Turbines have been around for a long time—windmills and water wheels are early examples. The name comes from the Latinturbo, meaningvortex, and thus the defining property of a turbine is that a fluid or gas turns the blades of a rotor, which is attached to a shaft thatcan perform useful work.
The most rapid and most seductive transition in all human nature is that which attends the palliation of a ravenous appetite.[…]Can those harmless but refined fellow-diners be the selfish cads whose gluttony and personal appearance so raised your contemptuous wrath on your arrival?
2009, Annette Sym,Simply Too Good to be True, Greenleaf Book Group,→ISBN, page 4:
2011 November 29, Tai-hoon Kim, Hojjat Adeli, Carlos Ramos, Byeong-Ho Kang,Signal Processing, Image Processing and Pattern Recognition: International Conferences, SIP 2011, Held as Part of the Future Generation Information Technology Conference, FGIT 2011, in Conjunction with GDC 2011, Jeju Island, Korea, December 8-10, 2011. Proceedings, Springer Science & Business Media,→ISBN, page114:
Importance of Identifying Leaf: Identify Plants: If wecan able to identify leaf, wecan easily able to identify plants.
2018 February 15, Asha Bajpai,Child Rights in India: Law, Policy, and Practice, Oxford University Press,→ISBN:
Children in need of care and protectioncan allowed to be placed in foster care based on the orders of the CWC. The selection of the foster family is based on the family's ability, intent, capacity, and prior experience of taking care[…]
2020 May 22, Pardeep Kumar, Vasaki Ponnusamy, Vishal Jain,Industrial Internet of Things and Cyber-Physical Systems: Transforming the Conventional to Digital: Transforming the Conventional to Digital, IGI Global,→ISBN, page226:
Itcan possible to design the ruleset refreshes that allow them to subsequently run at precise interludes and these keep informed.
(Manglish,Singlish,auxiliary or intransitive) To be able to or know how to (do something);an accompanying verb is not required if it is already inferable from context.
Canliao, don’t need to use so much glue. ―That’s enough glue already.
2015 September 5, Derrick Ho, Chew Hui Min, Lee Min Kok, Shea Driscoll, Nilanjana Sengupta, Melissa Heng, Ong Hwee Hwee, quotingLee Hsien Loong, “GE2015: 5 things about the third night of rallies on Sept 4”, inThe Straits Times:
We have been doing this for 50 years, we have shown you what we can do. If I saycan, meanscan.[…]
2021 August 5, Zat Astha, “The Lessons We’re Still Learning Too Slowly About Mental Health and Suicide”, inricemedia.co[1], archived fromthe original on11 December 2024:
It’s further exacerbated by well-intentioned but misguided relatives who say, “you’re from School X,can one lah”, or worse, those who associate the very identity of being a student in an elite academy into a label analogous with expectations of high achievements.
2024 June 10, Kimberly Lim, “What’s With Singapore’s Surge in Self-Proclaimed Life Coaches?”, inricemedia.co[2], archived fromthe original on19 September 2024:
When controversial KOL Sylvia Chan resurfaced in March as a life coach, the general online sentiment was, “Huh,can meh?”
For a missing form, substitute the appropriate inflected form ofbe able to, as:
I might be able to go.
(present perfect)I have been able to go, since I was seven.
(past perfect)I had been able to go before.
(future)I will be able to go tomorrow.
For the simpleconditional mood orpast tense, the auxiliary verbcould is commonly used (context usually makes it clear whether conditional or past is intended):
(conditional)I could go if it weren't raining is equivalent toI would be able to go if it weren't raining.
(past)When I was younger, I could go for miles is equivalent toWhen I was younger, I was able to go for miles.
The present tense negativecan not is usually contracted tocannot (more formal) orcan’t (less formal).
The use ofcan in asking permission is sometimes criticized as being impolite or incorrect by those who favour the more formal alternative“may I...?”.
Mandarin:會 /会(zh)(huì),能(zh)(néng),(the ability/inability to achieve a result is expressed with various verb complements, e.g.得了(zh)(-deliǎo)/不了(zh)(-buliǎo)),能夠 /能够(zh)(nénggòu)
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions atWiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
1989,Eleanor Wong,Jackson on a Jaunt, or, Mistaken Identities, page 8, lines1–3:
Can you go collect themor not? The shop is at Jalan Sultan. I’m not free, otherwise I’ll do it myself.Can?
2020 June 29, Poh Yong Han, “A Regular Singaporean’s Guide To Each Party’s Vision For The Economy”, inricemedia.co[3], archived fromthe original on23 May 2024:
It feels like a cheap gimmick to attract environmentalist types, when I don’t see any concrete policies to address that. If you don’t care, then don’t pretend to careleh. If you care, then make sure you got details to back you up,can?
VVhen the vulgar ſort / Sit on their Ale-bench, vvith their cups andkannes, / Matters of ſtate be not their common talke, / Nor pure religion by their lips prophande.
1970, California. Supreme Court,Reports of Cases Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of California:
[…] prosecution for selling and giving away marijuana, the evidence clearly constituted substantial proof that a package purchased by defendant contained marijuana where he requested "fourcans" of marijuana to be delivered to himself and[…]
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions atWiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Hecanned the whole project because he thought it would fail.
2020 December 2, Paul Bigland, “My weirdest and wackiest Rover yet”, inRail, pages67–68:
My next stop is Oxford, which has also grown with the addition of new platforms to accommodate the Chiltern Railways service to London viaBicester - although, short sightedly, the planned electrification from Paddington wascanned. Evidence of the volte-face can be seen along the line at places such asRadley, where mast piles are already sunk or lie discarded at the lineside.
2022 November 25, B. Cost, “Man wins legal right to be 'boring' at work, gets $3K from company”, inNew York Post[5], NYP Holdings, retrieved27 November 2022:
As a result of his refusal, the employee was subsequentlycanned in 2015 on the basis of "professional inadequacy" and failing to embody the "party" atmosphere that the consultancy was trying to cultivate.
Loren F. Bliese (1981),A Generative Grammar of Afar[6], Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and University of Texas at Arlington (doctoral thesis).
E. M. Parker; R. J. Hayward (1985), “can”, inAn Afar-English-French dictionary (with Grammatical Notes in English), University of London,→ISBN
Mohamed Hassan Kamil (2015),L’afar: description grammaticale d’une langue couchitique (Djibouti, Erythrée et Ethiopie)[7], Paris: Université Sorbonne Paris Cité (doctoral thesis)
2015 [2014], Will Collins, translated by Proinsias Mac a' Bhaird, edited by Maura McHugh,Amhrán na Mara (fiction; paperback), Kilkenny, County Kilkenny; Howth, Dublin: Cartoon Saloon; Coiscéim, translation ofSong of the Sea (in English),→ISBN, page 1:
Thuas i dteach an tsolais, faoi réaltaí geala,canann Bronach Amhrán na Mara dá mac Ben atá cúig bliana d'aois.
[original:Up in the lighthouse, under twinkling stars, Bronachsings the Song of the Sea to her five-year-old son, Ben.]
Transcriptions of Mandarin into the Latin script often do not distinguish between the criticaltonal differences employed in the Mandarin language, using words such as this one without indication of tone.
Barreiro, Xavier Varela; Guinovart, Xavier Gómez (2006–2018), “can”, inCorpus Xelmírez: corpus lingüístico da Galicia medieval [Corpus Xelmírez: linguistic corpus of Medieval Galicia] (in Galician), Santiago de Compostela:Instituto da Lingua Galega
Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2020–2026), “cão”, inVocabulário histórico-cronológico do português medieval [Historical and chronological vocabulary of Medieval Portuguese] (in Portuguese), Rio de Janeiro:Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa
Ferreiro, Manuel (2014–2026), “can”, inUniverso Cantigas: edición crítica da poesía medieval galego-portuguesa [Universo Cantigas: critical edition of Galician-Portuguese medieval poetry] (in Galician), A Coruña:University of A Coruña,→ISSN
In most dialects of Scottish Gaelic still spoken, with the notable exception of Islay, the future and conditional tenses and the imperative form are very often used for the verbabair in place of the actualabair forms, particularly in colloquial language; theabair forms are recognised but considered Biblical or excessively formal. Some northern dialects, such as Skye and Lewis, extend this to verbal noun forms derived fromcan, such ascantainn andcanail.
Lương Bèn (2011),Từ điển Tày-Việt [Tay-Vietnamese dictionary][9][10] (in Vietnamese), Thái Nguyên: Nhà Xuất bản Đại học Thái Nguyên
Dương Nhật Thanh; Hoàng Tuấn Nam (2003), Hoàng Triều Ân, editor,Từ điển chữ Nôm Tày [A Dictionary of (chữ) Nôm Tày][11] (in Tày and Vietnamese), Hanoi: Nhà xuất bản Khoa học xã hội [Social Sciences Publishing House]
R. J. Thomas, G. A. Bevan, P. J. Donovan, A. Hawke,et al., editors (1950–present), “can”, inGeiriadur Prifysgol Cymru Online (in Welsh), University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh & Celtic Studies
