Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 August 4

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August 4

Paradox

Is there a term to describe a meme, which is also a paradox? Although not memes, the following are hypothetical examples: the blackest white; world-renown in Mexico, the most vocal mime artist. Perhaps they are called paradoxisms? Plasmic Physics (talk) 02:15, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Lewis Carroll doesn't give it a name (other than "nonsense") but your examples sound like, "When you say 'hill'," the Queen interrupted, "I could show you hills, in comparison with which you'd call that a valley." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:52, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I once heard Dave Foley tell a talk show host, "We Canadians are so liberal we make Castro look like a Republican." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:57, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Is oxymoron close? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 03:10, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Maybe. I'm asking because the Lemon & Paeroa's slogan "World famous in New Zealand", which is also a colloquialism not limited to the drink. It is a colloquialism that satirises the apparent relative mediocrity of all things New Zealand. Plasmic Physics (talk) 03:44, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

That's satire. Kind of like when someone characterized Howard Cosell as "a legend in his own mind." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:31, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't think there's a special name for it, but isn't the example just a type of joke? Read through the psychology and types sections. It hinges on the fact that 'in NZ' is unexpected because it contradicts 'world famous.' As an academic, I often say "My works are world famous - known to dozens of people!" -- similarly humorous, but mine isn't an actual contradiction. Also compare the disparaging "I've been to [city], I spent a week there one night!" SemanticMantis (talk) 22:17, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

True. Now that I think about it, the slogan is not really a paradox. 'World famous' does not require every person alive to know of the subject - the fraction of people, and their national distribution is quite subjective. So 'satirical' or 'jocular' are then correct? Plasmic Physics (talk) 22:37, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I think John Denver used that "spent a week there one day" joke in his song about Toledo, Ohio... which, lately, has been kind of like true. Then there's this, sometimes attributed to Mark Twain: "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." Then this oldie: "Win a free trip! First prize is a week in Jersey City. Second prize is two weeks in Jersey City!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:39, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Does that imply that Jersey City is a buzz-kill? Plasmic Physics (talk) 22:58, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm reminded of stuff that's advertised as Absolutely free * ... (* Conditions apply). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:25, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Adverbs that are not

1. Shamefully, his works are now little played in concert halls.
2. Thankfully, Fred flew out of Indonesia the night before the tsunami struck.
3. Hopefully, we will regain the trophy next time.
4. Regrettably, Pam was so busy having a good time for 40 years that she completely forgot to have any children.

I have some difficulty in parsing sentences like the above, particularly the leading adverbs. I mean, these are adverbs, right? They certainly look like adverbs. But they're not really operating as adverbs. They're more like editorial comments by the speaker/writer. Adverbs are supposed to be modifying a verb denoting an action.

Take #1. The action involved is "played", but "shamefully" does not have anything to do with that verb. The writer is saying that it is a matter of shame that they're not played more often.

Similarly with #2. Who's being thankful? Maybe Fred is, but maybe it's his family, or the narrator, or whoever.

"Hopefully" has become the most over-malused word in the world; or maybe I'm just super-sensitised to it. At least it is sort of relevant to the action in example #3; but what's wrong with "We hope to regain the trophy next time"? And what if it were "they will regain" rather than "we will regain"? There, the hoping transfers to the narrator and away from the "we", and no longer relates to anything that "we" might do.

In #4, is Pam the one doing the regretting? It sure doesn't sound like it. So, what does "regrettably" actually mean here? The sentence purports to be about Pam, but it is actually about the writer's opinion of Pam's lifestyle and a judgement on her failure to reproduce, while Pam herself is clearly oblivious to any such failings.

So, since these words hardly function as adverbs, despite their form, how else should we characterise words of this nature? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 03:09, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

5. Fortunately, we have an article about that. --Amble (talk) 04:03, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Gratefully, I thank you for the complete answer. I really must learn more about the English language. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:03, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Resolved

The thing about English is - don't expect it to be logical! Like Topsy, it just growed. DuncanHill (talk) 01:32, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Renaissance boy

The following is a dialogue between a student and his teacher:

I fancy modern languages, sir. And history. And sociology. And astronomy. And... You can't study everything, you know. Yes I can. Renaissance boy, innit. ...You want to watch that smile, lad. All right. We'll see about you. Now off you go.

In the dialogue, "Renaissance boy" is elliptical. I wonder what its complete form is. Is it "I'm a Renaissance boy" or "I want to be a Renaissance boy"? And one more question. What does "We'll see about you" mean? I am looking forward to your reply. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.249.214.219 (talk) 05:35, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

There was a different question about this passage a month ago. Then two weeks later.

There, it seemed the teacher was asking if the kid thought he was some sort of Renaissance Boy, but if you're sure it's the kid saying this, he should mean it like "I'm a Renaissance boy...aren't I?" And then "We'll see about you" means "We'll find out whether you can study everything, after you've tried." InedibleHulk (talk) 06:49, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

It seems to me obvious that "Renaissance boy, innit" is said by the teacher—a skeptical "So you think you can be a Renaissance man, eh?" Deor (talk) 13:31, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

No, "Rennaissance boy, innit" is spoken by the student. There's no "complete form" as it's dialogue chunks. "wikt:innit" is short for "isn't it", but in this case he means "are't I?". Barney the barney barney (talk) 23:53, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

'Two and a half times smaller'

According to the BBC, Ukraine says that 'rebel held areas are two and a half times smaller than before'. What does that mean? That would make it negative in size, by 250%. Has it disappeared into a hitherto unknown dimension as a giant rebel held area, or something? KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 06:08, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I'll go with "or something". But no, that sort of math (if it is math) is beyond me. There's a simple explanation, or they're going to be really hard to find. Maybe "one time smaller" means halved? So it was halved twice, then lost a quarter (-81.25%)? InedibleHulk (talk) 06:31, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't see what the confusion is, surely that's a normal expression. If the area was 100 km² before, it would now be 100/2.5=40 km² Fgf10 (talk) 06:38, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

That's my understanding as well, as well as these strangers on the internet: [1]. WinterWall (talk) 06:43, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

This stranger thinks the Ukrainian Minister of Defense should say "about a third as large", since "times" means multiplication. And he's on a .edu site, complete with a pencil graphic, so you know he's smart. InedibleHulk (talk) 07:01, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

If you "times" the original area by the reciprocal of 2.5, you get 40% of the original. Pretty simple, really. As long as you approach your mathematics with your right brain and don't expect rigid pedantry (or pedantic rigidity) of terminological exactitude. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:31, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Hulk approach rebels and regulars with right and left fist. Smash 100% rigid structure. Declare all gone and Hulk president. Simpler. InedibleHulk (talk) 07:58, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Expressions like "two and a half times smaller", "twice as cheap", "nine times fewer", etc., are among my linguistic pet peeves, because they don't make any sense. If you mean "40% the size of", "half the price of", or "one ninth as many", then say so directly. I think we had a long discussion about this here at the reference desk last year. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 11:25, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I totally agree. These kinds of phrases are nonsensical and a result of muddled thinking. 86.128.1.157 (talk) 11:56, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I've been arguing against such imprecise usages for more than 50 years, but I suppose one cannot expect the modern generation of BBC reporters to use precise language such as "smaller by a factor of 2.5". (I wonder why the BBC don't provide some training in mathematics and grammar.) Dbfirs 12:21, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

(EC) I have always hated this style of expression, too, because it is nonsense. If it's 40% its orginal size, then just say "it's just less than half its original size". After all, it's unlikely that anyone has actually measured it accurately anyway. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 12:50, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't see a problem here. "X times larger" and "X times smaller" clearly imply a multiplication or a division by X. The phrase "half as small" would be the thing that would confuse me because I'd suspect that doubling the size of something wasn't intended...but then maybe it is. "You made it too small, it should be about half as small as that"...hmmm, tricky!

Anyway, the BBC clearly intended my interpretation because the area held by the separatist rebels has indeed shrunk by a factor of 2.5.

SteveBaker (talk) 12:55, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

My complaint about such terms is how they often fail to describe what is actually being measured. One I heard yesterday was liquid nitrogen described as "three times as cold as dry ice". What the heck does that mean ? My first guess was that they meant nitrogen's boiling temp is 3 times as far from room temperature as the sublimation temperature of dry ice, but it seems to be more like twice as far. They must have meant something really stupid, like three times as far below 0 F.

Phrases like "half as big" could similarly refer to height, volume, mass, etc., and having half the height could mean 1/8th the volume or mass, so depending on how you interpret the statement, it means something radically different. StuRat (talk) 13:13, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, with temperatures it's especially bad, and in that case it's just as bad when the thing being compared is greater than what it's being compared to: "It's twice as hot in Mumbai as it is in Moscow" doesn't make any sense at all. If it's 40°F in Moscow and 80°F in Mumbai, that's double the figure only on the Fahrenheit scale—in Kelvin it's only 8% warmer, and in Celsius we would say it's six times hotter in Mumbai (26.67°C) than in Moscow (4.44°C)! —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 13:50, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I see that a lot from people who make TV's..."our TV has a 20% larger screen than theirs!"...probably means that the AREA of the screen is 20% larger...which means that if you measured the height, width or diagonal, it would only be 10% larger.

The temperature here in Austin, Texas this morning is 30 degC - so what is "three times cooler" than that? 1/3rd of 30C would be 10 degC. But 30C is 86F...and one third of 86F is 28F which is -2C. So what "one third" means depends critically on what temperature scale you're working in. Worse still, in centigrade, water ice is likely to be at zero degrees...and one third of that is still zero degrees, so saying that one thing is three times colder than another is quite utterly meaningless unless you know how cold one of them actually is *and* what units you're using for the comparison! Things get even more wildly wrong if you're working in degrees Kelvin, 30C is 303K, one third is 101K which is -173C. So "one third" of the temperature in Austin Texas right now (30C) could be 10C, -2C or -173C depending on what units you're working in - and "one third the temperature of water ice" could mean "the same temperature as water ice" if you happen to be working in celcius!

Dry Ice forms at maybe -78C and Liquid nitrogen at around -196 C...but either of them could be present at any temperature below that...so unless you're saying "liquid nitrogen forms at a temperature three times lower than carbon dioxide turns into dry ice"...it's a meaningless statement anyway (and in this case, pressure matters too...). We can probably guess that this report was by someone working in Fahrenheit because liquid nitrogen boils at -320F and dry ice sublimates at -108F...so "three times colder"? Kinda, sorta, maybe?

Unless you're working in Kelvins (which is really unlikely in a story as vague as this), any comparative ratio of temperatures is meaningless. It's just not like weight or length or time, where you can do that kind of thing. "Half as long" works in feet, cubits, parsecs or meters...it's unambiguous. The ONLY meaningful way to compare two temperatures is to specify both the two temperatures AND the units you're stating them in.

That said, I like the quote from some scientist or other who, when asked the temperature of the surface of the sun said "Fifteen million degrees - sorry, I forget whether that's celsius or kelvin".  :-)

SteveBaker (talk) 13:46, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I grew up in Austin. Temperatures of 30°C at 7:46 AM are the primary reason why I don't miss Austin in August at all. I do miss it in March, though. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:20, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

This reminds me of the plaque above certain urinals announcing that these urinals "save 88% more water on every flush" than standard urinals. I've been doing my part to solve the local drought problem by flushing them again and again for no reason. --Amble (talk) 14:56, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Incidentally, the previous discussion I mentioned above didn't happen at this reference desk, it happened over at Wiktionary, in this discussion of a "ninefold decrease", a discussion that led to the creation of a Wiktionary entry for the (in my opinion) abominable phrase twice as less. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:38, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Repugnant. Contemptible. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:08, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

For extra points, guess whether "half as small" means 50%, 150%, or 200% of the original size, when used in the books Optical-Thermal Response of Laser-Irradiated Tissue and Ordinary Differential Equations: An Introduction to Nonlinear Analysis. In case you think this is only an academic quibble, I'll point out that your hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis may depend on it! --Amble (talk) 21:10, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I would assume that "half as small" meant "half the size" - but only because I have a profoundly pessimistic view of the human race. If I had any confidence in them I would of course assume that it meant "twice as big". DuncanHill (talk) 01:37, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

'Two times bigger!'

(OK, the title of the previous question provoked me!)

One of my current pet peeves is that TV adverts over about the last year (I think) have seemed to abolish the word "twice" in favor of saying "two times". This seems ugly and unnecessarily verbose - but I've seen the usage growing and spreading into dozens of different TV ad for dozens of different products. The word "thrice" seems to have died from common usage many decades ago in favor of "three times"...is "twice" going the same way?

It's happening so quickly - and only in TV ads. TV shows aren't doing it - neither are movies, so far as I can tell. That suggests that there is a deep underlying reason for consciously choosing to do it rather than the world genuinely shifting in that direction. I wonder if they are trying to shift adverts to use the "Basic English" vocabulary - is that what's really going on? Is there some kind of advertising industry mandate to do such a horrific thing?

SteveBaker (talk) 12:48, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I think it's done for emphasis, to be honest with you. "[our rip-off] is TWICE as big as" vs. "[our rip-off] is two TIMES bigger than". It also uses the comparative, so people hear 'bigger than', rather than 'as big as'. Sort of subliminal. Just a guess, mind you. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 12:56, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

The trouble is, to my ear, it has the opposite effect. But with the clear demise of "thrice", the word "twice" becomes an odd anomaly, so I could imagine it gradually vanishing - but this seems too fast, and just in one narrow slice of English usage. SteveBaker (talk) 13:05, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

When we did our times tables at school, we had some teachers who said 'once one is one', 'twice one is two' etc., but not with 'thrice'. These days the schools all say 'one times one is one', 'two times one is two' etc.... So maybe it is losing its joint monopoly with 'once' for having special words. 'Thrice' was either retired or fired. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 18:15, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Mere speculation, but it may also have something to do with the use of "two-time" as an adjective (as a verb, synonymous to cheating, it's existence goes back to the 1920s at least, according to etymonline). Archie Griffin is not the only "twice winner" of the Heisman Trophy, he's the only two-time winner! ---Sluzzelin talk 23:39, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

This raises a question I never realized I didn't know the answer to. If first, second, third are ordinals (in the linguistic rather than mathematical sense), then what are once, twice, thrice? And zeroth certainly exists, but is there a word for doing things no times? Zeroce or some such? --Trovatore (talk) 03:52, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Check out EO: [2][3][4] The "ce" ending denotes "times" for those adverbs. I don't think there's a "zeroce" or a "fource", e.g. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:19, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

The word for doing/happening/being zeroce is "never". If there's an object zeroce the size of yours, it's "nothing" and you can find it "nowhere". It's one of the numbers we can't count. InedibleHulk (talk) 05:55, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Oh, you can count to zero, no problem. In fact, you just did. Oops, you did it again. --Trovatore (talk) 06:09, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

No, that's saying zero. Try taking it out of one pile and putting it in a second. Just won't happen. But if you mean I'm counting to it by not counting to it, then yeah, I guess I am. InedibleHulk (talk) 06:30, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Exactly. You count to zero infinitely many times per second. --Trovatore (talk) 06:33, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

But infinitely many times still isn't zeroce. InedibleHulk (talk) 06:39, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

True, but zeroce is how often you have to increment your counter, in counting to zero infinitice. --Trovatore (talk) 06:47, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

And that's definitely convenient. Thanks, zero! InedibleHulk (talk) 06:59, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

As for the name, they're usually called "multiplicative numbers". See English numerals#Multiplicative adverbs. Lesgles (talk) 17:24, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

I personally have a problem with "three times bigger", etc.; if three times bigger is three times the size, does that mean one time bigger is the same size? I prefer three times as big. pʰeːnuːmuː →‎ pʰiːnyːmyː → ‎ɸinimi → ‎fiɲimi 23:17, 12 August 2014 (UTC)