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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 July 7

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July 7

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Morning is an ambiguous term

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Why does the term morning refers to a period from midnight till noon and not just from sunrise till noon? It should have a term for a period between midnight and sunrise. I coined foremorn, from be-(fore) + (morn)-ing and added to List of protologisms on Wiktionary. It doesn't really sound right for me to say like one in the morning, instead I shall say one in the foremorn or even one at night. PlanetStar 01:29, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If you coined it, it doesn't belong here. As to why (or if) there isn't a commonly-used term for it, maybe society in general hasn't felt the need for it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:42, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
There are other languages that have a word that specifically means a period from midnight till sunrise. In Spanish it's called madrugada and in German nachmitternacht. So there should be an English word for that. A not so great word that has already been adopted is postmidnight, which is found in Wiktionary. PlanetStar 06:24, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The wee hours of the morning? Loraof (talk) 03:13, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It is acceptable as a phrase, a.k.a the small hours, but what we looking for is a one-word term for that. PlanetStar 06:24, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I actually challenge the OP's premise that morning "refers to a period from midnight till noon", other than in fixed expressions like "the wee hours of the morning". Otherwise, something that occurred at, say, 2 am is never said to have happened "in the morning", is it? It's the night, or the middle of the night, or after midnight, but not morning. Isn't it? -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 11:36, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Well, to most people "2 a.m." is "two o'clock in the morning". I can't speak for the Spanish, but I believed (till now) that the Portuguese word madrugada meant early morning. However, it has the specific meaning of "from midnight till sunrise". That said, we have two specific words which cover the period, "postmidnight" and matutinal. With more specific words, we don't need a general term. After all, the Eskimos have 94 (?) words for different varieties of snow, but no word that describes all of them :) 92.8.217.121 (talk) 12:04, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No, they don't. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 12:22, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
There's an old song called "Three O'Clock in the Morning". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:32, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I see the word "forenoon" is a synonym of "morning". --TammyMoet (talk) 12:12, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, "forenoon" vs. "afternoon". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:32, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Forenoon just means part of morning after dawn. PlanetStar 21:20, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
And before noon. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:43, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
In my usage, "morning" means the Sun is up. It's true that I might refer to 3 AM as "three o'clock in the morning", but to me it would never be the morning. It's clearly night. --Trovatore (talk) 21:21, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Ditto. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 07:21, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
So what it comes down to is that "two in the morning" is not actually in the morning. There must be a linguistic term for this phenomenon, where otherwise-natural analysis of, what would you call them, "semiproductive" phrases or something? leads to false conclusions. This desk seems like the natural place to ask what that's called. --Trovatore (talk) 21:59, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The time from midnight to noon is one use of "morning". If you're confused by that usage for some reason, you can get around it simply by calling it "the A.M." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:06, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I at least would never call it "morning", and I would go so far as to call that usage "incorrect". --Trovatore (talk) 22:10, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It's not incorrect. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:23, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
But the point is that even people (like me) who don't consider 2 AM to be "morning" still call it "2 in the morning". What is that phenomenon called, linguistically? --Trovatore (talk) 23:26, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
"More than one meaning for the same word." It's English. It happens. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:23, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You're totally missing the point, Bugs. --Trovatore (talk) 00:49, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
To be explicit, the phenomenon I mean is like the way that "red hair" is not red, though it might be redder than other shades of hair. That is, you have a phrase where the meaning of the constituent words is different when they are in that phrase than they are on their own. But I don't mean strictly fixed phrases, because the "in the morning" construction is somewhat productive ("3:42:26 in the morning" has a clear meaning, but it is still not morning, when the word "morning" is used on its own). --Trovatore (talk) 00:58, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Read what Oxford has to say about it.[1] ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:54, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Bugs, if you're not going to respond to my question, then please just leave it be, so someone else can. --Trovatore (talk) 03:24, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No one is stopping anyone else from answering. But if you're going to insist that midnight to noon as "morning" is "wrong", despite the evidence to the contrary, then there's no hope. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:20, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I understand you don't accept my premise. That's fine. I'm done arguing about that. You could still address my question by assuming the premise arguendo, but if you're not willing to, then quit diverting from the question I asked. --Trovatore (talk) 05:22, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Try homonym. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:30, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You obviously have not understood the question. --Trovatore (talk) 05:31, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
And you obviously have not understood the answers. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:39, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
No, wrong, I understood your answers, which is why I know you didn't understand the question. Will someone who does understand it please address it? --Trovatore (talk) 18:13, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe nobody else understands your question either. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:18, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
That seems unlikely, as it's pretty clear. I think people didn't answer because they didn't want to be caught up in the irrelevant digressions you introduced. I wish you would just not respond when you don't have anything constructive to add. --Trovatore (talk) 18:51, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The premise that morning is "ambiguous" is incorrect. And words having multiple meanings is extremely common in English. What else do you want to know? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:39, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Bugs, it's not about words having multiple meanings, and you don't seem to have even remembered accurately what you didn't like about my premise.
To recap, my premise is that "<time> in the morning" is another way of saying "<time> AM", even when <time> is not in fact in the morning, but rather at night.
You do not have to agree with that premise, but you can assume it arguendo, or at least take my word for it that this is my usage. Or just not answer.
This is not "words having multiple meanings", but rather a specifically context-based semantic shift based on the phrase in which they occur. I was wondering whether there is a specific linguistic term for this. --Trovatore (talk) 19:52, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Baseball Bugs. Re your The premise that morning is "ambiguous" is incorrect: It seems quite ambiguous to me. If I were told that some person died "this morning", I would not know whether he died specifically in the 6-odd-hour period between dawn and noon, or just at some time in the 12-hour period between midnight and noon. I would have to assume the latter, as I would need more information to conclude it happened in the former. The word "morning" can be used to mean either of these time periods, one of which includes the other. If that's not ambiguous, nothing is. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 22:15, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
"Day" is even more ambiguous. --ColinFine (talk) 23:35, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
"Day" or "daytime" as opposed to "night" or "nighttime". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:23, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
"1 AM" is not ambiguous. Or you can refer to the "pre-dawn hours" if you want a legit way to differentiate those from late morning. StuRat (talk) 01:10, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Someone has solved that. See nychthemeron. 80.44.163.165 (talk) 15:32, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
That's a great word. Thanks. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 20:11, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Nychthemeron is not a word that we're looking for, it actually means 24 consecutive hours, encompassing both night and day. PlanetStar 21:51, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure why you feel a single word for "the period between midnight and sunrise" is needed. If the problem is the "one in the morning" thing, as I've said above, in my usage "one in the morning" is not in the morning, and personally I'm OK with that though I'd still like to know what the phenomenon is called. But if you're not, then just say "1 AM" and you're golden.
In any case, whether it would be good to have or not, as far as I know there is no such word.
(By the way, "one at night", as you suggested, does work in some languages, Italian for example. I would not be surprised to hear that it works in some dialects of English, though I don't specifically know of any.) --Trovatore (talk) 22:08, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Antelucan means before the dawn, so if morning must be used for the period from midnight to dawn, perhaps it could be qualified as antelucan morning. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 22:04, 8 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
So you could say "postlucan" for "after dawn"? English is often imprecise. If someone dies between midnight and noon, or between dawn and noon, either way it's not telling you much. It's like "in the afternoon" or "in the evening" or "overnight", each of which encompasses at least five to six hours. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:45, 9 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Soccer

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People in most countries use the word football to refer to association football. But Americans and Canadians use football for North American football, so we have the different name soccer for association football. But what about Australians? Do they reserve football for Australian rules football, and if so, what do they call association football? Loraof (talk) 03:20, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Supporters of the game usually call it football. Most people generally call it soccer. Usage: "Football? Oh, you mean soccer". Hack (talk) 03:29, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
For this subject see football (word). --69.159.60.163 (talk) 06:24, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
"Most" is stretching it a bit. Historically it was probably true, but things have changed in the last 10+ years as association football has become more mainstream as a spectator sport and Australia has been doing better internationally.
People who follow AFL like to call AFL "football" ("footie") undifferentiated, but in the most populous state, New South Wales, the traditionally most popular spectator code is rugby league, which is usually called "league" rather than "football", and in that state AFL is almost always called "AFL", not "football", and "football" and "soccer" are in equally common usage for association football. (Rugby union, the other football code with a major presence around Australia, is usually called either "rugby" or "union".)
The situation is different in Victoria, the next populous state, where AFL, not rugby league, is traditionally the most popular spectator code.
Association football is the most popular participation code in Australia and has been for years, and most of the organising bodies for association football now use "football" exclusively, instead of "soccer". Most major media outlets also use "football" to refer to association football more than AFL. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:07, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Up There Cazaly is virtually the unofficial anthem of the AFL, and its lyrics refer to "football" and "footy". I've never heard of anyone having a problem with that. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 09:27, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't say anyone has a problem with it, just that things are changing and that there are regional variations in that usage. The fact is, if you talk about "football" in Sydney without context, people will either not know whether you mean AFL or association football, or they will think you mean association football. It's unlikely that they will automatically think that you are referring to AFL. The situation is no doubt different in AFL's home state Victoria, or in the other small states where AFL, rather than rugby league, dominates. "Footy" is less ambiguous, I don't think many people refer to association football as "footy". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 09:38, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Indonesian language

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Comment by blocked User:139.255.65.211
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Remove all affixes from the phrase "Pengolahan citra". 111.95.114.174 (talk) 09:15, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Olah citra. —Stephen (talk) 12:40, 7 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
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