Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 April 4

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April 4

Babies without ani

What is the scientific/medical term for being born without an anus? Khemehekis (talk) 05:09, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

What happened when you googled "anus birth defect"? μηδείς (talk) 06:01, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Imperforate anus. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 07:14, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for "imperforate anus"! And to answer Medeis' question, I didn't google "anus birth defect". Instead I googled the phrase "being born without an anus", and got several mentions and statistics, but no medical term. Then I looked at the Wikipedia article Anus, but found no section on abnormalities of the anus the way many other articles have such sections. Khemehekis (talk) 00:24, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Ah, yes, google doesn't do so well when you use words that are too common and unspecific, like "being without an". Imperforate anus came right up with "anus birth defect". μηδείς (talk) 16:03, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

I have added "Imperforate anus" to the "See also" section of our "Anus" article. It is however, already linked in our Human anus article. Alansplodge (talk) 16:33, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Latin Question

I am just looking through a Latin book I bought years ago when I was doing Latin for A-Level, and one of the questions in it asks you to choose the correct word. It has answers at the back. The question is 'Copiam ..... potamus' and you are supposed to choose between 'aquae' and 'aqua'. The answer section says it chould be 'aquae'. I knew it couldn't be 'aqua', but why does 'copiam' not agree with the noun. Is 'copia' a noun, unlike in English 'copious', which is an adjective? KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 12:57, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

"Copia" is a noun, and it takes the genitive, a "genitive of quantity". So we could translate it as "we drink copious water" or whatever, but grammatically in Latin it is "we drink a copious amount of water". Adam Bishop (talk) 13:11, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

The technical term is the partitive, which in latin is usually expressed with the genitive case. μηδείς (talk) 17:47, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Could be a reference mood, e.g. with respect to supplies or force. e.g. Ego pedem vulneratus sum. I am injured with respect to my foot . e.g. My foot is injured.--Jondel (talk) 00:43, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

That's an accusative construction though. This is definitely a partitive genitive. You see the same construction with numbers, usually. Latin grammar books like to divide the different cases into different subgroups...I'm not sure if they are ever really standard, or just the inventions of the authors. But there are things like "genitive of quantity", "ablative of means", etc etc. And my favourite, the "dative of disadvantage". Adam Bishop (talk) 01:47, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

your referring to the water/aquae as partive genitive, Adam? To Kage, it might help to translate as We drink a supply of water. Here supply/copiam is accusative. 'Of water/aquae' thus is genitive. --Jondel (talk) 13:35, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

"Times larger"

What does it mean when something is "X times larger" than something else? Are the dimensions both X times larger or merely just the area or volume of the dimension? In other words:

• Area A is three feet by three feet, totaling nine square feet. Area B is six feet by six feet, totaling thirty-six square feet.
• Area A is three feet by three feet, totaling nine square feet. Area B is nine feet by nine feet, totaling eighty-one square feet. 66.213.29.17 (talk) 15:28, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

In informal language "larger" could refer to dimensions, area, volume, weight, power consumption, any measure that makes sense. Also, "X times larger" is used to mean both "X times as large" and "X+1 times as large", although some people insist that only one of them is correct (See this discussion). If you want precision, you should avoid that expression altogether and say it another way, such as "It has 9 times the area". --65.95.176.148 (talk) 16:02, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree on "3 times larger", but note that "3 times as large" can't mean "4 times as large". StuRat (talk) 17:06, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

• The expression is ambiguous, which is why I always say either twice as long or twice the weight. See cube-square law. μηδείς (talk) 23:29, 4 April 2015 (UTC)
• Per all of the above, the phrase is imprecise and ambiguous, and should be avoided in formal speech and writing. It is better to name the exact measurement being used, for example "The distance from X to Y is twice as long as the distance from A to B" or something like that. But just saying something is "X times larger" is bad. Don't even get me started on "X times smaller", which is one of those phrases that's like nails on a chalkboard annoying. --Jayron32 02:00, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

In my experience, "X times larger" usually means "x times the size" - although sometimes it can mean "(X+1) times the size" - consider describing something as "1 times larger" to mean twice the size. On top of that, what "X times the size" means can vary depending on what is being talked about. When talking about 2-dimensional things (i.e. things that would be measured by area), "X times the size" would refer to X times the area. E.g. if my back yard was 3m x 4m in size, another that was 3x8 (or 6x4) would be described as "2 x the size". A garden 6x8m would be 4 times the size. However, this can change when dealing with 3-dimensional objects. When comparing animals, for example, I've seen "twice the size" used to mean both "2x mass (or volume)", and "2x long (or tall)", which, assuming the same proportions would mean 8x mass or volume. Iapetus (talk) 10:19, 10 April 2015 (UTC)