Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 January 12

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January 12

Definition of OP

OP is often use for query is fully mean Opt. What does op for query use for questions stand for and mean?--69.226.34.161 (talk) 01:32, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

"Original Poster", the one who posted the question originally. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:51, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

For more terminology used in Wikipedia discussions, see Wikipedia:Glossary. -- Wavelength (talk) 01:56, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

This question seems to turn up frequently. Should it be kept on the ref desk pages permanently somehow? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:01, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I think so. OP is unfortunate jargon, and confusing, especially for non-chat-forum people, meaning 95% of Earth, probably. Comet Tuttle (talk) 05:49, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I thought is stood for 'obtusely placated' --KageTora - (影虎) (Talk?) 14:43, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I think of it more like this. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:03, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I think it would be best no to use Internet slang here as much as possible. But let's take this discussion to the talkpage. — Kpalion^(talk) 09:56, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Don't forget to read the article on Original poster. But Wikipedia is not a forum! ~AH1^(TCU) 01:12, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Temperature subjective feel

I'm not really sure if this is a science or a language question. Anyway, I know there's a word for the phenomenon where when we touch some substances they feel colder or warmer than others because of what they are made from, but their temperature doesn't change. What's the word for that? Example: If on a day at 20°f you step outside onto a towel that sitting out there, or onto a sheet of steel sitting out there, you'll immediately think the steel is colder. Same thing for touching a piping hot piece of bread verses a metal pan at the same temperature (ouch).--70.23.81.136 (talk) 12:03, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Is it because steel is a better thermal conductor than towelling? Alansplodge (talk) 13:05, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Meaning that it's better at "drawing heat away from you". A similar phenomenon on a really cold day outside: an iron railing will feel a lot colder than a wooden railing. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:41, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Apparent temperature is used specifically for the weather, not the situation the OP describes. However, the fundamental reasons for the existence of the concept of apparent temperature a probably the same - ie the different rates at which heat is transferred. Mitch Ames (talk) 01:47, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Is "accusee" acceptable?

I very recently wrote at WP:RD/E that allegations of "hacking" may simply be a result of the accusee being more proficient than the accuser. Now, Mitch Ames (talk · contribs) pointed out that the correct term is "accused", and I admit that I made up "accusee", based on similar words like callee. The person being called is "the callee". By that logic, wouldn't the person being accused be the "accusee"? Thanks, decltype (talk) 12:13, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Callee, eh? Oh boy. Maybe we should start talking about the victims of murder as "killees" or "murderees". Or about someone we like or love as a "likee" or a "lovee". Or about cattle that have been slaughtered as "slaughterees", and then eaten as "eatees". Maybe we should start calling our husbands and wives "marriees". Do you see how unproductive this appeal to logic would be? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 12:24, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Of course. Still, callee has somehow become a widely used term in computer science to denote a function being called (and can apparently also be used to refer to a person being called - I didn't know that). decltype (talk) 12:33, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

It's quite common to add the suffix -ee to a transitive verb to make a noun meaning "person being Xed", as in callee. What I find interesting is the less common habit of adding the suffix -ee to an intransitive verb to make a noun meaning "person who Xes", as in standee. It sort of suggests that ergativity has its place even in an accusative language like English. Back to the original question, I'd say accusee would be acceptable if the noun accused didn't already exist; since it does, there's no need to coin a new synonym for it. +Angr 12:44, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Even transitive verbs are sometimes made into agent-nouns by adding -ee, e.g. "attendee". (I think there may be other examples but can't think of any off-hand.) AndrewWTaylor (talk) 13:21, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Technically, shouldn't it be "attender"? Though I don't recall hearing that term. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:49, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

If you were writing an article, you should switch into a more formal dialect and use "accused". If you were writing on a talk page, it makes no difference. People will have no problem understanding you, especially if they know a little French, since accusee is a cognate for accusée. On the other hand, I didn't realize at first that you intended accusee to rhyme with "tree", if that is what you were thinking. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:40, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I was about to ask whether this has something to do with French origins, but now I wonder if it has more to do with where the usage first occurred. Something ending with "-ed", such as "the accused" could be short for "the accused one". In contrast, you have "employer" and "employee", and you don't often hear "the employed (one)". Likewise with "caller" and "callee", you don't so much hear the term "the called (one)". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:48, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

We have the word defendant. -- Wavelength (talk) 19:05, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

The English suffix "-ee" clearly derives from the French "-é(e)" in the sense that it has been generalised from words like "employee" and "lessee" which were borrowed from French. But it is a slightly productive suffix in English, and gets added to words irrespective of their origins. --ColinFine (talk) 22:53, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

The words are accuser and accused. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:09, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

(response to JackofOz). Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but "murderee" had quite a spree more than 100 years ago. New York Times archive 1892. Webster's 1913 edition lists it as someone who has been murdered, but I've also seen it used to describe someone who is the type of person who gets murdered. Wiktonary gives two citations, 1970 and 2001. Granta 25 (1989) has Martin Amis's "The Murderee" on the front cover. For some reason I can't get in to the OED, or I'd give you chapter and verse. And the next thing you know, we'll be calling a person who has been divorced ... a "divorcee". BrainyBabe (talk) 03:28, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

I see. (Thinks: Is somebody I see called a "seeee"?) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 11:24, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Reminds me of my favorite phrase in Manx, where "she will eat" is [eeee ee] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help). +Angr 11:39, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Which in turn reminds me of the Cetacean language. ---Sluzzelin talk 13:37, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Michaelhouse

At Cambridge there used to be a college called Michaelhouse. Was it pronounced "Michael House", or "Micklehouse" as in Michaelmas? The Wednesday Island (talk) 15:37, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Since it ceased to exist before the great vowel shift the question is moot: the vowel in "Michael" did not meander to its present strange place in the mouth until later. The equivalent question at the time would have been whether the vowel was long or short (/mi:/ or /mi/ - roughly "mee" or "me"). I don't know if there is any record of how the name was pronounced. I certainly heard it referred to as "Michael house" in Cambridge thirty years ago, but it's unlikely there was any unbroken tradition. --ColinFine (talk) 23:02, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

M/M: Lettering format

Waht does M/M: mean. Since When I apply to a Catholic school in orange county when mail letter home it said on top M/M:ABC then proper locale mailing format.--209.129.85.4 (talk) 20:31, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

That means "Mr. or Mrs.", or, I suppose, Miss, and possibly even Ms. It's used when the gender of the recipient is not known. Comet Tuttle (talk) 21:03, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Or "Mr. and Mrs./Ms." —— Shakescene (talk) 21:38, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

What's this sentence construction?

Consider these sentences, a and b:

a: The man who first ate an oyster was brave.

b: The man was brave who first ate an oyster.

Is there a term for the sort of construction found in b, where a relative clause follows the verb phrase instead of coming right after the noun it modifies? Also, do most native speakers of English find this construction difficult to parse? (I ask because I am one, and I do.) 69.111.79.27 (talk) 22:51, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Cleft sentence. --ColinFine (talk) 23:03, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

More generally, I would call it "poetic". You often see sentence construction in poems and sayings and such which are a little unusual. "Frog he would a wooing go." That's almost German-like construction, I think. P.S. Oysters are good. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:54, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Although I don't know of experimental examples off the top of my head, I am fairly certain English speakers find the cleft sentence (b) more difficult. For the seminal article on what types of sentences are considered hard to parse, see John Kimball's 1970 "Seven principles of surface structure parsing in natural language". I'm not sure exactly which of the 'principles' is relevant to this one, but it's something more or less along the lines of Minimal Attachment (an amalgamation of several of Kimball's principles) and Right Branching—the idea is that once you've already read "the man was brave" and closed it off (thinking it to be a complete sentence), encountering "who..." and trying to integrate it is difficult. You want to integrate it to the nearest word, but you have to backtrack a ways. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 01:07, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the oyster comment is a good illustration of the subtleties of English. Both sentences contain the same basic information. But the first is prosaic and unmemorable, while the second is poetic and catchy. I would say the second one has even more impact if read out loud, because you have to say it a certain way for it to be properly pithy and funny. Inflection something like, "The MAN was BRAVE... who first ate an oy-STER!" The first part with a little enthusiasm, the second part monotone except for emphasizing that last syllable, and ideally with a bit of a smirk on the teller's face. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:42, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

So in summary, I say that although the technical term may be "cleft sentence", the more general way of looking at those sentences is prosaic vs. poetic. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:49, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I suspect the reason these two sentences sound poetic is because they happen to fit the pattern of iambic pentameter. Maybe the second one also sounds a bit foreign, since Romance languages (and Latin) can start normal sentences like that. Adam Bishop (talk) 04:46, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

(b) is not quite iambic pentameter, unless you're saying it in a pretty stilted way. When I say it, it's "the man was brave who first ate an oyster. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 04:58, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

For iambic pentameters, one could say:

The man who first an oyster ate was brave.

The man was brave who first an oyster ate.

-- Wavelength (talk) 06:02, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Describing this as a "cleft sentence" is precise. Describing it as "poetic" is subjective. Clefting, pseudoclefting, topicalization (as in Bugs' example "Frog he would a wooing go") are all cases where the normal sentence structure is disturbed, usually for rhetorical effect. Poetry is one reason why this might be done. --ColinFine (talk) 08:29, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

"For rhetorical effect", yes. As Malcolm points out indirectly via the content of the link below, it is this effect that makes a phrase or sentence more interesting or "catchy". It's unlikely Yoda would be quoted or imitated so much if he talked the "normal" way. And with the oyster comment, the first way of saying it is mundane, and the second is much more likely to appear in Bartlett's. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:42, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced conjecture aside, the construction in question is known as anastrophe. Malcolm XIV (talk) 10:23, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Which sounds like it ought to be the opposite of a catastrophe. +Angr 21:29, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh, the iony of it all! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:46, 14 January 2010 (UTC)