Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 July 23

Language desk
< July 22	<< Jun | July | Aug >>	July 24 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 23

Shirt58's starter for 10

In an IQ test one of the questions was "Fill in the blank spaces in the following word: UND-----UND (the answer's obvious but people just couldn't get it). Are there many words which display this pattern? -- 86.141.140.147 (talk · contribs) 11:08, 23 July 2015‎ (UTC)

My word finder only gives UNDERGROUND (which was the "obvious" one I first thought of) and UNDERFUND. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 11:13, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

It doesn't have to be just "UND" - are there any other three - letter (and longer) groups with this property? -- 86.141.140.147 (talk · contribs) 11:25, 23 July 2015‎ (UTC)

ANT gives ANTIOXIDANT, ANTIPERSPIRANT and a few others; more obscurely, CAL gives CALENDRICAL, CALLIGRAPHICAL and CALVINISTICAL; there's also HOTSHOT, and, if you allow proper names, EINSTEIN. For four letters I only found TARANTARA, and nothing for five and above. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 13:06, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

If the intervening string can be empty, there's also MURMUR, TARTAR, TESTES, BERIBERI and COUSCOUS. And we should also include WIKI-WIKI. 13:11, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

With the exceptions of testes, those last are all just "exact" reduplications of a whole morpheme and easy enough to recall, so I doubt they are what the test question was geared towards. Though to be fair, IQ tests are by and large a gimmick notion not taken too terribly seriously by actual cognitive science and nor even modern approaches to psychometrics in particular in any event. (Not really what the OP inquired about, but worth bearing in mind all the same). Snow ^{let's rap} 14:08, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Andrew mentioned "hotshot". The plural "hotshots" actually begins and ends with the same four letters without being a reduplication. ---Sluzzelin talk 01:38, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Another one that starts and ends with the same four letters (though there is an overlap of one letter) without being a reduplication is "entente". ---Sluzzelin talk 03:24, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Whoever the OP is, can you explain what the header means, and how it relates to the question posed? These things are meant to be meaningful, not cryptic. And please sign your posts. Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:24, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

I added the user info. The title sounds like a Jeopardy! entry, except it's unclear what Shirt58 (talk · contribs) has to do with this. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:40, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

I don't have a clue what the section title means. Apart from me not knowing the answer, that is.--Shirt58 (talk) 09:27, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

In the UK, "Starter for 10" is (or was?) the catchphrase for University Challenge. I'm not sure if there's an equally-precise US equivalent. Tevildo (talk) 22:45, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Not an equivalent that I know of, but it makes sense from reading the article. That just leaves unexplained what Shirt58 has to do with it. Maybe he'll come here and take a stab at it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:44, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Quiz bowl and related games have similar phrases, the last clue in a question typically begins with "For ten points...". Probably comes from College Bowl, of which University Challenge is one version. Adam Bishop (talk) 00:18, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

In the UK, "[Your] starter for 10" does originate, as Tevildo suggests, from University Challenge, where it's still used as the introduction to the question to be answered solo before the following three team bonus questions. In everyday use, it might be used to prefix a particularly difficult or obscure question you might ask a friend during an otherwise unproductive but entertaining conversation in a pub. Bazza (talk) 10:38, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

The answer could have been undersound. It's a rare word, but Bronte and Ruskin both used it. Dbfirs 20:36, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

For that matter, "undermound" would be a perfectly cromulent adjective for, say, a Barrow-wight. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 212.95.237.92 (talk) 12:52, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Actually, both "undermound" and "undersound" would have been ruled out as the question specified five missing letters. My apologies for not signing this post but my keyboard is not blessed with a tilde. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.141.140.147 (talk • contribs) 15:31, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

If you're registered, you can just type [[User:your username]]manually typed date and time. Since you're an IP editor I'm not sure what good that would do, but thanks for mentioning it. StevenJ81 (talk) 15:59, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

You can also click on the four tildes to the right of "Sign your posts on talk pages:" below the edit box - as I will do now: AndrewWTaylor (talk) 16:01, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

What type of keyboard do you have? On the standard UK keyboard, the tilde is at Shift-#, in the home row on the far right, next to the return key. Tevildo (talk) 20:29, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

On a MacBook Pro it's SHIFT+`, located next to the left SHIFT button. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (もしもし！) 13:02, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

86.141.140.147, you still didn't tell us what this question has to do with User:Shirt58. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:51, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

There are a variety of motherboards in this place. The Hewlett - Packard ones are standard. There are others branded "acer", "SHiNE" and "Lesmo" which are not. I believe that Portugal has the distinction of being the only country with its own national keyboard (teclado nacional) which starts off HCESAR instead of QWERTY. As to why the others start QWERTY, it's all down to the inventor ensuring that the letters TYPEWRI (as in "typewriter", the name he gave to his device) all appear on the top line, useful for demonstration, allied to the fact that he needed to make the letter patterns counterintuitive to slow the typist down and stop him jamming up the keys. Ever resourceful, the Portuguese decided to go it alone and eliminate this deficiency. 86.141.140.204 (talk) 17:57, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

See Portuguese keyboard layout. The tilde is next to the Return key for the Portuguese keyboard, and one place to the left of this for the Brazilian keyboard. As this is a dead key, you'll need to press tilde-space (rather than the tilde key on its own). As far as I can tell, HCESAR was never used for computer keyboards, only for typewriters. Tevildo (talk) 21:27, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Amiga

As I understand it, the name of the Amiga range of personal computers (not PCs) means "female friend" in Spanish, meaning just a normal friend that just happens to be female. What would be Spanish for "girlfriend"? JIP | Talk 20:57, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Apparently it's novia. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:01, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

That's right. See wikt:novia#Spanish. In Spanish, that can also have the sense of a fiancée or bride, too.

The French cognate of amiga, amie, is also used as "female friend"; in French, a girlfriend is described by an idiomatic build from there, petite amie (lit., "little friend"). And as for a fiancée ... well, that's obvious.

And while both amiga and amie come eventually from a Latin word for "love" (wikt:amo#Latin), that root usually includes the sense of "liking" or "fondness" in Romance languages. StevenJ81 (talk) 21:14, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Well, yes, they do. But via Latin amica the feminine of amicus which means 'friend' rather than 'loved'. ==ColinFine (talk) 23:52, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

In that same vein, amiguita is also used (possibly less so than novia) to mean "girlfriend". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:19, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Depending on the variety of Spanish, in addition to novia, I've also heard compañera and especially pareja. Pareja technically means "couple" or "pair" but is used to girlfriend/boyfriend similar to "my other half". It is also gender-neutral, if you care about that sort of thing.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 06:02, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

In Portuguese, noivo is a fiance, and noiva a fiancee. That reminds me of when I was working in an office many years ago and witnessed the following conversation:

Male clerk: You can ask Jacqui [typist]'s girlfriend.

Female clerk: (incredulous) Girlfriend?

Male clerk: Yes. Typists have friends - didn't you know?

Jacqui was a lovely girl, and gave up her job when she got married (as was the custom in those days). She got a mention in the Oxford Times as one of two girls who narrowly escaped when the roof of the double decker bus in which she was travelling was sliced off when the driver drove it under Oxford station bridge. The paper published on Friday but of course we knew all about it before then, because she told us. This was a recurrent problem - tall buses (with H prefix numbers - the shorter ones had L numbers) all carried a notice on the platform reading "Do not allow your driver to proceed under Oxford or Cowley station bridges" but it never seemed to have much effect.

When I type amiguinha into Google translate Portuguese lights up but it doesn't offer any English translation.

Well, that -inha ending is a dead giveaway for Portugese. StevenJ81 (talk) 17:34, 24 July 2015 (UTC)