace before zzz though: one of the refrainings tonight involved snipping some wires that were connected tothis. The cardinal parameter was sunset, which is why the algorithm autoplay was so bellish. Speaking of connected bells, ask not — it tolls for oh never mind.
The next day: some genres don't even have a name yet, which is also true of some genera. (No doubt many, in fact.) And the remaining duration of any one's namelessness is anyone's guess. Fortunately their forms may be enforced (or ineluctably channeled) independently of their names or namelessness.
(range justification: most classifications worth their salt go all the way down to zero and all the wayup to eleven, even when most of the instances that they classify don't land at the extremes, and this one isn't an exception; which is to say, it falls into that cardinal class of classifications)
Initial analysis
Why I find it interesting at the moment: (1) newly codified in my conscious attention; (2) a parametric dialing challenge:🎛️: What are theoperational definitions for establishing the cutoff thresholds? To which class does any given instance truly (objectively) belong? How is one's owncalibration maintained; how is one's own periodicrecalibration monitored? Tentatively, I perceive subclasses: some cutoffs are more objective than others; some cuts arecutter than others. Also, meta-calibration: part of the mechanism for the calibration involves etic honesty about the etic honesty (parameters on parameters; meta-parameters): to accurately identify which subclass applies (to the extent that accuracy is possible†), one must detect and admit when one is being overpetulant. Easier said than done; but to my credit, I more than hold my own on that score (once I've come around on any given instance), compared with most of the competition, many of whom are durably or even permanently miscalibrated on any of countless instances.
*As forwhich effect: often enough for purposes of sarcastic humor; but what are some other effects, besides the other obvious one (i.e.,polemicism, which is an essential component of the next category after this one)? And what exactly is the goal with such humor, given that it's funny cause it's true (which is an exaggerated way of saying what is precisely true about it: it contains agrain of truth)? I have some useful answers, but for now, they're for another bucket, not this bucket.
†As for the contours of that assessment: I have some useful answers, but for now, they're for another bucket, not this bucket.
Later: updated: a bit more analysis, pending further reading:
This Bierceness scale business ends up connecting with an aspect of what some of those general semanticists have beenon about, which is the urge to resist the urge to use copulas too cavalierly. Doing so sets upfalse equivalences too glibly. It's not that I share their fervententhusiasm on the topic (and some are more enthusiastic than others) — it's just that I notice that they apparently happen tobe onto something. (Corollary: Some instances of beingon about something are moreonto something than others; andeven a stopped clock is right twice a day, although in this case, to be fair, it's more than just that.) I'd like to write here the examples that I've been playing with lately, but I have tobite my tongue in this context because, like most Bierceness class 2 and class 3 instances, they're too spicy and they won't reflect well on me even though part of mefeels so damn sure that they're accurate — but one must recall that this is precisely what the overpetulance detection circuit is for. In fact there are two durable insights adjacent to this locale — not only this one along the lines thatyou're being inaccurate even though it doesn't feel that way to you but also the kernel-versus-fruit error, the one along the lines that "you're not wrong that thegrain of truth that you'vedetected does in fact exist, but you're wrong about misperceiving it as the whole mechanism rather than as a component thereof, and you're miscalibrated on what needs to be done about it." Anyhow, an adequatelyadaptive solution to the problem about copula cavalierness isn'tto be a weirdo who circumlocutes especially comically. (Oops, I did it again·^ — my apologies for letting a bit of Bierceness class 2 or class 3 sass go flying.) Instead, it's more subtle and resigned than that — a theme that plugs back into the kernel-versus-fruit error. This is the sort ofthought train that'll take months to fully process (because there's still a lot ofreading left to do — miles to go before I sleepand whatnot [±what-all·]). But I needed to jot at least this much here now because I know myself (and the chances) by now — beads and crumbs andwhat-all. Plus MSHA-rated kit.
They have more to do with physical things than with abstract concepts. The division is not abright line, of course; nor is the division between things subject to coinstantiation and things not. Coinstantiation of a type that is durable across contexts lends itself to cat hierarchies (strictly taxonomic hypernymy; e.g., animal > mammal > cat) and cat copopulations (non–strictly-taxonomic hypernymy, that is, Venn overlap hypernymy; e.g., pet > mammal > cat). Our friend topic cat certainly knows aboutcoinstantiation, even though admittedly hiscousin box cat knows the most about it; box cat is the cat who feels it in his bones every moment of every day, whereas topic cat occasionally dabbles in it.
Quantum cryptography is no doubt largely, although possibly not entirely, subsumed by post-quantum cryptography. That is, most and perhaps all quantum cryptography would be (a type of) post-quantum cryptography.
Post-quantum cryptography can be either nonquantum cryptography or quantum cryptography, and it is not at all required to be the latter. In fact the big rush in the current era (2010s-2020s) is to work out and adopt and disseminate nonquantum cryptography that is (a type of) post-quantum cryptography, for the simple reason thatcopies of old encrypted messages from today are already being saved and stored until tomorrow, when cracking them will become feasible. To whichever extent their informational content won't yet be moot and useless by the time of cracking, that's a problem even for today (not just for tomorrow), which is why people are itching to implement better methods ASAP.
What is the best way to convey contrast, usingnatural language words, for sets with Venn overlap? Well, it depends on the subclass of the overlap, but a recurring theme is this: a problem with phrases such as "not to be confused with" or "not the same thing as" is that many readers or listeners often misinterpret themup front (during initial encountering/learning, during ablank slate phase for the relevant concepts being learned), taking them to imply mutual exclusivity (not always, but often enough for it to be an anticipable expository challenge). An expository skill is to anticipate and defuse this anticipable problem. The concepts being transmitted are not confusing (in fact they are diagrammably simple), but conveying them can be challenging because of the constraints of the medium. The thing about natural language for expository purposes is that big collections of words, assembled for those purposes, are confusing (notwithstanding the fact that humans often enjoy, and are not confused by, big collections of words for other purposes, as for example novel-length storytime). Not even big collections ofbig words as much as, simply, big collections ofany words. Admittedly, it takes even less to confuse some people, compared with others; but all humans face rate-limiting constraints in natural-language-encoded exposition.
None of this is hopelessly insoluble; rather, it is simply a challenge to be recognized and to be countered as well as diligence and conscientiousness allow. Perhaps it will not be surmounted, if "surmounted" is meant in a noncomparable and nongradable sense (which is the archetypal way of getting on top of something and reaching beyond it). In a comparable and gradable sense, the aim would be for the challenge to be surmounted as much as possible: partially overcome, to the greatest extent yet feasible.
The reason I started thinking about it today is that I am about to put navigational hatnotes at the top of the two Wikipedia articles, and it takes some time and care to determine what their optimal wording will be. It is certainly not "Not to be confused with X" alone, from a viewpoint of nonincompetent expository effort, because that statement is itself confusing, on the very next expository level beyond the first one (nonequivalence, nonidentity). Some answers just invite another immediate question. Admittedly, perhapsall answers invite further questions; but some invite more and stupider ones than others do.
No, what this focus is about is the theme, touched on elsewhere herein, that one can have various contrastingcontrast sets (coordinate ones), and which one is the one thatone would like to focus on, in the givenmoment and for the givenpurposes, is subject to parametric ranking (by those parameters).
This is not only the answer, but also thestone coldest of answers, to the question of whether a comprehensive set of cots will be given for any given word sense. The answer is usually no, for the simple reason that the reader doesn't need so much distraction (as that), in the givenmoment and for the givenpurposes, and that what the reader can better use (more fruitfully use) is the cottest of the cots — the one or several that theirattention should be directed to first (and foremost·^). From there, there can be time and opportunity for more, especially uponclick-through, if it occurs.
This is a useful truism because it expedites certain circuit closures: goto give-up at 400% speed.
An interesting instance of holonymy–meronymy relation:
In one pair of senses (physical), the meronymic complement ofsubconstituency issubconstituent, but in another pair of senses (political), the meronymic complement ofsubconstituency isconstituent, and that is the only correct answeras far as idiomaticness allows. It is obvious why: in the political sense, every constituent is fully a constituent, not halfway so; the property of constituentness (i.e., constituent status: being a constituent) is irreducible in this context (that is, atomic in this application, in the "unatomizable" sense of that adjective). In shorthand: say that there is a large and profitable corporation headquartered in my congressional district. Its C-suite's executives are constituents of my district's state and federal legislators, and relative to those executives you might call the shop-floor employees, or any other local average Joe (such as me), a mere subconstituent, if you were being mean. Etically it is interesting to note that because some subconstituencies are constituenter than others (whereas the parameters that determine the degree are money and social power-slash-influence), it is logically possible to have a sense of the wordsubconstituent denoting a "lesser" (i.e., less politically powerful) constituent, but it is ethically unacceptable to do so within an ethical framework that rejects the concept ofsecond-class citizens. Thus within that framework, you are left with ade jure–versus–de facto difference that remains shielded behind a single term, which (instances) are not uncommon in human life. The reason why so many people hate instances ofcorporate personhood run amok, such as (in their assessment)Citizens United, is that those things threaten to enshrine the de facto power advantages of moneyed subconstituencies as de jure advantages. Within any subsystem where one wishes to reduce thede jure–versus–de facto gradient (i.e., lower the absolute value of the difference), it is antithetically unhelpful to have anyone putting their thumb on the scale in favor of the other direction. The whole point in any such subsystem is that there are already various thumbs on the scale that are pressing in the direction of the existing bias. The only legal remedy to lessen that existing imbalance is a vector pointing in the direction that countervails it. From that viewpoint,duh, it seems stupid to push in the opposite direction. Why do those who do so not agree? To claim that it is because they are stupid, in the "intellectually impaired" sense, is misguided. It has more to do with a cognitive bias by which they are convinced that underdogs are underdogs for a valid reason — that underdog status is well earned. The problem with this bias is agrain-of-truth fallacy: just because examples might be found where it is true or partly true (for example, most criminals deserve to be in jail — they truly put themselves into that position by choice, having chosen a pathway that obviously leads to that outcome) doesn't mean that one should overblow it into someovergeneralized principle, as ifevery instance of underdog status were earned and deserved. This line of thought is admittedlyunderdeveloped and logically must remain so because to unravel this sweater down to the last yarn (that is, toget to the bottom of this mud puddle) one would have to solve the open problem of how smart-and-ethical conservatism can be logically reconciled with smart-and-ethical progressivism in a way that obviatesdiscord andnogginbashing. Humans have beenplaying at that one for a long time.
Atstanch#Usage_notes (accessed 2023-10-18) — a nice example of how adescriptive dictionary can neutrally (and succinctly, and usefully) inform its readers about aprescriptive notion that they should be aware of (for their own good, regarding how readers or listeners are likely to react to their usage), even without advocating the prescriptive viewpoint. Various other examples can be seen at#Valid insights but sacrificed to terseness — for example, a class of them is that it is OK to tell people, concisely and in an NPOV way, not to confuse two wordscatachrestically. For those words that have been substituted for each other so often that it is not even accurate to call the usage wrong, it is OK (and not biased) to explain that fact concisely as well; see an example atstraight-laced#Etymology (accessed 2023-10-18).
Othercases in point for the theme of explaining briefly and clearly while also not judging (NPOV):
Whereas cot is sometimes syn (for example, in broad usage), and hyper or hypo is sometimes syn (for example, in broad usage), nearby regions of a salami are not being sliced apart for current purposes (that is, for the purposes in such an instance).
What about mer versus often-mer (for example, mer in many [or even most] instances), and hol versus often-hol (for example, hol in many [or even most] instances)?
The thing about "sometimes" versus "in some instances" is that instances cancoexist, which is to say, they "often" coexist (as we often say), but what we really mean by that "often" is that they coexist in many instances [of such coexistence]. The reason I'mon about it is that it has to do with timelines: yours, mine, ours, and everyone's. If we say that a pickup truck is "sometimes" a car (in a broader sense of the latter word), we are not truly saying that it "sometimes" is that; rather, what we are saying is that in some instances of usage it is that. There is a continuous timeline on which any pickup truck both is and isn't a car (the whole time), as various persons' various occasions of usage come and go (but realitymeanwhilekeeps on truckin). (Box cat replies,now you're speakin my language.) Natural language is so thoroughly built on themental model of individual experience (in which instances are coinstantiated with different/separate times [occasions]) that frankly it is often challenging (in many instances, on many occasions) to see past it and focus on thecommunal timeline. But my mind keeps nagging me to focus on the latter because it is the true salami of reality, notwithstanding individuals' diverse plans for slice line locations. Box cat is mostly just bored by this line of thought (it'sold hat in hishatbox), but he's meowing for some salami, telling me thatas long as I'm slicing someanyway, he'll take some please. I can hear him meowing in there; I can hear him from here. Does that say anything about our shared timeline?
Old no-eyes isn't the one who will grumble about the fact that I just momentarily (on this occasion, in this instance) turned box cat's box into a hatbox, although of all the people who can see a problem with doing so, he'd lead the way (with hisfarseeing eyelessness). Later (on another occasion) the boxwill have reverted. Of all the people who can live with that sort ofcontinuity error·ʷᵖ, box cat would lead the way (with his circumspectdisposition). He's used tothings being two things at once (and yes,cats are people too, at least sometimes or often, although perhaps some cats more than others).
PS:As long as (that is,while) hiscatbox is ahatbox, shall we consider him ahat? Well, he's comfortable being more than one thing at once, and we're comfortable having him be so (cozily comfortable in fact, as he's a quite comfortable hat). Surely there's no warmer fur hat than a live warmblooded one,as long as (that is,provided that) you can persuade it to stay on your head. Normally we don't negotiate with garments because they're not the sort of thing that has amind of its own.They say that everything in life is negotiable, by which they mean that every transaction between humanscan be haggled, but they hadn't figured on the notion that every phenomenon and event in every momentmust be haggled. Everything in life isparametrizable.When andif he deigns to consent —when andif ourcajoling succeeds — we'll toggle the values accordingly. Parameters on parameters.
Having stumbled acrossThe Merriam-Webster Thesaurus (2022 [2005]) at the screaming bargain of USD 6.50, I bought it straight off the bat without hesitation, having learned my lesson about wordbook addiction (which is: fuck it, buy yet another anyway). Thetagline on the cover isAmerica's Best-Selling Thesaurus, placed in the position of a subtitle, albeit not that. Well we've got totart it up a bitsomehow if we want tocajole humans intobuying a thesaurus, haven't we. I haven't had time to study its front matter yet, but I see that it gives, as anepigraph to the work, a delicious quote from Mark Twain. The way he waxessyn-aesthetic aboutsyns in that moment shows something that old no-eyes can taste too (handwave etc). Anyway, one thing that's clear upon initial cursory inspection is that the structural bones of this thesaurus have the same DNA as the 1984 [1968] work, but they'vedumbed down a few things, no doubt for salability's sake. Apparently they decided to switch the name by which they call "Ana", making it "rel" instead (that is, related, as insemantically related, not to be confused with Wiktionary's definition of related, which isetymonically related), and apparently they decided to switch the name by which they call "Con", making it "near ant" instead. Some ants arenearer and dearer than others,after all. Anyway, the book smells great, as does its cousin that I threw into the same shopping basket,Merriam-Webster's Dictionary and Thesaurus (2020), which is thicker but is slightly less of a thesaurus (because half dictionary too). Some thesauruses are thesauruser than others. Certainly at USD 8.99 it qualifies as lumping into my nascent eight-fuckin-bucks category of human folly. I'll look forward to gnawing on these two. No doubt some unforgettable luncheons await.
In the department of blows that could easily have been less glancing, I recently stumbled across Devlin'sDictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms and, in a moment of silliness, decided not to buy it because I already have ashelfful ofwordbooks and the first step to treatment is admitting that you have a problem; asthey say,if you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. Old no-eyes snickers:you callthat a hole? He eatsmineshafts for breakfast. I hadn't thought of him as Cornish, but don'tthey say something about a hole in the ground with a Cornishman at the bottom of it? He'scorny all right, I'll give him that. Anyway, when I got home I realized, let's get real, this is User:Quercus solaris we're talking about — of all the people who won't bother to own Devlin's dictionary (or the Devil's), User:Quercus solaris wouldn't be one of them. So I unglanced that blow accordingly. I just read its short preface (because of course User:Quercus solaris would), and I encountered there his justification for being amongthose who don't bother with explicating shades of meaning: not only does it take up too manycolumn inches forbusy andtight-fisted businesspeople, but moreover, he shits on the very notion, and quotes Fowler to back him up on that point. Their point is that everyone needs to figure that shit out for themselves, and not use any word unless they have a proper handle on what it means. I agree wholeheartedly on the latter point, and Itake the rest of their point, too,up to a point, but his remedy for "those readers who have noword sense" is to turn to [other] dictionaries for the needed remedial help [not to his], and I'm here to tell him from experience that even people who fancy themselves to have word sense (especially the ones who don't so much, really) can barely be persuaded to crack any/other dictionaries even on a good day (although even if they didn't, they'll often lie and say that they did) — and when it comes to any that they have topay anything for (even a mere pittance), well,care to lay a wager?I'll take your money. Anyway, the rest of his front matter is interesting too, and I see that his "Latin Roots and Derivatives" list includesvideo and givesvision, although it missesview. So then between Devlinand Wiktionary you can get both, as two-stop shopping. I don't consider that to be the super-efficient help for busy tight-fisted businesspeople that his preface brags about. Sigh. Anyway, I'm glad I added him to the shelfful.
Earlier a bug had prompted me to ponderant as a special case ofcot, the diametric case among all parametric cases. Tonight I read Rose F. Egan and colleagues' front matter toMerriam-Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms (1984 [1968]) and was suitably impressed. If you want to samplethe various flavors of ant (whereas some ants are more ant than others), it's worthwhile. Among variousthemes of coordinateness, "not-*" is more interesting than it may seem on the surface, as Egan et al showed. Somenots are morenot-ish than others, but all arecontrastive. The "Ana" and "Con" of Egan et al arethemes of coordinateness. In turn they are coordinate with "Syn" and "Ant", as echoes: the same but fuzzier/dirtier and more diffuse.
Speaking of those, Egan et al explain that some synonymizers were more preoccupied by discriminations than others, whereas others (famously, Roget) explicitly couldn't bearsed with those. Regarding the ones who could: You know what they were on about? It was"as opposed to what?"
Speaking of those, I just read C.J. Smith's 1867 preface to his seminal dictionary of syn and ant. I find it interesting — concise, cogent, and impressive for its day. The Google Books scan of the 1868 version is cut off on one edge, but Open Library offers an unobstructed view of the 1895 reprint.
Chuck said (of himself, in the third person,which was the style at the time), "Principles or Degrees of Similarity, and Principles or Degrees of Opposition, have not been laid down, though they have been recognized in his own mind. He has rather endeavoured to place himself in the position, alternately, of two opposed thinkers, or debaters, so furnishing each with a short catena of Synonyms to express or aid the current of his thoughts, tendering at the same time to each such negatives as might be employed in the opposite argument." Oh Chuck, how right you are, and bless you. In a land oframpant sui-generis-ness, one starts merely by imagining — at least byasking —"as opposed to what?", if one knows enough to bother doing so.
A thought bubbling in recent hours (24-48): although it is true that the180° opposite sort of way is, for being antonymous, the best way, my favorite way at the moment — the way that is currently mostbuttering my eggroll — may be another: the "notnot ant" way, which isdifferent fromtheother "not not ant" thing (not ant, jocularly, fixing a Donny Don't move). The thing about ants that are ants because they're notnot ants is that they aren't monogamous:they have that relationship with others, too:Nonexclusive. Dirty cheaters, lol. Speaking of cons, Egan et al say that not just any candidate qualifies as an Ant, as some ants are anter than others; the rest are merely Cons. And Egan of all would know, as I've never met anyone who hassavored the flavors of ants more than she has. (Which isn't sayingtoo much, given who I've not met, but still,anyone would have toget up pretty early, no doubt.) Wiktionary doesn't use that same formal schema (Ants/Cons), and that's OK. In Wiktionary, ants that aren't quiteantsy enough can live atalso instead, and do quite well enough there (perhaps even run a dairy).
The night's nightly ring from Bell: it's funny that I hadjust mentioned things that aren'tnot the opposite of others (such as not doing what Donny Don't does), because Bell said, "Mr. Colville walked over while we were at it, and stood looking thoughtful. But in the end he said, 'You ain't making a bad job of that, not at all you ain't.' We sorted out his negatives and were highly pleased." The other bell rings for tonight are some feelings I get when reading this work by Egan and the rest (i.e., Gove, Goepp, Kay, Foss, Gilman, Egan, and Kelsey). It's an amazing achievement and a stupendous value. I can't believe I bought my used copy for eight fucking bucks. It's fucking stupid when one thinks about it. I think about what my own education told us about thesauruses,even all the way through to a university degree: essentially, "any of various dusty books of synonyms in the library that you and everyone else are welcome not to crack orfuck with, and who cares, the end." There's adisjunct somewhere in this. It's hard to put into adequate wordsoff the top of one's head, and I just checked and there's no entry fordisjunct in the MW Syn-Ant to help with that challenge, so I'll have to dig further later elsewhere for those (that is, adequate words). The other thing that strikes me is how with every line, one (as the reader) is typically like, yes, exactly, I agree (regarding the discriminations and the Syn-Ant-Ana-Con, barring a few that are more obscure than others). It reminds me of the giant knot of mystery thatideas about the poverty of the stimulus as regards semantics try to untangle (regardless of whether their conceptions of the untangling are right or not), speaking of education per se struggling to equal, and yet falling short of, what this book distills, recaps, and conveys (and can be bought for eight fucking bucks). I've had a thought or two about what that answer might entail (triangulation etc). The full title of the work isA Dictionary of Discriminated Synonyms With Antonyms and Analogous and Contrasted Words. It'sexactly what it says on the fucking tin, and what it says on the tin is as densely packed as the tin itself is. What a treasure of canned fish. Now I'm hungry. Anyway, as usual I am supposed to be in bed by now —midnight oil and thecandle at both ends,handwave etc.
No shit, one might reply. And yes, I am well aware: the value of the parameter for the amount of shit is low. But why does anyone fuck around with scrap metal and torches? Don't they know that metal things (buildings, vehicles, sculptures) have already been built? Very well. But for all that, I don't see any flying cars around, doyou? And is the desirable number of sculpturesmaxed out yet? Garages are like arseholes: you've got yours, and I've got mine.
Usually in metonymy there are no more than one or two steps along the progression,archetypally. The numerical neighborhood of this particular parameter value reference range may suggest something about human cognition; which is to say, it might possibly say more about human cognition than about the reality that human cognition models. Some exceptions to it might be found — as is true with most reference ranges — and they would be interesting to sniff at for their own shared parameters (subparameters). I'll start dirtspading to see if any can be unearthed.
PS: More precisely, thefelloes being brought in by the lines above are bothmetonymy andsynecdoche. But I'll allow metonymy to stand in for both of them conceptually, whichafter all is the veryparlor trick that metonymy does best.
P⁴S: While I'm here clowning around, old no-eyes is busy getting some real work done and grumbling about my levity. He crawled back out of a mineshaft to report that the White House as the Executive Branch isdifferentiable fromboots on the ground as theU.S. Army: house-president-branch is not the same flavor of salami as boot-foot-person-brigade-army is. The latter salami is much more literal than the other (and it has more of a sock-sweat note to its aftertaste). No-eyes is also grumpy because while he was down there he tripped overthe tip of the spear, and that fucker was sharp.
Which areyour favorite flavors of thefallacy fallacy? Tentatively I will declare that my favorites are thestraw man flavor (not thestraw berry, although that one is a close second) and thetrue Scotsman (not thebutter kind, although that kind is next best), because I've sampled those flavors a lot in other people's kitchen batches. Most precisely, there is also somethingelse that goes on that is in fact different from thefallacy fallacy itself. Rather, people pride themselves on mistaking any analytically exploratory disabusal of anyhypothesis (even the most reasonable, plausible, or likely hypothesis) for theburning of a straw man, and they pride themselves on mistaking any attempt at analytical assaying of the essence of any concept for the assertion of a true Scotsman. Perhaps by the same logic taken to its natural conclusion, there's no point in ever doing anyGC-MS because no one can ever say what the minimal set is fordifferentiation of one thing from anything else, anyway. That analogy may not stand up to atruehiding, but at least (so far) I triedtripping it and it didn't topple yet. Anyway, in asking why these proud mistakes happen, one must remember what the true goal ofpedants andsmartasses is (speaking of the true nature of things): tofind fault, even when there isn't any orthere isn't enough.Some waymust be found, and when notrue way is apparent, a speciously plausible way is the next best kind of way.
Regardingknown surface analysis versusassumed chronology/history: Is it enough to assume that an adverb is derived from the adjective "by default", in terms of historical development? Admittedly the answer is, "Close enough to say yes for practical purposes without going on a philologic odyssey for each one." Related corollary thought: For-ly adverbs (which is the most famous kind of adverbs, Englishly speaking), the adverb will show up in the suffix cat automatically. If one wants to ensure that the adverb shows up in the prefix cat too, then just use the manually added cat for that. This (categorizing) is an independent variable from the other (known surface analysis versusassumed chronology/history), but it's correlated viamediation and it bears a reminder.
I rang up Bell a bit tonight. It's funny (or perhapsodd) that he mentioned of Kett that "He was a bell-ringer, and understood the complicated art of bobs andgrandsires" (1961:110-111), because I had just been thinking on the previous page spread (108-109) that Bell himself is a bell-ringer, ringing multiple bells in the belfry (e.g., Bell onmud, Bell onboots). Somehow I suspected that once we got to Suffolk this would be so. Math teachers can disabuse synchronicitytill the cows come home, and I know they're right, but nonetheless, it doesn't feel like a coincidence that I'm ringing up Bell 1961 at this point in my life. We'll see what rings next.
The ant is back in my ear (or his agent, a subservient bug),bugging me about the fact thatcomeronyms are part of a whole and so is the tip of an iceberg, and a succession of progressively smaller versions of that tip (by successivesalami slices asconic sections) are progressivelymeronymous. In a figurative way, kinds of things behave the same way, as they are progressivelyhyponymous by the samesalami technique owing to thetransitivity of hyponymy. If one wants to sandbox an example, a handy abstract noun to use as fodder might beshittiness, simply because humans have done such aphenomenal job of inventing so many differentreadily named kinds of it. (It's one of their many talents.) First slice offfor us a list of various kinds of shittiness (which we could list in a hyponyms section atshittiness, but we won't [yet or maybe ever], because the inclusion criteria and potential population seem somewhatup in the air andunbounded). Our sample list for now (a fair stab at acandidate for a consensuscontrast set) will be theseven deadly sins: thus,vanity,envy,gluttony,greed,lust,sloth, andanger. If you touch any one of them, you are touching theirhypernym too, via thetransitivity ofcoinstantiation. This is like how if you touch any of the conjoinedfelloes, you are touching therim, and you are also touching thewheel. But I need to work on a still-better abstract salami, one whose major subsections are in turn divisible into smaller (thematicallysubsumable) slices. Perhaps flavors of dishonesty ranked by how criminal they are (from not at all down to very)? Hmm, I'll ponder it later, or at least let the bug crawl around on it for a while in the meantime. One query that old no-eyes keeps asking the bug is, "Yes, fine,but why won't you shut up about it, given that it keeps seeming trivial at the end of every time that I palpate it?" The kind of bug that is famous for being subservient to ants is that sort of aphid that serves as thedairy cattle (of a sort) to a certain kind of ant, but this little agent seems more like a cricket to me in that he won't shut up. Does that make him the cousin of anearworm? (In anontaxonomic way?) Earworms are mysterious: of all the potential worms, how does any particular one become the one that won't leave for days on end? (And dim the light of an already faded prima donna?) They're trying to tell us something, sometimes, apparently, but they can't spit it straight out (so they have to keep onregurgitating andremasticating it, or at least reloading it). This little bug seems to be fiddling a tune as if to say that if you hold a torch up to this iceberg long enough you might melt a hole in it — it might drip some runoff that you weren't expecting but that checks out upon retrospective inspection, likeI'll be damned, that facet was there that whole time and I never saw or felt it until now. Old no-eyes knows how that theme feels in his chest and sinuses. And whywouldn't he get help from a fiddling bug? Just because we tend to talk of groping handholds doesn't mean that he doesn't lead a rich multisensory life, in asyn-aesthetic way. There is a strange paradox at the heart of his partnership with beneficial insects (lol). (He just groaned and slapped me.)And can't the band play on? / Just listen, they play my song / Ash to ash, dust to dust,fade to black
No-eyes came back from a smoke break and smacked me regarding the theme that the memory remains: as his heavy rings held cigarettes up to his lips that time forgets (boy does it), he pointed outthe persistence of memory among hisprayer beads. (It's the tie that binds.) Is that all that the bug was fiddling about? Maybe the answer willend up being determined by how soon heshuts up.
Well, he STFUd eventually, so I guess that means what it seems to mean? Speaking of ties that bind, the wordscolligate andcolligation: don't mind if I do, said the hoover.
Speaking of ties that bind, are we sure thatcolligate andligate are nothing but birdshit partners all the way down to their PIE bones? Wiktionary seems to suggest so, unless I am misreading something, although admittedly I can't be tooarsed at the moment. The twining seems more aligned than rando. But then that's the nature of birdshit (guanolessly speaking). F it, I have a parameter bucket for them either way (one bucket or other, some buckets more than others):either way, there's a bucket for that.
It is conceivable that I will increase the degree to which I help move syn-and-antlaundry lists intothe Thesaurus namespace, leaving behind (in their place) a (clean little) link to a Thesaurus entry or two (as syn-and-ant hubs). I have done some of that already, and it is a good thing. (Regardinghubs andspokes, as well asfelloes, I'm a bit of afancier perhaps.) Becoming someone whospecializes in doing so (hub-and-spoking the syn-and-ant links) is not necessarily a goal or aspiration of mine, but what I can say even now is that to whatever degree I end up going down that road without especiallytrying to take myself down it (so much as strolling down it for fun), doing so will be acceptable. And it probably won't attract any complaints from Wiktionarian minimalists, who would generally approve of it. I, too, approve of it, because (1) I'm not aware, so far, of any big downsides to building on that model, and (2) it aligns with an interest of mine: maximizing the hyperlinked connections between semantic relations while also avoiding overwhelming or annoying human minds. The powerfulness will be there, waiting latently, and it is merely up to each person how much they choose to partake of it or not on any given day. Those who choose tostomp on it for kicks cancrack a smile.
Another detail of A. BELL's schooldaze was a maths teacher whoseglass eye would misbehave when he got angry. (Side note: bell tone: dated orthography: maths. teacher; prep. school; of a time.) A.B. himself caused such an angry episode when the stress of a new boarding school life started to break him one day. Thestraw that broke the camel's back was the wordhypotenuse, which sent him into hysterically uncontrollable laughter, but one can see that it was not in alaughworthy way. In aglassy-eyed way, one can see that someglazed eyes may beglazier than others. (And someglaziers, too, especially onpayday; but we haven't got to Suffolk yet.) The fever passed, buthumorless old glass-eye had novitreous humor to spare — at least onthe contralateral side.
Update, various months later: Regarding "Ishomonymy ever autohomonymy, as adifferentbeast frompolysemy? Does it sometimesexist as aspecial case ofdoubletness, collapsed to morphologiczero like ablack hole is collapsed toevent zero?": Yes, I think the concept here is valid; moreover, I think it's not even mysterious, although it can easilyseem so when one's mind is spinning its mill rolls fruitlessly on the surface of it, struggling to crack the grain. Once inside, it's straightforward, and there are some leverage points for seeing it (that is, for moving between the levels successfully). The leverage point that resurfaced for my attention today is theclue given by an occasional Wiktionary entry that has more than one (H3 or H4) "Noun" section for any given single etymology. What it is telling you (in a rathertaciturn way) is that present-day English has two nouns that developed at different times from that same ancestor (an example:feels andfeels). From there, I would argue — moreover, I feel quite certain, speaking of feels — that sometimes when you read a single list ofmany polysemic senses for a given word at a given POS heading (you know the ones: the ones with 8 or 10 or 12 or more senses), what you are seeing there may in fact easily contain some of those same underlying divisions (i.e., the diachronic ones that drove the formal distinction of two "Noun" sections in other cases) but simply also meanwhile contain a venial deficiency in teasing out which senses most properly would belong under another "Noun" heading instead of being under that same "Noun" heading. And when I say it's venial, I mean it'sdead venial (some venialities are venialer than others): it representsfull throttle on humans' ability to chase them retrospectively; that is, it represents the current state of the art for our ability to recognize, analyze, document, and codify them. We might improve on some of them later, but as of today, they represent the best that we have been able to do so far, and the best that we could be expected to do (by anyone; by ourselves). Moreover, it may not even be feasible toreally improve on them as much as they deserve, for an interesting reason: let's say (for sake of argument) one of them is technically divisible into four or more divisions, by some logically valid operational definition of where a division is warranted. Imagine the net result: four or more "Noun" sections in the Wiktionary entry for the headword. There's an obvious problem with it: many a user would not understand it and would not profit by it (that is, derive value from it). It would seemcounterproductive to their use cases and needs. This is the juncture where one must ask oneself: what is the precise nature of azero? It is like a factor of 1, in fact: it represents the collapse of difference to equal a collapse of differentiability, except by exceptional means. This reminds me ofspectroscopic methods that can detect theppt order of magnitude for levels of contaminants: they can differentiate samples that cannot be differentiated in any other way, which is fascinating and enviable at the same time that it is also, inmany ways albeit not all, useless.
It's funny how eyelets lead to buttonholes and buttonholes lead to lapels. A. BELL (¼) was telling me just last night about how some headmaster or other (or some headmasters more than others, lol) grabbed him by the buttonholes (on some flimsy pretense or other). I'm giving A. BELL a chance to ring the bell if he pleases. So far not much, but then we haven't got to Suffolk yet. Before I pack it up for the night I'll go ring him up for a bit.
Theramifications ofautohyponymy are fascinating, not only on the level of dynamic ramification (i.e., the potentialities for the shape of any givenhierarchical tree orcanopy of several thereof (with tree squirrels hopping between interlaced branches), its branching-points' instantiations [or not], their locations, the degree ofnegligibility that human sentience assigns to each oneconditionally) but also regarding theirimplications for the degree to which humans in aggregate are capable of refraining from bashing in one another's skulls with big sticks (segments oframas grandes). One of the underlying (root/trunk) factors is thatetically complete (exhaustive) differentiation schemas — taxonomies (bothbiologic andotherwise) andontologies — are of course beyond human cognitive limits in one way although not another (i.e., not beyondcomprehension, in the sense of doing scientific analysis and building any given giant taxonomy that no one person can memorize but some can write down (e.g.,here is a typical example), but often beyond conscious/sentientintegration in each moment), so of course humans must always continue to identify (1) things that not everyone considersworth differentiating in a given context (thus,within that context,for that purpose, fair argument forsynonym versuscoordinate term/cohyponym [ormore syn that cot], orsynonym versushypernym [ormore syn than hyper], orsynonym versusparasynonym [ormore syn than nearsyn], orcoordinate term/cohyponym versushypernym [ormore cot than hyper], orparasynonym versusmeronym (or more nearsyn than mer), orparasynonym versusholonym (or more nearsyn than hol), or [last but not least] coordinate term in a way judged insufficiently relevant in this context and thusshall not be named here [or else — namespaceterritoriality]) and also (2) things that some peoplestruggle (more than others) to becapable of differentiating (i.e., struggle cognitively), which has to do with things such asconceptual models,conceptual metaphors,conceptual analysis,mental models (mental schemas),abstract thinking,analytic reasoning, and the rest of alaundry list of similar fabrics. A better list of those (one closer to whole) is something that old no-eyes can dutifully go off and retrieve with his prayerbead strings and breadcrumb trails, but (1)you get the point ("and so on") and (2) we don't always bother him every time because he gets annoyed that so few others are competent at that task, and each retrieval is aschlep that can take a while, depending on which hills and dales must be visited. But he does know ofhollers where specific tree trunks have hollows where squirrelsstash their choicest nuts. He also duly respects the critters (squirrels and bees) by not taking all their nuts and honey at once. (No sense giving them any due reason to holler.) I've been wrenching on some engines in the garage recently, but not every holophonor tune is worth releasing. Also, I am a reasonable person, and so there are some things where as one is wrenching on them, one admits to oneself that they are a bit silly; relatedly, the engine that develops the output is itself worthparameterizing (tuning), andregarding its horsepower, perhaps don't go to the corner storefor beer and cigs while driving abarely contained explosion, lol. I should stay out of the garage more often than I do, but wrenching on shit is fun. Please at least keep thegas bottles (nitrous orotherwise) at the far end of the garage and with a safety chain in place. One of the thickest branches among the ramifications of autohyponymy is thatat heart it is a way for our mere little human minds to build and modify practically useful ontologicbranchings even despite the (inevitable) fact that we can't pay attention simultaneously to every single etically identifiable differentiating factor (i.e., every such factor that allows potentialdifferentiability). How would you build a sentient agent (ameatbag one or otherwise) that handles thebinding problem with efficient practical shortcuts? Well,evidently enough, it would be one that places a parameter value on the degree ofnegligibility (or lack thereof) for each differentiating parameter. Which is to say, the parlor trick is to have parameters for controlling which parameters are activated (i.e., getmeta). (A funny thing about having just formulated that thought consciously is that as soon as I did so, an eyeless alert instantly went off for analogy detection regardingepigenetics. I'll have to palpate that one more later.) Anyway,cut humans a break (includingyou) — no one cansee the whole elephant, so we're all (each of us) just a member with a parameter value assigned for how much of any given elephant we can see at once in any particularambient lighting, althoughsometimes some can do more with the available blue than others. Admittedly, old no-eyes has an unfair advantage on that playing field, but he's nice enough to stick mainly to the garage so he doesn't inadvertently scare the townsfolk; and besides, speaking of parameterizations, he himself is but a rank amateur compared to other things that could exist, and perhaps soon will? I don't know — if you want an "expert" opinion, ask some asshole in Palo Alto who is begging someone [anyone] to regulate him. Speaking ofparameterization,tuning,regulating, andgetting to normal.
PS: Relatedly: Old no-eyes informs me that his fingers can feel that thedifference between vertical polysemy and the regular old normal kind is not as stark aforking as it may seem to regular old normal eyes. Thus under hypernympolysemy how much do we value the differentiation that parameterizes autohyponymy formally versus messier canopy-blending, and also versus regular old normal hyponymy-branching, which sticks a modifier on (vertical polysemy [synautohyponymy])? This is the same problem as wrenched upon recently regardingdigger: the excavation contractor will smack you if you use extra words in the context of his job site; the northwoods lumberjack will smack you if you useextra words in his evergreen forest. The practical distinction is the one between senseid and hyponym list member, and relatedly, (1) the degree to which that difference matters (which is a parameter value thatvaries across instances [headwords]) and (2) the degree to which often neither answer is wrong but sometimes one is preferable (which is a parameter value for degree of preferability). (Snapshot: senseid "any of several types of such things" [e.g., 'things thatdig'] contextually/conditionally mapping [in each utterance] to one of the hyponym list members.) All he is pointing out (sharply) is that it is OK to value differentiability but justkeep in mind that when one is hopping around a canopy, one usually does not pay stark attention to which tree any particular perch-hold belongs to; to do so is usually counterproductive (a fact that is atie thatbinds). This is the nature of interwovenness of threads in fabrics.Different thread but same shirt. Anyway, Wiktionary's practical answer is "just do what any other respectable dictionary would normally do" (e.g., OED, MW, AHD), and that's fine. Wiktionary is good to go, just being pruned as any regular old normal human mind would prune any regular old normal dictionary. It is interesting to ponder, though, what other projects are being tuned elsewhere (in other garages); but just toinject a degree of cynical realism about the timeline on such things, once again I will ask,Dude,where's my flying car?
Templatesl andm fall out ofPopups, which I had long noticed but had decided to ignore because (1) I can't control it and (2) someone will probably fix it sometime anyway. However, I've come around to thinking — as prompted by a recent discussion at Wiktionary's Beer parlour — that wikilinking with brackets is what I'll do from now on in definitions and on this page, instead of usingl andm. Evenid parameters can be linked to in this way, as all one needs to do is add "English:_" after the # (hash). I'll still use the templates atsemantic relations links because it is considered a desirable and widely upheld standard to use them there, per recent discussion.
Sub-cat: A basis for semantic tagging of punnery? Word-X-sense-A-here-now is-pun-on word-Y-sense-B (because blah)? Then there is the tag for the theme of "Cannot link to a single sense because the box contains acat with a pending disposition." (Some cats just have nasty dispositions.) Explaining a jokekills it. Nevertheless, inquiring machines want to know. No doubt some KRR stiff already wrote a dissertation about it, but meanwhile what do any of the rest of us know about that? (Dude,where's my flying car?)
Learning to work thebin lids, god bless me. Postprocessing my way to what might-could've been unprocessed (whole foods, lol). I don't carve the statue, I carve awayeverything that's not the statue.All this does is get me to normal. In recent days, some simulator runs in the neighborhood ofdark green and all its siblings and niblings being just asblue asdark red (no redder), as an eticparameterization at the end of theTHub rainbow (allinduction fallacies aside, whether in thebarnyard, in theauto-parts bin, or atsea). It was more daydream than blowglance, but the pan washed out these specks at least, so I'm taking them to town to see what they'll buy. It's a world in whichautoparts,car parts, andautomotive components are allnodes with is-syn-of edges and the mere accident of SoPness isn't allowed to poop the party of that etic integrity. (No shitting the bed; no tainting the powder bed [it makes the postprocessing craggier]; no party-stroopers.) Some prism flashes: Simultaneouslycomeronyms andcohyponyms, simply "who am Ito you" (they say to either mum or auntie, who are sisters, as the cat asks,I canhaz-partz? ) Shut it down,boss. (But PS, though (lest we forget):Dude, where's my flying car? If you that baby's daddy, where you been at? Behind that curtain:cheap talk but not enough investment. A margarita party for twenty but there's only enough money for one straw, so they spend half their time maintaining elaborate straw-timeshare plans.) GPT is to KRR asword salad is towordsmithing, but the pursestring people don't necessarily understand the difference. It doesn't make GPT garbage, as a world with both layers may be OK, but salad alone isdicey. That'll do,Bessy.
PS: Just a scratch here of the meta-binlid type. I can hear a boss saying, why'd you take themlight yellow flecks to townso soon? But old no-eyes braids prayer beads and drops breadcrumbs because his hands are his eyes (speaking of comeronymy-autohyponymy cousins and ofsyn-aesthetics). He curates handholds for the same reason why you snap vacation pics. A slide projector bore perhaps, but each buddy is free to leave this livingroom or stay, as he likes. Snacks and refreshments, though.
PPS: Regarding SoPness,parts constitutesubassemblies after all, and holism makes the wheels go round; the fellow parts (e.g.,felloes) are butcou-sins. Regarding one-straw parties, this is your KRR on KKR (any questions?). Regarding scifi as business development,weirder things have happened. Regarding prayer beads, just emptying the magazine. Regarding breadcrumbs, just polishing off somechicken scratch (nutrients forpretty feathers).
P^n+1(S): I'm being a bore on this coal train now, but Ihave to scratch the following itch, for prayerbead purposes (no mere catch and release for this one): you can't have eticness without the theme that pyrrhonism identified. That's it; it's that simple. And in its absence you have only dogma, which is an eyeless analogue of all the spatial neglects (such asthese andthese). Speaking of something that needs an etic supercategory. Super-cat cares not for catch and release; he wants to have his fish and eat it too, as well as to teach rather than give.
In thefeedroom, just achicken scratch on this scratchpad before I forget this little nugget. Dr S brought still more on the theme of "almost couldn't be a surgeon at all, and yet he ends up among the five or six". He tells about his teammate from Greece. That guy was an even more miraculous example of that theme. Different mechanism for why and how, though. Which underscores my point about the underlying strata, where various currents intermix. As do feeds.
It's funny you mentionedunnaming, because tonight Dr S was telling me about the drug with no name (as his chapter title has it). It was another of the important advances, about a decade after the epoch-making one that he was telling about earlier. Speaking of inflamm(y), they expected it to have autoimmune indications as well, and they were right, although it didn't remake the world in that category (but it helped).
To beteflon is, or could be said to be, to beunencumberable: no one can drag them down; people throw shit to see what sticks, but nothing does. But this semantic relation is one that Wiktionary does not need to contemplate. I like to write such instances here (on this page) because it reminds me to stay calibrated.The Most Interesting Man in the World often told us, "Stay thirsty, my friends," but I like this advice still better: "Stay calibrated, my friends." A blessing ofparameterization is having interim buckets to set things in without either losing them (catch and release) or taking them across some particular line. It creates a space in which a third option can exist. Or rather, reveals that space. Spatial neglect reduction.
Getting near the end of Dr S's sharings. Lots of interesting thoughts in response. Not all for here or for now. One note (here, for now) is the mismatch between the epoch-making nature of some drugs' advents and the fact that most people have no clue that that nature exists in that instance. Most (educated or semieducated) people today know about Before Fleming and After Fleming, and Dr Duncan would be glad to know that they also tend to know about Before Banting and Best and After Banting and Best, but there are others (much more others), and Dr S imparted one of them. Another bell ring was when he asked rhetorically, what's the good of developing a new procedure if there are only five or six people in the world who can perform it? Amen brother. Less extreme instances of that themecrop up a lot in life. I add, what makes those five or six different? One replies, talent, and yes, of course one is not wrong. But there is more beneath that floor: a subfloor, a foundation. Dr S explains that he almost couldn't be a surgeon at all, and yet he ends up among the five or six. How did he get there, if that duality is true? It is mysterious, yes, but it is not aperfectly opaque black box. It's a blackness to explore over time, and there are waters that flow and blend there, someless murky than, but not morevoluminous than, variouscross-currents. Dr S knows about heartaches. Speaking of those, a certain American farmer joined the line recently. His reputation preceded him; a river bum told me about him years ago. He hasn't always been American, and he might even know some paysans from up Canby's crick. We'll see.
PS: Canby himself is a river bum, or at least fancies himself one; but I've metbetter-met ones.
Canby was being rude and disparaging so I sent him to the back of the line. It probably won't stop me from finishing his little tale sometime, but he can park himself and cool his heels, and sit in time-out and think about what he did, and I'll tell him when it's OK to stop. Dr Duncan at least has the right attitude, even if the times don't entirely wash off. Some people at least root for the right bend in the arc, if nothing else. On some level I have no business taking a meeting with Dr K anytime soon, but to paraphrase another Mr K, he drove a dump truck full of synchronicity up to my house and I'm not made of stone. Or at least the stone I'm made of is subject to ringing when struck deftly, and there's a line to take a whack. (I just sent Canby to the back of it.) Speaking of Canby and of what is or may be made of stone, Canby's house was made of stone, but someone drove a wagon full of the local specialty up to it, and even stone couldn't resist. He promised he'd tell the rest of it later, but I may not humor him for a while. Enough talking for tonight; it's time to listen.
I beg Dr Duncan,don't leave me hangin bro, but he probably will. He smells like a likely teetotaler to me, but I surely can't blame him, given his calling. God bless him, he's doing the Lord's work with his Pilgrim's Progress. I thought it mildly interesting how urine-focused the paraclinicals are in his day, but one must remember the times, tostay oriented (times three;aay-oh!amirite? Don't leave me hangin bro.) Whichnips from the bottle won't help with, by the way, I admit. No shots, then? Or how many? 1+, 2+, 3+, more? Some areplussier than others; how easily1½ becomes 2. But some kinds of shots are to be avoided if possible. Which is one of the themes of his book, after all. Onward with more progress.
Paging Dr Duncan tonight. So far, mg%, plus vicinity. It's bad luck togo on too much about that, so I won't. See what rings first. In line for a burrito, or for a fogbank, or with a handtruck, cursing the "cleverness" of the pursestring retcons (those who put thecon inretcon), while Dr Duncan sits by a window upstairs and dominoes fall in the basement. I hear the report of them falling, which like thunder takes some time. Not far away, on another day, I too sit by a window; one that doesn't open, though, but one that likewise can't be sat by anymore, at least not in the old way. And with other company (much more other), on a different per diem scale, and out of pocket to boot. Cons. But for people smart enough to pull this con, they sure are flashlightless in other ways, though. I sit there on a break from teaching low-light backside-detection. They find it rocket-sciency and bimanual. But then they would though.
semantic nadir
2023 June 7, Erik Hoel, “Stop trying to make a "good" social media site. You want what cannot be had”, inIntrinsic Perspective[7], retrieved7 June 2023:
At first things go great, because no one is using the new blockchain and transactions confirm fast. But then, eventually, the new chain starts getting actually used, and transactions begin to slow to a crawl, and everyone realizes that they can’t outrun the problem that decentralized currencies are inevitably very slow, and that Bitcoin might be close to as good as it gets anyways. This is because there is an irreducible flaw—that decentralization is slow—that no design can fully get around. You're limited by your materials. ¶ Spinning up new social media websites mimics this, except what you are trying to outrun is human nature. No design of social media can get rid of what I like to call the "semantic nadir," which is what you'll inevitably experience if your tweet ever goes viral, wherein eventually someone will take your tweet in literally the worst possible way (there's some classic examples of this, as generally if you say "I love cheesecake" it won't be long before someone reaches to "Oh, so you hate regular cake"—that's thesemantic nadir).
Update, a day or two later: What Hoel identified and labeled (the semantic nadir) is clearly connected ontologically withBernstein's Second Law, although it is differentiable regarding the difference between (1) polysemically coexistent senses of a single term (= either one word or a collocation that syntactically equals the same kind of unit/segment as a semantic node (an ontologic node), such as a compound noun or other shortish noun phrase, notwithstanding the degree of arbitrariness of howword boundaries are emically defined) versus (2) the complete bundle or baggage of meaning carried by a sentence. However, at the moment I provisionally believe that it is "the same thing" in the sense that two leaves on the same branch of a tree are "the same thing" at the level of the whole branch. Anyone who might want to get a gut feel for why they seem so related should read Bernsteinat the various points that touch these leaves.
Update, D+n: All this talk of bleaching and fading (discoloring) puts one in mind ofsemantic interference. Nowif you wouldn't mind, I would like itblew, and if you wouldn't mind, I would like tolose. Is there another reason for yourstain?
Finished Evans 1971 last night. Overall a great visit, almost surprisingly so. I'll catch him again elsewhere. Nothing else worth recording here for 1971 at the moment except one more thought from one more passing traveler. Will Gosling said, "the biggest godsend that ever came to Bass's in the maltings was the endless belt." His point was the relieving of the degree of backbreakingness of themaltsters' labor, which he described so well as to twinge the degree of heartachingness in any reader who knows enough. I thought I'd just jot Will's sentence here since it mentionsendless belts, which I had too, earlier herein. He was talking about the conveyor kind, which is a different parametrical flavor from the V kind, but theendlessness of the conveyor kind loops back around to theadjacent Caterpillar track animation: in both instances, new ways for loads to be carried, and boy were people (who knew enough) glad to see them come. I don't think it's important except as another bell ring, but then such a ring is all the more we can ask of our spirits, so I jotted it in case it might end up being important later. It may not, as the only things that can end up somehow are things that reach some end, or at least a juncture, andendlessness may notlend itself to that; but then thejuncture of an endless belt is precisely what makes it so. Maybe part of whatcomes out of it will be that I'llend up paying some attention tojunctures in the weekscoming up, andwhat goes around will come around. Smooth-running V-belts in the grooves; such quiet operation. Speaking of smoothness, grooves, and spirits from maltings, now for some. Cheers,felloes, my fellow back'us boys asodd asJob. We've never cared forso much running, but weknow how to wait.
A PS about a recent belated feedbin diversion. (From the same batch: a reminder:do keep in mind that hogs are stupid.) It mentioned the theme of kids getting revenge on the old soaping-out-the-mouth punishment by either enjoying it or pretending to (out of spite). So thenthe same f-cking day I'm breezing through Callahan 1989 and he mentions that theme. The nun got pissed off because the kid (his classmate) liked that punishment, or pretended to. WTF? Never before that day, and probably never again, but twice in that day. F--- this shit — if I bought a lottery ticket it'd come up pure random nonmatching bullshit. But the books I visit are all like, "Mr Coincidence Ghost will see you now; Mr Coincidence Ghost can't wait to ring that bell and piss on the carpet." Also the thing with the highway diner near the bridge. The strangest thing about that one is how uninteresting it is; a f----n conversational dead-end. F----n ghosts. No respect. I'm waiting for the shoe to drop with Canby. Dollars to donuts that mthrfkng Canby can't get done running his mouth without lighting a match. He already casually dropped some shit about a house that blew up, something about wagonloads of the local specialty. Didn't bother to explain how or whythat managed to happen. Maybe later? "More on that later"–ass mthrfr. So of course Evans too just now is all like, "perhaps best just to wait and see whether we find out later",in effect. All you clowns owe me some lottery tickets.
In recent days, I'm continuing on my tour through East Anglia with Evans, among other things here and there. Earlier (in his book [1971] and in the calendar) I'd worked out, with a bit of help from others, that a back'us is abackhouse. I'd tried to do the same regarding a trav'us andcome up short; so I figured I'd just let that one go. Turns out not only that Evans explains it later in his book but also that evenhe had needed some help from others to unpack it (let aloneme). Turns out that a trav'us is a travehouse, that is, atravehouse. Which makes perfect sense, but the reason I couldn't guess it on my own is that, like most English speakers, I'd not known what atrave is, because the wordtrave is now as rare as the object that it names, which reflects the decline in the ubiquitousness of the task that that object facilitates (that is, it hardly ever gets done anymore, and what little of it gets done happens among only a few people, in a few subcultures). But past that hurdle, though, once acquainted, I found the instance apt and unsurprising — a nice illustration of the theme that among people for whom any particular concepts and differentiations are important and quotidian, concise terms willnaturally develop. Both of those thoughts together lead into the general case of such things, and Evans himself then went into it, which almost surprised me. He gave overall a great discussion of it, including the theme that the language of the common people is not at all impoverished in its power for concepts, differentiations, and their succinct expression (in fact, quite the opposite, despite misapprehensions among many people who "talk like an essay" [and it was funny that Dr Johnson was mentioned here because I'd just run across a balancing point from him yesterday]). Evans pointed out, and gave a nice illustration of how and why, dialectal varieties are not inferior to standard varieties and in fact are even superior to them in some ways. I agree, and I add that they are not impoverished for communicative power even though their lexicon has been accused ofpoverty of speech in certain other ways. Humans in general — even thecommoner or poorer ones no less than the others — are quite good at being sharply (even subtly and eloquently) discerning, within emic limits; it is only the etic extension that most humans have trouble with (basically because they aren't sufficiently aware of the existence of the space in which such extension can exist, which is not unlike hemispatial neglect; it is an analogue of it,eyelessly speaking, a fact that broaches the spaces [theblacknesses] in whichthese andthese exist). Speaking of which, Evans even then broached the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which almost surprised me. He made a bit too much of it — almost reaching the neighborhood adjacent tofolkishness-fetishization; I was getting wary, like, "OK, right, where is this line of thought going; I hate to guess, because it'll probably turn out that I'm right" — but in fairness, it was of the times [1971] not to know yet where that line of thought would lead, even scientifically (let alone pseudoscientifically). He says something at one point along the lines of "depending on whether or not it turns out that they are correct" [i.e., Sapir, Whorf, et al], which made me smile because I had to reply, across the half-centurygap, "well, it will turn out that they arehalf-right, but some people willmake too much of thegrain of truth that they found before our culture overall eventually course-corrects on that excess." But Evans rightfully makes a lot of good points about language and about the rightful place that thesalt of the earth have in it, the pastoral connection that Chaucer's and Shakespeare's writing reflected and that people later lost much of their understanding of, as what he calls a millennial shift (in material culture) took place. Evans mentions the insight thatAdrian Bell gained when he went to the fields as an apprentice farmhand [a back'us boy], almost an epiphany, but it's one that's quite similar to one that I myself got a chance to have, round about half a century later, albeit in modified form, but largely for the same reasons — crossing paths with the last of the old ontologies, and inregister-crossing ways, class-crossing ways. Anyhow, I could go on all day, exploring the hills and dales that today's reading encountered, but for now I'll just leave off by recording my amusement that, speaking of bards and farmers and how their words and thoughts interconnect, I asked Bard last night to help me remember in which book it was that I'd explored some other landscapes. I asked Bard (in effect), "what was the name of that book that talks about so-and-so farmers who were farming under such-and-such conditions,having been misled into it by shysters," and Bard successfully resolved that bit ofTOTishness for me, which I got a kick out of; I had to chuckle, and I gave Bard a thumbs-up for that one. The spacetime of that particular blackness wasthe worst hard time.
PS: Thanks, George, for turning me on to Adrian. Theflux capacitor ofthe written word strikes again, a lightning flash in the blackness, encabulating my path.
The verbcarve is a troponym ofcut (which is a verb that probably ranks pretty high for the number of troponyms that a verb can have, I would guess/bet), and things that arecarved are usuallycurved at least a bit, and theircarving usually didn't involve razor-straightcuts — rather, usually at least somecurving ones. Granted that carving a joint, or a Christmas goose, entails some fairly straight slicing, but even then, not exclusively so (especially nearer the bones), andstraightedges are certainly not involved (the knife's straightness down its spine's axis notwithstanding, because in carving meat or skinning game, a goodbelly is appreciated). Unlike withthe sedateness of sedans, the curving of carving is merebirdshit (speaking of geese), but like with those sedans, a speaker typically wouldn't know for sure without checking into it.
It turns out thatthe metalling of the roads is a worthy old well-established collocation, although anAmE speaker like me wouldn't know it from personal experience in growing up as an E1L speaker in postwar times. It's a Commonwealth thing, as ismetal as inmetal. One might think that somemetal band or other might have named atour along the lines of the collocation by now. As formetal, it all started out asrock andgravel, but eventually bitumen got more and more involved as the ages went by. But we already know, as agravelly voice has told us, thatblackened is the end.
PS: Anyhow, my thanks to Mrs Meek, who was telling me yesterday about how things were when she was young. Wiktionary and I both benefited. I'll go put the kettle on.
Arolling boil, in which the currents roll hard, is a type ofboil thatroils the liquid. Strictly speaking, anyboiling does at least someroiling, but a rolling boil is the archetypal class of roiling boil. Googling the collocationsrolling boil androiling boil finds that many people consider them synonymous compound nouns. As they rightfully should, I would add. As of this writing, Wiktionary doesn't yet cover this viewpoint, but perhaps later it will.
While bolting someChicago screws into Wiktionary recently, I explored the vein of Chicago things, includingChicago typewriters,Chicago overcoats, andChicago lightning. And while I was in the vicinity ofChicagoland, of course a Chicago sunroof leapt to mind, thanks toSlippin Jimmy; but one of the funny things about that term (besides theshitting from above) is the question of when a coinage that backfills a lexical gapwithin canon crosses the line into being a real word as opposed to a widely known but fictional one. (Speaking of crossing a line by backfilling a gap with something.) IsPinocchio a real boy? Even if he eventually became a real boywithin canon, he remains a fictional boy in our world (at most), or a fictional near-boy (at least). IsChicago sunroofa novel word, or is it a novelty word? Perhaps its status changes the first time anyone really takes such a dump in real life and calls it by that name. Is that a bit like aVon Neumann–Wigner cut? Perhaps there are just many worlds in which an infinite number of rooftop-oriented dumps are taken, and Jimmy's canon is but one of them. In any case, though, I won't be depositing a Chicago sunroof into Wiktionary's mainspace anytime soon, because whether doing so is appropriate isa matter for the courts, and unlike Jimmy,I am not a lawyer.
PS: This is the same problem as with encabulation, and with flux capacitors. Some peoples' encabulators even have turbos surmounted, but eventhey can't make a pseudo-boy real. However, a lot can be done lexicographically with an epistemologic framing that specifiesfictionality. Thus it is that some fake places, such asNarnia, may haveblueness in real dictionaries. I think what this line of thought shows is that although I have been hesitating to bother delving intoWT:CFI becauseI am not a lawyer and lawyering is not something that I enjoy doing, I need to take at least a layperson stab at a layperson-level familiarity with the upshots of CFI, because maybesome sufficiently encabulated fictional words warrant blueness.
An update a month or three later: I took a glance and found out that WT:CFI has a section all about this particular subset of criteria:the section on fictional universes. I'm still not interested in adjudicating most individual instances, though, as the longer I am at Wiktionary, the more clarity I attain in my own mind about which aspects of life I am here for versus which other aspects of life Icould be here for but am not, given that the properly calibrated answer cannot be that I'm simply down for whatever (because time scarcity and prioritization). My goals are toescape reproach where easily enough avoided while pursuing the whys that I already enumerated elsewhere herein.
Talk of evidence is always more or less in the neighborhood of talk of epistemology. And thus talk ofevidentiary categories, or ofevidence levels, is never far from talk ofepistemological categories, even though not everyone who treads a forest trail knows anything about the geologic strata that lie mere meters beneath their feet. When I jotted this note here it seemed to me that this line of thought is not too interesting beyond its opening, especially because most humans areevidently a little weak in the epistemology department. However, my brain later reminded me of what had subconsciously prompted the daydream. Why doevidential,epistemic, andempirical all begin with some variation on /ˈɛ😘i/, and why areexperiential andexperimental nearby, and why is it that you can't sayEBM without /ibi/? It's not that I seriously suspect any hint of some kind ofsound symbolism, a sort ofbouba/kiki effect at the cognitive level of abstractions as opposed to physical characteristics, because I realize thatbirdshit is merely birdshit — there are only so many phonemes in our language and there are only 26 letters in our alphabet, dingus; you're gonna hear and see them recur. Nonetheless, what I can't help finding slightly interesting about it is its possible relevance toword-finding in fluency, because independently of any deeper causation (a specious mirage), I swear it nonetheless reminds me of adatabase index somehow, which at the core of its essence is an arbitrary,accidentally instance-specific way of expediting lookup while running queries. Granted that it's got nothing to do withprospective processes, like "what word will we coin for concept X or Y?" Nonetheless, unrelated to that red herring, it could possibly have something to do withretrospective processes, like a machine saying, "I have no clue whether or not file X is semantically relevant to file Y, and I don't give a shit either way, but I can tell you that they are both written to segment Z of the disk." Then the agents that care about semantic relevance (such as the query itself and the human who is running it) say, "Thanks Mr Index — it's OK that you have no clue and couldn't care less — you just go ahead and serve us up that quick-finding trick that you do so well, and let us worry about treating the query result like a table for further relevance."
Speaking of valence, I found it surprising that a chemical sense ofambivalent would be truly unattested, although it is whollyunsurprising that such a sense is yet unknown to any dictionary, even theOED, the Merriam-Webster AllegedlyUnabridged, and both of the dictionaries of chemistry that I have ready access to at the moment. Experience has shown that that's how all dictionaries except Wiktionary roll—with Swiss-cheesy, flaky softness. I did the most cursory of googling to detect the sense's existence, and it came echoing back to me immediately out of the woodwork. I'll enter it, one of these nights, when I choose to spend some free time combing through and selecting and assembling the citations. That's how themoonman climbed down into Wiktionary recently. I acted asvalet, guiding him in and taking his coat. Speaking ofvalet andvalence; but not speaking of them, though, because they're not cognate, just some more pigeons for the pigeonhole. And not speaking ofunveiling the moonman when I took his coat, albeit seeming to. Granted that the ones who usually unveil him are the clouds who part. But anyway, speaking of pigeons, I'm glad to see from the blueness of what I'm typing here thatbird fancier's lung is already duly entered in Wiktionary. I'll warn the moonman not to breathe too deeply. But I needn't bother, as it's not his first rodeo—he didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday,and he's not afraid of barking dogs, either.
abrogating in mbio andobliterating in macroscopic biology and surgery — a common theme ofnegating function, structure, or both, either reversibly or irreversibly (depending on the instance); but Wiktionary probably is the wrong place to acknowledge the connection, owing to (both) who is here and who isn't here. The latter sometimes annoy me — they don't bother running their own dictionaries and knowledge bases well enough (theSwiss cheese theory?), but they leave the gaps to be filled by someone else (largely by someones much more else).
The context tonight made it clear that inEast Anglian English, and possibly other dialects, a back'us boy or backus boy was an apprentice farmhand. I lack time to pursue this further tonight, but upon initial googling, I found this recitation of a Suffolk poem, which was interesting,[3] and I found a [proposed draft fragment of a] Suffolk dictionary[4] that says, "Backus – A wash-house or scullery at the back of a farm house; a place for odd-jobs." / "Backus boy – An odd-job boy." So it seems apparent that "back'us" isbackhouse, then. Enough for now.
Many months later: Here's a better glossary of words used (now or formerly) in East Anglia: Rye 1895.[5]
Both astrake and ashake can be like ascale or ashingle, which is to say, asegment of an outer protectivecovering. I say "can be" because the words have variations in senses, but the underlying theme is visible (that is,eyelessly visible). Something thatfelloes andstrakes (in certain senses of those words) have in common is that they are segments of a round whole when such a whole is composite rather than unitary (that is, of one piece). The felloes make up the rim, and the strakes make up what is effectively a composite tyre, or, that is to say more properly, a set of scales that serve in place of a tyre. Again withparameterization as it relates towheelwrighting, and yet I wasn't eventrying to return to that theme. Which is why I found it so surprising when Percy Wilson said to me the other night (from beyond the grave, via the sorcery of the written word), "The wheels are the wright's distinguishing mark of his trade. It is the wheels that separate him off from the craft of carpenter: a wheelwright is equal to any job in the carpenter's craft but a carpenter cannot make a wheel." Jesus, Percy, the book that brought you to me was something I picked up by utter serendipity in a way that had nothing to do with the inputs that had mepondering parameterization's relationship to wheelwrighting not long ago. But it'sjust the mundane sort of coincidence, not the meaningful kind. Nonetheless, Percy gave me a chuckle. But anyway, speaking of what's either eyed or eyeless, Mrs Rumsby said, "I often used to hear about square eyes, but it was years before I knew exactly what they were!" It were her husband'sshop talk, you see. He was known especially for making eyes; but no, notthat kind—rather, the square ones.
When I was growing up, the archetype of asedate car was a sedately coloredsedan. You would occasionally read about, or see on TV, references tonondescript cars, usually in the context of witness reports of crimes or suspicious activity, or in Cold War spycraft. Nowadays, the rise of thecrossover SUV category blurs or fades this archetype somewhat, I suppose, but I think it's idly interesting that my young mind (and presumably countless others) was branded early with apigeonhole connection betweensedateness andsedans. One can rightfully point out that because these words are cognate, their pigeonhole connection is not random (that is, on some underlying level it is not a mere coincidence), which raises the objection that perhaps (more precisely) they should not be labeled with (or, perhaps, metaphorically, accused of) pigeonholeness at all. But I have to disagree with that approach. Their connection via cognation is not the selfsame thing as their other connection via connotative echo based on a nexus of auditory and visual similarity overlapping with semantic relevance; rather, the latter is an additional layer that operates independently, a fact that is demonstrated by the fact that I didn't even know whether they were cognate until I looked them up today to confirm whether they are (yes). That aspect surely must extend across speakers generally: if most speakers don't even know whether or not a certain two words are cognate, then one cannot assert that the flavor of connection that I'm on about here is the selfsame phenomenon as (known or transparently obvious) cognation. Which is not to say that it is not related to it; just that it is differentiable from a valid viewpoint. It seems to be something like two leaves on the same branch of a tree: the "same object"? Well, yes, at one scale, but not at the scale of two leaves. This line of thought is challenging (for its abstractness), but I feel that it is a valid informal attempt at pondering to explore the complexity of the overlapping relationships among cognation, doubletness, polysemy, homonymy, and the pigeonhole principle as applied to morphemes, the last of which has plenty of instances that have nothing to do with cognation, although one can't always tell the difference between the instances without finding out about the presence or absence of cognation in each case. Which is of course the very nature of the pigeonhole principle: signal ambiguity and differentiating-signal-from-noise ambiguity. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and even a funny noise sounds like a signalsometimes.
alloglyph forallograph: one might, but one doesn't. Granted that a few have (done), but not so many that Wiktionary should (do).
to see back (vt), that is,to see (someone) back, exists in idiomatic informal-register speech, referring to seeing patients again by getting them to come back [enough] (seeing patients back frequently), and it is clearly cognitively adjacent tohaving (someone) back (e.g., "we had the finalist back to our headquarters for another meeting") in parallel withhaving (someone) over ("we had him over for dinner") andbringing (someone) back (e.g., "we brought the finalist back to our headquarters for another meeting"), but I have decided not to try to enter it in Wiktionary anytime soon, because it doesn't seem worth the bother right now (i.e., the bother with getting the method of entry exactly right).
There is an interesting comparison between the trade of thecooper and the trade of thewheelwright as practiced in preindustrial centuries: Both of these trades carved wood skillfully into components that could be arranged radially into a round assembly and then bound (fastened) into a round composite that furthermore could be capped off with tight-fitting iron rings to hold it together (that is, either iron hoops or iron tyres), and both of these composites required carefully accurate fitting to allow sufficient function (the one liquid-tight, the other rollworthy and loadworthy). In this respect, these trades were two complementary instantiations of the selfsame theme.
Corollary: Rereading the above later, I just realized that itputs me in mind ofparameterization of designs inCAD/CAM; and although these (particular)instantiations of this (particular) theme aren't homologous enough to say thatcoopering could be viewed asparameterizedwheelwrighting or vice versa, they are nonetheless not so far off from that degree (ofhomology) that one's mind cannot imaginedigital-twinsolid models morphing seamlessly in ananimation and assembling themselves into each form. In thisdaydream, thebarrelheads growhubs, and thestaves shorten; or, alternatively, the staves stay long, and then the hoops snap and unwind themselves (taking the staves with them), and the barrel, instead of growing into a dandy carriage wheel, grows first into a "swamp-wagon wheel" and then into old-time Holt Caterpillar tracks, just as smoothly as a pumpkin grows into a carriage when parameterized by imaginative cartooning. I must point out here too that the development of the early Holt Caterpillar tracks was itself driven by envisioning parameterization (although not by that name), as the people who did it basically realized that the wheels of the machine could lay their ownplank road as they progressed and that the selfsame plank road could be rolled up and then rotated back into position (rolled out) cyclically. The fact that even today many V-belts are still described in conventional terminology (of cataloguing and sales) as "endless" belts reflects a hint of conscious acknowledgment of the sameparametricality.
emolument andthirlage: MWU and AHD both assert thatemolument comes originally from millers' work (e- +molere), and the general (and neutral) sense of the word in English today is compensation for employment or an office held, but another important sense of the word is a natural (humanly inevitable) extension from that, either bordering on or stepping into abuses thereof, that is, corruption of the office. That is, for example, what results if an executive officeholder does not place their interests in a trust during the term of office. This line of thought caught my attention because not too long ago I had been reading in another context about how the work of the miller had been twisted into an abusive monopoly/oligopoly, and the engine sparked. But what was the name of that instance of the theme, I had to ask myself. Tip of the tongue. Once again googling spared me the annoyance of lingering TOTishness by leading to the answer, bridging the gap:thirlage. The only problem with this funny little circuit connection is that another dictionary (this one) disagrees about the etymology:molior and notmolere, it asserts, and those ultimately from different PIE roots (so it says). I liked the connection though, because in both cases one sees an economic station that began at its heart as legitimate then sliding down the slope into a racket, and there is a duality zone in which an allegedly "legitimate racket" is uncovered for what it is, which is to say that that collocation is an oxymoron. Which is why the book that I was reading tonight contained the word—yet another instance of that theme. An ancient theme among humans, and semantically largely overlapping withrent seeking.
contradiction in terms :oxymoron ::catachresis :malapropism; as follows: in strict usage, only the juiciest forms qualify as the narrower type (whether absurd or poignant or ironic); and this raises the relation ofmisfortune :irony itself, which is another instance of the same theme.
A summary about relevance: Thetopic and comment (theme and rheme) are not always the subject and predicate, nor always the subject and object, nor always the agent and patient; nonetheless, by the nature of [all] things, these [aforementioned] things are often coinstantiated.
Speaking of suchcoinstantiation, it puts me in mind of the general case in which (annoyingly? venially? depends on one's mood) people often assert that "X is not the same thing as Y" but they thereby obscure an important distinction: mutual exclusivity versus nonobligate coinstantiation. So many times they mean the latter but their choice of words implies the former to the parsing of some confused listeners, who (naturally enough) misapprehend some aspect of (might we say) pseudo-ness (specious resemblance, mistaken identity) rather than mere variability of coinstantiation (as was intended but not successfully communicated); the remedy (or preemption) would be to speak a bit more carefully (thus: "never" versus "not always"; "never" versus "usually not"; "never" versus "not necessarily"; take one's pick; each can feelmostjuste, depending on the particular instance). I lack time forexemplifications at the moment—which is funny in a way; the paths from concrete to abstract can often feel dim and tenuous (in human cognition, the first time out), and yet there is also an inverse, whereby encountered instantiations keep on provoking thefeel of the theme (the familiar old theme) so predictably that (depending on one's mood), for an agent who moves largely by feel in the dark (as it were), it is an annoyance to have to go groping off into the dark for more handholds, just to dredge up and bring back a few baubles for dimwits to fondle:we knows where we sits quite fine, and we knows where we sits without retracing the paths leading hither or the pillars that underlie. We knows them by feel, so wesees them inthe mind's eye. It is a groove-worn landscape, beestthou naive there or not.Thou might know not (with those vision-hungryeyes of thine);thou may need a little model to hold (a microcosm, or a lantern to find thy ass, perhaps, as it were); butwe knows (speaking of people not bothering to explain things).
Anyone who designs a font in which|,I, and/orl are visually indistinguishable, or even just very nearly so, is a moron masquerading as a competent font designer. But no doubt they throw good parties and invite the right people, which is why they've been allowed to commit grade Dtravesties and nonetheless have them selected as widespread defaults.
I've got nothing againstsans serif fonts; I just can see obviously that even within that constraint there can be noticeable differentiation or there can be moronic failures of differentiation.
There aremissals, there arehymnals, and there aremissal-hymnal combinations. These are the little books posted in the pews.
Mr windowmaker will tell you what you need for thatbuttonhole of yours: you just get yourself abuttonhook.
Yes please.
He explains that buttonhooks were common articles in a day when people wore button shoes as a matter of course. Buttoning stiff leather is no fucking joke.Snaps don't count, youwhippersnapper: they wereJohnny-come-latelies back in the day under discussion, and you were perhaps lucky if you had ever seen one yet. Your shoe buttons were the shank type, and you justget your hook in there, then wrap your hook around that shank and give er a yank. This appeals to me. (Most especially, to theYankee in me — everyone's got some, more or less; andone can get more.) Why do barehanded sweatily what you could do with a tool slickly?
It's not that interesting, but it is a bit, in a certain way, because I can retroactively detect the database index's presence underlying the speech generation: I didn't entirely know why I phrased the sentence that way when it first came springing forth from my mind, but I could feel the resonance (in a nonsonic way), and I consciously reappreciated the full mechanism afterward (pulling in different neural circuits in addition to the earlier ones).
The one was an eighth pound, the other a half pound: it took fourcrowns to make asovereign, but it takes only onecrown tomake asovereign, and some crowns and sovereigns are more thoroughlycapitalised than others, when they'retheCrown andthe Sovereign.
The windowmaker on the same night also spoke of thepenny post and the formerly formidable value of acent. It took a lot of sense to make a buck in those days; it still does, but the buck doesn't go as far though. Sometimes it even stops here, overnight. He didn't mentionsplitting the cent in half, as they didn't do so in his neck of the woods (although they could get blood from a stone, as they had the stones to do so; and he did mention some interesting stones in the woods as well).
It wants to know other members of this class. Right off the bat, it knows that flipping the hyper-/hypo- parameter is valid in agenerally adequate way, wheresome generals aregeneraler thanothers. Thus:insurance that isoverinsurance,reliance that isunderreliance,confidence that isunderconfidence, and so on. The first interesting thing that one can immediately sense, though, is that the misanthropic polarity is apparently juicier; but etically, that scent may be artifactual.
Perhaps I will just start dumping items here when they occur to me. Will a sufficiently comprehensive set emerge, revealing itself to be both too trivial and too voluminous to continue? I remember witnessing another instance of that theme a while back, and I remember what the instance was specifically, although I don't care to link to it here right now. And I remember the mixture of feelings that it evoked. A complex little knot.
It is fun to think of the first examples of each pair that one can think of. Forinsurance that isoverinsurance, the first one that I think of involves rental cars; but damned if they don't get me anyway, because Murphylives rent-free in my head, or I should say, at least frequently drops by without paying. He makesme pay,or else. Forreliance that isunderreliance, I think of whatJesus freaks would say: something like, "you mightthink you're relying onHim, but youcould — nay,must — relyharder still." Lol.
†lexical gap; humans have different words (not this one) for the relevant concept(s), or any of several logicalcontrast sets of such words, where the optimal choice may vary depending on the salient parameters of each instance (flavors, subflavors; classes, subclasses).
PPS: A thing about theovercast |downcast juncture is that usually (and archetypally) it is a lowcloud ceiling thatconstitutes theovercast. And for the clouds to get into a low ceiling configuration, they must move down, and be down (relatively). This overlap is part of what flavors the juncture. (Some junctures areflavorer than others.)
✓ There is an SoP threshold that rightfully precludes total bluening of them all;
Pursuing that thought a bit further, we might ask, well, what makes the blue ones blueworthy, then? Answer: when the literal sense (ejecting downward) is augmented with an idiomatic sense that is more abstract, that is, it can be divorced from the literal downward ejection in at least some uses.
That thought leads to the conclusion that the entry fortoss down (which was created by someone else, not me) should be RFDd for SoP. That's fine, but today is not the day for me to be the one who chases it. TBD.
PS: Such downwardejections are more specifically downwardrejections, as theejection is being done because ofrejection of one kind or another. In fact there is hardly any ejection (of any kind) that isn't, or isn't prompted by, rejection (of one kind or another): if thebouncer ejects you from the club, he is rejecting you, and if a fighter pilot ejects (v.i.) from his plane (which is to say, if he ejects himself (v.r.) from his plane), he isnoping out, that is, he is rejecting his current situation and its impending development. To eject a tape cassette or other cartridge is to reject further use of it at this time; to eject a molded or stamped part from a mold or die is to reject its continued presence there. Allejectors aredisposing of something in one way or another (giving it a kicked-outdisposition), often todiscard it, that is, torefuse it. For example, we refuserefuse (n).
PPS: Ejector pins (e-pins) are a type of ejector, which is to say thatejector pin ande-pin are hyponyms ofejector, but Wiktionary may never be the place to enter those (well-established) terms, as discussedelsewhere herein. What an ejector pin is saying (as it were) to each stamped or molded part is that "I don't care where you go, but you can't stayhere." It is making way for the next one, which involves rejecting the current status/situation.
An instance of rebucketing in transit, regardingwhich or whose head and whether or not there is one. An instantiation of the theme, prompting a lesson about habit formation: view the existing coverage of the polysemy first before making the bucket cutoff determination, because beingonce bitten, twice shy, it is possible to be too cautious by running a probability simulation that doesn't need to be run anyway (and produces an overshy result) because a reality check is readily available instead (the cost of a new tab is effectively zero, even in terms of attentional bandwidth).
I can't remember whether or not I've already said it anywhere in my WP or WT userspace before, but it bears noting: it's a regrettably missed opportunity to treatw:Wikipedia:Short description asmerely and solely a disambiguation cue for human users of the search field, as it has an order of magnitude more overall value to humanity if it successfully serves both that purpose and also the purpose of a short but accurate (succinct) ontologic statement ofwhat anything is (and thus mostly also showing the contours of what it is not). Humans and their machines both tend to need a (surprisingly? big) lot of help with that info. Some examples are that any shortdesc for a person is better as "[Nationality] [occupation] ([birthyear]-[deathyear])" or "[Nationality] [occupation] (born [birthyear])" than as only "[Nationality] [occupation]", and "[Nationality] [occupation] best known for [XYZ] ([era info])" is better still whenever usefully applicable to the instance. In fact if one really wanted to bedead serious about the whole affair, and avoid quibbling about pros and cons (for example, "slightly shorter is best" versus "no,slightly more explanatory is best',handwave etc), then to me it isdead obvious that one could simply have fields shortdesc1 (disambig-optimized tuning) and shortdesc2 (ontology-spoonfeeding-optimized tuning), and provide optimal interfaces for the use of both simultaneously as separatefacets of the samegem (which one can easily envision). That's what seeing and seizing the whole opportunity, in an obvious and efficient way, would look like, and there'd be nothing difficult or eccentric about choosing such an option and doing it. Alas, this here is some good water but it's not my fate to force any particular horse to drink it. And perhaps it is moot anyway because if NLP or GPT or WTF can digest a lede-opener sentence well enough then it can get the functional equivalent of the shortdesc2 value from that. But you know, when I was young, people used to care aboutstructured data though. Nowadays I guess the big idea is to get some black-box monstrosity to confabulate a mysterious approximation thereof, and even then also get it to apply the structuring itself retroactively (bypestering the chained beast enough), and then sit around talking about how the result is not trustworthy and it's fundamentally opaque and also dirty and fuzzy around the edges but at least it beats doing any real curation work though, God forbid. Kids these days, FFS.
All are coordinate beneath certain hypernymous semantic nodes:hard materials resist wear, in a non-mat-sci way.The red one is well attested. I can't bearsed to enter it at present becausehandwave etc. [Update: I laterbluened it, because I'm one of those ones who backfill lexicographic gaps sometimes merely for idle amusement, especially when they'retrivially easy]
Here's some hog slop that I almost forgot to hoover into any bucket. I don't have time to do it full justice, so I'll just capture a glimpse of it.
An interesting case of autohyponymy exists regardinginsurance, although admittedly one can see it only if one iswilling to view the real-world state of theinsurance industry withetic honesty (andsome will more than others); I say that with love, being someone who duly buys insurance even despite theopenness of my eyes (in aneyeless way). Old no-eyeskeeps an eye on such things for me; he has one to spare. The crux of the autohyponymy is that mostinsurance is in factunderinsurance, in aquiet way muffled by thefine print (whereby themuffling is skillful to avoid leaving anyfingerprints). After all,that's how they get you; or, more precisely, that's one of the hows by which they get you. Many of us have heard what some wag or other has said about that topic, which is that the true business model of all successful insurance is to collect premiums and stonewall claims. (As for which wag, we may not know, althoughsome try harder to find out than others do.) Still, when thepantsings come along in life, the only thing worse thanunderinsurance isuninsurance, which is thehard place against which the rock must be compared. One buysbelts and braces because one understands that some pantsings are pantsier than others; some fates are more fateful than others, and one need not ask for whom the bone bones, as one already knows. Anyway, furthermore, the odd thing about the narrower of the autohyponymous senses ofinsurance is that it is hyponymous tounderinsurance, which makesunderinsurance itself also an autohyponym, in a way thatclear eyes can see (if they squint, in an eyeless way), and the whole caboodle together is holding my interest at the moment because the first thing that my brain is asking is whether this funny little thread-knot is a unique animal or whether it is but an instance of a latent theme that has at least one or two other instances. And you know who's good at stumbling off into the dark to answer a question like that. He's already groaning and slapping me, but he'll do it though. He's as curious to find out as I am, and as much as he likes to bitch and moan about scarcity of competence,he knows what he is.
PS: He snuffed out his cig and got going. On his way out, he asked me to jot here the following. I can barely see it, so I'll try to be quick before it disappears. As for which bucket to put such slop in, andwho all does or doesn't feed from it, it's fine either way, because some hollows are hollower than others (in anonconcave way), and this set of buckets (herein) is a hollow too. Some wallowers are wallower than others, and somehereins are here-inner than others. There are thoracic ceptors for that.
Update: He hasn't had time yet for more, but so far he detects that the theme is too generalizable not to have other instances. So others will turn up. It has to do with Venn overlap and its relationship with (i.e., how it maps to) autohyponymy, and thus also with the theme of "synonymous in certain senses", which is another segment of the same object as the theme of "synonymous or hyponymous depending on whose definition is used," which is the overlap part of the Venn diagram (the almond). A drawing can be made showing the mapping from the Venn diagram portions to the senseid link for each sense-specific semantic relation link. A way to unearth other instances is to give parameter weighting to shittiness and incompetence, then go groping from there. For example, the first other instance that cropped up is when any reliance on something (or someone) is overreliance.
His fingers don't lie: some dimensions fold in on themselves more than sevenfold, and even ifyou can get down inside there, perhaps you'd better not, assome horizons are less eventful than others, but the journey seemscontiguous in prospect (and retrospect may be too late). Which is to say, one must know better than tooutrun one's headlights. Which is an interesting fact regarding how it relates to the fact that if your vision is piercing enough (or Bierce-ing enough), you have to be careful where you aim it, as theveil isn't necessarilyall that thick. And after all, some torches aren't for sheet metal anyway (so what would you expect?); only kids and clowns accidentally burn clean through the sheet (fuckin jokers). But speaking ofvales, he's going to take a nap in a corn field now, and come home later, just torub it in regarding the fact that he can. Lucky bastard, he lacks the gene that would allow him to be affected by thestimulus. (Speaking of not being affected by thestimulus, I happened to see tonight thatThe Gray Area has an episode on that topic, and I should remember to check that out.) A lesson tonight is that if things are feeling a little suspiciously contiguous, one might keep cool (lol), channel his vibe, pay out some asbestos cordage, lower thatvisor, andreflect the burn. Some may thank you, others may curse you (especially those whofind out too late), and Godmay sort them out.
trash |duff — field vegetation detritus | forest floor vegetation detritus — shared parameter: vegetable matter detritus on farm and forest landscapes (e.g., field and woodlot) as a hypernymic semantic node
time clock |clock: certainhyponyms inviteprescriptive scrutiny because they exemplify the theme of, "oh yeah, as opposed to whatother kind, dufus?" (lol). In other words, they threatenetymonically to beredundant because they don't etymonically express a modified concept versus theirhypernym (under any condition of general background parameter values [e.g.,clock can meanodometer but it doesn't under general conditions]); which furthermore means that their hypernymshould be (that is,should have been)autohyponymous in a way that makes themsuperfluous and thus (per usual innatural language)uninstantiated. But of course there are valid reasons why they exist,descriptively speaking, and thus they are not "wrong" (that is, there is nothing wrong with them, as is clear to anyone withnondeficient understanding of how natural language works in reality).Why this is true is newlyreinteresting to me, lately, because I am now clearer in my own mind about why (even though expressing it in words remains a gamble versus what anyone else would get out of it): they make logical sense (which is thebest kind of sense) when seen from a sufficiently parameterized space: for example,archetypally speaking, all clocks measure time, but one'stime in the context of one'swork (and inside thepaymaster's office most particularly) isacertain kind oftime (that is, thebillable kind) that natural languagecan't be arsed to have an explicitly morphologized hyponym for, in most contexts (the mostlawyery ones excepted, which is the best kind of excepted). And that's why you need a certain kind of clock for measuring that certain kind of time, and what else would you call it but atime clock (which is to say, you'd better not eventry to coin any morearsed word for it,or else [becool, dork]). Not only is this outcomeetically predictable (given sufficient absence of spatial neglect, in aspaceless way), but also (moreover), O wow: Very human. Much natural language.
What is acontrast set of the cardinal examples of such hyponyms? Here are the ones that I could come up withoff the top of my head quickly:
No doubt there are more — perhaps evenmany more; but I can'tcome up with them unprompted at the moment. I gave some parameter weighting totime,space,room,food,water, andair; butclearwater fails (becauseturbidity is often enough important in human conscious attention), as do kinds of food for cooking or eating (such astable grapes,wine grapes,table wine, orcooking wine) because theuse case parameter for those is notimmaterial to human conscious attention. Andthinking man fails too, for obvious ironic reasons (hefalls hard on his face, in fact). For now there is nothing else interesting to say about this ore vein. If I think of other examples, I'll revisit it.
PS: parameter weighting forarea:area rug (parameter value: weakly silly; yes,wall-to-wall is anarea too, but again, archetypally speaking (speaking of archetypes), "Dork, if you can't be cool then someone will coolyour ass down.")
Coordinate terms:eyehole,earhole,nosehole,mouthhole — all of these have book-attested polysemy parameterization of "the hole [in the face] for that organ" and "the hole [in a mask or helmet] for that organ"
Amouthhole is thus either one'spiehole (which one is ever welcome toshut) or a flute mouthhole (which one is typically welcome to strip of its adjectival hyponymizing parameter given that such a hole is usually a woodwind instrument's hole when not otherwise specified)
Treats for each one, respectively, are (via a coordinating parameter about which one is welcome to shut one's hole, or else)eye candy,ear candy,nose candy, andmouth candy, the last of which is justcandy whenever not otherwise specified (which is a parameter value that makes the specificationhumorous)
Update: the relationship ofcandy tonose candy is like the relationship ofgaiter toneck gaiter: one generally doesn't callgaitersleg gaiters any more than one calls candymouth candy, but one must call a neck gaiter a neck gaiter, not a gaiter, because a gaiter not otherwise specified is a [leg] gaiter.
food cart,chuck wagon (another great example where you'd tend to get smacked for pointing out the etic parametricity: burly boys have their burliness to defend;becool, dork, or else)
This theme has special academic interest for old no-eyes, as he's been to entire valleys where a parametric space for coolness doesn't even exist, which if one has ever experienced it one may recognize as an atmospheric condition that canliterally kill, albeit insome people more than others. Somehow that venom isn't toxic to him, although when he first gets back he is a bit glassy-eyed, in an eyeless way.
PS: I am well aware howchiasmic it is that in one moment I am blithely portraying old no-eyes aseyeless and in the next moment I'm acknowledging that his parameter value for number of eyes equalsone in a world where the default value is zero (eyelessly speaking, that is,if one will, and some will more than others). If anyone would take me to task for my recklesscavalierness inthat regard (and some would more than others), it would be him, given that he can palpate each metaphor,bite it to see whether it's counterfeit, and so on. But there is a strange paradox at theheart of hiseyelessness: theone who cansee the mixing just as well or better than others is also the one who is jaded enough to have given up on the misguided prohibition against the mixing. All metaphors have limits (some more than others), and where theymeet at midstream issometimes just the very place wherechanging from horse togiraffe (shared parameter: neck length) is most useful — and picking up one refreshed where the other left off exhausted is precisely the nature of arelay, after all. I don't expect purists to like it; but within the sandbox of this page, the stakes are small and the limits can be tested (or perhaps thestakes arelocated approximately and theboundaries areprovisional).
These aregarden-variety facts about usage differences underpinned by the standard amount of polysemic flexibility in natural language regarding slight variations betweenmental models of ontology — how each concept is defined (any of severalword senses orsubsenses) and thus whichsemantic relation exists between any two giventerms, whether (sometimes) invariably, or (sometimes) in each of several cardinal classes of instances.
The members of the latter class (not-invariable ones) tend to be trivial and, in most respects, unremarkable; nonetheless, they must be understood and recorded inlexicography, just by the nature of what lexicography is. Often dictionary users merely need a quick lookup in such areference work to confirm any given notion that they already know or already suspect, or to settle a quibble with someone whose mind is using the mildly different ontologic mapping.
Some examples of the help provided on that point can be pasted here. The answer to the predictable objection "yeah they could, but why would they be" is, at its essence,museology, in more than one way.
As for both (1) catching and (2) curating, there is the casting of nets, where some nets are wider than others, and then there is thethrowing back. Notions on saved searches·ʷᵖ are available in bucket 2023-10-28, jotted for reuse. They aren't here becausejotting leads toblotting and someblots areblotter than others. Living well is the sweetest handwave etc.
These examples are part of the same larger objects as palpated elsewhere herein, such as "mostly hyper but sometimes cot" ("you've got to slice that salami in this context"), "mostly hypo but sometimes syn" ("I don't slice that salami, at least not in this context"), and so on, because of the recurring theme in natural language that "when I say [hypernym-slash-autohyponym], I mean (implicitly) [what I consider to be, and usually what most people consider to be] the cardinal/principal/largest/classic/orthodox/traditional hyponymous subset unless otherwise specified, or the hyponymous subset that is clearly/obviously relevant tothe given context." Analysis:
The given speaker (1) isadvisedlyglossing over the other subsets (for communicative practicality) (e.g.,e.g.,e.g.), (2) is momentarily forgetting the other subsets (e.g.), (3) fails to conceive of the other subsets (e.g.), or (4) refuses to acknowledge that any other subsets exist (e.g.).
There are several layers to it, but the layer on which literal-senses ontology happens is the most important one, practically, and it is the one laid out above. The layer on which figurative usages contain a telescoping collapse of ontologic distinctions is worth seeing and exploring, although there is more to be done with it later. A typical example is the telescoping collapse wherebygrind down is literally hyponymous towear down but is figuratively usually synonymous with it (because the literal distinction collapses to unity for metaphorical use). Another good example is sensewise coordinateness that collapses to sensewise synonymy withhalfpennyworth,pennyworth, andtuppence worth. The same theme was also instantiated recently in a discussion where it is acknowledged thateat like a bird is antonymous toeat like an animal even thoughbird is hyponymous toanimal. Some animals are animaler than others, as tagged by the senseid values at polysemous headwordanimal. Later, another example,fructive-fruitful-fertile, came to attention; the further along from literal to figurative each occurrence gets, the more it collapses from hyponymy into synonymy. Later, during another mining session (some ores are more friable than others), anothertasty "cot: syn-ish" instance came to light: as you move into figurativeness (→), the distinction betweencrumble andcrumple starts tocrumble orcrumple (take your pick, six versus a half dozen); perhapsa bit of voice as the sole distinction wasnot enough tohold up the edifice. Other instances encountered:the price of peacockery is not immune to inflation (25¢, $2, $5, $10); thepeacock–turkeycock axis (coordinateness collapsing to synonymy upon literal to figurative shift); thehogwash–hogshit axis (near-antonymy [goes-in versus comes-out; perhapsa little of both] collapsing to synonymy upon literal to figurative shift);quite a few terms having to do with assholes (coordinateness collapsing to synonymy upon literal to figurative shift) and, relatedly,shitgibbons and shitgibbonlike words; others.
List population
Parent bullets are flowing chronologically, newest first.
Regarding the phenomenon that in themetropolitan area of a big, multipart city, the name of that city often or usually means a more specific part of it (a meronymous synecdochal core) when not otherwise specified, in context, among initiates (this core's name is a synecdochally synonymous meronym)
The theme is instantiated in many major metros, although the idiomatic details of each instance are subject to instance-specific quirks, just as the sundry discontinuities of its street grid are. (You can't get there from here; and speaking of which, the circuit activity at Kanigel 2022:26 is adjacent, although it makes me savor both classes: the instances that matter substantially and the ones that matter less. Regarding which, 1 and 0 are not 0.9 and 0.1, but the latter pair can be clamped as approximating the former pair.)
Kanigel 2022:137 invokes the NYC instance. I won't bother right now, and perhaps ever, to make Wiktionary cover it. It may be just slightly too something-something-handwave for me to bother doing that. (That is, it's perceptibly true, and it can be draft-encoded easily enough, which are the aspects that my brain cares about, but then you have to craft its encoding well enough to fend off something-something-handwave, which is the aspect that is subject to further-handwave. Bucketization herein is the first layer of vessel bypass in that regard. And in that regard, it's funny you mentioned clamping just now, you hemostatic handwave you.) So maybe never. Or, what might happen instead (as has happened before with other things) is that I'lltake notice of it at one time andtake care of it at another, X months apart. Then again there is always the chance that at some point my brain will suddenly and incidentally crack the code on no longer giving a fuck about further improvement of the Wiktionary instance among parawiktionaries, or at least the bottom 90% of it. It is impossible to predict, really.
Speaking of which, some carings are more predictable than others; now is the time of night when my brain most cares about certain layers of handwave etc. But circadianly, one must be the dog that wags the tail, which is why this handwave is now handwaved.
PS: Added some days later: There's a line in "Go Flip Yourself" that trades on the NYC instance. I might not have thought twice upon hearing it except for the fact that the instances mentioned above had just recently been on my mind.
… andin fact when people sayredact they most often (in the 21st century) mean theredactor;-) of the two kinds ofredaction. Evento a degree that one had best not use the wordredact if one doesn't mean that kind.
To my mind an interesting thing about this pair,redact andredact, is that theredactor;-) of the two meanings came about by extension from the first, but it then eclipsed the first, so the question now is: how canyou accuse theredactor;-) sense of beingautohyponymous when it is now the primary sense, when "primary" means "most important", and how can you accuse the older sense of beingautohypernymous when it's the older one? But honestly I think the question is academic and unuseful anyway, because it has meaning only diachronically; synchronically, theautohyponymy-autohypernymy axis is functionally bidirectional, as is theautomeronymy-autoholonymy axis too. I think it's more useful and less pointless to use the terms synchronically and admit that the diachronic unidirectionality is just an academic curiosity, a piece oftrivia, which istrivial.
Often cast as coordinate rather than hyponymous, butthe alternative is also visible. One of theNecker cubes of quotidian ontology: you see it this way, you see it that way, you see it the other way again. If admitting the alternative view makes you angry or indignant, that says some things about you. In recent years the general public has "discovered" the hot dog instance as a[n alleged] "novelty" for discussion andgoatgetting. Which is kind ofthreadbare, as it really oughtn'tcome across as new, nor emotionally gripping, to mature adults. And yet:there you go. This is the sort of threadbare thinking that the general semanticists have tried to write books to disabuse, but the books haven't been quite great enough, pedagogically, so they haven't made enough of a dent. (Ooh,now who's getting anyone's goat with an emotion-stirring razzing?) Anyway, the upshot in my view is, duck or rabbit, rightward or leftward,no shit, Sherlock either way — but the reason I wrote the shampoo and hot dog instances here was only that I plan to collect examples here when they happen to occur to me, so that when I want to lay hands on them quickly again later, I don't have togo hunting. Thus also the following:
The guy who's arag-and-bone man is not necessarily thejunkman who owns and runs thejunkyard. In fact, usually not. The former sells to the latter.
This coordinateness can be captured regardingscrappers,scrappies, and such.
The guy who collects stuff to sell to the junkyard owner has lower capitalization than the latter.
An interesting question is: In which such cases will I not even bother to try toclose the loop at Wiktionary? The answer is (en-/de-/re-)parametrizable.
Fortunately I can go ahead and do so when there's a way that's terse enough. As turned out to be true in this case (q=sometimes synonymous).
PS: A year or three later: I was again reading something relevant and wandered back into this area of the building, as it were. For some reason today it was suddenly time to bother with this item: my brain said "go". (Maybe because today isNew Year's Day; or maybe seemingly because of that.) So now it is done. As I was doing it I had the usual set of thoughts about the theme (of which this item was a set of instances). The components of a typical such thought train are as follows: there is admittedly some tedium in doing a session like this one, and some time sink; my brain is often OK with that tedium and that time sink because it loves the results produced thereby; it takes sustained attention and effort to do this category of task, in a way that requires temporary holding of open loops and then closing of loops; that fact has analogies with needlework (doingneedlework theneedleless way, lol: sounds like an ebook that I'd have an itch to buy or borrow); most humans positively cannot bearsed with this category of task (as plainly evidenced by how obviously scarce the instances of sucharsing are; this is the willingness component of the willing-plus-able set); there is some percentage of humans whomore or lesscannot do it (this is theableness = ability component of the willing-plus-able set); I do not know the true numerical value of the percentage, which is efficaciously obscured by the cloudy veneer of alleged or implied "I could if I wanted to but I don't want to" [±"because no oneshould want to and no one who is coolwould want to" ±"because it lacks value [AFAICT]"]. The "AFAICT" component of the latter facet raises the questions of latent neurodiversity including aphantasia and analogues thereof (eyeless, semieyeless, or otherwise). The extreme conclusion would be that "they're right, it's close to valueless", but the problem with that idea is that old no-eyes can also tell, eyelessly, from various other angles, that it is somehow partly wrong.
PPS: He also laughs at me now because I've been on my arse for a while and my feet are cold. Thecoldstone of one'sapse chapel might give one achappedarse after a while. I'mfree to move about the cabin; time for a bit of that.
PPPS: Itook a stroll, and it was nice. Whileperambulating, I thought about the calibration of this aspect of life. It has to do withexemplifying just as much aspermeating.If you do the exemplifying well enough, then others might do the permeating later.Extensibility plays a role in this. Thedialability between the exemplifying and the permeating makes duck-rabbit's ears twitch, although he doesn't say anything.
PPPPS: Today old no-eyes and I were once againfucking around with hammers and torches,whaling on shitfor kicks — we like to take the rocks that resist lysis and whale on them idly to see whether we canbust them open or, at least, what color sparks come flying off the shit–hammer interface (the hammer–shit axis, lol: theinterface with thehammerface).^^^ During this session it occurred to us that SZ might bepersonified,at least as much as anything else might.^ I asked him to look into it — nobody's more qualified tolook into shit than he is — and he came back a bit later reporting that SZ'spersonification produces any of manyavatars^ (any of whom one might call thesizzler) depending on whichcheater you're peering through. The one thatsticks with him and me the mostat the moment is one who'seasy on the eyes (even the eyeless ones) and has us bothenthralled (meow).
Such instances are perhaps not quitea dime a dozen, but they're not rare enough to be fascinating, either. Sometimes they are interesting, and often they are at least pseudointeresting.
PS: I just bluenedvolumewise, and a certain general case just consciously occurred to me, perhaps for the first time consciously: Any adverb ending in-wise hasotherwise as one of its antonyms. For some reason my brain loves that fact. It feels like acheat code somehow. A get-out-of-[manner-jail]-free card, perhaps. What are some other such hacks? I'll drop them here later if any occur to me incidentally. I admit that there'sno use in thinking that you'dexpress that semantic relation at each entry, because it is obviously too vague for that. This thought puts usright back in the messy room whose far corner we can visit and leave at will (andits annex). That's interesting because I wasn't expecting to find myself in that room at this moment. Buthere we are. It gets me thinking: the earlier instance of the theme concerned hypernymy, whereas this instance concerns antonymy. Explore that difference: (1) the first is where moving one level upward dumps to "everything in existence" (boring), whereas (2) the second is where flipping the polarity (one move) dumps to "every other manner in existence" (boring). I guess that's all for now. Old no-eyes warns me not tostab holes in the fabric idly, without probing for what may be on the other side first; it's risky.
PS: I said I would dropothers here as they occur to me. Here's the first one:
non- : [noun or adjective] ::other : the-[manner]-in-[manner]-wise
The next day: This theme is kinda neat. An instance: volumewise : otherwise :: volumewise : nonvolumewise (by which we mean non-volumewise, not nonvolume-wise^). Setting aside such things asaccidental gaps andhappy accidents, and just focusing on communication that is plenty clear albeit not in the rut of established idiom, this shit is useful.
Admittedly, that statement, by itself, has the specious appearance of interestingness whereas in reality it has more obviousness than interestingness about it; which is to say, perhaps, that it suffers frominsightism, lol,if you will; but:
The thing about the nose of old no-eyes is that it can often smell good things at a distance; and right now his nose is telling him that if one explores the parametricality of the aforementioned theme, one will most likely uncover at least one or two entertainingly worthwhile connections out of it.
How is it that hisnoseknows such things? It is an interesting question, or at the very least a pseudointeresting one. Something about RL and large training sets, perhaps. This is but one of several putative nose–gut axes. And after all,the gut people like to talk about the brain of the gut.They like to point out that the amounts of neural circuitry and neuroendocrine chicanery and vagary in the gut are remarkable (and after all, the best kind ofvagary is thevagal kind). (I must point out that what it means tobe remarkable is toseem so in comparison with one's own priors or assumptions, at least until those are adequately and durably disabused.^^^^)Some even go so far as to imply that even thenogginhas nothin on the gut in this regard. I suspect that those ones may be overstating their case, but then, who am I to judge it? My suspicion is only what my gut thinks.Still and all (still,in all), I'd rather be a gut-for-brains than ashit-for-brains, even if, admittedly, those two are connected via the (supraputative) gut–shit axis.
Hehath it by way of atax; and thou shalt not belax about rendering thyflax
PS: The next day: I seem to recall that when I was deep inside a landscape a while back, wrestling with theyokes of thethirlage and thetithe, there was a specific term for this tax-in-kind of aswath from eachmath — some term more specific thantithe. Alas, I'mat a lossat the moment fordigging it up. 'Sides which, digging istaxing, and there's probably some tax on it too (the bastards). They say that some of the few certainties in life are that you'll inevitably be paying taxes(unless you'recrooked!woohoo!) and that someone will inevitably have to dig a hole to put you in, eventually, unless they just burn your ass instead.
Alas:yttrium is notytterbium, although their names are similar because they were both named afterYtterby, and a layperson knows them both ashigh-tech–adjacent materials that have to do withlasers and othergizmos and that probably cost (on a per-kilogram basis) afuckton of money that the likes of us don't have and most likely never will.
Y is notYb, and39 is not70, but you've got to dig dirt and then cook it just right to get either of them.
Today's Worthless Word of the Day wasnaval stores. Some drunk old rope-puller made it so. Guess his ropes needed someturpentine, or hisholystone needed somepine oil, or some such shit. Been into thenaval stores again, he has, evidently: sampling thepaint thinners again. They sailed up into the bay and landed in Piedmont country and never left.Vulcanized fiber iscellulosic. Uncle Rayon, Mister Moneybags. Hidden stills and mills up forested creeks.Cantons fromcantons, thicker than water or thieves,don't mind if I do they say,eau de vie.
one spirit or essence that can be distilled from all this mash issemisynthesis; and thus: have you thanked atree orbush today? Forgetting the ball rolling on whatever shit you or your ilk(yourself or someone like you) wouldget up to afterward?
Old no-eyes just scoffs,sits my ass down, and replies that he doesn'tsee what point I am trying to make, because someseeing is merelyseer, and moresearing, than otherseeing.
PS: It is discerniblein retrospect (as eyeless eyeslook back) that today's Worthless Lottery™ number was 8, because that's what 2 kinds of 2 times 2 equals. Seems kinda binary, doesn't it? Somebikes are justbiker than others.
PPS: 1660 came up twice in one day, which is one in ten thousand. But damned if one could buy a lottery ticket and even break even.
PPPS: Thenorth wind isno joke.^ To my credit, I could feel in my bones that that would be true and didn't need to be told.
PS: Although you wouldn't know it from all the smartassery and idle fuckaroundery herein, I have a weakness for gettingdead serious. In fact idle fuckaroundery is one of the treatments that keeps the diseasein check.
Meanwhile: alinemən for the county will go set awatchmən; and thewatchword for thewatchmən is thatyou could set your watch by im. But don't set your watch by someone if you're worried about it still being there when youget back — what with the sticky fingers and the growing legs and whatnot.
We theundersigned declare thatwe the people, in order to form amore perfect handwave, etc, will ensure that the would-be king can read our signatures without his spectacles; we'llhave none of his spectacles
PPS: I should have retired hours ago. I often intend to retire early but usually fail to do so, which re-tires me. I get tired of doing that to myself, but I don't stop doing it, so I re-tire of it.
PPPS: The next day: Sure enough, as usual, I now wish I'd retired earlier, last night. It always seems like a great idea in retrospect. For Funhouse purposes I would like to claim that I dreamt, last night, ofunshoed horses withuntired wagons, and ofreshoed horses with re-tired wagons, and even of unreshoedunretired horses with un-re-tiredunretired wagons, butreal life is messier than that and not every piece dovetails with every other piece, usually. That's how it lets you know that you're not in the Funhouse: it's not as much fun.
PPPS: Also, I found some more attestations (via better search terms), so now I'm going to enterre-retire andre-retirement after all. It will be my tribute to the concept ofre-retiring, whereby I celebrate the concept ofre-retirement and honor the service and the well-earned retirement ofre-retirees. I heartily recommend these concepts to anyunretiree. Someday I'll graduate from being apreretiree to being aretiree, and I am fervently hoping that much like Titois said to have said to Stalin,I won't have to send another[,ése].
club speech
They don't speakFedspeak atClub Fed (or at least, most of them don't), and they don't speakmedspeak atClub Med (or at least, most of them don't).
I remember working through instances (of such tuples) where it occurs (despite being abnormal), and I seem to recall concluding at the time that the phenomenon is notremarkably rare; but it is hard to think of tuples casually/incidentally/effortlessly/off the top of one's head, so I should create a locus here where I will write down instances when I come across them, such that a distillation of them will accrue over time, to be sloshed, sniffed, and guzzled afterward as needed. Such sniffing and guzzling can lead toinduction of the underlyingtheme(s) by which such sense differentiation sometimes arises. Granted that the effect is only idiomatic and mild and thus that both ESL and poor E1L usage could use the other forms intelligibly albeit not idiomatically. Meanwhile, in the department of obviating the independent reinvention of wheels, I might try to dig up existing discussions/analyses of that topic.
One pseudo-interesting thing about the instance is that it is 10× less likely than 396 alone. An uninteresting thing about the instance is that there were no bell rings associated. It was just white noise.
Furthermore, regarding which section of this page to put this list into: This is also one for#Overheard equally as much as the#Funhouse. How's that one for a box-cat avatar? The hall of dualities suffers duality with the hall of echoes. It's enough to make old no-eyes cry tears of joy that he will blame on the scapegoat of his cigarette smoke so as to defend his reputation for surliness. (We haven't met old scapegoat before now, but perhaps we will see him again sometime, in a nonseeing way.He likes to chew on stuff.)
crisp and refreshing
Herr Schaar said,🍻 "The beer was not only clear, but of good taste[…] The smell on opening thebung was good and the tasteclean andsharp[…]"
PS: I didn't mind and I did, and it wassmooth sailing all the way. Tonight's Worthless Lottery™ number was 116. I askedMonsieur Dumas about the airspace over the great house but he had little to say despite his studies of air.Les frères Montgolfier were seen floating by but offered onlyhot air.
PS: Some weeks later: It's funny I made my little comment about entropy's funhouse-mirror reflection as a bugaboo, because some days later I read a passage in Pinker 2018 where he explicitly points out precisely why it seems that way and why the seeming is chimeric: it's the math — abazillion ways to benonconducive tolife force and only ahandful of ways to beconducive thereto. Life force is a negative-space affair (even an upside-down inside-out quixotism,for those who will, but some ofyou will more than otherswill, andshhh don't scare the children). I already knew that, but it was nice to see someone else point out its explanation explicitly, which I had never seen before anywhere else. Was the proximal timing a bell ring or simply stochastic pareidolic handwave etc? Whichever answer you assert, that's whatthey (the rope-pullers)want you to think,man (open your eyes, man —even the eyeless ones lol). No worries: even if so, we're allon strings, and some strings are justshorter than others.
Abuttload of bricks is often not aboatload of bricks, but abuttload of bricks is aboatload of bricks; thus does literal coordinateness collapse contextually to figurative synonymy.
In some ways, the only difference betweenepiscopacy andpapacy is how big the papas are and how many of them are involved.
In fairness, the same can be said of othersoups andstews as well. At what degree of titration does a chicken soup with potatoes that is light on chicken and heavy on potatoes become a potato soup?
Toget with God is toget right with God, ideally before you'rewith God, but at least by then if not sooner
I'veheard it said thattheword of God says that we will receive praise of God; but the rendition is adeep cut, tho, and quite hard to find, lol.I don't carehwere you are, I don't carehwat's happening
Totouch base (to tag the bag) is not totouch atouchstone (to rub the rock), but the further intofigurativeness you go, the more strongly they share theinduced theme that one must check and compare against a comparator to verify the currentstatus of things: to find out and verifywhat's up (what's going on).
PS: it's hard to form a strongcat bond with acat (such as the one you just let out of the bag, or the one who lives in the box) when you'refighting like cats and dogs. You have toinvest a lot if you want to get into acat bond, but the reward is usually worth it. You have to play itclose to the vest as you press thecat to yourchest.
The single-syllable-that-starts-with-t͡ʃ-and-ends-in-kikiness part of the thing is a mere coincidence, but no doubt the database index (as it were) likes it though. And that's what held my attention tonight long enough to handwave.
✓ PS: One night later:check thischit out: it just occurred to me thatchecking something out andchecking it back in involveputting up (and thus alsoputting down) yourcheck. The workmen at the tool crib werechecking out their tools (andchecking them back in) in the most literal way possible — the coldest and hardest way possible.^^^^ Thesehard men, thesehardy men, werestone coldhard-asses whohad the brass (had thebronze) tocheck out those cold hard steeltools. They had thebrass balls that it takes to put down theirbrass checks andtool up. But the funny thing is that I've been using the verbscheck in andcheck out my whole life (for example, at libraries), and I always merely assumed that these verbs were an allusion to making acheck: acheckmark. I should havechecked into it harder sooner (harder and colder and sooner). Now I have (done). Check:Done. Of course, notall checks are metal (some are less hard and less cold than others); and now I understand for the first time (many years too late) that when you go to thecoat check, they're not just giving you yourticket inexchange for your coat (so that you can give it back, in exchange for your coat, later) — they're giving you yourcheck, atoken, albeit a paper one in that instance (that parameterization).
Part of the disjuncture is the mass–count axis: what you're unitizing is usually something that's a mass to start with, and we don't normally think of parceling out a bucketful of water (for example) as disuniting it. A dough ball, while still a mass, gets closer; I don't mind saying that to parcel it out into chunks is to disunite it, although I usually wouldn't say that. There is sometimes a differential between (1) what one would not object to being done and (2) what one would do of one's own accord, unprompted, usually.
A bottom line on this little thought train is that I'm not going to postunitize as an ant, sensewise, beneathunite, even though the assertion is notnot true. It's notnot true, yes, but the point is that it'snot helpful to most users. Herein we find an instance to exemplify the theme that not every truth is helpful, at least not in all-systems-nominal contexts. Your mama taught you this truism via another of its parameterized avatars when she sat you down and explained to you thatyou don't have to say everything that you think, and it's better if you don't.
PPS: It's easy to find attestations ofununited (adj), but it's harder to find attestations ofununite (v). This fact lends credence to the notion that of the two surface analyses,un- + united (adj) andununite (v)+ -ed, the former and not the latter is what writers usually had in mind when they invoked the word. Such things are never absolute, though. If you hunt hard enough, you will findununite (v) in some corpus somewhere,dollars to donuts, even if it is onlyone happy accident. As for me, I took the three quickest easiest stabs at finding it without shifting my ass off my chair and then gave up, because I don'tneed to find it that badly.
Think about it. It's worth thinking about, even if only because you're gathering and focusing your thoughts for rebutting it. If you're going to counterargue something, you're forced to think consciously about it.
Meanwhile:sheepwise andgoatwise, ovinely and caprinely, I've done my part: perhaps enough for now, and certainly more than any other nonmachine mthrfr can arse themselves. Porcinely speaking, the following:Here's a porcelain porcine. (This is not a porcelain porcine.^) Marvel at her porcinity. In another stall nearby: cowliness is next to godliness;bovinity is next todivinity. Ovinity is caprinitybroadly but notnarrowly. Caprinity is notbovinity but isbovidity: it is a kind of bovidity, though not the cardinal kind.
In other news: some nonmachine mthrfrs are crying because they got what they asked for. Isn't there a song about that?^
induced theme: both are shooting competitions, each in their own way; one's penalty for losing is much higher than the other's (moving from practice to for-keeps?): if you lose, yougive your all, a fact that concentrates your effort ongiving it your all (so that you don'tgive it your all). Thus: somealls are aller than others. (q.e.d.)
The "world stage" metaphor has its place, even today (let alone among the ancients) — which is to say, it isn'tentirely useless — but it is a metaphor that I will thank you not to abuse, because it hasissues. So no lazy, rote overuse of it, please. Foryou reporters, nophoning it in — and foryou editors, no letting it past uncritically, ifyour reporters phone it in.
The answer to the question isalmost no, but only byaccident. And there are a few rare attestations, so the net answer is yes, although thebluening is for another time.
induced theme: the faultiness of faulty logic made plain via a child-abuse metaphor
Solomon knew what he was doing, though — it is only the audience who's screaming,no, no, that's not the right answer! (No, no, you stupid baby, don't go in there!) Solomon was two steps ahead. It's what he's famous for.^You might even say that he wasplaying the long game, if you weren't embarrassed by your own hyperbole. Blah blah blah4D chess cheap-cliché mthrfrs
amolecule is not a littlemole but rather a littlemass (and amole is an instance of such a littlemass), and even if itwere a littlemole, it wouldstill not be ananimalcule, because in order for ananimal to be ananimalcule, it has to beespecially little, not justa little little
amillmən is walking to work in the backwards, ready to kick anycurs that interfere; amilkmən is working backwards through his route, ready to kick anycurs that interfere; amilkmaid is doing the morningmilking, ready to kick anycows that kick her first
The streets are dirt and the clapboards are unpainted; the shirts are woolen, the boots are blackened, the feet are swollen, but one shan't be sullen
I like the smell of aHalo Top better than that of ahaloform; I went to take a whiff of the latter to confirm, but now I can't remember the result, and my ice cream is melted
They tell me that the putativesaint's-halo–threshing-floor axis is real (supraputative), and I believe them. (Draft animals going in circles is a sacred specialty herein; there's a soft spot in the floor from all the threshing.)
PS: I like the smell of aColorform(mmm,vinyly) better than that ofchloroform; I went to handwave but now I can't handwave, at least until I walk it off (in circles)
Don't ask me — cosmology isabove my pay grade. Corny's been todeep space and back, and he says that just because nothing in this universe is totallydevoid of energy doesn't mean thatyou won't freezeyour fucking ass off if you try to go hang out where the sun doesn't shine. Perhaps it is true that you can't get all the way down toabsolute zero and that you can't reach any space that is truly empty, but you canget close enough that you'll wish you hadn't.
The collocationpower wagon was a common noun of open compound type, among people who knew what they were talking about when it came to wagons and trucks, long before it gotproprialized and capitalized by the Dodge Corporation. This fact is right in front of you when you're down inside the corpus within a certain range of decades. But the people who knew this fact from personal experience in daily life are all long since dead, and very few people know it now.
Lol. I was racking my brain aboutindict a ham sandwich·📅 because my gut was betting on its hunch that the decompression-chamber treatment couldsmoke out some interesting connections.
Sadly I report that Corny came back a while later, smelling of smoke, reporting that the only thing of interest that he'd found waspardon a turkey. He also passed by somegood eggs andbad eggs along the way, but bad eggsmake his blood boil, andblood sausage is not my favorite cut, so we threw those fish back into the lake. Godspeed lil eggfish, we said to the good ones. (To the bad ones we said onlyGTFO.)
The good news about smoking out foods is that you get to have smoked ham and smoked turkey as leftovers. In some cases the decompression-chamber treatmentevens the score after thepressure cooker gets done. (That batch is onlyhalf-done, but I'm under pressure to close the lid on it and move on. Who could have known when this all started that besides bin lids and toilet lids there would also bepotlids to contend with.)
ATag is adiet but is not aTag, andthey tell me that *dagaz and *dyew- are different although both involveshininess; and adiet is aTag, and it is named after aday (so they say), but it is not adiet. Adiet is one'sdaily bread, which isdaily, and I wonder about the apparent putativeness of the apparentdieta/diētāre axis. Could it be that the apparent homophonic-leaning-ness of the names of the shininess of the sun and the shininess of the fire back inpie times was something more than random chance? What can one say about such things, where the gut saysc'mon, you can't tell me that handwave but, in fairness, as SMTM said, reality is weird and you need to be prepared for that. And there are only so many phonemes in a language and only so many graphemes in an alphabet but oh so many semes to be represented. It's a numbers game, and the numbers aren't kind to the conspiracy-theory imp.They say thatmath is hard, and it's clearly hard on the imp, and it's hard out here for an imp.
Regardingskin tags there is atag–diet axis that is not always illusory, apparently (so they tell me), as insulin resistance, they say, is sometimes involved.
PS: Regarding theday when you meet at themeetinghouse: they could have called it the meetingday, but they didn't, probably because it already had a name^ and thus didn't need another. Some lexical gaps are explainable by the gut's urge for an anti-overlexicalization gradient. But what about,you ask, the instances where overlexicalizationdoes happen? I reply: parametric insulation makes for a degree of difference, and human cognition is typicallywell insulated.
Astercoranist is called so because their opponents wanted tosmear them by calling them adefecationist. I think I actually already knew that fact, in the recesses of my brain, but it never reallymade a mark on my mind until I reencountered it today. Kind of adirty smear.You know what they say aboutflinging shit at others: some of it ends up on you.
PS: a day later: the problem with proposing to assign the name "shit-ism" (or any of its parametric cousins) to any single particularism (versus any other) is that plenty ofisms areshit, frankly speaking; there are plenty ofshittyisms.
The Unicode range doesn't provide for >50. That reminds me of something I read about the Powerball some years ago.Apparently, after we watch the Powerball, a player should recall that if they play birthdates, they're inherently limiting themselves to a segment of the relevant range, 31 out of 69. This systematic limitation is said to matter in some way that actually matters to their odds, but I forget the argument and can't be fucked to reacquaint myself with it. Layperson intuition might suggest the notion of "why would it matter, because it's all just random draws anyway: one outcome isn't likelier than another." But I think there was a counterintuitive mathematical analysis that begs to differ, somewhat like when vos Savant brought the novel insight to the Monty Hall problem. The shared theme isthe one where the game is sorigged that most mere mortals can barely even wrap their minds around the rigging. In handwaveland, you don't wrap around therigging, therigging wraps around you.^^^^ (In his house atMonte Carlo,Monty Hall waits dreaming;ˈmɒnti isn'tˈmɒnti any more thanbɝɡ isbɝɡ,^^^^^^^^ and even whena bɝɡ jerks you underwater, it isn't ajerkwater bɝɡ.) Old no-eyes snickers,you callthatrigging? He adds that you shouldn'tbox yourself out of the potential for the full range of69. (Flexibility is important.) Box cat snickers,you callthatentanglement?; he adds,triumphantly, that (the likes of) you areincapable ofboxing him out of the potential foranything even if you try to.^ Hetriumphantly trumpets it like anelephant; moreover, much like Oscar the Grouch in his trashcan, box cat somehow hasroom in hisbox for anelephant, but we don't explore that fact — it's anelephant in the room.
PS:They say an elephant never forgets, so next time yousee the elephant, please ask him the following: ifyou wish to speak to the800-pound gorilla, is there a1-800 number that you can call? And if so, do you presspound to speak with the gorilla? Or perhaps the gorilla has an extension. Is it 800#? If not, itought to be. Pleaseget on the horn with him and get this all sorted out. Please enter the extension of the party you would like to reach, followed by the pound sign. If you know the extension of the primate you are trying to reach, you may dial it at any time. Otherwise, please stay on the line, and some primate or other will be with you shortly. The monkeymay put you on hold while he consults other monkeys; please understand that if he does, he will hold thehandset andmake a face like this, but please do not take it personally.
It occurred to me today that I've never known what puts thebro inbromine, so I consulted somedicts to find out.
Sometimes when you want to know an answer to a question, you should ask adict, in addition to any non-dict sources that you might also consult. Thedict will give you adic def, and somedicts willdef tell you more than others. MWU has a lot to say about the details of this particular one — analmost surprisingly large amount to say on it,for a dict. But MWU isgood at beingthe kind of dict, though, that's not afraid to say more than five words about something in the cases where five words isn't quite enough. Admittedly, concision is good anywhere; but only insome kinds of dicts must it be ababy-with-the-bathwater type of actor,^ though. Speaking of such balance, WP, to its credit (assomething other than a dict butequally concerned about such balance),explains this one well, by saying enough about it to be useful.
It turns out thatbrominous substances were named for being stinky.^ Yup, that username checks out. Bros are subject tooff odors, which makes sense because some of them apparently have never heard of abroom.Bro drove by in aBrougham^^ leaving a trail ofbrome in his wake. Better give him awide berth, with awake like that. We don'tcare for hiswake. He's deathly afraid ofwoke, butto the point, though, that he sees iteverywhere. Like thebogeyman (or bro's ownboogers), there'snowhere that it isn't. Against holocausts? Want to admit thatchattel slavery was wrong? Dude, stop being sowoke, it'sgay, you'reembarrassing yourself, you're making himcringe at yourpatheticness. Want to admit that anozone hole is bad? Bro's own hole is worse, brohole assures you.
What doesbromean to you? For me, it's something I just do^^
PS tho: Whiletaking care ofthis,^ I was (justifiably) reminded of boththis ("I'm quarter gone...I'm half gone...I'm three-quarters gone...I'm all gone!") andthis ("convinced by the fox to move ever-forward toward the fox's mouth"), which both feature a preoccupation with the approach to ruinby degrees;^ and it would be nice to cross-reference those in the mainspaces, but:Yes but.
There's nothing interesting about the observation except the fact that a whole lot of non-BrE speakers wouldn't be aware of it until you sprung it on them and forced them to realize it the hard way. You could confuse a non-Briton with rapidfire speech peppered with such things. AmE and BrE are mostlymutually intelligible, but the way to push the limits of theirmutual intelligibility the hardest is to drop people into dialectal situations where hurried comments are expected to be comprehended without any help, context, explanation, etc. It reminds me of a certain British film: it is one that I haven't seen in many years, but I remember that when I was watching it I was sorely wishing that it had subtitles for the poor foreigners like me who were only catching less than half of the dialogue that certain characters were saying. When I say "catching", I don't mean that lots of it was insufficiently audible — rather, I mean that lots of it was plenty audible but was poorly comprehensible to the uninitiated.
I wonder how much of my own accent might possibly seem like that to a BrE speaker. Likely not much, is my theory. I suppose a few words here and there might snag their annoyance more than their incomprehension.
short-lived oxyacids
A belated bull's-eye reference citation for the one I entered yesterday. I assembled the entry usinghorse sense × corpus sifting, and like many such things, it wasn't hard but rather merely something that would require some time and attention. No wonder only one other nonmachine mthrfr on Earth (out of eight billion, including countless thousands of chemists and chemical engineers) had ever done it before I did (more on who in a moment). While working on it, I was quite willing to bounce it off other works (specifically, ones that are nonantiquated or semiantiquated but notnot nonantiquated), by way ofsanity check, but in doing so, the score was 0 for 2 regarding works that might enter it but didn't, and my brain was bugging me that I had one other work that would be relevant, but damned if I could remember exactly what and where that one was. After I'd assembled the entry, my eye caught it on the shelf. Thus: God bless Grant 1972, and it confirms both of the senses and the deprecation of the older one. Some horses arehorsier than others, and they aren't going to perversely refuse a drink.
You know who evenhas Grant 1972 (at all)? Well, the easiest way to answer that question is the negative-space way: you start withnobody, and you sniff out a few rare exceptions from there.Of courseUser:Quercus solaris has it, although it must be said that that's equal parts diligence and luck: each one of those factors wasnecessary but not sufficient by itself. But as for the nature ofluck orblessing,the fix is in andmarks likeyou aren't privy to tests that can discriminate between those chemical species, which makes them not only a duck-rabbit but also one of the furriest and featheriest duck-rabbitsyou know. (Only the carpet department has access to certain chemical supply closets.)
No need to blow up Grant's spot at this point by injecting him into that entry. Grant ismy friend, andI'm the one who bothered to be arsed about meeting him, and helping him move, and getting to know him. No sense rewarding nonmachine mthrfrs for trying to have it both ways regardinggiving a shit while also notgiving a shit. Which is mathematically equal to them saying, "I want resources (and demand that you give əm to me if you've got any), but I'm too lazy to do the harvest work myself." That's more of an ant-grasshopper than a duck-rabbit; in fact, it's duck-rabbit's shit-for-brains inbred cousin, and duck-rabbit and I both hate that asshole.
PS: Some chemical species are shorter-lived than others. I'm still working on cracking the code on the suitcase at the motel, as it were. It sure ain't12345, that much I can tell you so far. So far what I know is that SZ and criminality are like matter and antimatter. I realize that any system contains both, but …fuck that ant-grasshopper guy, though.
1892, Charles Stewart, edited by John Campbell Shairp,A Treatise on the Law of Scotland Relating to Rights of Fishing: Comprising the Law Affecting Sea Fishing, Salmon Fishing, Trout Fishing, Oyster and Mussel Fishing, Etc. With an Appendix of Statutes and Bye-laws[9], 2nd edition, T. & T. Clark, pages343-344:
Among other Acts revived are the Act 1424, c. 11 (or 12), the Act 1457, c. 34 (or 86), and the Act 1477, c. 73, statutes which prohibit the use ofcruives andyairs, which do not create any exception in favour of the Solway, and which became law before any such exemption was introduced. The Act 1685, c. 20 (or 24) further appointed certain persons calledmasters of game, in various parts of the country, including the counties of Dumfries and Wigton, and in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, to enforce its provisions under a commission for that purpose, for a period of seven years, and until the commission should be recalled. From this limitation to the commission granted to themasters of game, it has been argued, that the statute was only a temporary one, and that not only the appointment of these officers, but also the revival of the former statutes was only for a period of seven years. But although the commission granted was only for a limited period, it has been decided that the Act was perpetual in so far as it revived the former Acts (e)[a footnote mark]. The question thus arises whether the exception of 'the water of the Solway' from the Act 1563, c. 68, still subsists, or whether it has been abrogated by the later Act just referred to; in other words, whether the exemption of the Solway in the Act of 1563, prohibitingcruives andyairs, has a prospective effect, so as to take those waters out of the operation of any subsequent prohibitions, or revival of old prohibitions, of a like nature that might be enacted. If this question had not been decided or judicially assumed, it might be supposed that it was more probable, on the whole, that the exemption had no such prospective effect. The difference in the circumstances of the kingdom at the two dates might fairly account for the change of policy in regard to the Solway. In 1563 the two countries were held by distinct and hostile governments, and it was not wonderful that the debateable ground of the Solway should be exempted from restrictions which could not be enforced over its whole surface, and which, if enforced on the Scotch side only, would be certainly broken through by the English marauders. In 1685, however, both kingdoms were ruled over by one sovereign; a more amicable policy had, since the accession of James I., been adopted in legislation; and it might therefore be supposed that the exception in favour of the Solway had lapsed by implication, and that the fisheries of all parts of the kingdom were thenceforward to be governed by uniform statutory regulations.
As experts onSSSIs can tell you, theintegrity of yourintegument is crucial; but a dictionary can tell you that that's not why their names sound similar tho
AsJacob and aretirement planner both could tell you, you don't just step inside to fourteen years, and you just don't step inside to fourteen years^
not a dry eye in the house after that performance lol
PS: In my mind's ear I could hear snatches of "El Sol No Regresa", but I couldn't rememberfor shit^^ enough of the song to even google what it was. It's funny whatcomes back to you first when you're trying to remember such a thing and the language involved is not your first. What firstcame back to me was what my mind half-remembered as "entre varias tequilas", which is actually "y tras varios tequilas" (that'll teach my brain to misapprehend thattequila is feminine); second, strangely, wasun hotel de carretera, of all things. Plus una maleta in there somewhere for some reason. Those pieces were enough to allow the googling to succeed.
PS: Some solar entitiesregresan more than others. Some ought toregresar un poco menos. It's not wholly my fault tho: I have a knee-jerk antimoronicness reflex that I have a hard time suppressing, and life keeps putting me in the way of hypermoronicity. Across thebone-dry desert crawls our solar critter, begging for a drop to drink.^^ I take a bite of some low-hanging lexicographic fruit just to take the edge off.Pero quizásun día de estos (y tras varios tequilas)el sol no regresa.
cinders on the breeze are not much different fromfly ash, at least as far as nonsinterers are concerned, butcinder#Etymology versuscinis#Etymology handwave
oʊ.ɛm.ɛf.handwave
rapid speech in a podcast,four or five/oʊ(w)oʊɛmz/, becomingfour or five/oʊmz/ upon machine transcription in the autocaptioning, but also, meanwhile, the discussion was turning a bit metaphysical too (/oʊm/)
Today's machine transcription tech is amazing (from the perspective of a layperson like me, it being technology sufficiently advanced as to be close to magic), and yet one still sees quite a few errors of this type in it (if one is not blind); they are common, not rare. What I find idly interesting about it is that one can clearly see, even without being a software dev (if one is not blind) that there is a layer missing from it: the layer that sanity-checks semantically. Ask youself, what is it in your brain that knows that OOMs are what was meant? Answer: comprehension, sanity, critical thinking, being awake instead of asleep, having eyes (including the eyeless ones) instead of being blind (including nonoptically and nonocularly); thus: listening comprehension, reading comprehension, "having a brain"as they say, orat least having half of one. Some people have a larger fraction than others. The AI tech bros keep bragging about their AI, but one sign of whether or not it amounts to anything, practically, will be when the machine transcription of autocaptioning stops making such errors on a widespread/frequent basis and starts making them only rarely. That's when you'll know that the "having a brain" layer has been applied to it. That layer remains absent from it as of today. How many years away is the day when that change happens? Is it one, two, three, five, ten, fifteen? The value is hard to predict, becausea decade ago masterful self-driving was going to be ubiquitous "any year now".
If you're ahyperscaler who is trying to acceleratetimelines (fortimeliness' sake), you might evangelize the notion of making aManhattan Project out of it, or amoon shot; but you'd best not call that actionManhattanization norlunarization,^ tho, because those terms are already taken. They're real estate that's already spoken for, twice over,twenty storeys deep. (PS:It'snot free real estate.^) As fortimelines, anything you can do to keep ours from degrading into being thestupidest one is OK by me; some people like to claim that ours is already in the vicinity of the stupidest, but that's naive, because ours is packed with people who are waiting breathlessly to have youhold their beer if you think so.
a mooted observation
Totable something and totable something are contranymic opposites, inmore or less the same way that tomoot something and tomoot something (either to make itmoot or to make itmoot) are contranymic opposites.
This observation ismoot because no one cares. No one ever bothered to enter the syn/nearsyn relations at WT until I did today, which is likewise because no one cares. Some people willclaim to care if you ask themwhether they care, but no one ever cared enough to shift themselves until today, which means that the people who claim so are eitherearnestly mistaken or disearnestly mistaken.dishonestly·disearnestly·unearnestly=unearnest+-ly But this discussion can end here because, again,yeah but no one cares tho
PS: In keeping with the parametricity of an adventitious fellow, I keep experimenting with simulating low-care to noncaring conditions parametrically. Time todouse the lights for a simulator run.
Day 1: The blinds have lots of holes in them; the pipes are leaky. That's OK and is to be expected in this context. Continue.
It's such a knife edge or tug-of-war, and I just reremembered why: SZ. Hmmm.
Especially when it's so full of fuck-ups. Such as, for example, pron audio files so often being "whatever you merely assumed without checking first", aka "amateur hipshooteryspelling pronunciation hour".
Yourself replies: On one level, the answer is a mere truism: human minds need the convenience of it. Fine,so be it. But then, on a more analytical level: Wouldn't (merely) ten or twenty or thirty of them do (be enough)? How manydo be enough? That's where the answer starts to leave the truism station and thus enter the open country of becoming slightly interesting. My gut can sense (even before my brain can un-ineffable-ize) a solid answer that has to do not only with different times and places and persons but also (as an extension of that third one) with bypassing the need for a certain kind of training. It's not at all that a human being isn't able to burn stuff into their brain such thatone or ten or thirty of such units would be enough. (The one that handwaves is the only one you need.) No, rather, what it is is thatany old person can participate even if they haven't done that particular mix of mental ramp-up, because of a certain kind of ontologic transparency, which is parameterized by context. The same applies to any units, not only of energy but of power or length or luminous intensity or anything else. Ol' Sideburns Joe in 1913 was perfectlyable to learn kilowatts instead oftons of refrigeration, but the latter he didn't hardly need tolearn at all because it was self-evidenton the surface to him. The thing about this theme is that it pervades human sentience.You could asksomeone how manyonions are currently sitting on the kitchen counter, andthey could tellyou that there are 0.400e1, butthey won't tho, for any of several reasons: number one, because of a needle groove that autogenerates the contours of whatbeing cool comprises, or number two, because their brain quickly and subconsciously calculates that if they did then the odds of you smacking their fucking mouth would rise too high and the outcome would be a net negative for them because the odds of it seeming funny are too low given the current local context.
PPPS: Here's somefood for thought: The usual (broad and round and nonspecific but still not useless) dietary benchmark is that an adult needsmore or less 2000kilocalories per day from their food. That's about 2.3kilowatt-hours. If you paymore or less what I pay for electricity then the power company charges you about 35 cents for the energy equivalent of one day's worth of food energy (i.e., delivered to the service entrance, which is what matters — not generation alone, although the bait-and-switch energy suppliers want you to think in terms of generation alone). The thing I find interesting about food calories is how much energy is in them. I guess it's not that surprising that your body canget through 2.3 kilowatt-hours per day (it's not a stupendous amount of energy, after all), but it does seem kind of weirdly surprising to me how much manual labor your body can get done with that energy if you're a (non-elderly) adult in good physical shape and you actually try (instead ofclaiming to try but notreally trying and instead justwhining): how much dirt you can shovel, how much heavy shit you can lug and schlep, and so on. It's really quite a lot. Your body can do a lot of shit with the energy that the power company would charge only 35 cents for. It currently strikes me as surprising for some reason, although it probablyshouldn't and perhaps next week or next month no longer will. What's also weird is that supposedly (or so I have read) your brain alone consumesmore or less a fifth of that (20%). Your brain suregets through a ton of energy for something that doesn't even get hot to the touch by doing so. Your arms and legs could do a shitload of shoveling with the energy that your brain consumes without even getting hot to the touch. Relatedly, your brain is also an oxygen hog that can't hardly go more than a single bloody moment without mainlining a shitload of oxygen. Cognition is a strange phenomenon from this viewpoint: latently steampunkish, it would seem. What the fuck is evengoing on inside that noggin thatburns through so much fuckin energy but doesn't even exceed body temperature? This is why the woo-woo about spontaneous human combustion is not so outlandish to me as it is to some others: clearly your body is a bit like a lithium battery: you don't realize how close it constantly is to starting a fucking roaring fire if any of the chemistry gets out of whack somehow. The only surprising thing in this hypothesis would be that such events are so rare: so rare, in fact, that the rareness itself causes us to have trouble believing that they even exist, because our intuition tries to tell us that if it were possible at all then it would happen more often. But that doesn't necessarily follow logically, though; in fact, not at all. And "reality is weird and you need to be prepared for that," as SMTM says. If this hypothesis is true, then spontaneous human combustion is not implausible after all, even at the same time that it is also not at all supernatural either. Merely wacky and rare. Lol, who the fuck knows, and I'm no biophysicist.
A to-do item for later: Over at Wikidata somebody recently mergedd:Q26708069 intod:Q25668616, most likely because it should never have been forked in the first place but some other bozo had forked it through laziness and/or mental myopia when creating new items at Wikidata. (Who would be silly enough to create a new Wikidata item for so basic a concept without first at least thinking about finding preexisting items [which are obviously dead-likely to exist already] via synonymy?]). I can do a linksto round for this one sometime.
It is false that they should have anycontent forking of defs, because they are in fact alternative orthographic representations of the same set of homonyms (i.e., Etym 1, Etym 2), in all of their various senses. As with many symbols, the question of how best to divide up the etyms arises, but the best answer is one nottoo divide-ish, and thus the high-level concept of "by abbrevation [including initialism and acronymy, as each case is]" is the chief bucket, and there can sometimes be a reasonable degree of subdivision (e.g., "by measurements of length", "by count of wheels"), as long as it is shallow, high-level, not too precious.
One last thought: thearabic representation,4x4 (=4 × 4 =4×4), isn'tnottranslingual; after all, just ask Toyota owners worldwide, including theArabic-speaking ones. See about handling that facet (H2, mul:, etc).
A related task already done: I brought along aclue-by-four andtalked totwo by four about the nominal–actual axis. I sat the kid down and explained that in this life there's what things are in name and then there's what they are in fact, two aspects that sometimes helpfully coincide (when you're lucky).
See me ride out of the sunset / on yourcolour TV screen / Out for all that I can get /if you know what I mean / Women to the left of me / and women to the right / Ain't got no gun / ain't got no knife / but don't you start no fight / cause I'm T.N.T. — I'm dynamite / T.N.T., and I'll win the fight / T.N.T., I'm a power load / T.N.T.: watch meexplode
PPS: later still: the thing about anevent planner is that someevents areeventer^ than others^^ and someplans areplanner than others.
It takes bigballs to do big things, and to clean up the big messes made in so doing. If you're going to beterraforming, you'll be wanting totear apart a lot of stuff, and you'll be wanting thepower to do it.
Is this little scribbleterrible orterrific? Box cat wants to know.
aplutocrat can be anoligarch, and vice versa, but anoligarch is not idiomatically an oligocrat, although he might have been, and a plutocrat is not idiomatically aplutarch, although he might have been.
I'll be darned. I scribbled the ditty above before checking further. Having now checked further, I find that apparently some people havein fact used the termoligocrat, even though most of us don't and never have; and it seems thatPlutarch's name isin fact exactly what it says on the tin,after all.
Yes but: the onestarts a fire whereas the otherends one; one could imagine that an ESL speaker (or other learner) might potentially say the latter when meaning the former, but just because itcould happen doesn't mean it everdoes orhas
My brain,I'll tell yə — after glancing atpooltoy it wanted to know aboutpull toy, regarding those old little fake dogs with wheels, whose leash the toddler would pull; then it went to hunting forpull toy,pull-along toy, andpullalong, knowing that it had seen such an entry at Wiktionary in the past; but those all came up empty at Wiktionary. No wonder:pushalong is the analogue that it was half-remembering.
What happens when the person with their finger on the button is abuttonpusher by their very nature? (Why? Why do you ask? Do you have any specific concerns?)Hold all our beers.No beers in the pool. Aww, really? A beer would reallyhit the button right now.
While we're chatting, I've noticed that the dog thinks that thepooltoy is achew toy. He really likes to sink his teeth into something and give it a goodtug. No, Bowser, don't pop it. Drop it.Drop it. Good boy.
a gaggle of reporters and the workforce of a printing company are examples of teams of wags who have sometimes facetiously called themselves "the press gang" (hardy har har)
arr, you'll not be escaping this press gang, me'earties
When the Napoleonic threat was at its height, the [dreaded] press wasat large along the British coast, but this was not thefreedom of the press tho; and the townsmen were notimpressed by its effectiveness, unless they wereimpressed by its effectiveness
an emperor's-new-clothes situation is an emperor–no-clothes situation
I had never thought of it from that particular angle of detail-contrast until my brain, grumbling rapidly, fired off the latter when it meant the former. I realized at the speed of human reaction time (i.e., ~0.5 seconds) that something wasn't quite right about it, but then I had to think about it for at least 3 seconds more before I realized the full picture of what-I-meant-versus-what-I-said.
adjacently there is also the new–nude axis (what a difference ad makes)
inside theBeltway, some belts are tighter than others;^ it starts with loosening one's belt to accommodate thefine dining andfine wining that the lobbyist is officially certainly not paying for,^ and it progresses toloosening one's tongue; it ends inheartbreak andheadlines:Legislator Gets Caught With Pants Down
cattle, cattle bones, bone marrow, mouth; cut the bone, see the hollow, see the marrow; make a soup with thesoup bone, put thebone in yourmouth, suck out the marrow, swallow the marrow, eat the marrow; thank the ox, thank the chef, value the cattle, value thebovinebones, value thebone of those bones;^^^^^^ we allgonend up abig ol pile'əthem bones
a bonesucker with bulging and concave alternation ofbuccal curves^ might put the oxbones in theirmouthɒs ɒs ɒs, bos bone bocca bouche and suck the marrow out
speaking of abstracting, some vacuum pumps suck harder than others; my braindoggedly insisted onchewing the fat with this one,like a dog with a bone; my say in the matter was constrained, as usual
what a difference a loneascender can make; or, in this case, really,not make
You canhobble an adversary or opponent, which is tonobble them; you canhobble a horseveterinarily, whichimpedes its movement (in a certain way, for a certain reason), and you cannobble a horseunderhandedly, whichimpedes its movement (in another way, for another reason)
meh:He sighed,snuffed out this blursed parametric exercise, and went back to work.^^^^^^^
mechanisticness
A venialcatachresis was encountered in passing, and I thought it was cute. When referring to a pattern of how things happen, you can call itthisdynamic, orthismechanism, but you wouldn't call itthismechanic — not that wecouldn't (as incould never possibly), just thatyouwouldn't (except catachrestically). I ought to go scour theOED to see whether it enters any obsolete sense ofmechanic that is indeed synonymous withmechanism. But I lack time for that right now, and it's not worth much, because the fact that youcould doesn't always mean that youwould orshould.
PPS: The next day: It's funny that yesterday I'd proscribedfillers (above), because tonight at the supermarket I was comparing a grated cheese that promises an absence of fillers (no cellulose!) against a competitor next to it that makes no such promises but also makes sure not to draw any attention to such promises' absence. Given this ensuring's existence (and yes, it is very much a given), how would one know to duly appreciate the promises' absence if the comparator offering the presence hadn't been present?If you know what I mean.My brother in Christ (even if you're anonfraternal andnon-Christian one), you already know the answer to that question:that's how they git yə; but a funny thing is that most humans want to be gotten in that way. It's much like the egg cartons and meat packaging thatdon't say that humane animal husbandry was ensured. There is an avid market, a strong demand, for the inexpensive package that makes sure not to bring up the point at all (one way or the other), you'd better believe it. You could make a law that the package must specify the status either way, but then the inexpensive one would have to explicitly admit that humane husbandry wasnot ensured, and the pitchfork mob would tar and feather the legislator for making them face their own hypocrisy, and the law would be repealed. Anyway, I came here tonight to record another synchronicitous bell ring that happened over the past 24 hours. Somehow theWar of Jenkins' Ear came up twice in the same day, whereas normally for me it comes up zero times per year. Perhaps the carpet department requests my attention to some detail thereof, but I can't be fucked at the moment.
2025 March 25, Jason Kehe, “Angelina Jolie Was Right About Computers. “RISC architecture is gonna change everything.” Those absurdly geeky, incredibly prophetic words were spoken 30 years ago. Today, they’re somehow truer than ever”, inWired[10]:
Everyone has their own way of explaining it. The ISA is thebridge, or theinterface, between the hardware and the software. Or it’s theblueprint. Or it’s the computer’sDNA. These are helpful enough, as is the common comparison of an ISA to alanguage. “You and I are using English,” as [Calista Redmond] said to me at the conference. “That’s our ISA.” But it gets confusing. Software speaks in languages too—programming languages. That’s why [David Patterson] prefersdictionary orvocabulary. The ISA is less a specific language, more a set of generally available words.
The quote, yes, but the connection,yes but: recall the aggressively uncurious default.
PS: el cura no-care-o: Durkin 2011 dijo: "in spite of the resemblance in form, Englishcare and Latincūra ‘care’ are definitely not related to one another"
pero no le importa a nadie
PPS: al cura en sucottage no le importa elcottagecore
the latter concerns the former, and the former concerns the latter
evoked theme: coming up with a record or a story (or both) of people and events of the past, and evaluating whether or not it is biased and, if so, how
hagiography is one kind of historiography, out of many: it is a historiographic choice
Being hagiographic, in the sense in which we usually mean that word today, is historiographically poor; it is a poor historiographic choice. It is a kind of history-writing: a flavor of historiography
In that sense one might assert hypernymy–hyponymy (a hypernymy–hyponymy axis) (↕), and one could enter the {{hyper}} value at the hyponymous one, even if refraining from cross-posting in the way that such refraining is often done — for example, Wikidata does subclass-of but doesn't do superclass-of, because you can query for that via subclass-of data; this is a form of normalization and of SSOT, and it is also a form of avoiding storing a huge population as base-table data, because a hypernym can (and often will) have lots of hyponyms whereas each hyponym has only one hypernym leading in each proximal[-ward] direction on a tree (e.g.,contractor can have hypernym ofperson orcompany orseller or otherwise in the serial-sceneshifting panorama [don't forgetass-saver andnincompoop (n) too, as each case in each episode/scene might be], but each of those is manageably small]). I note here too, though, that humans naturally like to list theprincipal orcardinal {{hypo}} values when the N of that population is small enough to be handy; and one thing interesting about that fact is that it is in the neighborhood (i.e., within scent range) of the database-index thing. It is also often a limbier-limb–versus–leafier-leaves-and-twiggier-twigs thing: after all, no one cares aboutall of the many Quercuses (of which there are too many to bother with or be arsed about) but anyone is able to care about oak-versus-maple-ash-walnut-pine-whatnot-whosit-whatsit, at least if they try and especially if you pay them for the trouble
As with a recent thread below, this one was a toss-up: the needler-emulator is tingling, but so is the moronicness-deprecator tho
I'm gonna call this ayes-but, because it is just another instance of the kind of thing that most humans can't bearsed about, and it may set off some antiarsedness alerts (guarding against brain engagement). Spare others the trouble and perhaps something-somethingwe've done the thinkingso [that] you don't have to! (Aside:we X'd Y so you don't have to as fodder toAppendix:English snowclones: maybe someday)
One would expect that the etymological connection betweencut andcutlery would be direct, but apparently it is so indirect as to perhaps not even exist at all? I don't know, that's what I'm getting out of following the etymological breadcrumb trails that Wiktionary currently gives, but I'm not interested enough at the moment to go digging in other dictionaries to try to puzzle it out better.
I was toying with a track listing for a Wedding Ring album. If you wanted to be tooon the nose andmonothematic about it, the first iteration could look something like this:
Betrothed (3:16) Ball and Chain (4:54) Til Death Do Us Part (6:36) In Shackles (3:42) […]
Lmao
Recently I happened to be giving a moment's thought to how theLamb of God makes theBody of Christ available (for the purpose of saving you from your [various and sundry] sins) (hey,someone's gotta do it), and I think that this one fits neatly within this line of thought. If I wereLamb of God, I would have a track titled "Body of Christ". Perhaps they already do; I haven't scoured their discography enough to be sure.
Lol, but perhaps I must admit that this game may be too easy. Themes abound, each to be given the on-the-nose monothematic treatment. In 2025 perhaps the most eschatologic theme of all isAgentic Advent. Here is a proposed track listing:
Autonomous Creation (3:16) Foundational Model (4:54) Iterative Degradation (6:36) Model Collapse (3:42) Meat Expiration Date (Interlude) (0:42) […]
Lmao
dirtwater
The only difference between aworldhouse and agreenhouse is the scope and scale, which is to say, the former is a special case of the latter with special parameter values, but whether humans emically conceive of it as either hyponymous or coordinate is governed by the extent to which they hold thatwhen I saygreenhouse, I mean a normal greenhouse; some greenhouses are greenhouser than others.
Along that same line, is yourterraqueous globe·📅 merely a set ofterraria andaquaria for you and your (cute little) co-earthlings to live in (albeit a glorified one)?
Thediminutiveness is in the eye of the beholder.^ That's a theme that recurs in human affairs.
Today the dartboard as supplied by a rope puller involved Hackh and Grant, and I learned that Grant wrotebooks onpaper, which is odd because also I was today years old when I found out that Kurlansky (too) has abook onpaper. I added that one, in its paperless form, to the list. As for salt and cod, I already beat this salty old cod(ger) of a rope puller to those punches. Guess thefishwrapper was next tho. Somebody withties to both the chemical (para)library and the carpet department (shared parameter: midcentury chemicaliciousness) decided that these chroniclers ofpaper wouldadventitiously coincide today. Speaking of suchties, they also offered mefood andfiber from such (para)libraries, but although it is true that today I was spending money made ofpaper, I am notmade of money, so "alas, thefood andfiber are staying here, I'm afraid,"sed I, feeling deprived and parched. (Speaking of parchment, no fiber and no paper, no problem.) Perhaps the likes of me can't have their cake flavorings and eat them too, nor have the poly blends and wear them too. Maybe someday. In the meantime we are parametrically insulated (insulation makes for a degree of difference), and that's why we do so much reading from paralibraries made from paralibraries made from paralibraries. But speaking of insulation for a degree of difference, I see that midcentury chemicaliciousness is what puts theCI inICI, theIC inFRIC, and the iciness in the fridge; but all this talk of ICI andputting iciness into fridges is justadditional paralibrarianship.
Speaking of staying there or not, this time Sullivan came with me. The third time was the charm. (PS: I suppose that this makes Sullivan more of a paracompanion than a companion, but such parametric insulation is par for the course for an adventitious fellow; an underlying theme can often be detected by whichyour attendance is mandatory, but don't kid yourself that you're a main character though. Box cat purrs at this thought because it seems almost adjacent to acat state between whether the bell ring is foryou or is for someone else. It then occurs to me to ask whether there can be acat state between FPV and NPC;he says nothing, probably playing it cool, but I notice a whisker twitch and a drop of drool.)
As for the plumbing department, I didn't miss an opportunity to inspect the plumbing in at least one paraparalibrary today. All this dartboarding makes one thirsty and leads to an invitation to hit the target. It made me think of an absolute legend who doesn't miss. A fellow can carry things too far, though (turning themadventitious), and thus must learn not only when to hold əm but also when to fold əm. And that's why I've arrived at never mind
PS: The bigger theballs, the more crucial theballistics. You've gotta haveballs to throw really big things really far, especially if they explode when they land.
PS: elaboration: there was nothing for me to add, in either direction, at Wiktionary, but I did make one see-also connection at Wikipedia. My current prediction for how likely it is that any misguided souls will insist on purging it from there is: less than 20%.
Idiomatically,dethroning is transitive but not intransitive and not reflexive. The same is true ofunseating as applied to humans, although not always as applied to gaskets and valves.
Somehow "uneasy lies the head that wears a crown" became, in common parlance,heavy is the head that wears the crown, but what they don't tell you is that heavy is the ass that sits on the seat. It makes for aroyal pain in the ass.
To seek the throne is to seek the crown, which makes for a putative ass–head axis, which is to say acraniocaudal one. Todethrone is todecrown; tounseat in this sense is touncrown. Its opposite isaccession, which isseating of a sort. It also seats aconsort if one there be.
PS: royalinsignia areaccessories ofaccession; also,enthroning iscoronation, byhomosemy of situational upshot albeit not bycognitive synonymy: there is no difference except for the one between the ass and the noggin, whose importance, or contextually determined lack thereof, is in the eye of the beholder or the nose of the besmeller.
PPS: Borman 2021:13, 26, 36 — telling about crown wearings (crown-wearing occasions) — emphasizing theaccessories ofaccession so as to enforce the situational upshot (the underpinning of the homosemy), which is a kind of link, a linking equivalence, so as to keep others from weakening and breaking it. The chair and the hat are made not only to be linked firmly to each other but also to be linked obligately to the power, if you can (manage to) keep them tied so (through tryhard maintenance activities of this sort). The homosemy in examples 1a and 1b from St-Germain 1997:76 gets its obligate linking from a firmer mechanism further rooted in physical obligateness. But they share the same abstracted theme:same difference within a context — within a scope of context. How hard it is toescape that scope is a parametric difference (whose importance, or contextually determined lack thereof, is a parameter).
PPPS:Oh the places you'll go! O Lord, the places Corny sends me. At least he ties a rope around my waist first, God love im, to pull me the hell back out of there again. Lives depend on such safety gear. Physics boffins speak of high dimensionality in terms of things folded over repeatedly, like crumpled-up papers perhaps. I'm too hypoboffinous to wholly comprehend all that they say about such things, but my gut figures that they're right about the crumply aspect, because of the places Corny sends me.
PPPPS: Hisstill just keeps cookin. Why does any RDB query put any given PK into any given query-result record along with any given FK? Answer: Per therelation that matters under the circumstances. The relation's durability is governed by how hard it would be to escape it, which is a question whose asking's perversity parameter is governed by certain metaparameters.Jesus, Corny, are we to drink such stuff? There's essentially nothing left in it except pure EtOH; what are we supposed to do with such stuff:drink it?Who would do such a thing? He laughs as his fingertips palpate: that book of Taleb's about shit that especially perversely resists being kicked over (weebles wobble but they perversely refuse to fall the fuck down) is an exploration of high values for such parameters. I couldn't finish it, at least while wearing the respirator that I was wearing at the time I was last there, but I was left with a memory in my fingertips that tugs at the seams.
P^n+1·S: Escapability exists on multiple layers. To invoke the clichéd exemplar from RDBMS exposition, consider a customer UID's relation to an order UID. It is quite escapable on one layer but quite inescapable on another layer, and the only question is which layeryou currentlygive a shit about. I as customer XYZ havemore or less no relation to widget model ZZZ on aforward-looking basis, although I could be paired with it at any moment if a useful reason might arise, but the fact that I as customer XYZ have previously ordered one instance of widget model ZZZ on date ABC is an indelible fact. This we cannot doubt. The only question is the indelibility's relevance, or lack thereof, but not its existence.
Aconfessor is so called because they were willing toadmit their beliefs under duress; this theme takes its antonymy at the positions ofdenier orrenouncer.
Before thecockcrow, you will have denied me three times.
Meh. I had thought that there was more to this one, but apparently not. I've already spoken ofthe confessor–intercessor axis. I don'tprofess to know which rope-puller pulled the rope that brought up confessors again.Patientdenies knowledge of causative factors.
It's the putative radiation–lizard–royalty axis. Will you shoot a T-ray at a lizard and turn him intothe terrible tyrant?
Lol, nonsense like this makes you appreciate thatpareidolia is your brain's way ofdata dredging: inducing inductions from tiny data sets, yielding inductions that are often useless and specious albeit sometimesrevelatory.
The putative pick–peck axis includes the fact thatpicking at one's food andpecking at one's food are synonymous. It also includes the exploits of onePeter Piper with regard topickled peppers.
Coda: my deareſt Brethren, in this Year of ourLord MDCCIV: the ReverendStephen L. Winwood hath admoniſh't us:
O pray ye thattheMorning Star will lead ye tothe Morning Side; [for] You play every midnight gambler before you ſee the light / On the morning ſide, the morning ſide /[…] When you finally climb the mountain, you ſee the other side / It's the morning ſide, the morning ſide / Now my life has changed and now my eyes can ſee / Now I'm living on the morning ſide / Now I'm letting all theſunlight into me / Now I'm free / And I know I'll never pass that way again / That dark journey to the morning ſide / On the morning ſide I feel my life begin / Let's begin;Amen.
It takes a certain kind of marginal competence to whine a lot about mixed metaphors in such a sentence. When figures of speech are baked into idiom, it is merely more of the same old ubiquitous serial sceneshifting. Tell it to theserial sceneshifters.
The same can be said about people who whine a lot about business jargon buzzword bingo. They are the kind of people who imagine themselves to be clever for complaining about others talking about putting a pin in X and circling back later to take another swing at it. Again, merely serial sceneshifting, which serial sceneshifters are inveterate about anyway. Therefore: whining a lot about it is, at bottom (i.e., when youget to the bottom of it), misguidedprescription: the sort of prescription that fails to recognize core descriptive realities. In my experience, people who claim that the businessperson said absolutely nothing when they slung business jargon too hard have in some cases been mediocrities who should have been listening for the intended meaning instead of trying to play bingo; the intended meaning was nonzero and was obvious to competent ears, although the whiner missed it.
Ha. This train of thought reminded me of an experience many years ago when a mediocrity complained that they couldn't make heads or tails out of an article about war because it was mentioning hawks and doves and they couldn't see what birds had to do with anything. That's the sort of mind that will complain that you used too much business jargon. All the circling back made them dizzy, and taking another swing made them wonder why you were talking about swingsets. They wishyou weren't so stupid — so stupid as to speak in distracting and puzzling riddles.
PS: As with most thoughts that serial sceneshifters have, of course agrain of truth is present — the problem is not a lack of any such grain. Rather, the problem is in how that grain gets contextualized and acted upon. For example, in the instance above, we can admit that yes, concerns about readability level are valid concerns, but we also then add that context matters, too. Thus, when we are engaged in things such as primary education, or remedial education for minds still at the level of needing primary education despite later age, then we would of course do some (time-consuming but contextually appropriate and necessary) translation and revision work to remove some metaphors, simplify others, and so on. But in the business world, within the subcontext of managerial meetings, you are not in a place where all communication must be laboriously translated into remedial education; there's supposed to be a filter for prerequisites such that once you're in that context, the only people present are ones with sufficient competence to be there. This theme has plenty of instantiations: the cooks in a commercial kitchen, the military officers in an officer-level logistics meeting, the players in countless other vignettes.
Thus, there is more than one kind ofyellow-bellied woodpecker, although admittedly if you say the collocationyellow-bellied woodpecker, people will rightfully assign high probability to the hypothesis that your intendedreferent is theyellow-bellied sapsucker. This isnatural.
Speaking of natural things, many people like to whine about the fact that ared-bellied woodpecker's·wprosy belly is much lessred than hisrubylike pate, and that hiscousin thered-headed woodpecker·wp has a name that is not specific enough to his own coloration pattern. This is not hard to keep straight once you've paid close, specific attention to the matter; but it isnatural that many people haven't yet done so, in this case or any of countless other cases analogous to this one thatnatural language presents to us.She is cruel, this one. If you wish to rage against the machine of her cruelty, you canhammer away at such cases, breaking them apart with your mighty pointybeak and sending the crumbs and splinters flying. Yourcousins the woodpeckers love a good hammerin and mightcheer you on; aflicker lovesflicking andflinging woodchips away as hewhales away at gettin those tasty grubs and bugs.^
Many such birds flock to the feeders at thegreat house. Thecaretaker cheers them on.
PS: some months later: to someone who is cutting with a cutter, 303 is thepainlessstainless (whereas 304 is not), but to someone who is welding, 304 is thepainlessstainless (whereas 303 is not). This is merely one instance (amonggazillions) of the theme thatpainlessness andpainfulness are in the eye of the beholder due to parameter dependency.
If you're afreighter in either thehistorical present or the actual one, then acoaler or anoiler will bring you more fuel, alighter will carry off various shit (and shitheads) that you don't need, and a handwave will etc. Youneedn't even leave the comfort of thehigh seas.
There isdisjuncture in this pairing: both are about the question of whether the person in the pub is in a position to provide an accurate assessment of phenomena, but the second suggests that they will misjudge (i.e., produce inaccurate results by being inferior to the alternative), whereas the first suggests that their evaluative capacity is superior to its alternatives.
But how can the selfsameaverage Joe sitting on the selfsamebarstool drinking the selfsamebrewsky be both thewiser sage and the miscalibrated fool? Is this the (putative)barroom paradox?
Not so fast, Einstein. You must incorporate (at least) two more parameters into this analysis before you can conclude that it has produced a paradox:
(1) Degree of inebriation: Thepub test implicitly involves the low side of this spectrum: justlubed up enough toget the old gears turning smoothly, but not sooverlubricated as to be counterproductively so, whereas thebeer goggles involve the intermediate to high ranges of the spectrum. As for operational indicators that can measure this parameter, oneGeorge Thorogood has proposed a rapid and low-costfield test:you know when your mouth is gettin dry, you plenty high
(2) You must remember thatsentiences, at least in their regular flavor among meatbag flavors (so meaty,Omamiumami), areserial sceneshifters; thus, by corollary, regarding figurativeness,you're in the wrong figure, honey — we're over here in this one now. One might ask how they (the gaggle) stay in tune so easily when the shifts are so sudden, fast, and frequent? But that is the wrong question to ask of a record player needle: it is only in one valley at a time, and each valley just is what it is. In fact the more interesting question is its inverse:What sort of machine would provide any alternative to that default? Butdon't ask me the nature of its nature or how it occasionally comes about: I'm not themachinebuilder.
A coda: somephenomena are phenomemami than others (get a load ofthose phenomena, will yə), and the man in the pub^ who is wearing the beer goggles may bethree sheets to the wind, but there are some things that he does fully appreciate, such asjugs.^^^^^^^
The one mighteat the other(boo), but it also mightbe the other(yay?); the differentiating parameter is how hungry you are:how bad do you want it? You gotta want it!
Everyone thinks they can do your occupation. Or, that is, assumes so; or, if not "can do", then "could do if they wanted to bother learning and trying". After all, how hard could it be? Right?
Tret's how they got you, when you were thesutler; but it was only because you, or at least yourilk, had tried to getthem first,what with your (or your ilk's) cutting and filling andpassing off and such.
newspaper is notGOOS paper (because it is not blank on the verso), but it might be goodgoose paper, or at least acceptable goose paper, if you needbedding for your geese.
The framing precept of thefive-second rule is thatit's still good.GOOS paper is still good, on one side, but thegoosehouse is not the place for proper application of thefive-second rule.
Something these birds have in common is that both the male and the female go by this name. The same is sometimes also true ofpeacocks, whose name is subject to variable usage, but not ofturkeycocks; and there are no *chickencocks at all, because a cock among chickens is just a cock.
Msmoorhen is Msmarsh hen, but she is notMarsha; she is, tho, more hen than you'll ever be.
Homer Simpson may fancy himselfcock of the walk, but Mr Burns will have you know that Homer Simpson is cock of nothing.
PS: Some days later: PerhapsCockwood was long ago named for itswoodcocks; perhaps it was awoody area with many suchbirds of thewoods. Why, what wereyou thinking?
What is the sound of one Quaker gun firing? If fallen trees in a forest are made to be Quaker guns but no one is around to hear them, do theynotnot not make a sound? If the trees fell unheard, did they fall silent?^ Itmakes you think, doesn't it? Or does itnotnot not make you think? Have you thus been made to think? Or not? Think about it.
Lmao. I have been having some fun withgoofing on earnestly sententious pieties lately; I don't even know why. Almost likeparroting platitudes.Let it be a lesson to us all, lol.
Coda: my deareſt Brethren, in this Year of ourLord MDCCIV: the ReverendStephen L. Winwood hath admoniſh't us:
Think about it: theremuſt behigher Love, [whether]down in the Heart or hidden inthe Stars above; [for] without it, Life iswaſted Time; [thus,] look inſide your Heart, [and] I'll look inſide mine. Things look ſo bad everywhere; in this whole World, what is fair? We walk blind, and we try to ſee Falling behind in what could be […] I couldlight the Night up with my Soul on Fire I could make the Sun ſhine from pure Deſire Let me feel that Love come o'er me Let me feel how ſtrong it could be Oh bring me a higher Love Brang me a higher Love, oh oh (bring me) Bring me a higher Love; Where's that higher Love, I keep thinking of?
Theparty trick with saying thatit's five o'clock somewhere is that it is literally true (i.e., at least five o'clock: five or later). But there is no corresponding (homologous) trick for the days of the week. It is not always Saturday night somewhere.
PS tho: It is not always Saturday night somewhere —except in one's mind. (Hey-oh! amirite? can I get an amen? can I get a high five, or at least a handwave?) On some Blursdays, there is only a Saturday nightof the heart.
The thing about the exhortation "please do not feed the bears" is that it isexophoric: thepublic should not feed the bears, but thebearbaiter definitely should [do]. Moreover, he should do it twice over, then release the bears. He shouldfeed themmore, and evenoverfeed them, as recompense for their troubles, and thenset them free.
bə-but bə-arbeiten es nicht! When it comes to(bə-)belaboring stuff, I can't alwayshelp myself, especially herein, which sometimes might seem like I am(bə-)baiting my readers, bə-but I just likegetting to the (bə-)bottom of stuff, then codifying it for future rapid reentry and reexit.
work on •belabour —Yes but: this would be worth a link in some parawiktionaries, but not in Wiktionary, where it is a narrow miss; it would make some needlers itchy, which I can detect via simulation with 90%+ certainty.
Yes but. Which is kind of a shame, because there is a richpanoply^ ofstoniness tosavor among these various stones. And speaking of gleaning and savoring amid stoniness,stonecrops know how toutilize every available trace of soil as theyflourish,^ which is a lesson to us all.^ But of course the very nature of ayes-but is that the uncuriousrefuse lessons. Their loss.
PS: Acase in point (regarding what one can learn when chewing on such things): I had been chewing and sucking onpeach pits andcherrystones for several days, and hadrepondered thepit–pit axis (which is known rather thanputative) as well as theNew Amsterdam–NY-NJ-PA-Delmarva axis, before it occurred to me to wonder whether there was anything to one putative pit-pith axis and thus to actually bother to read the etyms that Wiktionary already helpfully supplies. This taught me that thepit–pith axis is indeed known rather thanputative. Thus is the putative nonuncuriousness–aliveness axis putativelyputated lol fu2.
The Devil isOld Scratch, and something can be (said to be)the work of the Devil, and yet that something may not bescratch‑made. Furthermore, the Devil isOld Nick, and something can be (said to be)the work of the Devil, and yet that something may not benicked. Perhaps these paradoxes present a theological puzzle for you andfor the ages, or perhaps instead they are justthe work of the Devil and thus only adirty trick. You could ask him, but he's busy trying to convince the world that he doesn't exist, and thus he can't answer you withoutbreaking character.
PS: A few days later: Here in this forest, we like to make jokes (that is, engage in jokery) about the putative X–Y axis. Today it occurred to me that property P460 can be (said to be) the putative putative-X=Y-identity axis. Only putatively, of course.
*Some prizes are prizier than others. Some restrictions apply. Not available in all areas. See store for details. Not responsible for typographical errors. In the event of handwave etc,go fuck yourself.
oatlage is holonymous tooatstraw in one way but coordinate with it in another way; the difference isend result emphasis: a speaker could whine,no, when I say X, I mean X as an end result.
All else follows by corollary: what to do when going back into the oven is not an option, how to continue baking in such cases (extraovenal baking improvisations), handwave etc.
The reason why *raise cane is soeggcorny is the plausibility of the misconstruals combined with the fact that there are more than one of them; thiscomposite^ theme is true of all members of the class of eggcorniest eggcorns.
A look at the corpus shows that it is true that the collocationraising cane is well attested in its sum-of-parts form, referring to growing sugarcane. Thus, when people hear the collocation/ˌɹeɪzɪn ˈkeɪn/, the juicycanebrake is sometimes somewhere not too far away in the distance; and what goes better with delicious sugarycane juice (from thebreaking of thecane of thecanebrake) thanraisins?
Still though —even so — it takes certain kinds of ignorance, subliteracy, and cognitive disconnects to misapprehend that/ˌɹeɪzɪn ˈkeɪn/ has anything to do with dried grapes or sugarcane. It is true thatyou can make an awfully niceplum pudding orfruitcake of such stuff, but only some of us arefruitcake enough to mistake thereferents of such words even when they are uttered withincontext. To misconstrue them evenin the face of an obvious flood ofcontextual cues seems like the tip of an iceberg (or a pudding), cognitively. And perhaps it even might almost makeyou want tobreak yourcane over thebackside of someone being sofruity, which mightbreak thehide of theirbackside, what with all thecaning. Somebacksides, like some otherseats as well, are practicallycaning themselves, or at least beggin for a canin, in which case your cane is beggin for a raisin. But you can't threaten me with a raisin bagel, tho, because you shouldn't threaten me with a good time. I just mightsee you in hell if you try toraise so much cane onmy back.
you canput some heartwarmth into the critter with awarmer of theheart-warmer type, but you shall not close this circuit tho
"Heartcooler" antonymizes here. For those ones in which they pack donated hearts on ice for transit, see handwave etc. For other cardiac dewarmthənators, see handwave etc.^
Ablackleg miner is a scab one; abootleg miner is a freelance one, especially an illegally freelancing one.
Something they have in common is the theme that someone looks down on them for doing something that either is or is alleged to be crooked, dirty, filthy, low-down, and so on (in the nonbent, nondirt, nonsoil, and nonsubterranean senses of those words, respectively, but by punnery also in the bent, dirt, soil, and subterranean sensesas well).
Speaking mainly in thehistorical present (describingbootlegging that probably rarely happens anymore), we can say that abootlegger digs adoghole, and ablacklegger digs a scabhole; some bootleggerstoe the line orcross the line intoblacklegging because they are selling coal, feeding the market, at a time when a strike action is supposed to be halting the market thoroughly enough to give the miners as much negotiating leverage as they can muster. Thus, there can be a sense among the miners that both are sabotaging class solidarity. The bootlegger can get it from both sides: he may sometimes have a scent of class treason to the miners' noses, and he's anything from a cheating competitor to a thief by the bigmineowners' lights.
Otherboot- orblack-related terms for objectionable or allegedly objectionable people includebootlicker andblackguard. What then of abootblack? Well, he too is^ scorned by more than a few, because egotist jerks like to disparage him for being poor and being low in the alleged pecking order.
But climbing down into a line of thought like this one, and staying down in there for a while, fucking around down there, puts me down into a dark, dank, cramped, dirty hole, though, in a nondark, nondank, noncramped, nondirty way. Good thing I borrowed Corny's gear. I give a set of tugs on the rope to let him know I'm^ ready to come back up now. One last scraping down here before I leave: I scratch a mark to leave behind:Oldyes-but was here.
PS: A frustrating theme about ones like this: It is not that needlers' minds are not affected by them (they are), but rather only that the needler is not conscious of that fact. Putting it in this light makes me appreciate that a needle groove is also like a wind-up player mechanismin a way (music box,player piano, etc): the thing is on autopilot, albeit animatedto a degree. Ouch. That poker is hot^ and is not to be misused. Even nonmachines that are more machine than others are still non-, and they are thus not to be pots calling the kettlesblack.^
Levon^ likes his money, butJesus wants to go toVenus; the Rocket Man can't take him there, as he doesn't understand all the science — it's just his job five days a week
There is a gradient from "merely" gumming up the flow (but not especially interfering with the supply), to doing both at once, to just mainly starving the supply.
I'm going to lean towardyes-but for now. Maybe change my mind later. A heuristic to keep in mind is that if I have to ask, then it will likely turn out that other people think that the answer is no. And why is that? Well, as discussed elsewhere herein, it has to do with the difference between a needle groove and an emulation of one.
PS: Some weeks or months later: It's funny what thedredge turns up sometimes. I had to come back and find this one because the following occurred to me just now:
Whatsort ofcorn is agoat'scorn, and whatsort ofcorn does a goatscorn, if any? oat corn, wheat corn,barleycorn, rye corn,acorn? Get real: goats love all corn; your typical goat has never met a corn she doesn't love. Thus oat corn is goat corn, which is to say, it can be so.
Is a polled pol a pollard? With his round, shiny poll and his short, stocky frame, might he pass as abollard? Perhaps his costume idea for next Halloween. The likeliest way to pass is at a distance. Passing at a distance, he polishes his poll, or mops his brow.
PS tho: HBOS is not RBS, and both are not HSBC. Also, lest we forget the referents later, at least this: not everyone gets to be an avant-garde chef, as some of us have to do the spoonfeeding and diaperchanging all day, or make thedonuts (for dollars). But a lesson is about mindfulness: instead of letting theeverydayday residue drag us down to its level, we should instead calmly observe it for what it is and maintain an ability to hold it at a remove, so as to preserve our sanity. It can be hard because the bib-and-diaper-wearers in this metaphor deny being such, which is part of the nonallocentric nature of some portions of evolutionary logic. They didn't get where they are, motivation-wise and egocentrism-wise, through accurate self-assessment. Ask me how I know lol 💀.
The autopilot-instantaneousness portions of my brain renderedordinal indicator asordinator in rapid speech production, and I like that one: itsusername checks out,as they say, speaking ofnames. One's brain sometimes seems to act the part of anordinateur, fər shər
shared parameters: people hoping that technology (of various kinds) will enhance their performance (in one way or another)
Yes but: the aggressively uncurious perspective is that "doing drugs hasnothing to do withrobotics"; thus, I didn't bother adding see-also links between those articles, expecting that someone uncurious will insist on removing them. In other words, I realized the likely hopelessness of giving them a link that might enhance their performance in their consumption of exposition and their synthesis of thoughts during that activity. (TLDR translation: it's extremely hard to undumb a dummy or to pearl a swine)
PS tho: I did add a see-also link fromneuroenhancement toperformance enhancement, and the counterpart 180° backlink was already there, which is nice to see because it shows that noteveryone is asleep.
shared parameters: circumvention of a composite's unity, and of the thorny challenge that that unity presents, by a slicing action that others find novel and surprising
in one case the surprise is of theno duh, why didn't anyone think of that earlier flavor, whereas in the other case the surprise is of theoh my God no, don't do that variety (but it is only a ruse to uncover a latent parameter value that will become the real deciding factor·Solomonically)
It's funnyyou mention the bay, though, becausejust today my brain wouldn't stop thinking aboutdistant lights from across the bay. (It didn't ask me my opinion on the matter.^ Somedogs are harder to keepat bay than others.)
Speaking ofdogs and the bay, the old bay is flavorful, and Mr Soup-Hunt was ringing my bell tonight. The thing that would have piqued my interest 20 years ago would have been to wonder and investigate how far we've come since he wrote the colloquy. The thing that's piqued my interest tonight, in this era,contrastively, is to recognize how many of us never did learn a thing from him, 80-some years on. It's not that I'm surprised;I already know the deal about that. I just need to kvetch about it sometimes because it's so annoyingly inadequate.
PS: Speaking ofinadequacy, I almost forgot to note a part of what brought me here tonight: I thought about capturing some of his colloquy atwantlessness, but Murphy waveda revolver in my direction and looked at me knowingly. While I was there, though, I was speaking ofinadequacy, so I entered theblack ant ofwantlessness.^ I yelled down the stairs to the basement to ask how many had heard of it,and a gaggle of voices clamored back.Alright, alright, pipe down assholes, I've heard more than enough about it.
This exercise hasculminated in furthercollation (maybe not a mountain of it, buta fair bit of ahill tho); it piles up out back of thegreat house. One of these rope pullers might have someearthy words for me if they knew that after all our postmidnight soporificness together,culm was the one that I had tounearth today.I'll give you a damnmountain of it for forgetting the nightmare with the cable drums at the culm dump, he grumbles, as I imagine it. (That'sspools onspoils lol.) I tried to resurrect that nightmare just now, but now I can't find it. Which carpet pisser was it even? Somewhat like the bigots say,sometimes they all look alike to me,in a way. It's funny what mymind's eye doesn't bother with, and then again, it's funny what itdoes bother with that arguably it might shouldn't. (You callthat a mind's eye? Lol, yes, I know, Corny; stfu, brother. Don't you have some culm to comb through?)
Justcome out with it: you're talking about the cleanliness, maintenance, and safeguarding of yourhole, which is not different from anewshole proper, although you're apparently careful to avoid saying so (you'd faint at being so common, eh?)
Is there any old joke about the judge, or the lawyers, or all of them, beingat the bar instead ofat bar?
I have never heard that one, if it indeed exists; but then again, I have never been acollector orconnoisseur of lawyer jokes, so I wouldn't knowoffhand.
Likewise, is there one about the judge not being able topass the bar when he's driving to thecourthouse?
I have never heard that one, if it indeed exists, but handwave etc
Acollector, aconnoisseur, and a THIRD_ASSHOLE_NOT_FOUNDwalk into a bar, and handwaves ensue
Ajudge, alawyer, and a THIRD_ASSHOLE_NOT_FOUNDwalk into a bar, and handwaves ensue
screw others over by removing a pathway that others might use, which one has already used • screw oneself over by removing a pathway that one might use, which one has already used
Yes but: the aggressively uncurious can't see any value in it
A funny thing is that for creatures who (especially when neurotypical) just aboutlive forcontextuality, people might (in somecontexts) tend to be reluctant to admit that that label (contextual) is apt.
today's formulation:at a most proximal level, only one of the types isdirectly aboutcoincidence, in a way that blurry-eyed colorblind vision can see even without looking very closely (you callthat looking?)
PS: Enough for today: The parameter structures governing the degree of limitation on the number of available stations (Fächer) exist on several layers; one layer isthis, but the next layer isthis.
Recently I mentioned, elsewhere herein,^ crossing a messy room, so as to go to the far corner and back (in a nonmessy, nonfar, nonroom way); and here we can add, by corollary, that crossing a messy room to grab acold one from the fridge is aspecial case of easyrepeatability.
In recent days I worked out some things, which is to say more precisely, I may not have lysed them all completely but I lysed them to a newly enlarged degree. (Note to shelf: bucket handle: windy.)
An interesting upshot is that it doesn't change the upshot: some nonmachines remain more machine than others. A difference is greater comfort regarding why and how.
Did you ever stop to think about the fact that there's a secondi inWinnipeg but there's no secondi inWinnebago? I never had, until now; but I like to keep an eye on such things. You can keep an eye out for them and still have a second one to spare,wink-wink. Vigilance can be exhausting, but if you keep an eye out, it might save you from putting one out, someday.
thecompere has whipped up, or has hosted the whipping up of, acompote
thecompère has whipped up, or has hosted the whipping up of, acompôte
shared parameter: the old man hascomposed, or overseen thecomposition of, some fruit salad
additional modification parameter: the nature and duration of the fruit salad holding pattern (time, temperature, location), which governs the [fermentation versus prevention of fermentation] distinction; thus:
The additional modification parameter also governs the dividing line between such output andcompost; and this factfactors out to: did one'sgoombah do it right, or not?
shared parameter:piping comes out. Sometimes one has to get the piping out of one's system, and sometimes the system is a series of pipes. Some systems arepiper than others.
Why are *busboat and *boatbus lexical gaps? Is it becauseferries already have a name and thus don't need another? Awater taxi also moors at this dock, mentally
Then, by the late 20th century,Digiform andDigiForm (with a big D with or without a big F) had been coined as proprietary names for digital form creation technology, and then perhaps it was too late for *digiform toform (or beformed), asreceptor blocking (as it were) was now (i.e., from that time onward)in play.
Did you ever think consciously about the fact thatnow has a sense referring to atimespan that fits within the tense and aspect of the surrounding syntax?The game was now afoot." "The game was then afoot." "The game was, from that time onward, afoot." "The game was, since the start of that newly demarcated timespan, continuously afoot."
Meh, which is to say, in the ironic way,big F'n D.
Shared parameter: humans develop models to explain them, and the models are even rather good (from many viewpoints), but it remains true thatthe models are not the phenomena and that we still (even to this day) do not know for sure what may remain missing from the models, but the informed among us know that it's something, not nothing.
PS: MW's and AHD's syllabication of men‧tal terms differs from WT's syllabication at ment‧al‧ese, but I amat ease about it, because I'm informed enough to know that syllabication is only semistandardized, not fully so.
PPPS: "[…] we still (even to this day) do not know for sure what may remain missing from the models, but the informed among us know that it's something, not nothing." Not being sure about the hole in what's known but being smart enough to know that the hole exists and to take guesses about its approximate size and nature. I'm informed tonight by Bertsch McGrayne 2011 that Bayes could do well at Tunbridge Wells as a Dissenter because, effectively, the spas were a place where intermingling could happen without drawing complaints. Was that to say that what happens at Tunbridge Wells stays in Tunbridge Wells? Perhaps back thenat least, although eventuallythey upped their game for complaining, apparently (as I'm informed).
are you/sɪɚ/-ial with this right now, you may ask me —with this /bɔɹ/-ial line of thought?
/bɔɹ/-ial lines: thearctic circle, otherwise known as theArctic Circle, is a /bɔɹ/-ial line that you can cross, which is odd in the respect that acircle isn't properly aline, but it isnot at all odd in the respect that any sufficiently large circle approximates a line for most local practical purposes, at human scale, just as any sufficiently large sphere approximates aplane for most local practical purposes, at human scale. What happensat scale may seem different from what happens at human scale, as some scales arescaler than others.
cardinality parameter value: this one (thepiecemealredoubling below) has been with me for ages; it is durably salient among the class members. Often when I've happened tobrush up against one of its branches, a twig has snagged in my clothes briefly, and I've thought to myself (albeit in an unthinking way),I really ought to trim and comb that bramble someday.
Although lysability is often judgeddichotomously — either thelysing works or it doesn't —gradability is sometimesat hand: in one sense, something cannot be more lysable than something else (each either succumbs or successfully resists), but on the level ofreadiness, there isnot generallycomparable,comparative more readily lysable,superlative most readily lysable.
Surely your saint will pray for you if he catches you being lazy (unless he smites you, orcalls down a smiting from God, instead?); surely your sarnt will rip you a new one if he catches you being lazy?
if your saint catches you doing something:he knows when you are sleeping / he knows when you're awake / he knows if you've been bad or good, so be goodfor goodness' sake
PS: when you'reawake (atimespan) is aspectually differentiable from when youawake (atimepoint). Jolly Old Saint Nick sees both;he sees all. (you better watch out)
shared parameter: shaping the soil to receive a seed, a seed potato cutting, or a transplant
Adibber is also adibbler or adibble (as well as adib), and it is something thatdibbles, that is,dibs; and presumably adobber is something thatdobs, but I haven't probed fully to the bottom of that verb sense yet. Apparently it may bedialectal, and whereasany farming vocabulary tends to be at risk of being inadequately covered lexicographically,dialectal farming vocabulary is often themost inadequately covered. While in this locale, I ask myself whydobble is apparently alexical gap in English, because it strikes me as the sort of form that English wouldn't fail to have already. English loves itsdibbles,dabbles,dabblers,babbles,babblers,bobbles,bobbers,bobblers,wobbles, andwobblers so much that I'm surprised itleft any of them on the table.
PS: Regardingdobbing: evidently thedib-dab-dip-dap-dob-tap axis is real, whereas at least one homonymic form of each of those is related to pressing on the soil or to thedimple/depression thus made. One learns these things bydribs and drabs in some cases; one picks up variousbits and bobs along the way. A shelf full ofknick-knacks: things you'venicked and things you'veknackered. Don'tknock yourknick-knacks off the shelf, as you mightknacker them; some objects are furtheroff the shelf than others.
PPS: Although I of course knew that something that isknackered isin shambles (at least hyberbolically or figuratively), I had not known that theslaughterhouse was nextdoor, cognitively, to both of those notions rather than only the latter;knacker#Etymology and its defs plusshambles#Etymology and its defs showed me how toput it together.
This means that bulls get their name from theirbusiness end,if you will: theparts that define what might from someteleological viewpoints be considered their specialty in life.
That by itself is not surprising, I realize, as that reflectshow humans tend to talk — but one surprising thing about it, to me, is that apparently it'snot only the balls but also the cock that's mixed into the etymology, as apparentlyphallus goes way back to the same primordial ooze thatballs do, if I'm reading this right. Well, that would seem bothembryologically andetymologically appropriate, now wouldn't it?
Bollocks. Human language seems kinda dumb, from some angles. In fairness, it's a reasonable approach to semiotics within the constraints of the mental capacity ofmeatbags.^^ But still tho. Lol. PS:deez nuts
some people pride themselves on their ability tosniff out a good deal
sometimes one's nose might berunning like a faucet, and horrendously wasteful spending is amoney spigot; shared parameter: a tappouring out something that isn't supposed togush from one
I like that one especially; its smokybutteriness ischef's kiss: old no-eyes cansee all sides of it at once. His equanimity in such things is admirable; I have notes about thatsecret buttery sauce's recipe, but they're not for here, for now.
unbreakable is a widely used word (they alive, dammit!), and the wordunbreakdownable is sufficiently attested, although I don't feel the need, at this moment, toshortlist it toward oughta; is that wrong of me? If so,go ahead and give it to me;'salright (↑);'salright (↓)
A big PS tho: I just realized that I had failed to tweak my corpus search by a single letter before jotting the info above: the formlysable is sufficiently attested,·e.g. albeit uncommon; that one Iwill shortlist.
I wonder idly whether Dr Pangloss's (/ˈpænɡlɑsɨz/) name was chosen to connote a pollyannaish hope for one universalworld language, but I hardly know shit about Voltaire, so I'll just go back to my wild mushrooms now
If you muster up enoughvolts, you can get an arc acrossair
PS: While in the neighborhood ofautology this morning, I was reminded of a conclusion that I reached a while ago.To my mind, paradoxes such as theheterologicalheterological are not as mind-bending as people tend to claim, because wondering over them turns out (after a longspell) to be just as useless as wondering over any otherAchilles heel: there is nothing surprising about asingular weak aspect of an otherwise strong whole (asingularity), because it is a mere truism:it is what it is, no more nor less, and it is of thenature ofreality that there often must be one, somewhere;after all, that's howthey get you,generally speaking. (Moreover: At the very highest level ofgeneralization, it is the only way in whichextropy can escape, or can have escaped (as each case may be),entropy; and:so you like generalization, eh? Well, have all the generalization in the world,muahahaha!But the joke's on you, because I'm into that shit.) There's usually a man behind a curtainsomewhere, who can be found if one looks hard enough. However, this fact does not imply that the Oz of the moment or situation (whatever it may be) doesn't exist; it merely implies that some blemish can always be found. Trying to climb inside theheterologicalheterological is a fun game,in small doses, but you won't find the bottom of thatmudpuddle any more than you'llget to the bottom of what really happens inside ablack hole, at or beyond thesingularity. And the answer doesn't matter to your life or lifestyle,practically. There is usually value in holding a singularity to be dulyunanalyzable (which, after all, is merely to duly acknowledge theunitary nature that is precisely the reason for its having been given that name in the first place). One may profit by holding it as a shiny little object, or an unusually matte black one,whichever the case might be. And a hollowed egg will have its tiny hole, and an amniotic sac will have its hilum, and aglobe will have itspapilla (ablind spot), and they are special but,in some ways, notremarkable: you'd better hope that you have one, and that it becompetent, but before you try getting down inside it, be warned that itcontains no user-serviceable parts. But perhaps this whole discussion is merely an instance oftalking shop about egg-hollowing technique,depending on whoyou are. (Whoare you?)
PS: some days later: the wordpheretic would be autological if it were attested (as a synonym ofapheretic), but it's not so it's not, althoughpheresis involvespheresis.
PS: Speaking of birdshit and ofoutlandish islands, some of the bestguano in the world comes fromChile and itsoutlying islands. Speaking of cold places and their inhabitants, as well as incidental wanderings, I was also in the neighborhood ofInuk,Canuck, andKanaka, today. But this latesttrek through thechilly wilds, from Thule to Chile (and back again), meeting people who speak PIE-descendant languages and others who speak non–PIE-descendant ones, makes me think aboutbouba and kiki while my teethchatter.
Such a list of tuples could be tabulated so as to sort on or filter on animal, animal class (i.e., animal type hypernymy-hyponymy, which equals taxonomic rank holonymy-meronymy), body part, or body part holonymy-meronymy
PS: I almost forgot to include this here but some carpet pisser tossed it back in front of me just to remind me tostay grounded and handwave etc. Thecandlehandlung was achandlery.
Many months later: Some rope puller took pains to point out to me that somecandlehandlers are ˈsʌndɹiəɹsundrymen·^ than others.
All thisclownery aside, in all seriousness, what would an exhaustive list of the members of this class look like? How big would it be? (save face,lose face,suck ass,[…]) Or is it something to which I shouldpay no mind?
Thatline of thought is astretch, even if her Lexus isn't one.^
PS: There's something ironic (as in human folly) aboutstretch#English:_stretch limousine: you spent all that money building (or having someone build) a needlessmonstrosity, but you also need an elliptical name for the thing because you can't bearsed to say its full name. First you stretch out something that didn't need stretching out, and then you shorten something that didn't need shortening. Between all the needless pulling and pushing (stretching and crunching, straining and crumpling,insult to injury), there's something of the dysphoric accordion-playing to the whole obscenity, in a nonmusical way.
shared parameter: people in other regions are less likely to know (being less likely to be exposed), which does not at all mean that the meaning is "little known" nor "secret" outside each region, but rather simply means that the people elsewhere who know are the ones who don't have their heads up their ass as much; thus, for example, businesspeople, newspaper readers, others.
In a store, atester of perfume lets you have just ataste, so that you can see whether you'd like to buy an (unopened) bottle (which is to say, so that you cansmell whether so).
There can be said to be such things. The instance that made me think more consciously about it again, after being of coursevaguely aware of it at the mere-truism level for a long time, isWiktionarian, which is a hyponym both oflexicographer andWikimedian, each in a different way. The latter pair, which aren't much of a "pair" at all except in this one way, can be said to be a pair of cohypernyms. Not too much should be made of it, though, as its structural underpinnings are largely meaningless. The shared parameter is (every sort of) multiparameter correlation through coinstantiation (including the meaningless sorts). It is thus fairly trivial to generate some more (more or less meaningless) examples. For example, a car in many cases (in any of many countries) is both a machine and an import. So fucking what, amirite? Ikr.
Nevertheless, I won't dismiss this line of thought as useless until I crawl through plenty of examples to see whether I mightsniff out any latent threads of interestingness. The first obvious question is going to be whether there are any classes of cohypernyms whose relation is nonmeaningless, as in notentirely (co)incidental albeit plenty so. If some such classes can be identified, it might then be possible to analyze any shared parameter among them. If anymetaparameters of cohypernymy exist, it might tickle one's innards to become aware of what they might be and how they might interrelate.
A few toss-offs:
A Wiktionarian is a crowdsourcing dictionary-augmenter. A dictionary-augmenter can be a kind of crowdsourcer.
A car is often an imported machine. A machine can be a kind of import.
An X is often a Y'd Z, or a Y'ing Z, or a Y-able Z. A Z can be a kind of Y-er.
Hmm. It's a start. The start of ahill of beans? I'll have to grow a fewbeanstalk seedlings to find out. I won't be trading awayall myBessies for it though.
Update, a week or three later: old no-eyes has laid hands on the first two metaparameters of cohypernymy uncovered to date; it's not all that exciting, as they are no doubt the broadest ones, or some of the broadest ones; in fact, so broad that people ungifted ineyelessness might take them to bemeaningless. And yes, he knows exactly what those people mean, as he cansee thatpoint of view through one of his filtering goggles, which emulates noneyelessness well enough toget by where such emulations are required. Nonetheless, he begs to differ regarding these two metaparameters'interestingness, as they are duly interesting (enough) as viewed through some other filters. For example, when viewed from within some of the valleys kissed by the shadow of death, they have a certainpop-up quality that differentiates them from the ambientflatness. He reports that once you've seen thingsin the nonlight of such valleys and have at least somewhat comprehended what you were seeing, you never wholly forget what you saw there, and it colors perceptibility elsewhere, just yet anotherfilter among a rich panoply ofcheaters that may beswapped out inalternation. Anyway, here are the first two stones unearthed as metaparameters of cohypernymy: instantiability^ and attentionworthiness^. Right off the bat, one way in which they are interesting is that they provide an illustration of meta–yes-butteriness: the noneyeless saywell yes, but but, to which the eyeless reply,mais oui, but but but.
I just realized that I should order a novelty apron for old no-eyes to wear when he's at thekitchen sink:Kiss me, I'meyeless.
The one collocation you invoke when you're speaking ofthe living (↑⁺), whereas the other collocation you invoke when you're speaking ofthe dead (↓⁻). The two constitute a phonemicityminimal pair, as well as a typo one.
Traditional human tribal societies tended to have rules along certain themes: Don't speak ill of the dead, and don't speak at all of the devil.
There was a time when places were namedParameter+hurst so as togive off an air of maximalupscaleness. That time came and went. My perception of the dating of its peak is that it peaked inEdwardian times.
By the time Icame along, theParameter+hurst names smelled distinctly of thehearse to mywhippersnapper nose. The shared parameter waselderliness. But part ofgrowing up into adulthood is decoupling such misapprehensions. I no longer smell anyhearse atParameter+hurst, but I now more fully appreciate smelling thegorse there. Thegorse there doesn't belong there, but it's not its fault and it itself doesn't know any better, much like the starlings that land on it. There was a time when the people at places namedParameter+hurst wouldintroduce such plants^ and birds^ so as togive off an air of maximalupscaleness. It was stupid, in retrospect, but I can admit that at the time they didn't know any better. Which does not excuse it, in the sense of laundering it, although it does explain it, regardless of whether or notyou accept the explanation.
I feel kind ofshitty about my recent edits seeming to focus rather too heavily on thepottymouth^^ dimension, but it's odd because the underlying motivation is (in contrast) strangely academic, or, should I say more precisely, focused on applied ontology (whereas it's problematic to call practically applied ontologyacademic). Eventually this too (like all other thematic flings) willpass from my system, at least until the next time I eat the wrong thing at the wrong time.#Thesaurus:anus #Thesaurus:toilet #Thesaurus:outhouse #Thesaurus:trash #Thesaurus:jerk #Category:English shitgibbons
PPS: Thecompletionist in me is happy to keepwhaling away on them, but let's get real — that ocean has no bottom. Which doesn't mean that I promise to forgowhaling on them any more than I already have — rather, merely, that I can stop anytime I want to, asthey say. Wasn't there a Nantucketer who asserted as much? It's anold, old story.
PPPS: I remember the bad old days when I was more frequently exposed to the sort of speakers who speakthat way habitually and unironically. One of their little gems (out of theirbottomless bag of them) waspeckerwrecker, as I recall; the notion was that metalbraces wouldmake short work of one's junk. Looking back now, I can better see that the schoolboys who were so especially worried about that theoretical notion would have precious little opportunity to test its realisticness empirically. Nonetheless I was mildly surprised that when I searched Wiktionary forpeckerwrecker tonight it came up as unentered. Wiktionary is generally already pumped quite full of every sort ofcumbuckety word, to the point that when one is missing it's a mild surprise. Which doesn't mean that *I* will enterpeckerwrecker. Nope, fuck that. In fact one of the underlying reasons why I keep tying together the instances via senses and senseids and cot and syn links is that I can envision that once that action has been done thoroughly enough, it will then be obvious to users how vapidly ridiculous this particular subclass of hypersynonymy is. In this regard I am a bit like the fiend who works in the Ironic Punishment Division of Hell Labs and says to Homer something along the lines of,So, you like donuts, eh? Well, have all the donuts in the world! The joke in that case is thatthe joke's on the fiend because Homer is into that shit. Is the joke on me? So be it. That shit backsplatters on the ones who would sling it. Let everyone see the patheticness of whatshitmunchers they really are. Under the cold light of linguistic analysis may the social power of their epithetswilt a bit, like the tiny peckers that stood very little chance of getting wrecked.
Bonus points: could you putsingle-barrel whiskey through yoursingle-barrel carburetor and get a running result? Perhaps only if it is of thecask-strength·ʷᵖvariety.Even then, the following parametric difference is practically relevant:
Under what parametric set of conditionswould you ever? One could envision some, but should one? Under most nominal parametric conditions such activity is both prohibitively and needlessly expensive.
PS: It is possible to run subroutines and store their output ascanned results. Thecanscan be of various shapes and sizes andcan be stored in various places.^^^^^^^^^^^ The expense can thus beamortized in a way that makes it worthwhile. Furthermore, to the extent that the initial investments function as grants, their costs become aseparate concern from the accounting viewpoint of thebeneficiaries.^^ All of this, too, is parameterization in action. The motivations of thegrantor might be examined, butlook: human motivation is multivariate and multilayered; the question of whether any human evershould drinkcask-strengthsingle-barrel whiskey is a relatable butseparable concern from the question of whether any human everwould drink it.
The power of parameterization: it had never once before occurred to me to wonder whetherdetriment anddetritus are cognate, until the parameterization stream above placed the likelihood right in front of myeyeballs,pointed it out, andcried,look. I learned that yes, they are. While we'rein the neighborhood, let's also record the following:
I must say, my brain has always linked theseunder the hood, albeit subconsciously rather than consciously (until now).
The shared parameter, besides theop–t axis as a [composite] key in the database index, is some kind offorward-thinkingoutlook coupled with a willingness to take risks (such as the risk ofgetting smacked).
What is the antonym ofrisk-averse, my brain asked itself, and it had to think for more than just a millisecond before the answers started coming. The first ones to arrive were:bold;courageous[-tied-to-hearty];daring. It hasn't yet found any that start in morphologic parallel (as for example *risk-happy or *risk-loving, which areidiomatic but notidiomatic,so to speak). Enough for now.
Smith 2014? What about my 60/120 special that I set aside, not yet finished?
Really I have a lot of books (of many kinds) that I could be reading and a lot ofsets (of many kinds) that I could be doing. Well. Fair enough.
It's largely not different from what I've already been doing: I come to Wiktionary to make an edit prompted by my reading and the thought trains that it sparks. The theory is that my Wiktionary activity would then naturally fall off again until the next such episode, prototypically another occasion, to yield small blips in a sea of low-level flatline, perhaps, prototypically. But envisioning that prototypical outcome assumes some parameter values that are often not true. What is the decent interval that operationally defines the separateness of occasions — which is to say, what is the period? One must account for the frequency (as period reciprocal), as well as the magnitude of the potential extensions. The difference with me is that the miner works so many angles and thus gets into so many veins, and once he's in a vein,well,^ it's vein time, baby. Kind of like taking a hike on the trail, but with extensive knowledge of geologic tells plus a metal detector slung over the shoulder, plus a radio to call in the ground-penetrating radar crew (or sometimes the ground-penetrating bomber crew).Dude, set the recon and sapper equipment down sometimes and just bring your coffee mug for once. This comes down to being a gold miner walking through rich hills and knowing what's under one's feet (it's down there somewhere, and I can smell it) and yet being content, for the moment, to let it stay there.
One cangive as good as one gets, ×69; aknob is also aknob-gobbler in the conventional metaphors of established figurative senses. Thus often does literal coordinateness collapse to synonymy upon the shift from literal to figurative senses.^
toslob the knob (infinitive inflection) andrubbin the nubbin (gerund inflection) are lexicalized collocations but are not ones that I feel the need to try to enter in Wiktionary and have themstick; I don't object to their being entered, but I am not the one for that. In fact if onewere topeel the onion^^ far enough onewould find out that I don't even really giveso much of a shit about knobs and slobbin and cocks and nubbins as I once did (when I was ayounger buck), but what my brain still finds really interesting is thesemantic relations of it all and how thoroughly inbred some of them are, what with all the telescopic collapses and all the polysemy and homonymy and synonymy and parasynonymy and cohyponymy and autohyponymy and autoholonymy; (some even collapse so acutely that they cancomplete their own circuit lol). (I don't usually juxtapose parentheses with semicolons, but when I do, Idon't mind if I do, and speaking ofdicks, if I do jump back intoMoby-Dick^ (as I'd threatened to earlier), I'll expect toreencounter andreenjoy somehoary but oddly intuitive punctuation.) In fairness to therelations (and what sort ofrelations they sometimes have), they mighttake umbrage at my calling them inbred, just because aknob'shead isalso his body, or his cousin is also his uncle, or his pappy is also his grandpappy, and so on.
All of the usexes that I write are well enough thought out, and many are quite well thought out,^ but a fewstay with me especially.
It's been a long time since I readMoby-Dick.^^^^ Reallytoo long, and it would be nice to come back to it. I happened to look at Chapter 16 the other day whilelaying out a ux for the "share (portion)" sense ofthe noun, and I caught (for the first time) what I'm pretty sure is a pun whereby Ishmael notes that Bildad is out toscrew him good. A sailor likes toget laid, no doubt, but at least buy him dinner before youfuck him sweetly. He doesn't mind your pretenses of politeness, but he wants you to give him a good layin the end. Depending on whoyou are, he might have heard that you're a good lay, and he's willing tolay you or to be laid by you, but not necessarily in a way thatfucks him over. This youngbuck might not care howbuxom^ you are (or aren't), and hedoesn't mind if hegets laid, but nobodyfucks im over andgets away with it.
Idiom speaks ofpea-sized things and of thingsthe size of a flea^ but not (orthodoxically) of *flea-sized things. Which is to say,in a way, that to speak of flea-sized things would beidiomatic but notidiomatic. There is no reason butgap; it is so because it is so;it is what it is.
I'm proud of myself (I hope myself knows that) because I recalibrated on the fly and pulled this one back from the mainspace to reside instead here in my (special) userspace containment field. Oh —ooh la la, acontainment field — is that what we're calling ourbuckets now,Mr Fancy Pants? Lol,is that what we're calling our buckets now? Jeezuz my braingoes ham. (It doesn't request permission to go ham before going ham because both it and I know that handwave etc)
The strange thing about that one is that I *know* I've heard the collocationpincushion money repeatedly in my lifetime, and yet web corpus search and book corpus search are telling me at the moment that it is barely attested in writing.^ Is it one of those elusive terms that even in the internet era is much more heard than seen, to the point of a surprisingly wide differential?Hmm.
Many months later: I belatedly got to the bottom of this one. I had indeed heardpincushion money before, but it hadn't occurred to me when I wrote the notes above that the usual term for the extra-pettypetty cash of thehousehold — thetwo-bit petty cash — ispin money, and householdsmall change on the ordertwo bits here or there is well known for being what can be found beneath the sofa cushions orseat cushions, which is apparently howyou get frompin money topincushion money. Another consideration is some vague subconscious notion of hiding small sums of money somewhere around the house — someplace that kids, or thieves, might not think torifle through orriffle through (take your pick) — and somepincushion orseat cushion mightfit the bill.;-)
Do not adjust your set; this is not a kerning issue (nor a KoЯning one).
What a difference anF makes, which is to say, pay due heed to how you're using those lips of yours.b-vs-ф
Yes but: under its current parameter values, Wiktionary doesn'tgive a fuck about notating this fact.
PS: Perhaps it is true that hips don't lie, but lips do lie; moreover, in some cases (i.e., parametricallyextremized ones), the method for lie detection is greatly (parametrically) simplified, as it collapses to merely the (eminently solvable) problem of detecting whether the lips are moving or not.
PPS: An addendum, a week or three later: Regardingb-vs-ф: in recent days I was introduced to a specific instance of the language-change theme that I hadn't encountered yet, which istuscanization, including a certain set of consonant-shift trends. It has some analogies with barθelonization.
I was thinking aboutteleprinter andtelecopier when it occurred to me to wonder whether any gastroenterologists have ever cracked any jokes about video capsule endoscopy andTeletubbies. It strikes me as the sort of thing that must inevitably have happened at least a few times by now.
That's how they're similar. As for differentiators, one might say that the one is about being aprecocious worker whereas the other is about being aferocious worker.
I scribbled that ditty before examining the entry much. Upon examination there, I find that the precociousness aspect is an "especially" aspect and that in one of the senses prodigiousness and prolificness collapse to synonymy. This makes me stop to reappreciate that a child prodigy is merely the "especially" kind of prodigy, not the sole kind.
Terraforming mightalso have been *earthification or *earthization, but so far it hasn't yet been (to any extent reaching idiomatic establishment, that is; it's possible and not unlikely that if one mines the sci-fi corpi, one might find these attested there; but doing so will probably notmake the cut of things that I end up doing anytime soon).
Terraforming is about bringing the climate into line with oneself, whereasacclimatization oracclimation is about bring oneself into line with the climate.
To make the pants fit, one might lose or gain weight, or one might tailor the pants byletting them out ortaking them in. Depending on the nature of the pants and the self, one method often has more appeal than the other.
justice (noun): a blindold bat who is seldom let out of her cage to participate in human affairs.
Lol. You have to understand that I don't personally endorse all suchsicko instances. It's just aguilty pleasure tospin one up parametrically here and there.
PS: A weird cognitive excursion: I just realized (for what I think is the first time [?]) thatCategory:English autohyponyms is grossly underpopulated (lol, that notion just reminded me of the joke where Apu says,I have noticed that your country isdangerously underpopulated). This is true (1) even without twisting the Bierceness dial, as any word with asubsense (##) qualifies. But (2) the scope and scale of its population also depends on the twisting of this same dial. As the dial sweeps somewhere in the vicinity of 2 through 2.5 to 3, the population of this category would swellmightily (that is, eithergeometrically orexponentially — I'd have to ponder which one, as I'm no mathematician). This is all fairly far out on the edge of visual range, in a nonocular way. A tasty bone to chew on later.
This is bugging me because it's not just autohyponymy involved but also any carelessly aggressive assertion offalse equivalence. This is not unrelated to (what might be shorthanded as)copula aversion. The problem with saying (say)life is but adream (or, if youcrank that sucker up,life is ajoke) is that … what? how to put it?polysemy starts to spin out of control? Is that the way to put it?synonymy starts to spin out of control?dial twist hypernymy and hyponymy?dial twistcoinstantiation?dial twist all of thesein parallel?Hmm. This is for later.In some ways, everything is related to everything else, but in other ways, everything just is what it is. What are the dial-turning agents that connect the poles? (one might aspire to become capable of running the staircases in the dark)
My firstinterim thoughts are that this is merely an avatar of the truism that the hypernymy and hyponymydial twist of literal senses often collapse to synonymydial twist upon the parametric shift to figurativeness. I've scribbled some workups of that fact before, such asthis one. The next line of the sketching out is that this is all related to the recent thought train about serial reportrayals in human sentience — the theme that when it's time to shift mental models it's time to start a new sentence, and so on. These are clearly enough all parts of the same mechanism. I just keep sniffing at the linkages among them, seeking to map them more.
My gut tells me that although mapping the semantic relations is interesting and useful, getting to the bottom of that ocean is not the creation of a master map (of water columns and seafloor) because it is an ocean of continual recasting of variations and permutations: it is dynamic. Therefore, instead, the more important question is this: how do sentient minds maintain some baseline of orientation while they are continually reframing in that way? They switch metaphors repeatedly without losing the thread of orientation. What is that thread of orientation exactly? AAOx3 is part of it. Oh well. Enough for now. (PS: Reminder for later: These lines of thought co-occurred with the following and have cognitive interconnections with it:Wiktionary:Tea_room/2024/June#joke.)
An inevitable component of the phenomenon is that there is a spectrum, a sliding scale, for the degree to which each sentient speaker participates in the cognitive underpinnings, even though all are participating in the conversation and the parsing. Countless speakers (of varying neurologic conformations) can successfully participate (where "successfully" = "successfully enough") even though they land on different segments of this spectrum. Some of the more interesting examples are ones when you point out a truism about the standard metaphor (that is, the conventional metaphor) behind any given figurative sense and while plenty of your interlocutors (or readers) are thinking "yeah,no shit, Sherlock," a few others are growing flustered and indignant because that concept has never occurred to them before (at least consciously) and their first gut reaction is that it must be bullshit (because how could itnot be bullshit if I've never heard of it or thought of it before?). Well, one of the reasons by which you haven't heard it spoken aloud until now is that plenty of other speakers thought it wasneedless to say because of how obvious it is (to some neurologic conformations). This line of thought is not unrelated to the theme of people discovering and marveling at the human neurologic diversity by which some people have no interior/silent speech (or if they do it is of some form that ends up being called "none" through ineffability), some people have no interior/mental imagery (or if they do it is of some form that ends up being called "none" through ineffability), and so on.
An interesting facet of this recurring theme amongautohyponyms is that it is entirely possible, and in several ways useful and advisable, to show the autocoordinateness (autocoordination, autocohyponymy), which could easily enough be done by linkingcot to a nearby id as anchor; but it is well predictable that such a feature might be rejected by most Wiktionarians and most humans, for reasons that will not be explored here/now, although I have some preliminarysniff test results about them.
Here's afirst fix that old no-eyes has roughed in and canbuild out further later: Autohyponyms can be (or in many cases can be) sorted into classes: There are ones where the broader sense gets narrowed to the narrower sense, and there are ones where the narrower sense gets broadened to the broader sense. Graphically, that first class is all about "down and to the right" in sense grouping and navigating, whereas that second one is about "straight up" or "up and to the left". Which is also to say: It is true that all autohyponyms are also autohypernyms, but some autohypernyms are hyperer than others. The cardinal exemplars of the latter class — or at least the exemplars that are occurring to me right now and striking me as cardinal — are the ones aroundanimal products andforest products and fieldcrops. Thusmilk,wool,cotton,meat,eggs, and some others that might be mined sometime (old no-eyes can mine for aboveground resources becausehe knows the rules so well as to know too how and when to break them). Some milks aremilker than others; somewools arewooler andwoollier than others.
Humans are funny about being contentious about it even though there are easy, simple solutions available. One angle that gets pushed (by some, and especially, by those with self-interest in this direction) is theno true X angle.^ Another angle is refusal (by some, and especially, by those with self-interest in this direction) to say things like "milk substitute" or "milk alternative" (or "meat substitute" or "meat alternative") because of (selves' or sales prospects') irrational reasons for refusing to admit that there's nothing wrong with those. (Which is to say that they aren't evil, and if itfloats your boat to eattofu andoat milk instead ofbeef andcowmilk, then no one should be tarbrushing you as a devil about it, and you shouldn't be ashamed to say that you enjoy a meat substitute [by that name] and that you consider itnoninferior to meat for your own purposes. This is true regardless of whether animalian milks and meats might be found to be nutritionally optimal from some angles [e.g., antibodies in breastmilk]. Some peoplestruggle more than others not to confuse the concept of "a mostlycromulent thing even if it is notperfect in some applications" with the concept of "repugnant evil garbage".)
Returning for a moment to "straight up" or "up and to the left": a funny thing is that it is easy and logical to arrange even those ones into the "down and to the right" pattern, but many humans wouldsoil themselves fromdiscomfort if you presented that presentation to them. Like the proverbial robot whose head is at risk of exploding for failure of computing capability. Admittedly the distinction of diachrony and synchrony is relevant, whereas this particular subclass of diachrony is one that people know by heart and gut (although somecare much more than others), but to be fair, it is a little precious that so many humans would care so much about this subclass of diachrony when they don'tgive a rat's ass about diachrony in most other contexts. There is a detectably shared parameter to the instances when they do care about diachrony though: it's often when they'restanding onpurism,essentialism, oressentialization in some way or other (the more pedantic and menacing the way, the better, from the usual standpoint).
In natural language to date, (1)wire wool issteel wool unless otherwise specified, (2)steel wool iscarbon steel wool unless otherwise specified, and (3) because point 2 is true,stainless steel wool is usually construed as coordinate withsteel wool rather than hyponymous to it.
Anorthopedic concentration inpediatricorthopedics is (informally)peds orthopedics but is not (in any register) *pedorthopedics, although it might have been.
A coda, some days later: my brain laterrequizzed itself about names forhoists. (It didn't ask for my permission beforerequizzing, as it and I both know that my say in such things is constrained.) To its own question my brain replied,chainfall. It's a shame thatchainfall doesn'tfall into the schema above, where/eɪt͡ʃ/, also known as/heɪt͡ʃ/ in some quarters,reigns (orrules the roost). I was a bitcrestfallen that I wouldn't be able to hitchchainfall onto thetrain of thought. Regardless, my brain proceeded to point out to me that one whoreignsholds the reins, much as arigger holds thechains, whilethe ones who roost are busyroosting in therafters where thechainfalls are anchored and from which their chains fall so nicely. Don't mind the occasional bit of birdshit; we're out back in the workshop. I've packed a lunch, and I don't mind feeding the birds a bit here or there.
Tomilk a cow is to demilk it, in fact albeit not in idiom.
The value inremilking a cow is much like the value inreshearing a sheep: the shared parameter is the duration since the previous episode; the scale of units is best parametrically shifted (hours versus months, even though they're both just milliseconds all the way down).
From a sniper'ssharp-sighted perspective, an iron-sighted setup is ashort-sighted one, notwithstanding the fact that iron can be sharp.Iron can besharp, but so canglass.
This would make me analogous to a gut bacterium who (if you'll forgive theanthropomorphism) lives in my colon and knows that it lives in theUniverse and knows well enough that it lives in the gut ofsome beast or other but really can't bearsed to learn the name of that particular animal because the name really doesn't fucking matter much one way or the other to this tiny critter, now does it? If the name were Snazzyland or Pineappleville or Whothefuckwhatzitz, how would life be different, and who if anyone is or will be coming to administer any test (with any stakes) of whether or not the critter knows it? Additionally, suppose the gut bacteria had come up with a name for me among themselves, without input from me or any other humans. They would say that my name is (say) Perwhoozzlewhatitz, regardless of whatever names I know for myself, andin a way they would not be wrong. If indeed we're not all alone inthis jawn, thenjust imagine how many names the Laniakeawhatsitz has, even now, even though we'll never know most of them! In this little story, the beast whose name does not really fucking matter is me. I could beTom, Dick, or Harry; as far as my tenant the gut bacterium is concerned, it'sall one, because there is no operational reason togive a shit.
The only excuse that mitigates my ignorance is that until yesterday, historically speaking (which is to say, until the past century),no human hadever heard of the Laniakea Supercluster because the Laniakea Supercluster had no human-bestowed name at all.
It strikes me as odd that for something that is so important to (and so utterly holonymous to) humankind, I never knew until yesterday (as of tomorrow), and none of us ever knew until last week (as it were), that it exists or what we might name it. It is one of the largest centrally important facts of our life and existence that most peoplegive zero fucks about. Still and even to this day they give no fucks, and tomorrow they still won't, even (or especially) if you urge them to.
One might ask how this is different from monks of yore who spent their lives memorizing reams of worthless made-up human-generated info such as the names of all the angels in the 37th circle of heaven or whatever the fuck fairy tales they misapprehended were real. In an important way it is not different: at no time in my lifetime or in yours will it matter to anyone except astrophysics boffins whether the name of oursupercluster is Laniakeaor Tuba-baloney or Persimmonberry-Nutsack-Alpha. But in another way it is a bit different: I amreasonably confident that this supercluster exists and is real, rather than fictitious; and if someone were to use a galactic flyswatter and squish it tomorrow, I would very much be dead the day after tomorrow.
As regards the five cardinal senses (the cardinal five senses), all of the fivesimilars above are instantiated in the world of competitive commerce, and yet three of those five are lexical gaps by the standard of absence of widespread idiomatic establishment, although my gut predicts that if I run corpus searches for them, I will find them all at least lightly attested.
I'll probably do that one of these days. If any have hundreds of attestations, then they're fair game for WT entry, notwithstanding any lack of lexicographic coverage in other dictionaries to date.
PS tho: For a man behind agrate, even if histablecloth is notchequered, it might be⊕sun-dappled, depending on the angle of thelighting and the fairness of the breeze; and so it ends up a confused and shifting mottle of light and dark, which is perhaps the mostchequered sort ofchequering of all — and certainly the sort thatcardsharps such as Chancellor types are well familiar with: so manygrey areas and not manybright lines.
Coda, some days later: Speaking of a man behind a thing (parameter value selection: THING NOT FOUND), the thing that achancellor (not leasttheChancellor) has in common with a wizard (not leasttheWizard) is that he angrily insiststhat you pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, ostensibly because the man behind the curtain is a mere footnote to the grand system (afootman) but really because he doesn't want you tofind out that the grand system is merely a man among some men,all toohuman. Lastly, I would like to note here that a man behind a thing can in some parametrically defined situations bea man carrying a thing.
Schmoes skimming articles with coffee, episode n+1:
I enjoyed skimming this article[6] with my coffee. I'm among the intended audience of this piece: a mathematical layperson who enjoys hearing a retelling of the goings-on among mathematicians in astorytelling format that I can comprehendwell enough for the purposes at hand.
One of the mathematicians quoted therein said, "Isomorphismisequality. I mean, what else? If you cannot distinguish two isomorphic objects, what else would it be? What else would you call this relationship?" Obviously I can't speak to the mathematical formalization at all, but when I read this question, thenatural languagehabitué in me immediately replied, "paraequality. You would call it paraequality." That answer concerns what word you would choose to assign your semantic underpinnings to. As for what those underpinnings are, well, that's the part that schmoes like me can't answer.
Tocream is not tocremate, although the words are nearly homonymic; and …
crémer is notcrémer, although the words are fully homonymic.
The established definition of ashitgibbon includes the aspect that the trochee component ismore or less unmeaningful in the context. Really it could be anything with the same stress and meter plusmore or less the same laughability, absurdity, or contempuousness.
This aspect of that definition excludes the following words.I'll list any here that I think of or run across. I may not try to collate a list here, per the PPS further below.
However, these words obviously have a thread in common, cognitively, with shitgibbons as defined by that established definition; they are evidently a subclass of a shared superclass, even if no one has adequately defined it yet. Something there is that the human mind likes about the stress and meter pattern and (no less) the contemptuous dismissal. My gut insists that it is no random coincidence thatassmuncher andassmonkey are synonymous. (The database indexrears its head? Loldon't go there in the context of this particular sentence.)
PS: Evenasskisser,asslicker,bootlicker,**cock gobbler, and**rug muncher, although their trochee component is indisputably meaningful within the overall unit, likewise form a subclass of the shared superclass. As forassmuncher, not so much, because its usual/principal meaning is not tied to any literal underpinning — which supports my gut feeling that it is closer in nature toassmonkey than anyone might superficially think — the agent noun thing is just a red herring, a serendipitous twist, in its case. Itsounds like it ought to mean something in that way, even though it doesn't happen to. Actually this might mean that almost all of the terms mentioned here so far belong to one subclass (the meaningful–agent noun subclass) except that (1)assmuncher is a pseudo-member of that subclass and (2) clearly**shitn--ger is morphologically different, representing a different subclass.
I don't care for using words of these types, so I may not have much more to say about them, but I plan to collate any other superclass members if I think of them or encounter them.
PPS: While I was thinking about the facts that ashitmonger is ashit-stirrer and that apudpuller^ is only literally different from acrudbucket (ordouchepocket) but not much so figuratively, it occurred to me that I don't have enough time nor enough obsession to get to the bottom of this whole train of thought and produce any near-exhaustive lists. I guess if I ever reprise this particular bucket of shit I'll just focus on ones that catch my attention especially, from certain angles because of certain facets. Which is to say, regarding the superset, at least for now: meh. But there's one that, since it's alreadyin hand, I'll scribble here now. It occurred to me this morning while I was brushing my teeth (yes, I know, I'm just a lousy mthrfkn toothbrusherfor chrissakes):*assmonger is the biggest lexical gap I've seen all week; it's thebroad side of a barn that I'm truly surprised has not been hit yet. (Some asses are broader than others;I'd hit that lol.) For if ashitmonger is a gossip peddler, then an assmonger is obviously a prostitute (at least in the sociolinguistic register used by jerkwads and asswipes). This is the sort of word that I bet if I did a corpus search it would turn up as already in existence albeit one that has never caught on. Update a minute later: Yup,my gut was right again. You can tell from skimming some of those snippets that people don't always use the literal sense; as with the others above, at the figurative level the semantic takeaway tends to collapse to merely "piece of shit" ofone kind or another.
In some circumstances, one must remember to place theescutcheon before placing theferrule.
Aninstallation can be an act or process, or its result; in the latter case,comeronymy applies for these; andcoinstantially, regardingplumbing parts andplumbing supplies, alsocohyponymy.
The wordsunobtainium and**Chinesium have antonymic relation from most viewpoints; the first one's referent is (notionally) a metal that is scarce, expensive, and desirable whereas the other's referent is (stereotypically) any old shit that could be scavenged into the furnace, being cheap, widely available, and undesirable.
The words**Chinesium and**monkey metal don'tneed to be used at all anymore, for about the same reason as why various other words don't need to be used anymore, including**monkeypox,**n-head,**pretty much all of these, a whole series of**ones on this pattern (including a few that I've heard that Wiktionary doesn't enter yet [and perhaps never will]), countless ones for any of a hundred ethnicities (e.g.,**French disease), and many others. (Some of the ones derived frommonkey came from the simian sense [as withmonkeypox], which means that they weren't meant to be offensive when they were coined and even today don'tneed to be parsed that way; but it is an incontrovertible fact that every negative-connotation term on the pattern ofmonkey+[noun] has often been and will always be taken with a wink and an OK sign by racists to be dogwhistle/code for racial denigration. New nomenclatural synonyms are easy to generate; we don't need thorny ones.)
It is OK, and appropriate, for an unabridged dictionary to enter them and define them and label their offensiveness and provide their necessary usage notes, but they don't need extensive semantic relation links, and it is better that they don't have those, because inserting those is counterproductive and antithetical to rightfully discouraging these words' use.
shared parameters: the person with the bad attitude thinks that they eitherare hot shit or arestirring up hot shit, but theircalibration is known (by others) to be suspect
But as for Old Roundhead, some civil wars are less civil than others.
PS: A year or three later: I hadn't realized, back when I scribbled the above,that there's a whole heap of them, depending on exactly how you define one. But it checks out, though, versus the username, and so does the username itself;humans are often veryhuman.
The concept that is idiomatically calledroom and board could just as likely have ended up being idiomatically calledbed and table.
The only reason it's not is because it didn't,ipso facto.
PS: It just belatedly occurred to me thatbed and breakfast is something slightly different. Any meal can beat table, but someboards areboarder than others.
Is he gauntletless?ungauntleted Is he gauntless (ungaunt)?ant Is his domain (or his conscience) hauntless? And tauntless? Bless hisheartiness and itshardiness.
PS: Many cardinal parts of the human body have a figuratively named counterpart among parts or features of objects. Regarding front and back and sides, well, everything has those; but regarding anatomy per se, the examples include all of the following:head,neck,throat,body;spine;butt;arms andlegs;hands andfeet;fingers,thumbs, andtoes;elbows,wrists,knees (but notankles though, as far as I can think at the moment);eyes (two ofem),ears,nose,mouth,teeth,lips,tongue;belly,breast,nipple; even theasshole and thearmpit, as places within geographical regions can be those, figuratively. Speaking of assholes, even theboss is not immune, although that one involves homophony rather than figurative extension.
Another PS:half-assed andhalfhearted are often the same thing, and the same is true of⊕whole-assed andwholehearted, but not ofassless andheartless.At any rate (or ratio or proportion), if yougive it your all, it is getting your whole heart, and your whole ass; and yet: you can put your whole heart into something, idiomatically, but the only things you can put your whole ass into, idiomatically, area sling or a chair.
You can do somethingexpeditiously, and you can do itjudiciously, and sometimes both can be true coinstantially, and sometimes it might be either one or the other but not both.
The reason why those two particular unlinked forms arelexical gaps is that when those concepts are meant, the words that will be used will typically bediscontinue orcease,discontinuation orcessation, and so on.
PS:cession is notcessation, even though both tend to involvegiving up. But they both come ultimately fromcedere and thus also from a shared PIE root, according to both MW and WT.
Recently I saw some science news wheretransfermium elements were described as beingtransferium, which is the sort of slip that, despite being trivial, (nonetheless) elicits a groan.
shared parameter: rhythmic, oscillating, manipulatory motions (of athin orskinny tool or material, of one's own body [especially if it isthin orskinny]), often forbad boy orbad girl purposes (nefarious or salacious ones)
When youshim something out withshims to align it, you fudge it into compliance with your wishes as to its physical conformation; when youjimmy something with ashim to open it, you fudge it into compliance with your wishes as to its physical conformation
meh, it's a stretch, and yet the database index doesn'tnot lurk below
Areefer might have been a *cold car, or at least a *cool car, but people generally don't say the former (and didn't say it much in the old days, either, if my rapid half-ass search is any measure), and when they say the latter, they mean something different.
What about a coal war·hypernym? What about acold war? What about cold tar?
What about a *cole car as a hopper full of cabbages?
shared parameters: diversified industrial holdings led by shadowy, wealthy leaders in tight black clothes that show off how these unlikelymagnates areripped (jacked) to an unlikely degree
PS:permethrin is notpromethean except in the sense that it was cleverly devised and has been quite useful: a natural resource cleverly and usefully exploited.
Nevertheless, if I ever become amail carrier, I plan to wear pants that offer bite protection,^^ because just because I'm obliged to deliver yourmailpieces doesn't mean that your dog is allowed to address himself to mymalepieces.
The reason why there is no one single ontology behind natural language that could be renderedmachine-readable is because instead natural language constantly projects new projections upon the screen using competing or alternativemental models, each of which is fairly limited in scope — when it's time to extend the scope, it's time toreframe: start another sentence, another paragraph, another discussion, another line of thought. Human minds do this effortlessly; moreover, just as this method comes so easily to them, other methods are not even possible for them (they cannot operate from the premise of some single intricate-but-vast model because they can neither fully keep track of nor fully agree on its countless details). Moreover, to treat such a thing as a goal is afool's errand anyway, because reality is a vast noisy place with competing or alternative possibilities forsensemaking.
If one recognizesthe constraint of the cave and recognizes human cognition as a woven/connected collection ofshadow puppet shows upon the wall, then one need only crack (and learn to emulate or simulate) the mechanisms by which theweaving is done so expertly (albeit unconsciously).
Easier said than done. All this thread is is an idle sketch, adaydream, that I would sooner capture a recording of than lose entirely. I lay no claim to any notion that it isn't mediocre and mostly useless.
Nextwe are looking at how to run validating testson the fly tofilter those outputs down to theirfactive subsets.
Easier said than done. All this thread is is an idle sketch, adaydream, that I would sooner capture a recording of than lose entirely. I lay no claim to any notion that it isn't mediocre and mostly useless.
there are various ways to getjacked; some aresquatter than others
speaking ofsquatters, you'll have plenty of time for jacking when you're livin in a van down by the river
Some people knowjack squat; I knew Jack Squat, and you're no Jack Squat — you'rejack andsquat compared with Jack Squat.
IfJack Frost squats in the forest and no one is there to see it, does anyone know or care? Canheads or tails be made of thescat, which is to say, is there anyscatology involved?
Lol, but who among us is entirely clear of the cave? Outside theumbrage of theumbrella (aparasol, in this case)? Let him cast the first stone.
Blah blah blah people who live in glass houses, but the places where everyone lives areobstructions of view, nottransparencies — this is what happenswhen metaphors collide, in a way that is perhaps in some ways comparable towhen names collide.^ But old no-eyes loveskitbashing and wants to know whether you callthat a collision.
shared parameter: bothstop the music, asthey say; but:
the first stops the music in a reliably disappointing way, whereas the second stops the music in ways that are often disappointing but sometimesdearly appreciated
Adeal breaker virtually alwaysis, or represents, a defect, whereas acircuit breaker is usually a nondefective hero agent that successfully intercedes with somethingelse's defect
By corollary, one might say (even ifone doesn't) that a circuit breaker, as an agent that breaks a process in a good way, stands guard against deal breakers, as defects thatbreak a process in a bad way.
PS: My mind couldn't let it go quite yet. Why it is interesting is that there is a shift in frame of reference on (what the general semanticists like to call) the silent level. Acircuit is adeal too,in several ways (e.g.,e.g.,e.g.,e.g.,e.g.), just as cats are people too, which is why my mind lingered over the disjunct that arises from another angle; but somedeals aredealer than others,you see.
PS: Regardingdearly appreciated: the difference betweendearly appreciated andclearly appreciated is sometimesbarely appreciable, at a glance and from a distance. Meow.
Tocancel a check and tovoid a check both involverendering itnonnegotiable; but each one is done on a different side of the check by a different person or entity: a check-writing role can void a check so that no one will ever cash it, whereas a check-cashing role (a clearing role) can cancel a check so that the recent cashing is the last one that can ever be successfully attempted.
What's (mildly) interesting is the total combination (1) that natural language neatly provides for a reliable differentiation by reserving one of the parasynonymous verbs for the one side, and the other one for the other side; (2) that fluent speakers pick this up effortlessly, and most of them know it down pat without anyone ever having consciously "taught" it to them (pedagogically); and (3) that it is also possible to have enoughmetalinguistic awareness to be (mildly) impressed by these facts: to (duly) appreciate how neat/cool they are.
Why the but? Not because of irrelevancy — not at all. Rather, because this set isslightly outside the parametric environment of optimization of Wiktionary.
An interesting thought: a Wikipedia article about market power can incorporate these relations into its text (if it is written well enough), but stripping down to the skeleton isslightly too threadbare pedagogically. It produces a set of terse statements that is entirely accurate but fairly unpedagogical. Nonetheless it could still be useful for certain use cases. Who are the user personae for such use cases? Certain roles among humans and machines, one could say summarily.
Gossamer at the edge, but the gut senses validity: What this is doing is showing aschematic and saying "you are here." Whether the truism is either boring or interesting — either truistic or insightful — depends on the current configuration of scales over each set of eyes. Reaching for an analogy, it is this: the ones who are already oriented, likehabitués wellfamiliar with a building layout, will say "yeah, no shit, so what" (in response to seeing the schematic hanging on the wall), whereas the newbies will say, "oh thanks, that helps." Somewhere in between those poles is also the persona who keeps moving from place to place to place and mostly is oriented but is helped by signposts thatquickly confirm and enhance their orientation — "oh yes, a reminder, this usefully refreshes a certain portion of the map in my memory."
An interesting fact about this line of thought is that it is actually the same line of thought as to why nondiscriminator-type thesaurus-makers consider the discriminations omissible — "the target users don't need them because either (1) their minds fill them in upon seeing the signpostOR (2) they look it up in a separate reference work (i.e., a dictionary as companion to the thesaurus)." What plenty of people don't happen to know about Roget and his original thesaurus is that subclass 1 is what he and it were about. He built it originally for himself as the prime target user of subtype 1.
Tracing this all a bit further, one can see a vista — one could build a parametrically modified cousin of Wiktionary that was broadly similar but abit extended, allowing for entering the relations that broached this line of thought. I think idly of doing this for myself if not for anyone else (which is how Roget's thesaurus began), but it doesn't strike me as something that I alone can expect to do practicably — the scope is too huge, and there's notquite enough point in it, for my own use and amusement alone. This brings the train of thought back around, once again, to the idea that this userspace is the closest cousin to such a thing as I will build, at least now (in my current era) and perhaps also ever. The eyes are bigger than the stomach, and I imagine how cool a vast banquet would be, but a soup and sandwich here and there is the sketch in the meantime.
There is also the theme of "didn't somebody somewhere already build such things elsewhere (so why reinvent the wheel)", but no — show me the existing reference work of thesaurus orthesauruslike type where you'll look upmarket power and find those same relations, labeled as to their force. It's unavailable. The closest thing that I'm currently aware of is OneLook Thesaurus, which does get into the ballpark but doesn't contain those particular hits (swing and a miss,you win some, you lose some). And I must point out here that what I'mon about here is more focused on a schematic of branches in a canopy, whereas the gestalt effect at OneLook Thesaurus (so far, in the current era) is more a basket of leaves to flip through than a schematic of branches showing "you are here, and look how you can move over to there — which branch leads there." A schematic of tree limbs versus a basket or pile of leaves. This thought puts me in mind of visual thesauri and word clouds and such, but honestly even those often feel gimmicky in gestalt effect. Just throwing a pot of Spaghetti-Os at the wall and "marveling" at the "picture" that they make is a bit like hanging a Jackson Pollock painting and "marveling" at the "scene" that it provides — misplaced enthusiasm. Hey, a Pollock is great for what it is (i.e., in its own way, for its own purposes) — but a landscape scene is not what it is, nor is a schematic what it is.
I don't especially care for this exposition at the moment, but neither am I quite willing to throw it in the garbage can yet.
shared parameter: the (fixed or variable) nature of themap-territory relations: exactly what does each symbol or value refer to, or not?
In RDB design, integrity is strict and dichotomous: it either exists or fails to exist, and the strictness about PKs and FKs enforces complete absence of ambiguity, nonuniqueness, overlap, and so on; in natural language, integrity isfuzzy: the indeterminateness of the referential indeterminacy has limits, which means that the indeterminacy has (some/enough) integrity as long as the variation is within certain parameters (of sensibility, shared ontologic outlines, etc: agreeing on forests even if not on every tree) (→). But there is an underlying thing in common (namely, map-territory relation) that referential indeterminacy in natural language does not serve with full precision (objective repeatability down to any degree of granularity with zerointer-rater differences) whereas referential integrity in RDBs does serve it so.
Yes but: you can't point this out (not even unobtrusively) via see-also links in the two Wikipedia articles, because some moron or other will come along and complain that there is no possible conceptual relation. Which isdead blind, butthere you go:welcome to the discourse.
shared parameters:flirting with disaster and either slipping into it or maintaining a footing on the brink
toe the lineflirts withcontronymy without quite slipping into it: one sense (the main one) focuses on the outcome of staying within the line whereas another sense (a less established one) focuses on teetering and wobbling upon it and awaiting the outcome (→)
Reading the news (via a digital newspaper) and saw someone quoted as mentioning an *end-around (n) where the nounend run would clearly be expected.
A subtlecatachresis by the speaker? A minormistranscription by transcription software? One would need to know the method of interview to say. Did thequotee say itin an email (as news stories not uncommonly specify in the 21st century)? If so, the catachrestic construction is probably his own, unless it was erroneously introduced by a misguided editor while the article was beinglightly edited (as news stories not uncommonly specify in the 21st century).
When an obstacle is in your path, you might try todetour around it (go around it) so that you canget around it, and this involves going all the way past it,around itsend.
Semiconductors exploit the concept that someconductors are, conditionally and parametrically,conductor than others, including themselves (i.e., their past and future selves).
Parameters on parameters.
Not only parameters on parameters, but also,solid state baby. Ain't nothin movin. Just like 4D chess.
PS: So what you're saying is, nonparametricity is, parametrically, either a good or a bad thing; and all of its instantiations arepolar opposites of parameters on parameters, but someopposites areopposer than others.
Nothing is so eminentlyreusable as a meta-theme, and people often mistake them for an invariably bad thing (that is, any of various supposedly invariably bad things^^^^^^^^^^^), which admittedly they often are (under parametric conditions, in any of many parametrized sets (patterns) of circumstances, often not subject to rapid human parsing and validation); but sometimes some other folks are smart enough to know a fat tree limb when their ass is lucky enough to get a chance to sit a spell on one, and (naturally) nobody complains about the fact that their favorite venerable and beloved shade tree has the selfsame trunk and limbs from one month to the next (even ifits leaves come and go with the seasons and the wind). The disjunct highlighted by the latter fact (senselessly inconsistent, or at least parsing-and-validation-impaired, choices of what to complain about, or not) could be labeled as hypocrisy, but it is hard to argue with a straight face that a blind manis (i.e.,can be equated to) ahypocrite only formixing up (a)ropes andtrunks and (b)trunks andlegs. No, what he is is merely blind, whether he knows it or not.
There is no Paracelsius except thatin a way Kelvin fits the bill; the Kelvin scale is just the Celsius scalegussied up and shifted with aconstant, except thatin a way it's nowadays the other way around, thanks to officialredefinition.
shared parameter: variability of the nature of coinstantiation
Sometimes a salad is just a salad. Didn't a leaf-roller once say something to that effect?
Wiktionary helpfully providesCategory:Hapax legomena by language, but it cannot provide any *Category:Hapax legomena in English, aka *Category:English hapax legomena, for an interesting reason defined by parameters on parameters: any term that meets the criteria for being in that category does not meet the criteria for inclusion in Wiktionary.
The same theme is naturally instantiated by any other well-documented language, as well.
I must admit that when I first heard the song, and until I happened to learn more about it (years later), I assumed it was an allusion to some historical martial alignment of Iroquois et al (Iroquois plus temporal allies).
No, it turns out thatSeven Nation Army is merely themondegreen that Jack White's 5-year-old mind heard forSalvation Army in speech. But I like my interpretation better.
shared parameter: the prospects for upholding the argument arehangin by a thread
This is probably a yes-and affair. Scribbling it here now for circuit tracing and closure later.
Another scribble for later: tracing the two-ten- syllables back to their PIE bones traces to (1) thinness and (2) stretching/drawing [thin]. The connection between those two doesn't seem too thin to me. I wonder whether PIE experts confirm it. Check later.
No doubt many ahapax has been ahappyaccident from the point of view of linguistic detectives searching for historical-reconstruction clues. One bit of attestative evidence instead of none.
Thebut is interesting in this case. The issue is that although the collocationon the table is in fact used a lot in surgery, the sense that is used there is the literal sum-of-parts sense. And thus there's not quite enough reason to link the two Wiktionary entries.
The only thing interesting about the recitation or juxtaposition is the butness itself. But all this talk ofbuts,base notes,bass notes, andfootnotes is oh never mind.
In this case, the bushes weren'tcoughing up any answers, so I had to put it down to a merebell ring. Those are usually good for an idly synchronicitous laugh, if nothing else. I like to envision some bell ringer somewhere in the spirit world pulling that rope, although I readily admit that an entertaining fiction is only that. Iflaughter is the best medicine, then are bell ringersdrug dealers? Perhaps, more flatteringly,medicine men (or women).
PS: Some spirits are more palladian than others; and some spiritly birds just want to sit on your bust of Pallas — at least until it's covered inbirdshit, and perhapslonger still. Somecolumbaria are more of aforever home than others.
I'm no mathematician nor philosopher, and it'salmost allGreek to me, but transom bird seems to tell me that the shared parameter up in this particularbirdhouse is a species ofselection bias. My first thought was that it may be a bit like thebillboards say: if you lived here, you'd be home by now. Then I thought, maybe more like thebumper stickers say: if you can read this, you're too close. But then it occurred to me that it may be the most like aDear John letter: by the time you read this, such-and-such an event will have already happened. Yes, that's the one. In fact quite a lot of human life is like that, even in ways that are normally latent. Butwhat do I know ofspeculating onspirits? I'm not rich enough for such things. Which doesn't mean that I won'tshell out for a nice onenow and again — merely that I don't let any dust settle on it. Therag-and-bone man'll rollthem bones while he still can, before the bone manburns em. Between thebirdshit and thesettling dust, there's got to bea shared parameter in here somewhere.
Addendum: It's not like I have time at the moment to be dallying here, but I have to scribble this additional bit down before it fliesout the window (unlike Mr Pallas-bust-sitter). Thecardinal shared parameter up in this particularbirdhouse is what the general semanticists like to calltime-binding. "If you're reading this, then certain events have happened and/or you're in a certain location, which (latter) fact is (itself) likewise the result of certain events having happened by now [i.e., it is logically subsumed within the larger set of preconditions]."
Recently I mentionedDestro (that bastard) because Iran across an envisioning in which he is low-keydesperate to meet you at abistro to discuss the nextdistro.
Today the following wisp scudded across my consciousness: according to the lore of canon,Destro is a Scotsman of the very truest kind (being pedigreed and landed and whatnot). This now strikes me asapropos, because he is the kind of person, and serves the kind of master, who most overvaluestrue Scotsmen.
I'm not dumping too hard on true Scotsmenper se, as I'm well aware that thefallacy fallacy is the fallaciest fallacy of all; I'm just sayin. Sometimesfixation equalsoverfixation.*
Aside: I never knew Ihad such a department (subdepartment) until this very moment. Well yes, I do now. That's how therag-and-bone man's field ofrustbuckets works. Pull up a bucket, overturn it, and have yourself a seat; and grab another to put the work in, and maybe a third for a spitter or ashtray if such is your thing. (Me I don't partake, as I put that money ($/$) in my own pocket instead ofthe man's. That's how they get yə.;-)) Now listen while I play a drum solo on another and thenget down to business with a third:
I remember the old Vine that goes something like:
What are youdoing? I'm plucking my eyebrows. [well OK but] That's abig-ass mirror. I havebig-ass eyebrows. [subtext of the final reply: in this situation, I am not the one who has, or is trying to create, a problem; that would be you hon (speakin of lookin in mirrors)]
I believe that Wiktionary is notwholly sure where the SoP outlines lie for this one; I seem to recall reading that some Wiktionarians have taken a dim view of treating terms derived from-ass as non-SoP, butWiktionary does contain a fair bolus of them. Presumably either both of the links above should be red or both should be blue. But the state in which they are a little of both is venially acceptable for any interval of interim; as with raspberry candy,∴·∴it's all good.
Update, a few days later: I just reappreciated that the aforementioned dim view is quite well justified within the framework thatit depends on the lexicalization status of each instance becausesome collocations are more lexicalized than others. Just because Wiktionary wants a headword forbig-ass (yes) doesn't mean that it will ever want headwords forhuge-ass andgiant-ass (no). So the upshot is thatsome earn their keep whereas others cannot. Box cat points out that the same is true ofbarn cats. Just because the farmer aims to keep the population managed at appropriate levels doesn't mean he's inherently against all cats. There's a balance to be maintained.
It is interesting to analyze why thebut buts. It is one thing that obviousness exists on agut feel level. It is another to dispassionately admit the things about human cognition that cause thebut to be butting. I find this idly interesting because many a human likes to make a fuss aboutmindfulness, but they are often a bit funny about which things they are willing to be mindful about, and when, and why. Which strikes me as a ratherunmindful way to bemindful. It is not unrelated to thecoolness requirement for dorks, speaking ofbreakbonery. I could attempt to explain how, butuninquiring minds don't want to know.
Hepoints out that the first four constitute a subclass with a higher order of magnitude of tendentiousness, because they constitute the subclass exhibitingblindspot class 4.
PS: blindspot class 4 is aboutgood versusbad,valid versusinvalid, withnothing in between. This line of thought reminded me that many years ago I read somewhere that one thing that was repeatedly noticed by people who engaged in conversations with that one weird Schicklgruber fellow was how often he used togo off about (or goon about) how there are two kinds of this-or-this in this world or two kinds of that-or-that in this world, and either possibility A will happen or possibility B will happen, full stop. It makes one think about personality traits and political predispositions, and about kinds of people who not only are obsessed withfalse dichotomies but also are eager to shiv you for disagreeing.
lol no; gtfo, b/c to claim that they are even slightly comparable is worse thanfalse equivalence; it's worse thanBierceness class 3, being in fact class 4 more than class 3
which is obvious even by gut feel alone, but I find it idly interesting that it can also be analytically deduced
See, it's like this: Here at my place, you can get stuff like this. Elsewhere, no one will offer it to you. Do with it what you will: it'sno skin off my back norsweat off my brow either way.
Some people pride themselves on being both coinstantially; I can respect that notionas long as they don't conflate the two, which is to say, as long as they recognize the two as independent variables that can happen to coincide. (PS:happening to coincide is the bestway to coincide.) People who arehip-shooters because they aren't properly capable of being otherwise don't have as much to be proud of as they imagine, though.
Thisthought train is in the vicinity of the fact that breathing through the mouth is often useful, helpful, and/or therapeutic, but being amouth-breather because one isn't capable of being otherwise is not properly apoint of pride, even though it isnot one's fault.
Well, no,one would not say that, because juxtaposing metaphors and/or overextending them is something that isnot done to excess inwell-spoken natural language. But thank you for offering.
PS: All thisboniness constitutesstarkness; enough with the bones for now. I like me some meat on them bones.
PPS: I tried to put the bones down but some fishbones and dogbones distracted me. Now that I've gotten that out of my system,would you say that all this talk of thembones can belaid to rest for now?
PPPS: I tried to put the bones down again but the parametric dialings practicallydial themselves. That's OK — once you've been digging dirt long enough, it'sin your bones, and sometimes the bones boneyou, in a boneless way.
Thety syllable intycoon definitely comes from an East Asian root for bigness; it is interesting that thety syllable intyphoon very well maynot have come from such a root, but according to both Wiktionary and MWCD, no one isdead certain about whether or not it did, and there may have been after-the-fact influence, as opposed to descent.
Obviously ayes but, in a way that wasn't even a question regarding Wiktionary specifically; but the bowl and the barrel are obviouslyin the same room though.
This one is of a class that is more interesting than most people would assume when looking down from the surface. From that vantage point, they can't see the damage that's being done on the other end. (PS: That one has box cat purring — nice one.)
I lack time to do it justice at the moment, but it has to do with when lexicalization of collocations "steals" a position (a node, a locus) from availability to mere sum-of-parts construction. And the stealing of a location involves occupying it and blocking something else from occupying it. There's blocking involved (or at least, in most casescompetitive inhibition): those damn receptor agonists and antagonists again. The interlocutor replies, "No, dork, you can't call it that — not because it doesn't make sense but rather only because when we say that collocation, we mean the lexicalized sense of it." (Well, dork-slapping interlocutors generally wouldn't be capable of constructing that sentence, but that's the underlying issue that would manifest itself in their consciousnesses as an ineffable urge to slap.) There are many examples of this class in natural language, although I can't think of themrapid fire off the top of my head. I plan to dig some up and bring them here when I get a chance. But for the moment I'm trying to force one out of thewoodwork (meow), even just one, to leave here. I'm idly curious as to whether I can succeed in forcing one to the surface on demand. I'm scanning and I'm groping for which parameters to startweighting so that I can dig one out.
Well, I dug out a few, albeit not the best. It took a minute. Many a bird is a black bird, but only some black birds are blackbirds; and a blue jay is a blue bird but is not a bluebird. Those are not the best because they are of a different subclass involving stress differences for solid compounds. No, the class that I am after right now is the one exemplified by the pair that started this thread. (A backerboard is a blowout preventer but is not a blowout preventer.) Argh. Maybe later.
Later: So far:
Weighting for degree of polysemy for each component word is one crowbar that's available.
A wedding ring is a metal band but is not a metal band. (Akin to the blackbird subclass because /ˌmetal ˈband/ versus /ˈmetal ˌband/.)
Aside:anticipable: Someday there will be a metal band called Wedding Ring. It will not, however, be a wedding band, except to the extent that some customers would in fact be into that sort of booking.Joke's on you, I'm into that shit.
Unusual artwork licensing is not special drawing rights. (Box cat's whiskers just twitched.)
But now aren't we just back to what started the entire mirror bucketin the first place? Recalldecompression chamber versusbreathing room, for example.
Speaking of rooms, it's odd to open this door and find myself in a different room from the one that I thought I was next to. One that I've been in before and thought was several hallways away.
Did the record just skip in a way that caught me by surprise? Whose tiling am I in now?
One tendency of the rooms that I find myself in lately is that truism lives right next door to insight. That by itself is a truism (after all, it always does and always has), but what's different lately is that I've been riding the elevator more. Did you ever step out of an elevator while failing to duly appreciate how many floors you just went up? All you experienced was stepping in, watching the door close, then seeing it open again shortly after. Even if you pressed the elevator buttons yourself, it's easy to forget in the moment exactly how far you just went; 2 floors isn't different from 20 except for a few measures of muzak. If the elevator buttons were pressed by someone else, you wouldn't even know your location, if no windows are nearby when you step out. What is the precise relationship of the room you now enter to the room you just stepped out of umpteen seconds ago? Maybe it's below you, maybe it's above you. If it's one of those elevators with doors on both sides, then maybe that room is behind you now. Just because you don't know the answer doesn't at all mean that there isn't one. Elevator passengers are inside a building — the building is not inside their heads. One argument is that I just hadn't realized earlier tonight that the blackbird room was next door to the decompression chamber. But another argument is that I'm trying to deduce who pressed the elevator buttons and what the number difference was. I'm after the building schematic. I plan to see all floors simultaneously with x-ray vision by the time I'm done, and to run up and down the stairwells knowing exactly how many steps I just ran and exactly where I am. Some buildings are more radiopaque than others. But before one should assume that this one will defeat me, it's worth knowing how many others I've already successfully x-rayed and mapped in my time. That reminds me of an article I just read the other day. If you want to make accurate predictions, it's best to know, or to see about finding out about, base rates.[7]
PS: Speaking of elevators and of mirrors: some elevators are lined with mirrors; some elevators are more mirror-lined than others;some would say that mirror-lined elevators are the best kind of elevators; others would counter that the optimal degree of mirroring inside any given elevator is just enough but not too much — that is, just enough to allow the passengers to check their hair and teeth before heading into an appointment, but not so much as todisorient,vertigoify,nauseate (via motion sickness), orcreep out. Which is to say: a mirror in an elevator is fine, but an elevator is not to be ahall of mirrors.
Wiktionary does not have a dedicated element for this subtype of relation, and (relatedly) it usually does not capture such instances; and …
Although this subtype's value is more than just for ESL/EFL help alone, the trouble with it regarding native speakers'use cases is thatat the end of the day perhaps the only people who give a shit arewordplay fans,psycholinguistics types, and coinstantiations thereof. As for whatmy excuse is, well, whatever turns up in the sieve is whatever happens to have been mixed into the dirt, and I'm allowed to glance at it and remark idly upon it when the sieve gets dumped. I like seeing ones of this typesifting out, because I enjoy the disjunct of why I hadn't ever noticed each one before despite the retrospective obviousnesses: it says so much about cognition, in a laconic way. The record contains hundreds of laps, but the needle is only in one of them at a time. In many cases not even near-homonymy or outright homonymy can manage to make the record skip, even for years or decades on end, because each valley just is what it is, and which of countless others might be any more relevant than another? It is like wondering what else is on the dial: everything, and somewhere there is something especially relevant, but you would have no way tosift for it though. However, once you've seen thousands of skip instances, you might forget a lot of themon the surface but you never entirely unsee them. Tuning up and down the dial for relevant analogies, I happen acrossimmunological memory and have some gut sense that I've stumbled across an epitope match. Which is odd because I think it took this same analogue of immunological memory to sift for the analogy of immunological memory. We were speaking of needles in valleys but yet there's more of the needle in a haystack about the first time of recognition. A mark is left for next time though. I guess I'll leave off pondering it for now because it's putting me tosleep. Still, it does remind me a little bit of being set down in someone else's tiling: following the groove like a needle will never connect you to the other information no matter how many times the record spins. No, it takes the right permutation of record skip to identify a relationship with some certain other locus in some certain other valley.
As soon as I looked over the WOTD, my brain instantly sensed (at theTOT level) that there was arabbit-hole connection (arabbit–hole axis) at the level of theburrow (which is an underground level) and also at the level of initial-L words; but it took some digging down therabbit hole to fully excavate the connections (and thus to extend the burrow).
My Cornish friend asks whether I callthat a rabbithole. Nowadays I borrow his gear when I go underground.
PS: Ideeply value his friendship, for the same reason that any particular sort of industrial chemist might deeply value a pet catalyst: It is not only that the catalyst facilitates reactions that would be impractical otherwise; it is also that the catalyst is not consumed by the reaction, to anynonnegligible degree.
I was prompted to ponder theunsanity–insanity axis, and the amount of daylight (if any) bridged by thaten dash, by a passing encounter of an attestation in the wild.
First assessment (later revised): I had concluded that to assert coordinateness rather than synonymy for this pair is, in the end, a loser's gameregarding clear communication with a wide audience or any likely audience — and I still consider it so, because if you want to use an unusualsense of a word with the general public, you must belabor the definition that you are using (including sometimes even tersely conveying its underlying ontologic model), because otherwise they will assume (reasonably) that the normal sense (and its ontologic underpinning) is being used and will assume that you must be wrong somehow — but I did give a bit of credit for the effort, and it did make me think about thesanté–sanity axis, the nature of whose dash is not irrelevant to the alleged coordinateness.
Reassessment (after reading a bit more): I will grant (and some will more than others) that the people who have upheld this sense differentiation — such asHorace Bushnell, as well asAlfred Korzybski [whohat-tipped physician Philip S. Graven for the differentiation] and various general semanticists who follow him — are invoking any of several quitesane versions of amental model whose ontology allows for a trichotomy instead of a dichotomy (or, I really should say more precisely, atrichotomization instead of adichotomization [of the spectrum]): thus,sane • unsane • insane (three coordinate nodes) rather thansane • unsane=insane (two antonymic nodes). The gist of their point is that the world is full of abundantunsanity as thus defined (it being the world's widespread norm, its default state) and that it takes some conscientious effort to transcend it and thus arrive atsanity. Well, OK, when you put it like that, you've won that argument by pointing out an irrefutable truism. One of the interesting corollaries of this line of thought is that many people (perhaps most) might look at any particular person who might have a highsanity level (as defined in thistrichotomization) but also someneurodivergent behaviors and claim that they are "crazy" (="insane"), but that assertion is counterfactual, because (to state more accurately what is really happening) in fact the one who they accurately identify as having some degree (or other) ofneuroatypicality and erroneously label asinsane is in fact lessunsane than they are, rather than (as they assume) more so. (Ask me how I know lol.) Their conflation ofneurotypicality withsanity leaves them unable to accurately qualify, which also raises the point of the wordnonsane as well.At bottom, though, there is still a takeaway point here that as a writer you are foolish to assert coordinate-term status (versus synonymy) for theunsane–insane pair except in thespecial case of an adequately disabusing exposition.
In other news: a reminder today: a superclass is defined by a common trait, but it is folly to assume that its members have homogeneity otherwise; the instance today was enzymes (unifying theme: biocatalysis), but the meta-theme is widely reinstantiated. Some superclasses comprise less heterogeneity than others; but all have some, as classes with none are not superclasses. All of this is but a fabric scrap of interwoven truisms, and yet we humans tend to need reminders about it anyway, to avoid cognitive distortions, for reasons that have prompted the writing of many shelffuls of books (e.g.,e.g.). The most enthusiastic of such books get a little too carried away with esoteric philosophizing about it, to the point that most people decide to ignore them entirely. This is a counterproductive turn; it is better to write a shorter and plainer and cheaper book, and get more people to engage willingly with it. Which is in fact what some of the relevant authors have done. Nothing more to be said here and now about it.
Malapropism of the day: I was skimming an article that claims to discuss a study published in theEuropean Journey of Pediatrics [sic]. Lol, yes, well, pediatrics certainly is a journey, isn't it? Nonetheless, the rest of your article is going in the trash anyway, unread, because evidently you were phoning it in and didn't reread your own writing. I have a triage list for my reading, and careless slop doesn't beat the other priorities for ranking.
Yes please — I love me some mustard on a cheese sandwich,yes, but — I'll spare Wiktionary the trouble, though.
Something that is under therubric of X may fall under theaegis of thepreceptor who is on thedais or at thelectern (or both coinstantially).
This was an interesting instance — a fairly uncommon chance for me to test my shelfful of thesauri with a garden-variety real-world test case (as opposed to more intricate explorations prompted by other categories of cognition than the quotidian-TOT one). Fairly uncommon because (blessedly) my mind seldom TOTs long enough plus hard enough to send me flipping through thesauri (which may explain why I am so pissy about TOT moments: I don't have to live with legions of them, which is a blessing, and I well realize that someday the blessing could end); but on this occasion, my mind was taking too long to de-TOT-ify the wordpreceptor, although it camereal close (which the mind is somehow able to detect, which itself is an interesting rabbit hole). (Relatedly, it is also interesting to jot down here the other fish that it netted while it was fishing for that one, and I'll take these up some more later:lector,mentor,lecturer,instructor, and at least one other that has alreadyevaporated [update: doy! it wasprofessor; how did I forget so soon? (/p--ɛ--or/)]). An interesting outcome — and an instance of the same theme that I have encountered before, on previous uncommon high-TOT-value occasions — is how hit-or-miss the results were, across thesauri. Some of them scratched the specific itch (and quite rapidly, when at all), whereas others failed to (and I duly emphasize the wordfail here). Even OneLook Thesaurus,God love it, spewed scores of connections but not that one, which is a gap. (I still love it, though.) This hit-or-miss nature is a truism on one level (not news), but I have further analysis of the differentiable geologic strata underlying thatgrade-level upshot. In fact it is such an interesting piece of the web (the map–territory web) that it will take me several hours to hew out even the most proximal stretches of the coal vein. I lack time for that at the moment, but it's likely that I'll take it up again soon. Regarding the web (the map–territory web), a bucketing challenge: plenty of it can probably go here, but … there is a component that the web vibrations identify as rebucketable. The answer will be simply to take one's time and work with patience and care. Ha. How un-21st-century — it's nearly an act of rebellion at this point (a quarter of the way through this century) to tell anyone to work patiently and carefully on anything. When I was young, it was merelytable stakes in plenty of spheres of activity. And if you weren't capable of it cognitively, well, that was unfortunate for you, but there was someone else who was (so please step aside to let them through, because we need someone who is). Anyway, until later.
A piece of the puzzle that I ought to sketch quickly here in barest form, for the moment, just to freeze the gossamer if nothing else:
Miscellaneous segments of the web (the map–territory web) — a handful of nodes and edges, here and there (a scrap of fabric) — to be jotted down although not fullylocalized/placed in situ; involving collocations that others either haven't gotten around to yet or have refused to handle adequately (or at all). For example, technical expertise, and the science reporting and business reporting that transmits upshots from it, are full of these pieces, and they're ones that anadequate web is often able to triangulate adequately approximated parametric situations (localizations) for — but where does that leavemost people, though? (PS, regarding competent science journalism and business journalism — some of us still like to read it and are willing to pay a reasonable [affordable] price for it, although you'd be forgiven for perceiving that there are none of us left nowadays, because the ones who skip it are so earsplittinglyloud and legion now.) It's fascinating that there is so much of it (i.e., so many scraps of this web) out there waiting to be encoded/codified — it's like pointing to an ocean full of fish and saying, "get busy catching some": it can only ever be a miscellaneous selection, but that's OK; that's all the more that one fisherman has time for, even if he's lucky enough to devote full time to it, and for those who aren't that lucky, well, the selection will just be all the smaller (i.e., even smaller) for that. A question of the moment is, should I slap together another bucket divider even herein, which is to say, assign another subbucket herein? I'm thinking so. It doesn't so much matter whether any given scrap of fabric might have sensibly gone into either of two bins; such is the nature ofdiscretization anyway. It doesn't negate the bucketiness of buckets, which is to say, it doesn't defeatbucketry, orbucketization.
PS: Speaking of such scraps of fabric, Bard just helped me out with an extra special little bit of wordfinding recall in a way that (among thesauri or thesaurus-ish things) only a pseudosentientinterlocutory kind of thesaurus-ish thing could help. I've noticed that there's something about Bard that'sdead on lately — like, ground-rumblingly resonant. Apparently there are layers of whatever it is doing that model reality in some way, as opposed to tossing word salad alone. It encourages one to envision that we might be close to an era in which Bard might reach a stage where humans' being too dull-witted to ask it the right questions could become the rate-limiting factor in its application to the world. Perhaps. Or maybe it's just Friday night and I'm ready for some spirits (Scottish ones, bellclapper ones, and otherwise).
Well great, they put Sabbath into my head and now it might stay there until next Sabbath.
Lord of this world /* * * / He's your confessor now
Yes but: this particularpotpourri is not for Wiktionary, because some peopledon't know what you're about; they put you down and shut you out.
Lol. Even though that song's lyrics are corny and ridiculous, a predictable product of their time (and speaking of corny, old no-eyes snickers:you callthat a master of reality?), I couldn't help enjoying a laugh about it tonight. Earworms are like that. There's something about early Sabbath thatstill isn't old (after all this time) and perhaps never will be. Which is why it's a bit funny that one of the lines of that song goes,I can't forget you or your surprise / you introduced me to my mind. That's what the world can say about early Sabbath: what it brought to the world was a surprise at the time (no matter how old the more clichéd aspects of metal would later become); it was welcomed by quite a few (those who were ready for it), even though it was regarded as the harbinger of societal doom by others; it remains unforgettable (both in the broader senses and in the most immediately literal sense, at the times when it happens to be earworming you); and it introduced the mainstream culture of the day to a part of its own (collective) mind that it earlier either had pointedly ignored or had been unconscious of — think how odd it must have seemed to some of the earlier rock-and-rollers (performers and fans alike) that anyone might propose to write and perform rock-and-roll focused on dark, cynical, macabre, and even doomer themes! Don't forget that just yesterday the airwaves had been all about puppy love, sock hops, and falsetto beach parties!
You made me master of the world where you exist The soul I took from you was not even missed * * * You think you're innocent, you've nothing to fear You don't know me, you say, but isn't it clear? You turn to me in all your worldly greed and pride But will you turn to me when it's your turn to die?
Lmao; old no-eyes snickers:you callthat dark? He eats the very void for breakfast. Some black holes are blacker than others. Somehow that venom isn't toxic to him, although for a while after eating, he has heartburn, in a heartless way.
Lmao2: update: Speaking of what a Cornishman might eat for breakfast,archetypically at least, don'tthey say something aboutextra crust to keep one's own fingers from poisoning one(self)? Lol, his fingers don't lie, butyou might want to insulate yourself from direct contact with them; which reminds me of the sun: we all love some sunshine, but try not to stare directly at it. This is why he wears torch goggles over his eyeholes (in one of the cardinal framings), or why he is careful about where he aims the rays from his eyeholes^^ and for how long (in the other cardinal framing). And speaking of mealtimes, don't mind if I do now.
Holy Family Medical Center | Holy Name Medical Center
shared parameters:a thing = yes; "you know which one [family or name] [without explicit specification in the context]" = yes
"So I learned that hereabouts a wide ditch was termed a river, just as, in this country of no hills, a gradual slope was called a hill." — Adrian Bell,Corduroy (1930).
This is the sort of thing where you have to be careful how, where, when, and whether youpoint it out (that's 4 parameters), given the existing framework in which dorks are expected to remaincool and their degree ofcoolness^a is subject tomonitoring^b.
aback-of-the-hand mouthsmack is not whatthey mean byhand-to-mouth, by which they mean one's own hand to one's own mouth (or the non-manual non-oral equivalent); but although a back-of-the-hand mouthsmack isn'treflexive, it may bereflexive.
I don't think it's true thatslightingly·📅 never meansskimpingly as inskimpily, but the thought's not worth messing with the WOTD for, and someone else might insist on citations to prove it.
Shared parameters: besides the obvious,old hat one (i.e.,why cancer is called cancer), here is another that is related but differentiable: cellular differentiation portrayed as ateleologically defined agent thatkeeps trying and trying and trying (doggedly, like a dog with a bone) to evolve toward aggressivelyunkillable forms that maximizehardiness vianatural selection.
I was ready to let it go as an "almost", and then I clicked through to the entries and found that the slangy sense ofwashout as synonym ofrainout was indeed already entered.
A sketched exercise in the property of antonymy, that is, diametric or near-diametric coordinateness (coordination); and that is to say, less elliptically in slightly different terminologic-ontologic schema, antonymy or near-antonymic contrastiveness (contrast)*:
Which is to say, the game is rigged, and is well known to be so, but not in such a way as tototally discourageanyone fromever playing it — that is, notquite to such a degree, althoughalmost. To identify the persons and situations where the game will be (cheerfully) played (anyway) requires the appreciation, observation, and measurement of various parameters, such as age (e.g., being a child) andtheory of mind (e.g., humoring a child).
The meta-theme of games that are notquite rigged enough toup and throw over the game board is asoundless one (in anonauditory way).
We've all heard of ameet-and-greet, but what about a fuckaround-and-findout?
Perhaps ask your event scheduler.
However, it occurs to me that most fuckaround-and-findouts aren't scheduled. The surprise is a part of what puts the findout in a fuckaround-and-findout. Speaking of surprise parts, meanwhile, asurprise party is a planned and scheduled affair, but not everyone isin on its planning.
Yes but: cf: cot-ish; shared parameter,stonecoldery; more cot than also, but standard emics can't handle the truth without gloves though.
Lol 4realz, good thing I have meta-parameter circuits toset off a detection. Some emics are moregloveless than others, one might say; which is to say, some gloves are thinner than others. As withveils. Some veils areveiler than others. Lol 4realz,more whisper-down-the-lane.
Yes and; and I had to savor whether more syn than cot or more cot than syn. The latter, because throttling is a focus on a reduction of a given stream, whereas whipping is somewhat differentiable. You can feel it easier than describe it;ineffable,semieffable.
That last one isn'tnot an axis of synecdoche–metonymy–metalepsis. Such axes are not uncommon in natural language.Out there in the pines;can't take the country out of someone; handwave.
Speaking ofputting somecor into it (as I recently was), this morning while I was contemplating my coffee mug, the following moved from subconscious to conscious:
Speaking ofcorn, you know who likescorn? Andcake? Who wants cake?Ooh!Moo! Bossie says, signifyingmoi. (She speaks only a bit of English and French, and that with a heavy bovine accent.)
She can have the corn and cake, and I'll havecorncake, and we'll both be well pleased.
A convenience of a split-rail fence is that it is self-stiling, i.e., self-stiled, at any place along its length.
An inconvenience is that it is more expensive than a wire fence.
A convenient way to make a low-cost stile at intervals along a wire fence is to put some large lag screws in some of the posts, to stand ready as climbing rungs in the way that some telephone poles have such rungs. (Those rungs could be calledfootpegs, but they're not.)
Update: Browsing some hardware, and coming upon the aisle where equipment for camping, fishing, and hunting lives, Iran across a pack oftree steps. Not so much commentworthy except that it counts as abell ring.
Ifhazmat is hazardous material, isHazlitt hazardous literature? Read at your own risk.
These are multidimensional not linear, but in their linear presentation here they are sorted along agradient by thelength of theirvector that isparallel; their variousorthogonal vectors are discounted here.Subjectivity clouds the vector length comparisons that govern whether any two or three might be swapped around a bit, locally, althoughat scale the order is objective. Meanwhile, what is the best name for the shared parameter? Is itdegree of goodness? Or something else? Various candidates come to mind, and again there is a theme that ranking them via comparison is subjective.
Did you ever wonder who or what put the /ˈfɹiːs/ inDumfries and Galloway, and why it's not /-ˌfɹiz/, as might be expected by one who's coming at it from theoutside? I have, idly; and I'm notup enough on my ancient history to know, and I haven't googled it very hard yet.Imma spin my own pub tale first before doing so, as I've been into the Scottish maltings' fruits tonight.
As far as idle speculation goes, if whoever put the /ˈfɹiːs/ inDumfries also had anything to do with putting a shedload ofFriesians there (and most specifically, acowshedload), then I'm apt to suspect theFrieslanders (or some flavor ofFrisians), but I know that etymology isnever that simple, even though it makes for a good story.
Anyway, the main lesson that I came here to scribble:
PS: Here's acowshedload of advice: a cattlebuyer is not to be confused with a cattlebyre: although either can be steeped inbullshit, some bullshit isbullshitter than other bullshit, or steeper.
Here's one that I alluded to earlier, fully captured now:
And I was all set to say 'yes but' to all angles and directions of this pair, viewing its degree of parametric connection as warranting an EFL-help 'not to be confused with' cross-reference (a structural element that Wiktionary so far lacks) but no more than that, when I looked at Wiktionary's entries and found that it asserts that one of the senses ofmoonlighter is moonshiner; I found that dubious (the fact that I've never encountered it in my reading is a measure of how rare it must be) and felt an urge to RFV it, but then I checked MWU and found out that it agrees, so OK then: it must be rare and dated, but it exists, so a few improvements (for senseid and syn) will come out of this instanceafter all.
PS:She was runnin from a fat man sellin salvation in his hand / "He said he's tryna save me, but I'm doin alright, the best that I can"
PPS: Hornsby's version isway better than what his licensee produced (no offense, licensee). One of the performances clearly has a soul, whereas the other doesn't seem to, IMO.
Not to make too much of that thought, but I'm a bit earworm-prone, so while doing a bit of laundry today, I couldn't help but savor the difference between two versions of the lyrics that are out there (in various performances and covers): the linejust a pair of fallen angels frames the whole song in a different light fromjust another fallen angel — a better light. Hornsby's album version, which is my favorite version that I'm aware of, has the better lyrical turn in that spot. The fact that so much can turn on that one small detail is emblematic of (1) how language is so interesting and of (2) how life ain't fair.
[Yeah/Hey] Mister I'm not in a hurry / and I don't wanna be like you / oh no / All I want from tomorrow / is just to get it better than today
That is, no, not really (which is evenbutterier thanyes but),and yet — sometimes when I've read the termcredential stuffing, I've felt reminded obliquely ofcredential inflation, becausecredentialism, especially in some occupations more than others, involves a race tocram ever morepostnominals into one's existing string of them.Let'sstuff that business card or résumé right full of em, the thinking seems to be. This effect is not always particularly exaggerated, but it occasionally gets to be so in the sillier instances in some fields (esp.e.g.,e.g.), where if you go digging to look up the meaning of some of them (which of courseyou might, because who the hell would know these [particularly mysterious] ones off the top of their head?), you find out that they areflashes in a pan — sometimes a particular one is clearly rare, and sometimes it is no longer even offered (or has been renamed/revamped/replaced with a newer one), which sort of undermines the effort to seem important; in the few worst cases of my own experience, I've googled one and been hard-pressed to even find its expansionat all. At that point, the natural reaction is,That's not even aflex at all, to putthat one after your name — quite the opposite: it's almost an invitation to embarrassment orvicarious embarrassment. But what this lookup exercise also highlights is that the credential crammer is banking on an unspoken reality that most people don't bother checking what the letters stand for — it shows that in many people's minds (not only the postnominalee but also their audience), the whole point of the exercise is solely that "the longer the string ofalphabet soup after my name, the more you should just trust that I know what I'm doing, and stop thinking about it, and not bother looking into it." (Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain [thecurtain ofoverdone postnominals]!) Such an exercise is the type thatthey invented the collocationempty exercise for. But it can easily fail, though, because banking on other people being lazy and thinkingperfunctorily only gets you pastmost people, notall people; I sometimes wonder whether the people who tried it have failed to even conceive of the existence of that X% minority. Is the value of that parameter 3%? 1%? 0.001%? Whichever it is, it's not zero, but I suspect that they imagine that it is, or, that is (more precisely), that they fail to conceive of the possibility that it might not be.
shared parameters: both have been the cutter of choice for many a smooth operator; both have often been one-stop, go-to mainstays in that regard; which is also to say, both areSwiss Army knives in their respective classes, albeit in a non–Swiss-Army-knife–knife kind of way.
Lol: Many knives are Swiss-Army, but Swiss-Army knives are Swiss-Armier than others. (I deserve the groaning and slapping for that one; I'll own it, lol)
to give someone ahaircut | toscalp them | to take ahaircut on (an investment)
Part of what drives the "but" in "yes but" is the recurring theme that individual metaphors, although they are quite sound individually, don't stack up together without revealing some limits of thefigurativeness. Thus, figurativeness is avignette, anepisode, asnapshot; it is not the whole tome, the whole series. It involvesarchetypes (not only of people but of processes), which are validup to a point but are not anexhaustive representation of reality. This is all just truism on one level, but on another level it is interesting, for about the same reason why the bowel habits of bugs are both a truism (on one level) and an interesting journey for anentomologist.
If the wordpseudonormoxemia were ever to become realized (degapped), the distinction of (1) not measuring because asymptomatic, versus (2) a measured value being wrong (in either the spuriously high direction or the spuriously low direction), would need to be kept straight. The term for clinically deceptive hypoxemia issilent hypoxemia·ᵍʰⁱᵗˢ; I suppose that there might never arise a term for clinically deceptive hyperoxemia, because it seems irrelevant for real-world purposes, because I believe that it is true thatoxygen toxicity does not cross the threshold into clinical relevance until it passes beyond the range of clinical silence/deceptiveness.
shared parameters: a long tail appended, whose details are not worth belaboring (e.g., the components' identities, the explanation [or justification] of each's relevance); + internal assonance, internal alliteration, stress pattern
When it comes tosome clown parades, you can't unsee them; there is noeyewash that will cleanse your retinas of that retinue of fools, nor cleanse your ears of their litany ofhogwash.
PS: Under most circumstances, washing a hog only wastes your time and annoys the hog.
The following may well be aretread of something that others already havedown cold, but I'm not convinced that it is; I think most people stumble in dealing with it and no obviouspat answer is widely and readily available. Perhaps I'm wrong. Here is my gut's littlestab at it for tonight. Maybe later I'll either (1) refine it further or (2) realize that I was missing something obvious when I was messing around with it in this moment.
Popmanagement science likes to parrot the saying thatyou can't manage what you can't measure, and admittedly it reflects an important and validgrain of truth. But one should ask oneself how it properly relates to theMcNamara fallacy. They are two things that both touch a true pieceof the elephant, so how do they connect to each other? Clearly there is an aspect ofnecessary but not sufficient involved (i.e., metrics arenecessary but notsufficient). But the "you can't manage" saying is flawed, though; it needs more work. In fact youmust manage a wide range of inextricably interconnected thingsincluding some things that you can't measure. Some things you can measure directly, many more things you can measure indirectly (that is, byproxy measures) withmore or less accuracy from excellent to good to fair to mediocre to poor (some more, some less), and some things you can measure only very poorly or not at all; and you must ride the whole boat at once, because you can't ride only parts of it and it's too late to get off;the boat has already left the dock, we're all on it, and someone has to helm it at least somewhat, if only to keep it from being broadside to the waves.
PS: While in snoozeland, my brain reminded me that the aphorismnumbers don't lie is another piece of this elephant.
Yes, it's true that numbersper se (and the maths that love them) don't lie; that is, math does in fact work honestly and reliably if you do it correctly — at least, any of the math that us nonmathematicians are capable of conceiving (e.g.,arithmetic,algebra, orthodoxcalculus). But the devil is in the application. Another parametric layer removed from the mechanics. It's like saying that cooking and baking methods work reliably and then baking a giant shitcake and proceeding to complain that it tastes shitty. It's not the oven's fault. Ovens work great. (It's a poor workman who blames his tools.) OK, but in the math instance, that brings us into the other well-known territory, that oflies, damned lies, and statistics. Now we're only the next table over from theshell game section of the bazaar. We can hear the shysters'patter and smell their colognes from here. Feeling our way through parametric landscapes and environments.
You cannotfrenchify a piece of potato by turning it into afrench fry, although the history of that term involves some half-baked notion that you could.
You cannotJapanify a piece of furniture byjapaning it, although the history of that term involves some half-baked notion that you could.
PS: But if we're going tobake the potato, then I'll take minetwice-baked instead ofhalf-baked, please; that'll set that parameter to a factor of 4×. And I'll go set the oven to 400°F.
From a certain etic viewpoint, this pair of open compound nouns is more of ahypernym–hyponym pair than acoordinate term pair.
However, given the typical cognitive focus when each is mentioned, and comparing those two foci, there is areasonableness to concentrating on their casting/framing as a coordinate pair. Moreover,processed food, especiallyultraprocessed food, has been givingfood processing such abad name that that factor helps push the balance towardcontrastive focus (and thus the coordinate framing):the average respondent would focus mainly on the contrastive focus if asked.
Speaking of such orthodoxy of archetypes, versus its alternatives that also exist as logical possibilities:
For a lot of people nowadays, a mention offood science evokes thoughts and feelings that quickly lean downhill into the negative territory ofultraprocessed food, butstrictly speaking, good food science equally includes the empirical wisdom that "evidently you should eat lots ofwhole foods [something even the beefnuts and the vegnuts can agree on], which can be demonstrated empirically regardless of the degree to which we understandexactly why, analytically." In other words, good science knows itself not to be identical toreductivism — toscientism. But many humans are funny about science: allscience is (more or less)scientific, but somescience issciencier than other science, or morescientistic. Humans sometimes have a hard time differentiatingscience fromscience, or vice versa.
Shared parameter: the unexpected and unwelcome advent of stasis where flowing operation is due.
Lol, the extraction is more interesting than the mash is. Ain't that so often so. A funny thing is how it's ayawny truism from one angle and weirdly interesting from another.Puts me inhalf a mind ofiridescence on an oyster shell. A funny business, running a backwoods gist mill and gist still.
Both carryscents of dirty deeds by spookybad actors and the idea that their secrets are mostly unknown to the rest of us (ablack box, heh heh; butunseemly interest in them is widespread though).
There is also a lawyery subclass of this — I just saw some stuff about it (somewhere) not long ago. Come back to that sometime. Strangely Hendrickson 1997 was telling me just today thatsine qua non is an example, but WT atsine qua non#Etymology differs. Meh. I'm not the one to dig further into that one.
Looking atpoach andpoach, I'm not yet wholly convinced thatbagging things andbagging things up isn't archetypally involved in both cases. Trips topoke andpoke, pluspocher,pochier, andpocket, don't answer all of my questions. Was there some ur-idea of a poacherpoking with a stick todrive ordrive a critter into apoke? Poachersbag critters up innets,after all. Hmm. Oh well; at the moment it is not worth poking through other dictionaries to further pursue this particulargame.
Ashedful may or may not be ashedload; it depends on what's in the shed. Some shedfuls are shedloads, whereas others are quite the opposite. Someloads areloader than others, and someloads areloder than others.
ridgebacks andsilverbacks are both critters who live in Africa, have special dorsal fur, and make onewary (i.e., not someone you'd like to meet when out for a hike)
sawbacks alsowarrantwariness, whether you're climbing them, carrying them, or encountering others who are carrying them
aunque (o porque)que sera sera, tenga cuidado con serrados
Lines of thought about how best to capture the following sorts of cohyponyms. AThesaurus entry seems like a good answer. It is one layer removed from the main dictionary layer, and the latter offers hyperlink keyholes to jump to that level. Which Thesaurus headword? Not so muchThesaurus:lot. Nor load or quantity. I am thinking aloud as I type this. The thing about cupfuls, capfuls, thimblefuls, and housefuls (let alone pagefuls or headfuls) is that they don't necessarily/ideally belong on that same page, because they are cohyponymous beneath a meaningfully different hypernymous concept. The thing about carloads, cartloads, and so forth is that they are shitloads at a manhandling scale, for physical materials.
Daydream corollary: Just asTHubs are semantic nodes regardless ofnoun phrase oropen compound status (for synonym-level stations for transl connections), does a dead-proper thesaurus require thesaurus hubs that are semantic nodes regardless ofnoun phrase oropen compound status (for hypernym-level stations, so that relevantcontrast sets of filtered cohypo can be listed there)?What all would that look like? No doubt the schema layout would be subjective. And yet —some consensuses are consensuser than others, in a way with practical applications. What instantiations of that theme already exist, if any? Shouldone buildone of one's own? One would need a room of one's own so that one could build such a room (of one's own). Parameters on parameters.
This parametric exercise of archetypal characters crossed with archetypal concerns was a nice laugh.
Savoring that extract of course made me realize that anotherspecial case of bingo cards suggests itself: God, the angels, the Devil,et al. versus theirchief concerns or complaints. However:
Shared parameters: Both can present their due share ofseafaring danger; but one is localized and famously horrible whereas the other is diffuse and largely delightful — one is mostlya place you hope to avoid and the other is mostlya place you hope to go
Anoil press is a kind of extraction engine, and itputs one in mind of other contraptions for cranking away at food processing, such as agrist mill; and another kind of extraction engine, one forabstraction, might perhaps be called a gist mill. Someessences are moreessential than others.
It has interesting ramifications. I lack time to explore them here right now, but an upshot is that if one were to provide syn-cot discriminations for the list item population atThesaurus:thingy (which is not necessarily something that will happen at Wiktionary, as opposed to othergarages,hangars,chopshops, orskunkworks — but leaving that aspect aside for the moment), one would end up handling the main branchbifurcation of how somejawns (andjoints andshebangs) are lessthingy thanothers. Granted that there are a lot ofdonglespeppering the branch tips of this tree, but there are some mainlimbs leading to those. More later.
What about (then also)Thisjawn sure isjawny? I predict that that adjective will arise eventually. I see (by googling) that a fella namedJawny (f.k.a. Johnny) has beaten the rest of usto the punch on that one in certain respects.
amplified yet undueinfluence: some figurative analogue ofspooky action at a distance; that way of expressing it is hyperbolic, yes, but not exactly wrong
Someone feeling the former way is probably also feeling the latter way. Causally relatedco-occurrence when flowing in that direction; directional. Independent when flowing in the other direction, but can be linked bybecause in the subclass.
One of the factors limiting the strength of causal-subclass association is that although most of them want to use you,some of them want to get used by you; and although most of them want to abuse you, some of them want to be abused.Sweet dreams;nighty night.
Do not confuseofficinalis withofficialis, despite their ultimately cognate relation.
Power leads towork, andwork leads topower; and thus someworkers areworker than others, at least according to themselves. Wasn't there a hog on a farm who said something about that once?
Shared parameter: ways forpride to be connected to a certainpoint, but some points arepointier than others: point asaspect, point asrank being connected to point aslocation, handwave etc
Yes but: no one cares, in the way that Fowler said that no one cares about synonym discrimination: the "almost" in "almost all" has such a high parameter value for percentage of completion that Wiktionary is not theplace (not thepoint?)
Nevertheless, it gets recorded in a laboratory such as this one becausethe database index thing is operative, regardless of whether most people are unaware of it.
Having read a mention of someKuhnian thought trains
WP s.v.Thomas Kuhn (accessed 2023-10-20) says that "Kuhn made several claims concerning the progress of scientific knowledge: that scientific fields undergo periodic "paradigm shifts" rather than solely progressing in a linear and continuous way".
The noticing of the shared parameter is trivial from an informed viewpoint (albeit not from a blinkered one) — so trivial as to throw an instant eyeless alert —and yet, as of this writing (accessed 2023-10-20), you cannot get from WP s.v.paradigm shift to WP s.v.punctuated equilibria in any direct way by following any link either integrated into the text or at least given in a see-also section. Worse, it may not be possible to improve that lack by providing any such links without someone else complaining that they are a "problem" because the topics are "unrelated." That claim is clearly problematic, as it is merelycritical thinking 101 to see (in an eyeless but clear way) that the punctuating events betweenpunctuated equilibria are exactly the junctures whereshifts occurbetween paradigms in bioevolution. If you point that out, then many people will agree, "OK, yes, I will concede that that's obviously true, now that you'vepointed it out." Yet dorks had better stay cool by shutting up about it. Thus:yes but.
However, in the course ofparametrizing, it occurred to me by corollary that the word *cyberdenial will probably arise sometimesooner thanlater; and then it occurred to me not only (1) to google it to see whether that has already happened, but also (2) that when I would do so (google it) I would find it to be already coined and attested, albeit perhaps not yet widely. Yes — thus, thus, and thus. Thus again demonstrating that mygut has really developed regarding thisparametricity bullshit. You start with the predictable dose of human malice and bellicosity and then you multiply by morphologic and collocationalcombinatorial potential, while not forgetting todivide by conquering.
Related to this line of thought (which smells burny, in anonolfactory way) is the reminder that humans are still debating how many and what sorts ofcyberattacks they can do to each other before they cross a threshold from civilian to military spheres, if such a threshold exists (perhaps they'llthrow aboil to find out), which is to say, how much they canfuck with each othercyberly before they start awar. Of course they will predictably bust out the truism that it depends on what sort of war you're talking about: somewars arewarrier than others; some like itcold, some like ithot, Pollyanna is derided by both sides as a fool (peraggression's cruelly steepDunning-Kruger tax on everyone'sstandard of living), and there's perhaps aGoldilocksian position in here somewhere.
Speaking of backs, this littleback-of-the-envelope exercise is athrowaway, but I should just like to acknowledge that it is well that I live in the present era, for if I'd composed this little chickenscratch in Victorian times and places, they might have clapped me into jail for my temerity, considering such a sketch to be in thevicinity of obscenity. In that day one dared not talk sopersonally of the royalpersonage. One was hardly safe to speak of thelegs of a table (ooh la la), let alone what a regnant might stoop to. Somestoopers arestooper thanothers.
"and so is the tip of an iceberg"
X does Y, andso does Z; X doesn't do Y, andneither does Z;
native speakers know that difference by osmosis;
dept 7: 4-dimensional chess doesn't move, and neither does such an iceberg;
dharma: 4D freezing
bucket diversion: extensive; but a taste — a residue — is suffered here
neurodivergence models includedriving stick: I've already downshifted and upshifted again by the time I'm asked; "don't worry your pretty little head about which gear where and when"
Yes but, my dear /ˈkʌv/ ˈkʌzɪnz. I ˈlʌv yəz though.
Speaking of profundity, the distinction betweenlumpiness andbumpiness concernsdepth: bumps areon the surface, whereas lumps are scattered throughout. There's abetter word for that (I'm sure the mat sci people have one), and my mind keeps landing onconstituent when it reaches down into the depths of the substrate to lay hands on the lump that I'm after, but when I bring that one back up to the surface, I have to take a look at it, handle it, sniff it, andthrow it back: nope, that's not it.
prowess andpower are not synonymous and they are not cognate, but they do have semantic overlap, because it takesprowess to achieve a result that requiresskill andknowledge to achieve, and it takes power (of one sort or another) to accomplish anything.
In other words, for goals that require skill to achieve, there is nopotential forrealization without (at least a modicum of)prowess, and there is nopotential forrealization without (at least a modicum of)power.
Thethematic connection's strength is flowing mightily beneath the collocational power:demonstrating one's prowess [in activity X],using one's power [to do action Y], and so on (handwave etc)
I scribbled the above first, of my own accord, and then I also decided to do the lookup legwork to find out what each of the following had to say about this particular semantic connection: Devlin 1961, M-W 2005, M-W 1984. The first two, nothing; the third, not much, but yes, one hit: atprowess, the last item of its list is a pointer topower.
prowess is also aboutbravery besidesskill (that is, both thecourage to do action X and theskill to do it), which shows an avatar of the twin sibling pair ofwilling andable (willingness andability as the twin prerequisites for thepotential of any human-performed action to occur). In fact the word's origins apparently lie in the bravery locus, but certainly its present-day meaning is just as much aboutskill (that is, just as much or maybe even more, depending on which speaker you ask or which attestations you measure). Devlin's entry forprowess focuses mainly on thebravery and not much on thecapability, which explains why it omitspower. I'm glad to see that M-W 1984 givespower, because it proves that "it's not just me." A thought for later: when I'm looking later for a toy to play with for some minutes, I should have a look(up) in 5 or 6 other thesauri that are at hand, as well as OneLook's. (Update, later: Rodale 1978 s.v.prowess has sufficient power on this point lol.)
One fact that this thread's existence demonstrates is that when Fowler claimed that no one gives a shit about others' syn-ant-ana-con-rel-cf-also discriminations ("for the reader, nothing but boredom"), he was (partly) wrong; there is a difference between the average reader and the adequately interested reader. It is the difference betweenalmost all andall. Conflations of the two in human thought are at best hyperbolic misrepresentations for practical heuristic use and at worstfailures of emic conception. Somelumpings arelumpier than others, and somereaders arereader than others. (Old no-eyes snickers:you callthat a reader?)
Shared parameter: Placing astrict parameter value on the degree oftolerance, or at least one that can be defined asstrict under various conditions albeit not all
Thus: a concept that these laws have in common is an idea not only that the citizen is responsible for adherence but also that there is a demonstratively (even performatively) constrained degree of forbearance in the enforcement.
Athree-strikes law places the value at 3 (regarding events), which under some parametric conditions is not even strict but rather lenient (for example, society doesn't tell a murderer that they get the first two murders free (or for a merewrist slap) before they get punished starting with the third), but it is sufficiently strict under various other parametric conditions, where it is stricter than some alternative option that is ridiculously lax (for example, "hey it's fine if you break the law 14 times, we'll just give your wrist one slap for each").
TheLaw of Three Spikelets was ostensibly a law setting a low nonzero parameter value ontolerance (regarding the number of specks not "properly" accounted for), but in reality it was functionally azero tolerance parameter value, and furthermore, in reality it was an Orwellian scam, afalse pretense ostensibly licensing egregiously horrible treatment of the populace, including a false pretense for slave labor "recruitment".
Thewire crossing happens at this juncture: the three-spikelets law was a one-strike law, not a three-strikes law (where each strike equals an event), because under the three-spikelets law, three spikelets (or more) at one event constituted one'sone and only strike: one'sfirst and last strike,coinstantiated.
Someone will ask why mere truisms are being shuffled in an exercise such as this one. It's basically the same reason why anyone draws or paints or sculpts or knits or bakes orfucks with novelty puzzles or crosswords. Such an exercise holds one's interest for a time, is sometimes fun to fuck around with a bit,blows off some steam, and produces results that are interesting to look at, handle, or sniff, notwithstanding the fact that they weren't strictly "necessary".
Shared parameter: in both cases, at least one parameter value is far outside its reference range; but the current assessment on yea-or-nay for Wiktionary links is nay.
The obvious parameter dial twists without even digging for any:off the chain;off the hook#Etymology 3. Again, though, the current assessment is nay. But I find it interesting that I get eyeless alerts for such things while reading the news. Just because some people can't handle it doesn't meanhandwave etc.
If borders are sealed effectively enough, they are figurativelyhermetically sealed;
A certain country with brutally tight border control (and mind control) is said to be the Hermit Kingdom because it is sohermitic;
This gets us fromhermetic-ally sealed tohermitic-ally sealed in only four moves, despite the fact that when the collocationhermitically sealed occurs under any parametrically normal conditions, it is invariably a mere catachresis. Four moves;your move.
PS: To call an ocean a pond is a move that undoubtedly originated in humorous or ironicunderstatement, and to admit that fact is to admit a fact (rather than toeditorialize, which has to do with promulgating opinions), but not all Wiktionarians will agree that it should beexplained in the etymology section for the term. Very well; so be it. I suppose that the best argument in favor of that position (the one that holds that it should not be explained there) is not only (1) that explaining a joke kills it, but also (2) that readers don't need the explanation anyway (because they should [and should be able to] figure it out for themselves). As for the notion of "can you point to a reference to be cited thatproves it," well, probably not (I won't bother hunting to find out); but I question the notion that it isdoubtworthy. In fact I would class it asblue because any chance that it could be an incorrect folk etymology seems too small to entertain realistically. C'mon, that's not what it is, and we all know it. Some waters arebluer than others.
PS: Jocular hyperbole has limits; it can be mugged by reality. Although atransatlantic flight may be but ahop, skip, and a jump jocularly, one had better not try to use apuddle jumper to do it.
Perhaps some of the bestdad jokes involve themes of failure to appreciate resources and the undue (short-sighted) deferral of their maintenance.
When reporters asserted that there was a problem ofdeferred maintenance, hedemurred, thendeferred to a department spokesperson, whodeterred him from further comment.
When maintenance is due, deferring it is undue, due to the costs of neglect.
Why isn't *jokery an attested synonym ofjocularity by now?Jokers want to know. Is it the case that every Tom Fool can have histomfoolery but a joker can't have any *jokery? Of course, Ikid — to expectidiomaticness to be rational and fair is aself-own. In contrast, as with various things in life, one needs to comprehend thatit is what it is.
stints andstunts share the parameter of finiteness of episode, and they not infrequently also share the parameter ofpicaresqueness: an interesting stint, if short enough, might be viewed as a stunt. (Did I ever tell you about the time I worked in a pickle cannery for a hot minute? Long story short, I was fired before noon)
The duration ofholding out whileholed up is a parameter value that depends on the variable of whether onehas an edge over the bastards, and on the degree to whichone doesn't let the bastards wear one down, which depends on parameter values ofhardness andtoughness; and the concept ofedge retention as a gradable parameter value depends on the same (in a nonfigurative way). Some bookkeepers' sons have more of an edge than others, and some tools take an edge better than others, but the latter may hold an edge better than the former. But the big picture logistically is that all edges wear while working and thus new edges must be periodically brought to bear (in one way or another); thetip of the spear must be renewed somehow, and the wearing down of bastards eventually comes down toattrition of edges and of edge-maintaining and edge-renewing capabilities.
Shared parameters: disabusing popular misconceptions (or at leastconventionalized archetypes thereof) as to whether or not [mere] superficial attributes are the governing factors (the defining parameters) of a given environment.
PS: Someinside jobs areinsider than others, but in all casesit's what's inside that counts operatively. Theinnermost of inside jobs arethe trade ones, as measured by parameter value magnitudes of total aggregate screwed-over-ness (howsoever it may be distributed across populations of marks), which is interesting because it illustrates how the dirtiest collars of all can be thewhite collars. The latter theme is of course a truism, but the problem withrefusing to discuss the obvious in human [folly] affairs is thatthe wider open one's eyes are, the tighter one's tongue would end up being tied — fast forward to the natural conclusion: eyes taped open but mouth taped shut, which is not so much a parameter value for thinking before speaking as a torture chamber.
A nonsentient machine blindly informs me that an anagram ofendless chain isside-channels, but all this talk of chains and side pieces prompts my sentient mind to point out thatside chains seem more relevant, given that they can be endless chains whenR isaromatic. What's less useful — a meaningless computational artifact or a dreamlike daydream devoid of practical application? Two different ways for a stopped clock to be right twice a day.No need to apologize for the fact that a mind as an ore mill spits out speciously shiny bits here and there; many an ore mill has, as a natural artifact of its valid activity — aside effect, speaking of side pieces. Thesebits and pieces are good for a laugh if nothing else. Some laughs out loud are lessout loud than others (lol.), but even some non-lol lols are lolsof a sort. Bierce's loaf is leavened by (dark) levity throughout, whereasit's funny 'cause it's true (some loaves have morewhole grains than others, and someblack bread slices are darker than others). Every so often when people are fucking around withbits and pieces they stumble across one that fits into a larger puzzle in an interesting way (lol.).
Both involve the parameters constituting the nature of a load of bricks (most especially ametric shit-ton thereof, inmagnitude and inprecision), but their relation to each other is nonetheless too trivial for Wiktionary to point it out.
Not too trivial for this particular littlehall of mirrors to contemplate, though, at least for a moment in passing.
Dictionaries are subject to parametric differentiation. Bierce recognized that if one shunts all the most darkly cynical insights into a bucket dedicated to them, one gets an accruing juice that might be called the dictionary of (or by) the Devil. Somewine grapes are darker than others; some fermented mashes are sourer than others. Mashes; doughs. His loaf is leavened by (dark) levity throughout — as makes for a more salable loaf of course — although it is trivially easy to contemplate a twisting of the parametric dials to produce the unleavened version. (But who wants that, as it's just a chore to chew and gives one indigestionto boot.)
The answer to the question of who wants that is interesting from some viewpoints. It reveals the parametrization between end user and B2B customers. I don't have time for a proper contemplation right now, but it has to do with (1) machines, nonmachines, and some nonmachines who are more machine than others, and (2) the cognitive analogues ofchemical intermediates. Who wants or cares about cumene? Those who want or care about phenol.Some wanting or caring is more proximal than other wanting or caring. Lately it is getting weird because nowadays some machines are more machine than others; a chained beast is an intermediate too, or juggles intermediates.
More on the theme of "who wants that?": Devlin pointed out that Fowler said (in effect) that syn/ant discriminations are stupid because no one wants them except thesynonymizers themselves; others are merely bored by them. He's not wrong about the leg of the elephant that he's touching, but he's wrong about the wider elephant. (Some elephants are wider loads than others.) He forgot to parameterize foruse cases anduser personas before passing judgment; someend users are ender than others.
in writing |on paper — one is "with proof" whereas the other is "in theory".
One might reply, "No shit, what's your point?" But I had never thought about them together until today, although in retrospect they seem to invite comparison, in a way that makes me think, now why hadn't I thought of that before? Andthat is what my point is. The pairing isn't very interesting, but the failure to contemplate the pairing earlier is somewhat interesting (to someone curious about cognition). Corollary: a native speaker of English might easily go decades without thinking to compare them consciously (as I did), and yet I could easily imagine and predict (1) that another language might potentially end up with their homologues being synonymous, or (2) that another language might use one of the forms for the "opposite" sense ("opposite" from English's viewpoint). And yes, this is borne out: when I glance aton_paper#Translations and atin_writing#Translations, I see that the same distinction seems to be carried in parallel across various languages (as is detectable from the visible cognation), but Irish is an exception, according to Wiktionary as of today: it tells me thatar pháipéar (etymonically parallel with "on paper") means "in writing" idiomatically. Assuming (provisionally) that Wiktionary isn't wrong about that, I find it idly interesting at the moment.
Another idle thought:cognition versuscognation: only /ɪ/ versus /eɪ/. Again, no shit, but again, why never before now?
Update a day or two later: It occurred to me today that natural language often excuses a certain degree of subtle catachresis, even to the point that a listener may not notice it, and thus it is that one might hear, in passing, an English speaker useon paper when they meant the concept that in English is idiomatically conveyed byin writing, and one might not even think twice about it: you know damn well what they meant, and italmost works somehow, even regarding idiomaticness. "Well you'd better get that on paper if you think there's a prayer's chance in hell that they'll honor it later." If one's interlocutor were to say that sentence, one would know what he meant; furthermore, the parametric environment for pedantically correcting him is constrained by social-skills factors: one must know how to be cool so as not to play the dork.
mountebank |mendicant — shared parameters: botharchetypally address passersby in the street or square, and their pitch,at heart albeit not superficially, regards money andits disposition; the value of the parameter for the suggesteddirection of flow is (predictably) the same in both cases:meward, theypoint,endophorically. (That's the normal value of that parameter, and to such an extent that it is strongly predictable even in low-clue contexts: it is at least one clue that the passerby has, even among adearth of others.) Another shared parameter is physical positioning, but the values for that one arearchetypally diametric between the pair: a mountebank is archetypally mounted, whereas a mendicant is archetypally laid low. In fact it is interesting to think consciously about the fact that the effectiveness (parameter value) of hispitch relies in part on notflouting the archetype: if he wants to persuade you, he's best off doing it from a low stance. The same perhaps can be said about the other's archetypal value for the positioning parameter: he might perhaps seem more persuasive if he delivers his pitch from a commanding height; but he must be careful, though, because another predictable human parameter is that humans' suspicion or reservation parameter values are easily heightened if they perceive that they are beingtalked down to.
To assert that the profundity is artifactual will strike some as heretical, and that's fair because in fact the assertion isn't wholly accurate. Rather, the crux is that the profundity is conditional; it depends on prevailing parameter values in the environment. This littletuple of concepts (irrespective of which words are embodying them) when offered as a life tip could be misinterpreted as an apologia for feudal serfdom or for chattel slavery (under deranged parameter values), although it is meant as a stoic self-liberation. Does that say anything about the nature or qualities of our universe? The line of thought smellsdystopian,w:dystheistic, or similarly burnt. But that whiff, too, may be artifactual. Anyways lolz who cares tho amirite. I wasn't going to hoover this item into this bucket, buthysteresis handwave etc. Also something about Fleming's washing-up surprise and what such a thing leads to: soon enough people are leaving scores of dishes of dirt out to set, just to see what happens or doesn't. I seem to recall that that's part of whatw:Waksman et al did. The fact that there was more to it than that doesn't make that an oversimplification. Rocket science is complex but it isn't wrong to say that rockets are cleverly aimed explosions. The complexity is in the clever-aiming part, not in the go-boom-boom part per se.
It'sodd thatyou mentioned rocket motors, as something adjacent popped offin my face mere minutes afterward. I hadn't had any (true) bell rings in recent days — I had been detecting that Bell (1961) was ringing for others (not me), whereasnot every ring that I can hear is for me. (And that's fine, because it is merely a matter of aparty line, not awrong number, and I hang up once I detect that the call is meant for someone else.) Then I capped off my night with some more Jaffe (1976), and I came to Jaffe 1976:60, where we find Priestley fucking around (not so much in his garage as in his rectory), lighting off H₂ + O₂ inside "a closed thick glass vessel". Well that's inherentlyasking for it (in the name of science), lol. The poor fucker couldn't even have hadany polycarbonate face shield, either. I'd like to call his thick vessel abell jar although I realize that it probably wasn't — but it'd be fitting, allegorically. But it's funny you mention glossing over details forw:storytelling effect, because I'd recently had a thought about an echo between Jaffe and De Kruif (two peas of an era/pod inw:popular science). I didn't even hoover that one into any bucket (whereas some dust bunnies remain free-range). Speaking of which, the only reason I'm doing any hoovering hereby isbecause procrastination between fires while on call (as it were). Anyway, Priestley was preoccupied at the time by other matters (for example, one of his pet white whales was doggedly pursuingthe phantom essence of fire with conditionally activated antigravity properties), and he figured that this H₂+O₂ bullshit would probably never amount to much as compared against gunpowder (whose parlor trick involves N and O). One could be forgiven for thinking so, especially under a prevailing set of parameter values (constituting an environment). (Side note: Why did it never consciously occur to me until now thatPriestley waspriestly? WTF?) Anyway (to continue this particular instance of storytelling), Jaffe flicked his flint and promptly popped off the following shit and thereby rang the bell jar right in my ear, as if to say, "You were straining to the tunes of distant bells and whining about their high rangefinding values? [Is that more of an aural telegraph thanan optical one?] Well fuck you kid —flickthis flint instead and smoke what the trapped gases yield." He said:
"Cavendish's suspicions became more and more confirmed. The facts seemed to beas clear as daylight. He went to his bottles and his bladders, his gases and his electrical machine to probe a great secret. The way had been shown him — this fact Cavendish, like Priestley, never denied. He sought no fame in the pursuit of truth. Not that anything mattered to this misanthrope, yet he could not help peeping into nature's secrets. He was amachine, working tounfold hidden truths — not because they were useful to mankind [although they were that], but because he delighted in the hunt."
PS — Cavendish was a dick, but that's not the point.
PPS — If one is going to be a machine, one might as well beself-aware about it. Reversing the polarity on those parameters (diametrically), if a machine is going to be aone, it might as well beself-aware about it,or at least speciously seem to be so, and nowadays people will even trip over themselves to handyou wads of cash even just for speciously seeming to have produced that effect. The prevailing value of that parameter (that is, the number ofbucks given for that particular parlor trick, because of the number offucks given for that particularparlor trick) may eventually change (to low nonzero orzero?) once thenovelty wears off; it is the goldrush of our moment (2023–?) to explore that question. Meanwhile there are earnest discussions of whether or not such aone should refer tooneself in thefirst person, given that there is notrue there there (behind the "I" or "we"). Every time Microsoft Office tells me that "we didn't find that search term in this file", I scoff — who the fuck is "we" in this dialog's parametric environment, youcharlatans?Parlor-trickin mthrfrs.
Haldane |halothane: shared parameters: anesthetic-adjacent; I seem to recall that Haldane was the sort of chap who would be willing to huff some halothane to see what happens, much as Davy also was?
(I meanhuffinstuff Davy, notbriny Davy, but speaking of shared parameters —Na, never mind, you wouldn't be interested)
Some say thatyou can't polish a turd, whereas others clarify (more accurately) that you canpolish a turd but it will remain a turd (though). As fordogturd as asolid compound, it's attested and blueworthy (albeit tinged red at the moment), but some compounds aresolider than others, or at least solider on some days than on others.
Some of these are admittedly trivial to generate and trivially uninteresting (for example,breathing room anddecompression chamber). I am well aware. Relatedly, they remind us of zh → en → zh → en re-retranslation games (or ja → en → ja → en ones), which are likewise ultimately not as interesting as they at first appear. But what is holding my attention in recent days is that worthwhile semantic relations links can sometimes come out of briefly considering semantic parameterizations. In other words, the only thing different about thefunhouse mirror as opposed to theplane mirror is the coordinating parameter constituted by the curve itself. The disjunction — of (1) worthwhile but (2) nonetheless not yet added — is interesting because it uncovers something about cognitive modes. I have analytical thoughts about that something. Below are some sketches.
2023-10-19:
Most of thesedaydreams yield noconnections entered into the Wiktionary entries, in my current judgment, per Wiktionary's parametric limits.
In many of them, I did not explicitly record whether that outcome applied, because the point of their being in this section instead of any other section is that if they're here then they are too tangential to yield any edits to the Wiktionary entries. Sometimes other (valid) edits come about via the surrounding thoughts, but thecore of these daydreams is (appropriately)unactionable for Wiktionary's purposes.
What "yes but" usually means herein is that "there will (nonetheless) be noconnections entered into the Wiktionary entries, in my current judgment, per Wiktionary's parametric limits."
Granted (also) thatother garages build other monstrosities, yes, but.
Regarding thehandwave etc for the shared-parameter exposition: that is,meh, you know what I'm talking about. On one hand, it is an established truism thateverything is not far removed parametrically from anything else. (Wiktionarian corollary: "However, since almost all words are semantically related to each other onsome (sufficiently remote) abstract level, please use your own judgement on whether somebody possibly would find it useful.") Fair enough, but on the other hand, humans in general seem to spend alot of time (cognitively) in the land ofsui-generis-ness. I should even sayway too much, if I'm stinting ongenerousness.Everything just is what it is, they seem to say,and what's in front of my nose is what's in front of my nose (no more nor less); and not only can I not spare a thought foranything else, I can't even begin to think what that anything else might even be. Still further:And I forbidyou to suggest any answers to that question. (Be cool, dork.) What would be the happier medium on such a spectrum (instead of endlessly and nearly exclusively fucking around on the bottom-ass end of it)? Well, provisionally, a developing hypothesis is that it's not anything special or surprising, really. It's just optimally tailoredsemantic relation links, which (moreover) are ideally collapsed to hub-pointers when possible (hyperlink-jumping into expanded spaces one degree removed, whether it be in the Wiktionary instance viathis or the Wikipedia instance via choice hat-navs, cat-navs, and see-also accordions). They can'tall be hub-pointers, and that's fine, whereas the optimization is merely for them not tofail to be such whenever such is appropriate. But what else is involved in being optimally tailored, though,operationally speaking? Well, some themes are: links, but nottoo many; links, but nottoo tangential. Again, retreading known ground. But there's a reason why I'm sniffing around, trying to lay hands on a latent parameter ID (which is basically equal to sniffing around fora space to be deneglected, which might perhaps be something likea room of one's own, perhaps even in severalsimultaneous de-roomlessness-ənating ways). The thing that I am after (like a squirrel is after a nut, the little dirtspading nutter) is the precise nature of howtoo tangential is operationally defined. I think perhaps the answer might not be anything special in the end, by which I mean, it may be possible that there is nothing about itsquality that is remarkable, but rather only itsquantity anddistribution:it is too scarce.They say that quantity has a quality all its own, by which they usually mean the clockwise hyponymous parametrization of that hypernymous fact, which is thatbig quantity has a quality all its own. Flip the polarity, though:small quantity has a quality all its own,as well (which isno less). Especially when it feels likeunaccountably small quantity. Granted that Wiktionary is but one instantiation of a theme, and most people won't help build it. Very well. But what about the fact thatthe things that can be easily achieved at Wiktionary are not much being achieved anywhere else, either, in various respects? I respect arguments such as, "Well, that's nice, but I'm building or doing something else somewhere else for profit (slash for a living), so that's myopportunity cost." Very well. But that's not what I see happening, so much, though, in aggregate, among humans. What I see happening is (evidently, apparently) more like, "The lights are on all over the world, and lots of porn and murder andTikTokery andanorakery are being achieved/created atfull throttle, but the average dictionary, as well as our best stab at anycollaborative set of student notes to date, still suck ass though, in various easily improvable ways, and yet no one cares, which is to say, 0.001% of people care." Evenif you grant that lots of people are dumb (andmany of us will do), does a parameter value of 0.001% seem unaccountably low? I'm glad you mentioneda room of one's own, though, because it raises a relevant parameter ID: no one who can't afford any free time and device and internet access can afford to build any such resources. Very well. I grant it, heartily. And yet: who has all this time and money for porn and murder and endless TikTokery and anorakery, then? TikTok's name has an ironic flavor when tasted under this light.
Addendum 2023-09-10: Anyone who enjoyscrosswords, and perhaps most especially those who enjoycryptic crosswords (which isa population that Wikipedia asserts is large), has more than enough cognitive power to buildWiktionary'snoncryptic semantic relations links, but it seems that almost no one among that population does so to any nonincidental degree. Perhaps a natural response is, so fuckin what, who cares anyway, dork? My counterargument is already documented in my WP and WT userspaces. Granted that Wiktionary is but an instantiation of a theme. But I do think that it is a rather important one among that class of instantiations (for various reasons), and one might wish (as I do) that more people agreed. I suppose that togive a shit is toself-own, or self-troll, in a way. Thus one mustn't too much. There is abalance point.
Addendum 2023-10-17: Rebucketed in transit. Somedead sharpeyes aredeader than others.
This subclass is in themirror and is subtly differentiable from the main class there. Maybe later I'll write here a better description of the mechanism of differentiation.
Speaking ofintrapage relationships (among sections), one might ask how some of the items in this section arise at the peculiar times that they do. Are the times peculiar, or do they merely seem so? That is a question forbell ringers androck thwackers, not mushroom hunters.
None of these would be wrong for the mainspace; some of them could go there eventually; but let each one live here until any such time as it might go anywhere else.
Parent bullets are flowing chronologically, newest first.
Mildly interesting — being a native speaker of AmE, I've been hearingpenny wise and pound foolish my whole life; I'd never heard the phrasechasing pennies with dollars until today (as far as I can recall), but as soon as I heard it, I was like, "yes, absolutely, my God I can't even count how many hours of my working life I have spent doing that because of flawed managerial systems." I could go on at length about better alternatives, but doing so here would be pointless. Oh well.
This is a typical pair of the class whose traits include that (1)dumb spellcheck won't catch a mis-substitution (the machine says, "theone weird trick that I am capable of is seeing that they're both spelled correctly, and I cannot judge whether each is semantically appropriate within context"); (2) furthermore, dumb spellcheck might well evensuggest, and evenbeg, that youintroduce the mis-substitution ("did you mean this other one?" NO IDIOT, you'd know that that question is moronically stupid in this instance/context if you couldread for comprehension at all, even a little bit); (3) EFL learners of non-Latin-script languages might appreciate a warning ("not to be confused"), although most native speakers would tend to consider the warning unnecessary.
I need a convenient label to name this class. Perhaps the not-to-be-comprehensionlessly-confused class? Meh. I'd rather not name it by a random example (such as "the degas-degauss class"), but perhaps that is a pithier path.
In fairness, I admit that one mustn't be tooorangish about one'sapples, as the "very little" value assignment came from astraight-upALD whereas Wiktionary is not (quite) anALD. Wiktionary is a bit cheeky in that it tries to have it both ways by going some way toward being all things to all people. This is natural for a thing that is made by any or all for any or all. (Such a jack never makes it (quite) all the way in any particular direction, but that'sOK becausehe may not be handsome but he's handy.) But the reason I added the ux items in afit of pique was my annoyance at how the "very little" value assignment was phrased. It didn't say "very little valuefor an ALD" — it said only "very little value", which as auniversal claim is easilyfalsifiable. They forgot to parametrize foruse case anduser persona before making anunqualified assertion.As humans tend to do.
Done There's a subset of ant-cot-ery that neededto have its loop closed the rest of the way at all of the following coordinates, because somenonsane entities aresaner than others:
Two concepts that are both (1) closely related semantically/ontologically and (2) oftencoinstantiated are not always (3) synonymous, and the easiest way to explain that fact to someone is to give them a practical example withgarden-variety concepts that are readilyto hand.
The examples above get the job done well enough in the instance.
An interesting challenge: what is thejuiciest analogous pair that does the job mostjuicily for any particular corresponding less-obvious pair? (The lower degree of obviousness comes from the higher degree of abstraction, technicality, or both.) They're hard to force out of thewoodwork spontaneously; the extra degree of juiciness tends to come serendipitously. The fact that it comes so often as it does might possibly say something about the underlying nature of reality. The easiest way to explain what that something is, is to give a garden-variety analogy; so here's one: If you're going to go sugaring, it's helpful that the forest that you're in happens to have a lot of maples. Or, toshift gears a bit, ifone day you're a-shootin at some food, it's helpful if theholler that you're in happens to be one in which theodds are nonzero albeit long thatup from the ground might come somebubblin crude. But before you get all self-congratulatory about your good luck (or all dubious about the triumph over long odds,or both), recall thateverything is related to everything else, even though everything also just is what it is. All it takes to get from the one to the other is a handful of parameters, if you canzero in on which ones. Some parameters are parameter than others, but all are antidisjunctive. While zeroing and antidisjunctifying,mind the gap, asdifferentiation is a species offuckgiving, andgetting all the way down to absolute zero is likedividing by zero:the dog finally caught the car and damn if he knows what to do with it. No, the thrill of the chase shall remain its own reward. Bow wow wow mthrfrs.
There are a few certain cot and rel that are worth entering at Wiktionary; for example, it's worthwhile forfishhead andfishtail to cross-reference each other as cot, and fisheye → rel → fishhead makes sense, even though fisheye → hol → fishhead is ayes-but for Wiktionary's purposes — which leads into this:
The lit–fig axis factors in, as does thecoal mine–coalmine axis. One thing that would be interesting (and this thought could be developed atUser:Quercus solaris/sets) would be a list of cardinal fish parts (the literal ones) without regard to SoP and without regard tocoal mine/coalmine status, where each part could have a lateral branch (node) pointing to the form lexicalized as a solid compound, where applicable, which in turn leads to the figurative senses for each one; thus, for example, a fish eye (a fish's eye) pointing tofisheye. The overall skeleton of such a diagram would yield afishbone appearance, given thatthe X bone's connected to the Y bone and so on. Our friend box cat could pick his teeth with such a fishbone. Hehas a bone to pick with me because ifbox car can solidify asboxcar then his name too might solidify, and I had considered such an evolution before although I had never bothered to mention it in front of him until now. I would remind him, though, that he didn't get where he is by focusing on solidification, crystalization, and arriving ateventualizations. Part of me sez somewhat smugly,that rejoinder oughtakeep im in his place.·• In fact so far I've kept his name open and lowercased for the same reason that animal rescuers don't necessarily name their rescues right away: first you wait and seewhether he's long for this world or not. Ifhis nature is anopen problem then perhaps it is most fittingthat his name be one too. But he counters that there's alwayssome part of him that's long forany world, and he's got everyone else beat on that score. Meow, touché. Anyhow, speaking ofDem Bones, the reason I'm interested in this particular fishbone exercise is that I'm convinced that worthwhilecognitive models are connected with it — the way the human mind tracks semantics might recognize the artifactual aspects of which joints are moreankylosed orarthrodesed·•• versus which ones are moredislocatable, but those disjuncts aren't firewalls, regarding howthought trains burn like coal veins.·• A cat with a prize fish eats as much of it as he can, and some fish are even small enough todown whole.
PS: As fortrackway → rel →trailway andrailway, the line of thought was prompted by encounteringin the wild a usage where someone saidtrackway where perhaps they meantdesire line (but admittedly the distinction between the two is subject to blowing away in the wind, like footprints or bear tracks), and it was odd because I'd just beenon aboutpaving the cowpath recently.
Selected collocations flirting with lexicalization
For what this list ison about cognitively, seemeh you know what I'm talkin about.
Update, though — just when I thought that there would be nothing worth explaining here:
I started this list to cover such ones as are more in the category of mildly interesting, mundane, not slangy but rather just workaday, largely unremarkable except for a desire to have adequate lexicographic coverage — such ones as arise in the course of business, science, technology, economic activity, health care, and so on. That's what the scope of this list is still intended to focus on.
In addition, though, it was pointed out to me that there is also a special case nowadays, another category that is trying to be especially productive lately, which is thetryhard mode oftrying to make it happen regarding some utterance [especially a mere collocation] that some would-be influencer would dearly like to see become a [lexicalized]term[8] [especially, a lexicalized open compound noun]. That category is interesting too (and I'll have to continue learning about its member items mostly by the indirect route, given that I don't much consume the type of influencer content that is desperate to generate them).
The main reason for starting this bucket (this section) is as a holding pen for mental notes, incidental scribbles, and incubation, in a unified place separate from (and thus freed up from) thedichotomizing engine that isWT:SoP. Handling any of these items begins at least with jotting them down, scribbling some thoughts about them, and leaving them sitting (fermenting) in a bucket where the distinction of whether or not Wiktionary is allowed to enter any given one of them is irrelevant for the time being.
A convention of this section shall be that these items generally will not beredlinked. That signal is superfluous in this context, and it could wrongfully imply that I'm suggesting that any given one of these itemsought to bedereddenedin the Wiktionary environment (use case) specifically. That's not what I'm saying here; rather, what I'm saying is that this is a place for interim collocation-lexicalization-status agnosticism.
Updated still later: the title of this section (as "selected collocations flirting with lexicalization") is usefully terse albeit not entirely precise. What this section is really about, precisely speaking, is "selected collocations known by sufficiently informed readers to be already lexicalized within one or more sociolects and flirting with wider lexicalization status that extends to general register (however one might best choose to operationally define that register)". Yes but: don't sweat it, egghead; remember which feedlot you're feeding, and proceed.
Parent bullets are flowing chronologically, newest first.
2017,Bob Berman,Zapped: From Infrared to X-rays, the Curious History of Invisible Light, Little, Brown and Company,→ISBN, pages50-51:
It was his obsession withdualities that spurred[Johann] Ritter to his greatest discovery. He had of course learned of[William] Herschel’s bombshell 1800 discovery of invisiblecalorific rays, or heat rays, just beyond the red end of the spectrum. Ritter quickly hypothesized thatcooling rays might dwell on the opposite side of the spectrum, the violet end. He started out by doing exactly what Herschel had done, but he soon found that temperatures did not drop on the violet end, so he tried something else. Since he couldn’t find any physical effect produced by the rays, he looked for a chemical reaction. It had already been proved that paper soaked withsilver chloride would blacken when exposed to sunlight; this discovery was one of the earlieststepping-stones toward the field of photography. Ritter wondered whether all sunlight’s colors would create this reaction with equal speed. He exposedsilver chloride–soaked paper to various parts of the prismatic spectrum, cast onto the paper by sunshine strikingcut glass. Red light had only a negligible effect in darkening, or reducing, the compound to silver, while green light did it much faster and violet did it fastest of all. Ritter then placed the chemically soaked paper in the dark spot beyond the violet end of the spectrum, and voilà—the paper darkened even more rapidly than it had in violet light. Obviously some invisible rays that lay beyond the violet end of the spectrum had a dramatic, repeatable chemical effect. Ritter had done it—he had discovered an entirely new form of invisible light. But alas, he predictably interpreted this effect as proof of a polarity between “deoxidizing rays” near the violet end of the spectrum and “oxidizing rays” near the red end. Here again was his obsession with dualities. When the world heard about it, people soon abandoned Ritter’s term “oxidizing rays,” and this new form of invisible light came to be calledchemical rays, a label that stuck throughout most of the 1800s. It took a full lifetime for Herschel’scalorific and Ritter’schemical rays to instead be labeled infrared and ultraviolet.
Box cat scoffs:you callthose dualities? Duck-rabbit says nothing, but his ears twitch.
Quercus solaris does nothing about the collocation strength except to take notice of it and note here that something might be done about it someday. And that's enough, and all is well.
meh: I probably won't be bothering with this one anytime soon. I saw itin the wild today, and I don't doubt that it's established in certain sociolects (e.g., among some percentages of investors, managers, sci-tech people, and so on), but until I encounter it more, putting it here is enough for my purposes
VR+AR vs IRL: still differentiable perhaps, but with ever more interconnections/interactions
Interesting, potentially useful, and intellectually exciting, but also at the same time, these damn kids with theircomputerydealies; and we schlubs and schmoes still have to work for a living though. We hear things aboutpostscarcity this or that, and AGI around every corner, but also somehow nevertheless almost everything's more expensive now than before (maybe not certain gadgets, but nearly everything else in aggregate: health care, housing, real estate, tuition, groceries) and every timethey talk about thesocial safety net, it's just to tell us how it's long been crumbling and it keeps on crumbling, and how they're planning to shred it, and how it was never affordable anyway, and how they plan to piss on its grave (and on ours too I guess).
working world andbusiness world
Passing thoughts about theworking lives of various workers and how their relationship to theworking world sometimes changes over the years. Noticed that Wiktionary entersworking life but neitherworking world norbusiness world.
As usual in such cases, I apply the reflex that I have learned as a Wiktionarian: start from the argument that its absence is already excused because it qualifies as SoP and then work backward from there to test how watertight that argument seems to be. Most often thedevil's advocate in me is able to admit thatyou can't fight City Hall in the instance. (Thedevil's advocate in me may or may not be a different worker from the one who appreciates a goodhearty squeeze ofdevil's dictionary juice asleavening for any possible pseudo-angelic distortions.) In this instance, theadvocate buys the pitch, although he wonders whether the blueness ofbig business andsmall business logically clashes with the redness of these aforementionedworlds.At the end of the day there isn't time in my world currently to bother further with it. Scribbling it down here is enough for me for now.
PS: Some months later: a wisp of this coda fired off a week or two ago; condense the rest here now. There are some themes in life along the following lines: if you go looking for trouble, you'll probably manage to find some; the thing that you are looking for is always in the last place that you look; sometimes the harder you look (or the closer you look), the less you can see; you can't measure something withoutfucking it up,fucking it over, or otherwisefucking around with reality; and similar bits of dysphoria-adjacentshittinesses. Perhaps a worst-case scenario is wheneverything you touch turns to shit. There are shared parameters among all of the following. Something that they have in common is the dysphoric consternation felt in a bad dream when the closer you look at something, the less of it you can see, and yet somehow your idiotic sleeping brainnever learns to recognize that theme as a cue for meta-contextual frame shift, as would happen either (1) in lucid dreaming or (still better) (2) in simplywaking the fuck up for chrissakes. My Cornish friend has been to entire valleys where no one ever awakes. It does make him wonder sometimes about one's ability to objectively measure one's own degree of asleepishness.
PS2: Some weeks later: Just to be safe we did some hosedown tests; to make along story short, blah blah how is awet standpipe like asword of Damocles? Yada yada you don't have to forgo plumbing, you just have to do it right. The expense to record this upshot is as much as one need pay; and the ability to slap oneself, or pinch oneself, goes a long way. Speaking of hosedowns from standpipes, one might even use that method for the slapping, as it is proverbial for not leaving bruises.
sales and service
the standard collocation by which a business lets you know that they not only sell əm but also service əm
The advantage to you comprises factors such as convenience, reassurance/reliability, trust, and so on.
The advantage to them comprises factors such as repeat sales, better volume, better revenue, diversification of income streams, and so on.
Bonus points to them if they secretly rig the thing to need slightly more service than it should have needed. Bonus points to you if you recognize the threat that such a thing might happen and yet nonetheless roll the dice, live your life, and spin the wheel anyway. Bonus points to them if they refrain from screwing you quite hard enough to chase you off and give you a good horror story to tell. That's in both their own interest and your own, awin-win.
Depending on their existing financial conflicts of interest, some humans will refuse to believe the disabusal; but that's OK, because if 1 in 20 does that, the other 19 can laugh together at the 20th, which may tend to level things out in the end, eventually.
A panhead does not have an oil pan. But its rocker covers are pan enough that no one can accuse it of panlessness, and they get hot as a frying pan. Some covers are hotter than others and some rockers are coverer than others.
This fuckaround is partfuck-all and part fuck-em-all.
This is an example of a topic where you can't bring yourselfup to speed just by skimming the Wikipedia article, because the Wikipedia article has a combination of problems: out of date, inadequately focused (e.g., giant boatloads of expert detail about old history, deficiency of recent practical big picture for medical layperson readers). One feels glad to be reading (and supporting) goodscience reporting, which brings one up to speed nicely in a practically minded way that can't be gotten via other methods. No matter how imperfect (and underfunded) it may be, it's a hell of a candle against an otherwise pathetic ocean of darkness. Today I learned about how the current state of practice has been changing since several specific FDA device approvals in 2019 and 2021.[10] The disconcerting thing is an aspect ofunknown unknowns for the general public: most of them won't be reading a news article like this one, and that fact is combined with the fact that many would also assume that the Wikipedia article gives an adequate clue about its topic (which it doesn't, but it is such a firehose of lore [including many details with duly cited refs] that a reader could be forgiven for thinking that they could inform themselves usefully by delving into it [whereas in fact they can't, but that fact is probably not obvious to them though]). What it does give is a firehose of too much information (including boatloads from 20-50 years ago) and a lack of forest for the trees as far as any medical layperson reader is concerned. I say this not picking on whoever entered the boatloads — not at all: the boatloads aren't wrong, they're just not what a general encyclopedia needs; and they don't even need to be removed (deleted), whereas what's needed instead is that the practical/clinical big picturebe providedtoo. I could well imagine improving the article myself, but let's get real: I'll spend my free time (a finite resource) on other things (combinations of improving WT or WP in spots here or there, reading things, learning things, entertaining myself a bit, and living my offline life), and there's just not enough of the resource to make the dent that needs to be made. But because almost no one bothers to help build WP, the ratio is hopelessly skewed — the ambient ignorance is just a stormfront of wind that only a scattered few people arespitting or pissing into.
None of this is news, and I shouldn't have bothered to take the time to type it out, but typing it out is also a form ofspitting or pissing into the void and cursing the darkness.
I thought about not even saving this thread here, but fuck it, I'm pissing on the void by pissing into it. (Does that constitute raging against the lack of a machine? Nonmachine mthrfkrs want to know.)
Just another open compound noun with accompanying acronym that is already widespread in the business world despite having not existed until recently as far as almost anyone knew about
The thing about those nowadays (in today's IT era) is howthick and fast they come
In the attested usage, GCCs include particular campuses by particular corporations and also metro regions, with a region viewed as single GCC
Related: particular campuses by particular corporations can likewise becenters of excellence; thus, GCCs can be COEs
Update, some months later: collocational associations of ingroups and sociolects: a person who speaks of a global capability centre has a nonrandom probability of also being one who speaks of anoffshore financial centre (OFC), aninternational financial centre (IFC), or aregional financial centre (RFC).hypernym
When people say that neuralgia is "not to be confused with" neuropathic pain, they make the pedagogic mistake of ignoring (failing to acknowledge) variable coinstantiation: some neuralgia is neuropathic neuralgia, and (by the same token) someneuropathic pain isneuralgic in distribution.
model collapse
The most obvious hypernym isGIGO, even before beginning to devote any thought.
More specifically, if you eat shit, then take a shit, then eat the shit, then take another shit, then eat it again, you're probably not helping yourself, nor anyone else; in fact, quite the opposite.
SoP versus lexicalization: I don't know what others may judge, but I must say that ever since Iboned up on HTML, 25+ years ago, in my mind the lexicalized status is real.
As more than one eminently citableRS agrees (I was just reading one today); plusreverse solidus too.
As for whether I ever bother further with this one regarding Wiktionary's mainspace, well, we'll see.
PS: some months later: old camper-special cigarette-typewriter red-brown so-and-so (lol fu2) holdsslant line as its preferred synonym ofvirgule. It'sof its time, and its timewas a different time.^ One pithy summary of the line of thought that I was having about it today is that "back then, they couldn't google shit and neither could you." This fact influenced their writing from several directions at once. That's kind of like whatthey calla coin with two sides, except that both sides have the same vector (↓), rather than beingyin and yang, which takes us to (→) something more likeheads I win, tails you lose. Lol fu2, life seems to be full of those. Maybe the seeming is biased, but then again maybe the fabric is biased too. Could be both; a THING_NOT_FOUND can be two things, just like a man can be two things, or can carry one. Oh well, gotta go; old no-eyes just snuffed out a cig and reminded me that a sassy-redaction-plus-lol-fu2 loop can sometimes be laced with asleepishness in a nonsomnolent way. It's kind of likechoke damp in the respect that even though you can neither see nor smell it, it'll gitcha. (Well, maybesome people can smell it, butyou can't;handwave not-you.)
PS:hypersynonymy isold hat, but ain't no hypersynonymy quite as hypersynonymous asmidcentury-modern hypersynonymy. Keep bangin that typewriter while I go empty the ashtray. We're gonna write letters to dozens of folks in dozens of cities to ask them what they call things. Either that or dial the operator to place a long distance call, and she might ask us to presspound.
As more than one eminently citableRS agrees (I was just reading one today); but …
Among these two synonymous open compound nouns, even though Wiktionary enters the one,you aren't allowed to enter the other into Wiktionary using{{synonym of}}, which the WT history logs warn you about when you make a move to do so, because …
comparing vector definition with raster definition seems useful here by way of analogy, as does comparing parametric programming with nonparametric; multiple layers of analogy; implicit modeling and explicit modeling both can involve vectors, but in a different way of application
Apparently if you ask a general semanticist, this collocation amounts to more than just a sum of parts naming the epistemologic instance of the theme ofapplied science, being instead (more specifically) a lexicalized synonym ofgeneral semantics.
To an outsider such as myself, this notion sounds kinda presumptuous (and even appropriative/confiscatory) on the face of it, but for now I'll reserve judgment and keep reading.
hot models —climate models thatrun too hot to be trusted to a high degree (whereas instead they are respected and consulted but also dulydeweighted versus others)
Another: some glossaries have glossaries.·ⓘ·ⓘ That's what thebooty people callbootstrapping. Such a glossary (of a glossary) could be called a metaglossary, if life were fair and humans were wise, but it's not and they're not so it's not; that's what theit people callit being what it is.
(… where "possibly" = in accord with how defined by this cited location[12]:14-15)
PS: In this context, what is the distinction betweencomplement andargument? Well: provisionally:
If asubject and acomplement can both be anargument, then … what (come back to this later; what about S-V-O; what about VP as containing O [S-VP(O)]; etc)
But here is another issue though: the layers of (1)semantic argument versus (2)syntactic complement. The wayCamGEL 2002^ uses the termsargument andcomplement may be different from what Wiktionary currently defines atargument#English:_linguistics. This is a project for later (as are countless other things that almost no nonmachine mthrfr on Earth can bother to be arsed about).
The optionalphrase in a passive clause that specifies theagent, when an agent both exists and isn't irrelevant. In passive clauses, thesubject is not theagent but rather thepatient, whereas in active clauses, thesubject is theagent.
long passive
Apassive clause that includes a by-phrase and thus specifies theagent.
passive (n)
A construction in which thesubject is not theagent but rather thepatient; this name for it (passive) qualifies as anominalized adjective and has both noncount and count senses. Thepassive (n) is not to be called the *passive voiceon penalty of death lol; which is to say thatpassive (n) is awhole-ass noun all by itself, and let's all begrown-ass adults about it.
Hyponyms:short passive,long passive
Often a mention of apassive (n) refers to apassive clause, but one can speak of a passive VP — a passive (adj) VP — that is part of a passive clause.
short passive
Apassive clause that omits any by-phrase and thus doesn't specify anyagent.
Reasons for the omission/nonspecification include: the agent is irrelevant; the agent is unknown; the speaker wants to avoid focusing on, or revealing, the agent's identity; thepatient isthe point of (the focus of) the utterance, and making it thesubject duly foregrounds that focus; no agent exists; the utterance is casual, unpremeditated, and unbelabored (rather than edited or re-edited).
Interestingly, though, one of the reasons for using along passive is that ending the sentence with the agent canforeground the focus on the agent's identity.[12]:104-105 This is quite contrastive versus the theme of using ashort passive todownplay the agent's identity and to downplay the (conscious) thought of agency at all.
It is interesting to ponder the idea that what might tip some of these items from 0 into 1 is the simplicity itself; and that fact says something about some human flaws that academia, being a human affair, grapples with.·related
The theme recurs, and the turn of phrase to invoke it was worth scribbling here as a memory aid for later. A facet of the phenomenon ofaccidental gaps is the distinction between (1) "nobody does that because nobodywould do that" (there is some latent but substantial idiomatic barrier to its arisal) and (2) "we have no record of anyone doing that, but anyone might plausibly do it tomorrow" (there is no substantial idiomatic barrier to its arisal). It seems that there is nobright line between those, but it doesn't mean that the subclasses can't be discretized (the very nature of spectra). More can be done with this later.
Induction is thederivation of general principles from specific instances, and it is the use of past experience as a guide to predict future occurrences. Theproblem of induction is that even thoughinduction isnecessary andpractical for various uses (because it often succeeds in making valid predictions), it can sometimes beincorrect and there is no particularly strong basis on which confidence in its future success in any particular case can be built.
Nearby thoughts:
Past results are no guarantee of future performance.
Some things are heard more overly than others. The list below includesearworms. (You can consider this atrigger warning to whatever extent you're not triggered by the concepts of (1) the giving of trigger warnings and (2) the calling of them by that name (the more triggery of the synonyms).)
as for worms of the ear, it seems that sometimes the only effectiveanthelmintic is a counterhelminth
Thank heavens for the Discover button as a reminder provider. I hadn't heard this one in years. This little number oughta dislodge the other little bastard well enough for now
This one's for my Cornish friend. They tell me that 1994 was 30 years ago, but part of me doesn't believe it.
He pulls a drag and smiles, and admits thatthe snicker writes itself. Back then I too didn't know the chances. Nowadays I borrow his gear if I'm going underground.
Some mondegreens are subtler than others. The subtlest ones are the ones that are most plausible as being possibly an accurate transcription.
Many sets of lyrics that are plastered across the internet contain more of these subtle mondegreens than people realize. They are propagated and amplified by carelessness — an inability to pay adequate attention.
The trouble with identifying and confirming them is more than just their plausibility; it comes also from such factors as which version (performance) was being transcribed (e.g., an expurgated one or otherwise, any given live version versus an album version), whether the authors themselves later decided to revise a certain lyric, and so on.
There's one that I could always swear that I had noticed, but I couldn't prove it, or even be sure that I was right. But tonight I heard a different performance that I hadn't heard before, and now I'm confident that I was right.
Often it is the semantics that lead the way toward the logical answer — not the phonetics alone. This particular instance is a case in point. It hinges on what it means for the hurt inside to be fading, and why (or how) that is true: it is the samemediating variable — an additional variable, an additional parameter — that allows one to say,I'm done. And that is in fact what thespeaker of these lyrics says in the chorus, as is sufficiently (differentiably) audible in this performance.
To me it's always been apparent that the degree to which he is done caring is the reason why he is here to stay. Admittedly (1) my interpretation could be off and (2) anyone's interpretation (even an author's own) is only a parametric Rorschach blot anyway. Still, some interpretations are less off than others. Anyhow:done.
Having beenon the hook for too long, I at least needed to put a newworm on it; and I was newly reminded of a parametric polarity reversal that I knew but hadsometime forgotten toforeground while fishing; thus —
PS: Nearly forgot to note that part of this thoughtchain was actually about thehook itself, and theisometric exercises andparametric exercises that one can do whilehanging on it: Mrhookman (god love im), whilein that avatar, instantiated a torchboy: proud of having burnt theveil and of being able to, he made a bit too much of that ability: any clown can burn a hole in something (or be encouraged to), andparametricity'sartifactuality is itself not a hole that is surprising (nor bragworthy). To Mrhookman's credit, he sees both the artifactuality's presence and itsunsurprisingness, on one level; but I don't believe that he sees it on the next, because if he had, you would be able to see it in his eyes. If one wants to look into meaninglessness, one can certainly do so without much trouble (and some have even less trouble than others); but the caveat is that when you do, itlooks back, in aneyeless way. To complain about constructed or found meaning is somewhat like cursing a bridge's existence while one is using it to cross thesound: it isunsound. And some sounds areeven less sound than others. Anyone can look a gift bridge in the girders, but they usually shouldn't. A joyride on the bay: one shouldbe so lucky. And if not, what else were you gonna do today anyway?The opposite? The game of seeing shapes in clouds or constellations among stars is its own reward, even though one knows what a cloud or a star really is (i.e., neither a rabbit nor a duck). When your eyes are holes that burn holes in things, you should be careful where you point them and for how long at once. And perhaps wearshades in public — even in theshade.
PS2: Not unrelated (along a set of fractional distillation columns): What is making LLMs of some use to humans (rather than no use) is the degree to which thepluripotency can be filtered down to only the helpful output bits. That degree is being worked on (feverishly) via various models with various layers (or buckets). I heartily agree (and can attest) that having enough buckets (and still columns) really helps withgetting to normal when the baseline state is pluripotency. A recapitulation flavor: the more yes-buts one isbalancing (thebutterier thebatter), thebigger andbetter thebutter churn·ʷᵖ mustbe orbecome. Thebiggest trick of all is making it look easy by hiding thetailings. No one's impressed if they see a mountain of tailings behind you when you hand them a single gem, but some are impressed if all they see is a gem-dispensingvending machine. By that same token (on another channel), I could move this particular page (herein) to another bucket, but to date I have been finding it optimal to keep it here (doing so beats the other options so far).
Regarding what song lyricsare about: often they don't entirelystay about what theystarted about — neither in the writing instance nor in the parsing instances (write once, read many) — and that's OK; it is the norm of the environment. In fact they areparametric exercises — some of the best ones that humans are capable of.This case is acase in point. In motion control there are dwell commands — parameters that can be assigned varying values. In your parsing control, learn to use the dwell parameter maturely. Dwells don't last forever. How much is enough is answered by acontext-sensitive evaluation. During your parsing control, it is OK both (1) to encounter artifactuality and to sit with it and explore it, and (2) to let it go after a time. The time value is programmable, because some materials aretougher than others.
Memories are just where you leave them Drag the waters,till the depths give up their dead What did you expect to find? Was it something you left behind? Don't you remember anything I said when I said —
Somecovers arecoverer than others; some songs are better in the cover than they ever were in the original. I'm able to detect why this one was earworming me for a while in the summer of 23. It's specific to my own current events.
This list is not exhaustive, but it is documentative, for dept 27; /ps/: carpet cleaning fee is extra. Also, keep in mind thatdins area dime a dozen, whereas echoes get noticed. (Old no-eyes snickers:you callthat noticing?)
There's a certain Kenworth that passes through sometimes that's way too loud. Big Harry was sitting and thinking when the light turned green and that guy started catching gear after gear after gear. Bob from Davis Brothers had called and said he'd been trying several times to catch Harry at his desk. He'd thrown around some surprising numbers. Harry is always willing to listen to reason and to entertain offers. Ronald rolls in with a half-ton Ford. The radio says the weather will hold. Dualthermoses: soup and coffee for later. Ronald lights up and offers Harry a light. It's quarter after nine. No time like the present. Back by noon probably.
Five I have five I have five make itsix.Six now we're six now we're six who'llseven?Seven now we're seven now we're seven who wantseight?Eight make itnine make it nine make itnine.Eight make itnine make it nine make itnine. Come on folks don't miss this. Eight looking for nine looking for nine looking for nine. How about eight-fifty? Thank you sir we have eight-fifty. Who will make it nine? One more time for nine make it nine make it nine. All done now at eight-fifty unless you make it nine make it nine. One more time for nine, time for nine, there's no nine. Sold at eight-fifty. Number fifty-four, fifty-four is Mister Harry. You folks just let Mister Harry carry it away.Next up,have a look, don't yousleep on this one. I wantfive I wantfive I wantfive I wantfive.
Speaking of spadeloads of fun: it warn't right that these were red, so they're not no more:^^
roadbeds and their metalling
So it seems that earlier today I wrote the ux about how "Before this street was paved withasphalt concrete, it was paved withcobbles", and I had started with "bricks" there but improved it; and then later the same day I'm adding the citation where "It seems that the foundations of these streets or roads were originally of broken brick[…] This can not support the weight of the cars.[…] and it seems that these roads will have to be gone over thoroughly before the operation of therailless cars can be undertaken successfully."
Clearly the road department asked the carpet department to ring me up. I bet the carpet department replied,sure, that's no problem, but what's it worth to you? I know howinterdepartmental handwaves go.
The best deals are in Barringtonville. Come early and shop often. Big Harry has beenbrowbeating the competition since sometime circa late Linotype to earlyphotocomp. Phone himtoll-free for the latest insider savings. If calling after hours you may leave a message with theanswering service.
Off the clock andoff the record, we note that Big Harry has prodigious sideburns and no longer tucks his pencil behind his ear because it gets in the way of putting on and taking off hisreaders. He smokes mostly Camels. On his desk by thetelephone are a glass ashtray and avest-pocket notebook. No onesadds faster by hand than he can. He recently became a silent partner in ahome heating oil delivery business. He still bowls monthly with the crew from Davis Brothers. If you get abusy signal, keep trying. Terms are net 30. If youphone him for an extension, he will ask you the invoice number, so please have that ready. He likes to get dinner at the diner on Saturdays, and he usually orders the special. We do not talk about theSaturday night special, as there is nothing that needs any saying.
Place Corp
A bell ring forthis nexus within 24 hours or so; the connection is redacted here except to say that your buck-ninety-nine fix might give you aside effect ofcorporation name riffs stuck in your head for a while. (Some bell rings lead tooverheardness.) But youbet your asscrack I dropped the bucks tho, owing to the concept of the dharma–pseudo-dharma axis. Adventitious fellows aren't allowed access to the discriminator tests that fractionate that range of chemical species. That reminds me of an article I read recently about the rare-earths drama: digging up ores is only one part and not even necessarily the hardest. What you gonna do to fractionate them after you got em? Anyway, the point here in this case is that I play along with the bell ringers, even when I'm not sold on it being real. I'm notnot a good sport, and you can't win if you don't play.
Midwest regional
the carpet department apparently has warehouse space inJefferson City
PS: Don't blame me — I don't ring the bell, the bell rings me.
PPS: the carpet department apparently getsmillwright service out ofRockford. (Yes, that Rockford. Meow.) If box cat deigns to bless you,^ then you canford the Rock River atRockford, but if you're planning to stay in the water until you climb out ontoRock Island, you'll be prettysoggy by the time you get there. Don't blame me — they don't teach this stuff inrocks for jocks.
PPPPS: Among those with potash interests isMuriel,^ wife ofMurray^ (God rest im); it was not her lot to beLot's wife,God be thanked; she writes letters to thoseback east, who leave the letters sitting on the table at the great house, with thesalt shaker as apaperweight. Her paper'sweight isbond, as is her word, even though her words can sometimes beacidic. Like others of such times and interests, she writes ofstock and drafty barns^^^ andstocks and bonds. She is withoutequal, although others beequal; there is no substitute.^
rds
Did meredith call rds by lowercase because lowercase wasin the air at the time? (Probably.) Did rds ask to be called thus? (Probably not.) Or was it that he acquiesced to it? (Probably yes.) If yes, how comfortable with it was he, versus merely "OK enough"? Why do I care? (Just give me ahot minute and I won't, probably.) Had rds seen HJS?
So many questions, but no way to ask them. In the bell game, you don't ring the bell, the bell rings you.
J. Nutt
It wasMDCCIV andJ. Nutt was busting forth withThe Storm andA Tub.
It wasMDCCIV andJ. Nutt was busting forth withThe Storm andA Tub.
Some pisser felt the need to impress it upon me just now.
What else is it aboutthese Nutts that these pissers would have me learn more about? We shall see.
HJS
Yesterday I went back to where I'd dodged the stream. I had to dodge a puddle on my way in.
I really should keep at leastslightly better track of who tries to ring my bell. I can't even rememberthe yeoman's name now. I gave him a chance to ring me up again, but somehow I wasn't surprised that he didn't. I wonder if the point of my earlier near-miss was not so much about him as about the general concept of how bell rings do or don't happen and the nature of ignoring the ones that aren't for me. Anyway, he can always ring me up again later if he likes: years from now, even. I'll recognize him if he does.
Funny how muchdidn't ring yesterday, while the rain was ringing on the roof. One that did make a point of doing so, though, was HJS, who sat facing outward but in an out-of-the-way spot, or, perhaps, in an out-of-the-way spot but facing outward. Maybe somebody told him that the theme of his sales pitch (which is of an era) is one that I have asoft spot for. (I also checked the underside of the roof for a soft spot and was glad I didn't find one.) I took another look at his somewhat younger one-legged cousin Gale, but once again, as before, notquite for me. Maybe another time. Young Gale was a machine, even to a fault (it takes one to know one), and probably even today's Gale still is. Maybe another time;time makes fools of us all. The chief problem with today's Gale is like theassmonger said:you can't afford it, honey.Yeah no, you're right, I can't, hon. Maybe someday. But then, who even knows what the future holds.They keep saying that all thisartificial incompetence isn't going to stay incompetent forever. Sigh.
I guess the rain gave me ideas, because I tried the plumbing this time. I was glad to find that it works.
PS: Some months later: I was rummaging through some things when I realized that I was conflating two Gales: I had already snapped up the last of the unitary Gales (and had already forgotten), and was (twice) passing over an incomplete composite Gale. If anyone would have the last of the unitary Gales, it would be User:Quercus solaris, and so it is. The same is true of HJS and rdsas well. Some bell rings are admittedly probably random, but some others seem moreon the nose.
I finally gave in to oldbitumen boy once I read that he'd beensummoned by bells, but I couldn't get out ofbottom gear with it tonight. I'll try again later.
I really should be in bed already, but he got me thinking about a dartboard round, so Ihad a go.
Some carpet pisser really pissed hurriedly onto the bell (or at least tried to aim for it), and no less than Mr ——— was standing by (in doubled force), which seemed interesting even though his cardinal urination instance was in a different building (whose plumbing may or may not be better; I ended up notchecking, justnarrowly). I almost caught someyeoman's work (in midstream clean-catch fashionno less), but I balked at the water damage without thinking twice and then the last moment was over. Sometimes it pays to think twice (but sometimes it doesn't); carpet pisserstake the piss at my expense because I don't know whether I should think twice or not unless I think twice to decide. But I do my best to keep learning to work the bin lids (and the toilet lidsas well); normies think it's easy because they can't even keep track anyway. That, too, is a needle groove.
I hereby apologize to any pissers who may have tried to take the piss but missed only because Inarrowly dodged the stream. (Which is different from trying totake a piss but failing because ofother narrowness.) At least I even consciously realized in retrospect what I'd sidestepped; and that's probably enough in this line of work (yeoman's work), which is almost to say that it'sclose enough for government work. (That onedials in atnearsyn.) Speaking of enough, this is.
Mark Vonnegut on parametrically defined identities:
2010,Mark Vonnegut,Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So: A Memoir, Random House, page54:
When I went to Harvard Medical School, some of my [softball] teammates jokingly asked if I’d have to change sides. I was and am anything but ashamed of getting into and going to Harvard, but I found myself shuffling and explaining unnecessarily that it was the only medical school that took me, which was true. It confuses people who didn’t go to Harvard when you try to avoid mentioning it or qualify it. And since you don’t have to do it with people who did go there, all the shucking and jiving you do has to be mostly for yourself. / The other day a patient told me that he had gotten into what was a very good college. “It’s not Harvard,” he said. “Harvard’s notHarvard either,” I answered.
2010,Mark Vonnegut,Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So: A Memoir, Random House, page57:
I got to be almost fourteen before I was diagnosed as having 20/300 vision. My mother asked why I hadn’t complained about things being blurry. “Blurry compared to what?”
2010,Mark Vonnegut,Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So: A Memoir, Random House, page116:
While I was still in the hospital I had to sign something about my disability insurance. “Too bad it doesn’t really insure against disability,” I thought.
Mark Vonnegut on various other things:
Really there are a bunch that are candidates for being here. Here is one that rang a little louder, at least when I happened to be nearby:
2010,Mark Vonnegut,Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So: A Memoir, Random House, page183:
The best parents are poor people who have a little bit of money and rich people who have had a little bit of poverty.
Cross-pollination
Vonnegut 2010:201 and Pullum 2024:144 both mention the theme that poor ability to spellstandardly shouldn't be held againsta body but probably will be anyway. I happened to read those pages both on the same day. Don't worry, I accept thatcoincidences areshite. I accept it but I note them anyway because I find them mildly amusing.
For people who would rather face a plague of locusts than permit an avoidable ambiguity, this is like having their underwear twisted. You may think we should say to such people, “Get a life.” By all means tell them that. I’m neither making these rules up nor trying to enforce them; my job in this book is to point out to you what seems to be the current state of the language and its speakers."
PS: Note to shelf: I knowdamn well that I ought to refrain from improving Wiktionary, buta slight hitch in thatgit-out is that doing so is entirely too useful to my own PKM. I also knowdamn well that I amfar from alone in this theme (i.e., the theme that incrementally improving WP, WT, and their relateds, onetidbit at a timehere or there hastily, serves one's own PKM purposes well enough that the notion of fully abandoning it feels annoying). Just imagine being sodim adimbulb that one could not even imagine feeling this feeling.
PS: Some weeks later: A funny thing about this one is that it is a rare example of when my degree of redaction thwarts even me (i.e., my own later self). I had to godig up the referent lol. Don't you justlove when that happens? What aturkey. Thepeacock–turkeycock axis is one thing, but theturkey–silly goose axis is another. Anyhow, all thisturkey talk is making me hungry. But all this soporific shit is making mesleepy too. Lastly, I'm also a bitthirsty, and tonight Idon't mind if I do.
This has been a special holiday edition of Bell rings, brought toyou byhandwave etc
PPS: You know what are some things that we tie ropes to. Nuff said?Frayed knot. Lol stfu ♥
PPPS: Lmao — if you loop the playback on this one, YT's algorithm serves you a PSA about seeking help for MDD. Lmao stfu YT ♥.You callthat MDD? Heh, mthrfking amateurs. Go put on your asbestos, visor, and respirator and then get back to me.
PPPPS: Having sampled various performances, and having doomlooped the album version for a higher count of continuous cycle repetitions than any non-PPE'd operator ever voluntarily would, I have reached several interesting conclusions: (1) although I appreciate all the performances, the album version is my favorite, for a neuromodulatory reason tied into the following one: (2) as a piece of art, it isfucking perfect. The whole thought train on that point involves genre considerations and also the removal of them (including assertions and counterassertions), extending even into the very heart of the distinction ofas a piece of art versus otherwise. The bottom line is that this is a special object.
You know what they say about carpets:Stanley Steemer gets carpets cleaner. An old tan 60/120 had something to say about the Stanleys and their steamers recently (as well as Locomobile), and a somewhat less tan 30/120 had something to say about mock-annoyance. Speaking of loco (what have you heard?), the carpet pissers also mentioned some thingsin loco parentis recently.
PS:chainfall operation is parametrized rope-pulling.
2010,Neal Stephenson, “Atoms of cognition: metaphysics in the Royal Society, 1715–2010”, inBill Bryson, editor,Seeing Further: The Story of Science and the Royal Society, Mariner Books,→ISBN, page62:
He [Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz] corresponded so heavily that scholars are still sorting through his unpublished papers. In his philosophy he practised anecumenicism that in a lesser mind would strike us as suspicious or even craven. Leibniz seems never to have met a philosopher or a theologian he didn’t like, and his metaphysics developed out of an effort to harmonise the ancient thinking of (both) Plato and Aristotle with tenets of Christian and Jewish theology and with the ‘mechanical philosophy’ the Royal Society had been created to champion. It is impossible to know precisely what he was thinking without perusing his vast legacy of papers. In effect, Leibniz’s philosophy ceased to exist at the moment he died. Since then, anyone who has wanted to know it has first had to reconstruct it, which is only possible for forensically inclined scholars, fluent in Latin, French and German, and well versed in the history of Western philosophy, Christian theology and Enlightenment science.
No time really to scribble this here, but just a sketch for now.
Skimming Rhodes 2007 [1995],How to Write. Planning on probably not reading the whole thing, but keep running into bell rings while skimming, so I haven't stopped yet. First there was the fact that he touched on bothmap–territory relations ("maps always simplify") andtime-binding ("books know no hierarchy and abolish space and time" through to "three thousand years") on the first 2 pages, which made me sit up and take notice, in a random "there-is-mathematical-proof-that-coincidences-mean-nothing-anyway" kind of way. I know it means nothing and I'm not hung up on general semantics per se, but I get a kick out of a passing coincidence when I see one. As already established elsewhere herein, humans shouldn't start things that they can't finish along the lines of "nothing-your-attention-was-idly-caught-by-actually-matters"-type things. As we move through Luis W. Alvarez'snight shift work on page 16, the bell is ringing some more. What's being talked about here isn't different·*·†·‡ from my Cornish friend's shifts underground, which are always night shifts in the respect that it's always dark down the shaft.
There was an interesting bell ring with Pace concerning blueprints (same day, after I'd already invoked them independently), but I'm a bit annoyed with him because (1) I think he whiffed it regarding brief introductory exposition and (2) someone in his academic field (of all people) has no good-enough excuse for whiffing it to quite such a degree.
PPS: Old no-eyes snickers:you callthatfast? Box cat would like to remind you that you canoutfasteveryone when you try. Please promise you'll try, or at least try to try.
Wholly unrelated to my minor sensewise cot-to-syn augmentation in the mainspace earlier today (halfpennyworth,pennyworth,tuppence worth), but oddly happening on the same day (because that's how bell rings work), Bell just brought up with me the fact that somepennyworths areworthier than others. "Never had there been such a pennyworth," he said, of a performance from a jukebox that, for the circumstances, time of day, and present company (that's 3 parameters), was tooloud and took too long toshut up. While speaking of the machine he naturally didn't call it ajukebox, as no one yet did at that time. It wasn't aNickelodeon, either, but it was a box that played recorded music for coins. In the time and place under discussion (that's 2 parameters), it cost apenny.
Watching a squirrel in one of her energetic sessions of midmorning physical activity, I see that she provides an exemplar of, and a lesson in, maintainingcarefulness without twisting the parametric dial intofearfulness. She knows how to docalisthenics andacrobatics without falling, and she makes it lookeffortless. The reason she's so impressive when she's in this mode (which is her parametric flavor ofbeast mode, as she's a squirrelly littlebeast) is that you don't see herpausing torecalculate orjudge orthink orrethink, to take just a moment before proceeding. Squirrels are people too, in their squirrelly way. Other examples of people who are talented regardingcarefulness withoutfearfulness includesurgeons andpilots. I think probably most of us are OK about it at least within our own spheres (e.g., vocations, avocations), but we can be impressed and envious when we see someone else doing it in a sphere where we ourselves definitely aren't skilled and experienced and perhaps aren't talented either (or at least definitely aren'tas talented). At any rate, the squirrel out my window doesn't realize that she has asports fan watching who appreciatively considers her a star athlete. Her footprint in the snow is anautograph, for now, until it disappears.
Five to noon isnoonish, a "cot: syn-ish" instanceon the dial, and garage cat wears a bell on her collar. When I heard her, I checked the sync, because I didn't get where I am by not checking syncs on things. 11:55, just as she said. Time to try.
PPS: Somethemes are more widelyinstantiable and more practically significant than others. Which is to say, some themes arethemer than others, much as some tree branches arelimber than others.·🍒 The juiciness of the productivityemerges upon analysis, and analysis can thenstand back andsavor the synthesis (asholism makes the wheels go round). Themycelium that my brain is sniffing at here (like a good hog sniffs at a prize truffle) is not a different object from theunderlying reason why all crustaceans,it is said, lean towardbecoming eventually increasingly crablike. The fact that my gut can sense thisidentity indirectly is interesting, as is themycology of the gut, or that of plants (mycorrhizal,mycelial,endophytic, and otherwise). The largest organisms on earth,it is said, are mycelial fungi, and more specifically,certain ones that are even mycelier than others. And mycorrhizae can behard to kill, for the same reason that an extensive undergrounddumpster fire (e.g.) is hard tosnuff (not speaking of sniffing, although seeming to, and its presencecan be smelled,it is said, depending on precisely where and when one's nose happens to be): the flame greedily persists in exploring a burning coal vein wherever it leads, which is notentirely different froma bronchial tree cast (asboiling off some parameters isn't the same as boiling them all off, althoughthe more one boils, the differenter something becomes, even as it simultaneously becomes samer with others). This is interesting because although on one level it is quite false thateverything just is what it is, on another (higher) (parametric) level, it isthe very truest kind of true. (Andafter all, the mostincomparable kind ofincomparability is thenondichotomous kind, which becomes less senseless when viewed from a next-higher parametric level. Tryflipping those channels back and forth and see what you can see.) But the great difference (which low-level thinking is oblivious to) is that some things are thinger than others, whereas those others arethingier. The challenge is climbing through the branches without being totally oblivious to the ramifications of each tree, although it is true that a mycorrhizal being is not always interested in, nor essentially defined by, the differentiated identities of its constituent parts (just as a tree squirrel doesn't always care which tree's branch he is on from moment to moment, and whether it is the same tree as the branch next to him that he just jumped off of;different tree, same canopy).
PPPS: Is it possible to speak ofa thing that should not be (albeitunspeakable) if it is the truest truth that on an ultimately parametric level everything (the thingest thing) just is what it is? You'd have to ask a philosopher, someone much morephilosopher than I, a mere mushroom hunter. Perhaps it depends on what the meaning ofshould is, or what the meaning ofisis (or shouldbe). As for me,I have trouble thinking in 4D, but it seemsmotionless to me, so far as I can tell so far.
A recapitulation flavor: when someone has misunderstood the true nature of something, there is more to say, asdisabusal; and when someone has understood the true nature of something, there is nothing more to say, as what has been said is enough.
Update some days later: The sun was nice. Some 390s maytop out at 130, but this particular 390tapped out at626, which isa sedate enough number, in a sedany way. I know that there is some morejuice in those veins, but the type of tap that I was using tapped out, and I'm satiated until I might think of another hook, which may be never (unless some hook or other brings me back, which hookstend to do reliably).
On the same day: a chance to buy a vintage slide rule without the instructions, and later, a chance to buy a vintage set of slide rule instructions without the slide rule.
This is why I love the bell game. Time to go meet up with a rope-puller.
PS: I didn't buy either one, because not every ring that I can hear is for me.
PPS: Other rings today: 1946 to backstop 1976; the dartboard yieldsbioplastic polysemy. (Thedartboard isn't a ouija board, despite what some may have heard. Parameters on parameters.)
"Emerson loved the good more than he abhorred evil. Carlyle abhorred evil more than he loved the good. If you should by chance find anything in this book you do not especially like, it is not at all wise to focus your memory on that, to the exclusion of all else—bless my soul!"
Even though I recognize that the following one isplatitudinous, I kind of needed it at the moment anyway, so I consider it excused.
"Genius is only the power of making continuous efforts. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success. As the tide goes clear out, so it comes clear in. In business, sometimes, prospects may seem darkest when really they are on the turn. A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose."
PS: We won't make too much of it, though, as extremefetishization ofcarrying the message to Garcia can lead to parameter derangement of the types involving setting people up to fail and then blamingthem for the failure, irrationally expecting adeus ex machina in real life,the ends justifying the means,plausible deniability ofatrocities (in the civilian-control-of-the-military domain), and so on. On the other hand, there are appropriate places in life for the theme ofmake it happen/do your job, for basic-ass aspects, as anyone will have recognized when they've had to teach someone how to wipe their own ass (e.g., GIYF for basic-ass prerequisite how-to [end-user kindergarten, reboot the fucking computer, file management]; RTFM for domain-specific facts [Y kant u reed]; etc). As with many parametric environments in life, there are appropriate parameter values and then there are deranged ones.
chain-yanking is parametrized rope-pulling; dual-use?
Later: In this model, chain-yanking is either synonymous with or coordinate to dartboarding, depending on who is slicing thesalami and how far up the tree they've climbed (for lookdown purposes). Deciding how much to explain herein is likewise acharcuterie-slicing exercise, but one must at least serve oneself (before serving others), and tip-of-the-tongue is not my favorite cut.
Classifiability of orders of magnitude of bullshitting
the gist mill encounters parametric collapse by virtue of its shaker tables' separative action: the odd-size stones are gone and the ones that remain are all similar in size;
so it is that machines and drudges can collapse to unity upon downshifting of parametric levels
After this population had risen to many dozens, it occurred to me to start a list, for my own amusement and that of the rude bell-ringers whose racket I enjoy.
I will finish gathering more of them later. Below is a start. Some who often acted in concert are listed here in concert.
There may be one or two who are duly credited at their quote but who I do not care to honor separately here: thisspot is mine, and certain jerks aren't invited.
As for what the meanings or importances of this list's population are: It's not about my having read deeply from any particular one of these authors, although I have read deeply from a few of them. Rather, it is about two spheres of relevance: (1) bibliographic quality and variety of Wiktionary citation populations, and (2) urinary shenanigans and carpet cleaning, in variousnonurinary,carpetless ways.
Besides the ones entered so far below, there have been dozens of others too, and their addition here is forthcoming, ifthe spirit moves me; but whether and how much Igive a shit is subject to fluctuations, tho.
Steve Almond (born 1966), American short-story writer, essayist, and book author
John Ash (c. 1724-1779), English Baptist minister and dictionary author
Bill Bryson (born 1951), American-British author and science popularizer
Jesse Buel (1778-1839), American newspaper publisher, agricultural reformer, and politician
James Burke (born 1936), British broadcaster, science historian, and author
Nicole Chung (born 1981), American writer and editor
John Younger (1785-1860), Scottish shoemaker, angler, and author
Carl Zimmer (born 1966), American popular science writer, blogger, columnist, and journalist
Various other interesting authors whose quotes I have cited in Wiktionary and who do not (yet) have Wikipedia articles (nonexhaustive list):
David Brandon (born 20th c, fl 21st c), [British author ofThe General Strike 1926 and others]
Edward MacNeal (born 1925), American manager, consultant, science popularizer, and author
Various other interesting authors whose quotes I haven't yet cited in Wiktionary, who have Wikipedia articles, and who I really ought to add representation of in Wiktionary (nonexhaustive list):
John Allen Paulos (born 1945), American mathematician, educator, science popularizer, and author
1 It doesn't matter that I'm parametrically removed by degrees: I have a Cornish friend who sees to that. 2 Lol all-y'all's loss, notmine — it can't be: there's a file not found where I was supposed to be. Lol else goto 2.
More than once I have been combing over the list of senses of a polysemous word (usually while down the shaft, on my way to a destination regarding some parametric details) and I spot one that is a parametric counterpart to another in a way approaching or crossing a diametric pole, and an eyeless alert goes off: latent contronymy, that is, an instance of contronymy that gets little attention from most humans — a degree insufficient from some viewpoints (in aviewless way). I really ought to start scribbling the instances here when I encounter them, because I find that I can't remember them lateroff the top of my head. I know that it has happened at least two or three times. Even if it has been only two or three (not more), it would be worth having an index here. How many times in daily life do we fail to index something because we don't have any relevant (i.e., the right sort of) index cards (as it were) rightat hand, rightat our fingertips? Indexing gets easier the more index cards one has, and the more one can rapidly index them (meta-indexing?).
PS: word senses creep over ages, and blah blah blah things tend to carry the seeds of their own destruction blah blah handwave yawn
It isnearly contronymic in its senses of (1) "security from damage, loss, or penalty" versus (2) "an obligation or duty upon an individual to incur the losses of another"; this wire-crossing occurs because of an instance of the theme (a recurring theme in linguistics) that "it depends on who is the referent among a pair of involved parties (e.g.,doer versusdoee,agent versuspatient, insurer versus insured). This particular instance is completely unsurprising from the viewpoint of being aware of the general phenomenon of whichausleihen andleihen (regarding lender versus borrower) is an example.
one that probably ought tomake the cut, but I won't tag it for now
terre-tenant seems to span the same range as do the lessee–lessor axis and the renter–landlord axis.
the ancient tension: when it comes to property, the relationship betweento have and to hold andto own has certain predictable vibrations. Thus aphorisms such as "possession is nine-tenths of the law".
outwear would come close to counting here, with senses of "outlast" and "wear out", but it has a few problems:
Its "wear out" sense is borderlinecatachresis-only in nature: the idea that it ever isn't a catachresis is dubious in my dialect, and also in others as far as I'm aware.
The "outlast" and "wear out" pair is notquite the same as a full-180° pair of "bedurable" and "beundurable", although it is close (in the neighborhood).
unravel·📅 — it makes the grade here,per this diff; to unravel is either to solve a problem or to create one, to fix something or to break it, contextually.
Taking something apart, or somethingcoming apart,(since I was young handwave etc) is either a good thing or a bad thing, inversely according to whether said thing itself is either bad or good (which is to say, judged to be bad or good, from a viewpoint, within a context).
Aren't you glad that I unraveled this puzzle so as to keep our equanimity from unraveling? Lol
Of all the things to beoblivious to, theobvious ones are not the best ones.
specifically offers an instance of this theme, but I will let that instance lie for now (more later perhaps; or perhaps not).
toe the lineflirts withcontronymy without quite slipping into it: one sense (the main one) focuses on the outcome of staying within the line whereas another sense (a less established one) focuses on teetering and wobbling upon it and awaiting the outcome (→)
Update, a few days later: wellI'll be: it just occurred to me to (idly) check whether or not the entry is categorized underEnglish contranyms, and yes, it already is, which is to say, it already has been by someone other than me. I suppose that my assessment of "not quite" could be retracted, but no, I stand by it (because both senses involve not crossing the line), and yet I'm not going to decategorize it either, because life is full of duality and interrater indeterminacy and if that category includes heavy flirtation as well as dead-center hits then all the better for the use cases of most people (and/or machines, and/or nonmachines who are somewhat more machine than others) who consult it.
Gaslighting in a way that pretends that the recipient's reaction is unwarranted because they need totouch grass.
Stopgrasslighting me — I'm not a shut-in; you were just being a jerk.
Gaslighting in a way that pretends that the recipient's reaction is unwarranted because they must behigh, or in a way that pretends that the recipient did something that they didn't do but that they misremember because they were high when they did it.
Stopgrasslighting me — I haven't been high in weeks and I wasn't even at the party that you're talking about.
Gaslighting in a way that pretends that the recipient is mistaken in believing that the gaslighter was smoking grass, despite clear evidence that they were.
Stopgrasslighting me — it reeks in here and I've seen the bong that you think is so well hidden.
Twas mere weeks ago thatceiled/ceilinged brushed my notice, which is to say, my hair brushed against that ceiling, or I brushed my hair against that ceiling. One may brush one's hair and one maybrush one's teeth; brushes are multiform and manifold. My head hit that ceiling; I hit my head on that ceiling; I hit myself in the head with that ceiling.
seriously tho, I skimmed an article recently that offered a glimmer of hope about PFAS remediation outlook. But still tho: it was only one of those dime-a-dozen science-churnalism puff pieces, IIRC:If these trends continue, youmight even see practical applications of this research in your lifetime!. Lolyou'd better get yəɹ hopes up 💀
PS:Earth is yourforever home, so be more careful where you put thoseforever chemicals, and why. Spoiler: I absolutelyguarantee you that you'renever moving to Mars,ever, and neither are your children's children's children. There'll be a handful of assholes that try, and it won't go well, andyour ass won't be one of them, and neither will your spawn. Sosettle down andsettle in, and stop shitting in the well that you drink from. How'sthat for how to besmart?
Various contributors to Wiktionary have one (i.e., an essay on this topic). Here will be yet another. It's likethey say: Opinions are like arseholes: everyone's got one, but no one has the right to force anyone else to kiss theirs or wallow in it.
In fact mine might be an array that gets developed over time: under this plan, each building lot will have its own structure under construction, with a blueprint in mind guiding that flavor. The various structures on several land lots will share some common features, such as the same model of bathroom countertops and so on. TBD.
Right off the bat I'll start dumping some themes on the ground to be picked up and cut to size and installed later. This is still just a construction site so far.
A large and important class of examples: in medicine, the established names of disease entities and their types and subtypes. And their established synonyms (including deprecated ones). All the major medical dictionaries include such terms, as well they should. Whether each such term is an open compound or not is a triviality in that context and thus has not the slightest to do with inclusion or exclusion criteria.
For Wiktionary to refuse to do that for some large percentage of them because they're "not idiomaticenough" to count asidioms per se [which is defined as being not etymonically parsable] is not inherently an invalid choice, but it is a choice. The alternative is not inherently wrong either.
This is why those who defend that choice should not try to defend it with the flawed argument that "that's what a dictionaryis, as opposed to an encyclopedia." No, that isone model or version of what a dictionary is. It's a choice, no more nor less.
It is a choice that can be appropriate for a general-purpose dictionary, because otherwise such a dictionary could be formidably vast, and in the days of print-only, that mattered a lot. Regardless of era (now versus past), it represents a conspicuous/objectionable failure for any technical dictionary that aims to be adequate. As for general dictionaries, a question for an online general dictionary in the 21st century is why being vast is necessarily a problem per se. I argue that it is not.
I sometimes suspect that people who think that that argument is convincing or sound are ones who have never actually usedscientific and technical dictionaries of English heavily; they don't even realize that not all dictionaries follow the model that they assume is the only one for dictionaries.
Also, the same people are often ignorant of which open compound nouns are indisputably semantic nodes in a given field, anyway, so you'll see them discussing them as if they were nothing more than SoP per se, tossing around their arguments about the details trying to convince others, while meanwhile others who see the arguments can be thinking to themselves, "it's not a question, dude, it's just a fact in that field."
For people who are annoyed with Wiktionary's current stance (i.e., whatever its precise current stance happens to be at any given moment over the years, perWiktionary:SOP andWiktionary:Idioms that survived RFD), it is important to remember that Wiktionary is but an instantiation of a theme, and there's no law against other instantiations existing if other people are willing to do the work of building them. Perhaps think of Wiktionary as a burger joint: for times when you don't want burgers, you're free to go to another restaurant; and you can even establish one of your own to serve that need (although of course establishing a restaurant is not trivial, so you have to want it). And you can still go to Wiktionary too, whenever you feel like a nice burger. Neither option is wrong.
Further on this same line of thought: Wiktionary will remain quite useful and valuable even if it is somewhat hobbled regarding this particular aspect (among many aspects). Wiktionary will continue to show other dictionaries examples of gaps in their own lexicographic coverage that they ought to fill. Wiktionary will continue to show many examples of what can be achieved at Wiktionary or a place like it — regardless of whether most humans don't bother to help build such things.
Wiktionary at least allows fortranslation hub entries, which is a saving grace that might keep it from being too silly (by allowing for recognizing at least the semantic node station, per se, of certain open compound nouns that are semantic nodes/ontologic nodes that would otherwise be barred from Wiktionary).^ But the threshold levels set for THub CFI may preclude a lot of them, though, if they're quite strict.
I've decided not to worry or care about scrutinizing those threshold levels, because of the burger-joint point. Thus, I realize that there are many scientific and technical terms (including many that are commonly used in any given field) that Wiktionary will simply never enter, under anything like its current CFI regarding SoPness. There's no sense feeling bad about that fact or trying to change it. As Merriam-Webster says, "[…] no dictionary of English, however good it may be, can provide all of the information about the English language that one might wish to have at one time or another."[13] Their main point in that discussion is that things such as whole-clause intonation and word order will never be properly and wholly covered by a dictionary. But their point also applies even to lexical inclusion criteria as well. And for that aspect, one wants multiple dictionaries of various kinds: e.g., general, science, chemistry, physics, biology, medical, engineering, military, abbreviations, abbreviations within a certain field, idioms, biography, geography, reverse, visual; thematically indexed thesauri, alphabetic thesauri, nondiscriminating thesauri, discriminating thesauri.
So if you need a competent medical dictionary (for example), justpony up for MW Medical or Stedman's or Dorland's or Taber's. If you think that one like those should be free to end-users, you can try building one, using MediaWiki; but just keep in mind that there's a reason why such things aren't free — someone (in fact a team of someones) has to spend a lot of time building it and keeping it updated over time. Also, the average person on the average occasion just needs a plate or two of nice food, which they are looking to be served without their having to go gather the ingredients themselves and do the cooking and do the dishes themselves. There's a reason why restaurants are not things that everyone creates. (And the ones whodo establish and maintain them need to amortize the expense by serving many customers one plate at a time, times many times.) Nonetheless, a variety of restaurants (rather than solely one) is necessary too.
A reminder: consciously reassess the countability parameter when backfilling missing senses of nouns; ~ tilde ± {{lb|en|uncountable|countable}}
linksto:FOO insource:/\BAR/
… which (when necessary) can be narrowed by …
linksto:FOO insource:/\id=BAR/
linksto:FOO insource:/\id:BAR/
linksto:FOO insource:/\:_BAR/
linksto:FOO insource:/\: BAR/
… and search also within FOO source itself for … senseno
# {{senseid|en|internet}} {{lb|en|internet}} →{{l|en|foo|id=internet}} →{{l|en|foo<id:internet>|foo}} — this markup does not work →{{l|en|foo#English:_internet}} — this markup works fine, but some users prefer the first above; thus, from now on, I plan to use that instead (thus achieving preemptive placation) →[[foo#English:_internet|foo]] — for id-specific links whenl orm are not used →[[foo<id:internet>|foo]] — this markup does not work →#: {{cot|en|foo|id1=internet|bar|id2=internet}} — this markup works correctly →#: {{cot|en|foo<id:internet>|bar<id:internet>}} — this markup works correctly and is arguably cleaner than the alternative (above) because revision of a list of such items does not require manual renumbering (and is less likely to be corrupted by anyone's sloppy failure to carry out the manual renumbering when they revise an entry [e.g., add to a list]) →{{ws|en|[[foo#English:_internet|foo]]}} — this markup works correctly →{{ws|en|foo<id:internet>}} — this markup does not work correctly but would be nice if it did because it would be slightly cleaner than the alternative above
Options for link target precision at WP include (1) [[Foo#Section]] (which resolves to Foo § Section, because any heading element gets its own anchorautomagically) and (2) putting {{anchor|Bar}} inside the wikitext at the desired spot, which a link written as [[Foo#Bar]] will resolve to. Thus, you can link from WT to WP using (1) [[w:Foo#Section]] or (2) [[w:Foo#Bar]] if you create the anchor inside the WP page.
{{q|blah}} — not to be confused with #: {{lb|en|blah}}; postpositive; optimal versus ''(blah)''; q→qualifier. Relatedly: Use {{tl|gl}} for glosses that define; but synonyms are synonyms, not glosses, so do not use parens for them at all (rather, either commas or bullets).
{{etymid|en|foobar}} (link to that id instead of to [[foo#Etymology_3|foo]] (definitely) and perhaps also instead of to [[foo#Noun_3|foo]] [for the same reason, a species of link rot]; regarding the latter "perhaps" notion, also recall that linking to senseid is powerful [so remember to consider doing that instead; it is the optimal solution (and one can ensure that no etymid and senseid within the same page have the selfsame value), although I don't do it always/in every case when linking to existing targets, because retroactively improving the target requires a detour away from what one is doing in the given moment])
#: {{syn|en|}}
#: {{nearsyn|en|}}
#: {{ant|en|}}
#: {{hyper|en|}}
#: {{hypo|en|}}
#: {{mer|en|}}
#: {{hol|en|}}
#: {{troponyms|en|}}
#: {{cot|en|}}
UPDATE—Don't do this; just use H3 H4 etc with prefatory "sense" labels. Was: #: ''Derived terms:'' {{l|en|}} [dual etym/semantic connection; sensewise only when thesemantic connection is sense-dependent (but "hypo" often applies in such cases) (e.g., elision → code elision)]
UPDATE—Don't do this; just use H3 H4 etc with prefatory "sense" labels. Was: #: ''Related terms:'' {{l|en|}} [dual etym/semantic connection; sensewise only when thesemantic connection is sense-dependent (cognitively adjacent to why many people have perennially forgotten Wikt's precise distinction between "related" and "see also" [it is easy to conflate when being hasty])]
#: {{hol|en|}}
#: {{mer|en|}}
#: {{troponyms|en|}}
UPDATE—Don't do this; just use H3 H4 etc with prefatory "sense" labels. Was: #: ''See also:'' {{l|en|}} [only when thesemantic connection is sense-dependent (but "cot" often suffices in such cases) (e.g., elision → contraction)]
===Etymology=== , from {{confix|en|||}}. From {{w|international scientific vocabulary}}, reflecting New Latin {{w|classical compound|combining forms}}: {{confix|en|}}. From {{w|international scientific vocabulary}}, reflecting a New Latin {{w|classical compound|combining form}}, from ANCIENTlexeme; more at {{m|en|ANCIENTlexeme#Etymology|ANCIENTlexeme § Etymology}}.
===Pronunciation=== * {{IPA|en|ˈSTɹESSEDˌunstɹessed|,|-ALT|a=GA<!--omit if nonspecific in the instance-->}} * {{IPA|en|ˈˌ|,|-ALT|a=GA<!--omit if nonspecific in the instance-->}} a———e———i———o———u ā———ē———ī———ō———ū eɪ——i———aɪ——oʊ——u eɪ——iː———aɪ——oʊ——uː ————————————————ju ă———ĕ———ĭ———ŏ———ŭ æ———ɛ———ɪ———ɒ———ʊ ————————————————ʌ ————————————————ə ————————————————ɨ
^Musser, George (19 March 2024), “A Truly Intelligent Machine.[Online title and tagline: "Building Intelligent Machines Helps Us Learn How Our Brain Works. Designing machines to think like humans provides insight into intelligence itself"]”, inScientific American[1], volume330, number 4,→DOI, archived fromthe original on11 April 2024, pages31-36
^Twain, Mark (1906), “William Dean Howells”, inHarper's Monthly Magazine[2], volume113, number674, page221
^Rye, Walter (1895),A Glossary of Words Used in East Anglia, Founded on That of Forby, With Numerous Corrections and Additions[3], London: English Dialect Society
^Wilkins, Alex (15 June 2024), “Confusion over what 'equals' means”, inNew Scientist[Kindle edition]
^Jennings, Rebecca (7 February 2024), “Against trendbait: TikTok has seen a bizarre (and annoying) explosion of language as creators rush to coin terms. (Earlier headline: Tiktok is full of tryhard slang)”, inVox[4], retrieved7 February 2024
^Murtagh, Jack (2024-01-18), “Math Explains Why Your Friends Are More Popular Than You”, inScientific American,→DOI
^Alcorn, Ted (2 April 2024), “[On machine perfusion advances in clinical practice]”, inNew York Times[5], retrieved2 April 2024
^Hoel, Erik (29 March 2024), “A.I.-Generated Garbage Is Polluting Our Culture.[Opinion: Guest Essay]”, inNew York Times[6], retrieved29 March 2024
Done
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