Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 March 20

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March 20

When can't you verb a noun in English?

Somehow, "criming", feels awkwardly wrong compared to "committing a crime." But it's clear that in many cases you can verb a noun without much trouble. How are the rules for this?--Llaanngg (talk) 00:23, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

For established meanings, like "committing a crime", the pattern has already been set, so you should stick with it. But, for new meanings, you can do as you please, and hope it catches on, like when you "Google" someone. StuRat (talk) 00:31, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article on this subject is conversion (word formation). I'd say that Stu's advice on what you "should" and "can" do is just opinion; this is something that has happened many times and I don't think there are any rules to say when it can't happen. However, there are always people who resist neologisms. --69.159.61.172 (talk) 07:02, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

"But me no buts". Alansplodge (talk) 11:49, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Name me no names??--178.102.66.206 (talk) 23:33, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

I'm looking for three consonants: C₁, C₂, C₃, with two meaningful English words: C₁eC₂eC₃, and C₁eC₂C₂eC₃.

Something like "heqej", "heqqej", but I want both words to be meaningful in English. As for meaningful words, that could have been "meter", "letter", but I want both words to have the same consonants - in the same order. HOTmag (talk) 11:57, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

"Peter" (as in "to peter out" if you disallow proper nouns) and "petter" (one who pets). AndrewWTaylor (talk) 12:19, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Possibly "gened" and "genned" - gened is perhaps not commonly used, but you can find it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.150.174.93 (talk) 13:11, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

diner/dinner? riper/ripper? fuses/fusses? Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:54, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Ah, but those use vowels other than 'e' ... another example, sort of: defer and deffer (as in Bigger and Deffer see also def). ---Sluzzelin talk 14:21, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Ah, sorry, didn't notice it was supposed to be only e's. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:34, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Jeter (as in Derek Jeter) and jetter (as in one who jets around the world). Loraof (talk) 15:10, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Feter (one who fetes) and fetter. -- BenRG (talk) 20:18, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

I wrote a script to search a dictionary for pairs of this type. These are the 36 matches I got. Some of these may be proper names.

benes bennes
benet bennet
beret berret
derek derrek
devel devvel
femes femmes
feted fetted
fezes fezzes
gemel gemmel
hebel hebbel
helen hellen
leger legger
leper lepper
merel merrel
meter metter
neses nesses
neter netter
peder pedder
peles pelles
peper pepper
peter petter
reded redded
refed reffed
remer remmer
renes rennes
renet rennet
seler seller
semel semmel
semes semmes
tebet tebbet
tenes tennes
vener venner
verel verrel
veter vetter
weber webber
yeses yesses

CodeTalker (talk) 15:14, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

That is a lovely list - but once you take out the proper nouns, the foreign words which occasionally get used in English texts, and the pairs which are just alternate spellings of the same word, there isn't much left - and none of them are exactly common English words. Nor are the earlier examples. I think is is fair to say that there is no such pair of words in common use in the English language today. Peter and petter probably comes closest - but I have never called anyone a petter, and doubt that I would. 109.150.174.93 (talk) 13:11, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Wiktionary gives five pairs, of which the last one is a pair of verbs (in the past tense):

• leger, legger.
• leper, lepper.
• peter, petter.
• weber, webber.
• refed, reffed.

HOTmag (talk) 19:52, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

"Selects for ..." or "selects against ..."

I've vaguely heard the expression "A selects for B" before, but never had to focus on what it means (more truthfully, I never wanted to focus on it because it's an ugly expression, one that I would never use). I never heard "A selects against B" at all, until this friendly chat (near the bottom). StuRat kindly explained what they mean to him and provided an example of "select against". It seems to me that the agent doing the selecting is not A, but B, which makes it a garden path expression. Who dreamt it up?

Before I asked him, I naturally looked for dictionary explanations and sources, but I could find nothing. Maybe my searching skills are decaying. Can someone point me to an online source that explains this idiom? Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:02, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Jack, I think that the idioms come from the study of evolution. Our article Natural selection includes the sentence "Traits that cause greater reproductive success of an organism are said to be selected for, whereas those that reduce success are selected against." Deor (talk) 21:09, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

OK, but someone must have first used that series of words, and those around him must have been as mystified as I was. So, if it managed to flourish despite the odds, there must be a dictionary explanation somewhere. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:13, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

How about here, at definition 1.1? Deor (talk) 21:16, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for that, Deor. It confirms it derives from biological contexts. (I still hate it, because it makes it sound as if Evolution is some gray-bearded Being who sits on high and mindfully chooses this characteristic and rejects that trait. The reality is utterly different. End of mini-rant.) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:04, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

You mean like this guy? CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 00:11, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Horror! I'll never be able to unsee that. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:18, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

It's a reasonable extension of the notion of "natural selection". Like in Jurassic Park where Jeff Goldblum says about dinosaurs, "Nature selected these creatures for extinction." So you can blame Darwin for it, since it does sound as if someone or something is actively selecting. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:19, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

In the context in which StuRat was using it (see my link), it's the profession of politician that, he maintains, "selects for" dishonesty. In that case, it's not the profession that selects the person, but vice-versa. Or is it some mutual symbiotic, magnetic attraction? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:25, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

It is indeed the profession that selects the traits of the people who are eligible and ineligible, although not the specific person. For example, the profession of basketball player strongly selects against the morbidly obese and for the tall (although there are exceptions, like Muggsy Bogues). StuRat (talk) 03:09, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

User:JackofOz You've gotten references on the biological origin of the phrase, but you still seem a bit dissatisfied. I hear and use these phrases all the time. I can't help you like them any better, but perhaps I can explain a way to think of them vis. agency. Now, if we're thinking of animals, you might say "it is not the desert that selects for water-efficient animals, it is the animals that choose to live in the desert". And to some extent that's true, too. But think about plants: they don't move much as adults, and lots of seeds get spread around to lots of places. So what happens is that dozens of species show up at a place, and the environment selects which ones survive. The term "Environmental filtering" is commonly used to talk about natural selection, when the focus is on how the abiotic environment selects species or traits, while selecting against traits that negatively impact an individual's lifetime fecundity.

Think of a sieve. I might say "This sieve selects gravel over 1 cm in diameter." Or "This sieve selects against gravel under 1 cm in diameter". In this example, it seems unreasonable to think the gravel is doing any selecting. The agency must lie in the sieve (or the human that poured the gravel in, or the force of gravity, etc). In other examples, the agency is less clear, and may be joint. But whether or not I agree with Stu's claim, the form of "Job X selects for/against people with trait Y" is fine and acceptable, because there is certainly some room for a profession to systemically turn away candidates with a certain trait. If you want to be extra picky precise and careful, you could phrase these all these in terms of selective pressure, rather than a binary for/against, something like "Job X has a weak selective pressure favoring trait Y." Clunky perhaps, but such is often the price of precision and clarity in formal writing ;)

Systemic bias, Systemic racism and Occupational sexism are all articles that focus on how the structure and membership of organizations can and do preferentially select for/against different traits, even though there is some converse selection going on as well. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:10, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, User:SemanticMantis, that is very helpful indeed.

I guess my trouble has been in regarding actions like selecting, choosing, voting etc as being one side of a coin whose other side is implicit. I mean, if I have a bowl of fruit containing 10 pieces, and I choose/select one of them, then there's no need to mention the other nine as being "chosen against" or any other such crazy form of words. When I vote for a certain candidate, that inherently means for whatever reason I choose them over all the others, so I don't need to say "I voted for Bloggs, and against Smith, Jones, Brown, ... Macgillicuddy, Brezhnevinsky and Changworth". "Vote for" is a standard idiom, but "select" and "choose", in usual parlance, take direct objects, so it hits me in the ear/eye when "for" is added to them.

Having been exposed to the general concept of natural selection but having never read anything in detail about it (my vast range of interests not yet extending that far), I find myself behind the 8-ball of this particular jargon. I can see now that the bare word "select" is insufficient or misleading to describe what goes on in these contexts, and I guess I'll just have to get used to "select for" - in its place.

But if I ever hear a marriage celebrant ask the parties "Do you select for this man/woman ... ?", you'll see me running headlong from the venue screaming "To the barricades! They've finally gone too far! The glorious revolution begins!".

Thanks to all who helped me get up to speed here. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 18:49, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

One point you may be missing is that "select", alone, means that you 100% selected that item, while "selects for" and "selects against" only describe a tendency towards or away from a given selection. Also, "select" tends to be used in an individual case, while "selects for" and "selects against" are used in discussions of groups. So, "John selected the orange instead of the cake", while "Health-aware individuals select for fruit and against sweets". If you said "Health-aware individuals select fruit instead of sweets" that would mean it's true 100% of the time, and it isn't. You could add in some weasel words like "usually" or "typically", but "selects for" and "selects against" are more elegant. StuRat (talk) 19:53, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

I understand the difference now, thanks Stu. But I've never seen "select for/against" used in any writing designed for a general readership. Is it a commonly used expression in your neck of the woods, outside of biological/scientific contexts? It certainly is not well known down here. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:20, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

It has started to spread into general usage here, yes, although it is so common in biology that those Ghits still dominate. StuRat (talk) 20:33, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Resolved