To boldly go.....

[dww]

As a person who has lived in the west country, four miles from lands end, for nearly half of my life, I have never heard of that either. True Cornish people do have lots of ways of saying things and it takes a few years to understand all of it, my sister has lived there for over forty  years and is now becoming a local. I was married to a northern girl for over 10 years and they have some strange sayings. Best bit is we meet with a Scottish pair in Spain once a year, the wife I can understand, but her husband I only understand about a third of what he says, Have to guess the rest.

[mlroseplant]

I thought I would contribute regularly to this thread, but I see it has fallen by the wayside. I now realize why. We hate to hijack other people's threads with our humorous, but otherwise irrelevant banter, but there's a reason why it happens--I think it is a natural reaction to ordinary conversation, and there are some of us who like to take conversation on a sometimes circuitous route. To separate out these conversational side journeys often takes away the beauty of the journeys themselves. I suppose it is a shoe without a foot to put in it, and with no place to travel.

[at9]

As the OP for this thread I'm very happy for it to meander anywhere down the byways of English (Latin and possibly Greek also allowed, where vaguely relevant to English. Lesser tongues also welcome on the same basis).

[Shyheels]

I learned a new word the other day, courtesy of Carnival Cruise Lines: allision. It’s a nautical term for when a moving ship strikes a stationary one. It is different than a collision. A collision is when both ships are moving...

[at9]

I saw that recently too. Not to be confused with allusion or illusion.

[Cali]

I wonder if allision could be used when someone hits parked cars?

[Shyheels]

15 minutes ago, Cali said:

I wonder if allision could be used when someone hits parked cars?

It is a nautical tern, true, but the concept contained in that word could certainly apply to a moving car striking a parked one - so, yes. 

[Cali]

 

20 minutes ago, Shyheels said:

It is a nautical tern,

Don't all terns live near water, so aren't they all nautical?

[Bubba136]

Hmm!  In order for an event to have it’s own definition, l would imagine that it must occur quite frequently to be recognized for what it is.  Never heard of it before.  But then, as a old aviator, why would I?

[Cali]

How about a plane running into other planes parked on the tarmac?

[meganiwish]

I can't find any complete etymology, but I suppose that allision/collision must share a similar relationship to that between allusion/collusion:  Latin ad+ laedere = strike at, com+laedere = strike together.

[p1ng74]

2 hours ago, Cali said:

How about a plane running into other planes parked on the tarmac?

That would be alloseyourpilotlicence

[mlroseplant]

On 12/28/2019 at 1:21 PM, Cali said:

I wonder if allision could be used when someone hits parked cars?

What about a car hitting other stationary objects, like a trash dumpster (skip)? My only unintended contact (in a car). It was a green car, and a green dumpster, so you couldn't really tell, unless you looked very closely. The ex-wife was still mad as hell about it.

[Shyheels]

I believe it can apply to any moving object striking a stationary object

[meganiwish]

How fast was the dumpster going when it hit you?    It strikes me (or perhaps allides with me) that it should be easier to tell the two apart if they're not close.

[mlroseplant]

On 1/1/2020 at 7:01 PM, meganiwish said:

How fast was the dumpster going when it hit you?    It strikes me (or perhaps allides with me) that it should be easier to tell the two apart if they're not close.

Oh, not very. Probably only a couple of miles an hour. It's the momentum that gets you. Mass times velocity. Those 40 yard dumpsters are pretty massive. And green in this area. I hear Waste Management is run by the Mob. Don't know if it's true or not, but what the hell, we're living in a post-factual society anyhow.

[Heelster]

9 hours ago, mlroseplant said:

I hear Waste Management is run by the Mob.

It's been rumored extensively.

 

[meganiwish]

11 hours ago, mlroseplant said:

  we're living in a post-factual society anyhow.

Yes.  I'm just relaxing with a post-factual cigarette.

[SF]

Menthol light 100's are the best....

[Puffer]

On 12/1/2019 at 1:25 PM, at9 said:

Somebody suggested that we start a thread for grammar fiends, spelling hounds, latinists and other pedants. So let's split the infinitive and take the Fowler* express to the land of the semicolon.

*Those from outside this Septic Isle** may not be aware of Fowler's English Usage: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fowlers-Modern-English-Usage-Re-Revised/dp/0198610211

**See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Sceptred_Isle

PS: When I wrote the OP, I'd forgotten that another Fowler was a railway engineer. A double meaning without even realising that I was doing it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Fowler_(engineer)

I must have been slumbering for too long over the festive season (and beyond) so only now have seen and digested this new thread, to which I will endeavour to contribute from time to time.

For the sake of good if pedantic order, I would point out that (a) it should be 'Latinists' (not 'latinists'); and (b) there was at least one other notable railway engineer by the name of Fowler, i.e. Sir John, who was the engineer of London's Metropolitan Railway (its first 'underground' line) and also chief engineer of the Forth Bridge.

Misuse of the apostrophe is something that I find irritating, especially when added superfluously to a plural ( as in "cabbage's and plum's"), or omitted from a word ending in 's' (as in "James' book", rather than "James's book'".   And why do people think that they can be 'bored of' something, rather than 'by' or 'with' it?    There is an annoying trend also to write of something being 'debited from' an account; 'debited' means 'charged', not 'taken' - the correct term is 'debited to' (and likewise 'credited to', when something is added to an account).   Don't get me started on those who confuse 'apprise/appraise''; 'infer/imply'; 'practice/practise'; licence/license' - and, yes, I do realise that US usage of the latter two pairs is the opposite of that in the UK.

I had better stop there for a breather and some more medication.

[pebblesf]

On 1/5/2020 at 8:44 PM, SF said:

Menthol light 100's are the best....

I just "rediscovered" Newports….

[Shyheels]

One of the things I dislike most about autocorrect functions - aside from the fact that you can’t seem to turn them off, no matter what you do - is the way they blithely add apostrophes by default whether they are appropriate or not. 

[Puffer]

3 hours ago, Shyheels said:

One of the things I dislike most about autocorrect functions - aside from the fact that you can’t seem to turn them off, no matter what you do - is the way they blithely add apostrophes by default whether they are appropriate or not. 

Autocorrect on what - a PC?   I've never experienced that problem with apostrophes, although I agree that they are a nuisance - particularly when they try to insist that I should write in American English.

[Shyheels]

I use only Apple stuff, and it inserts apostrophes at every opportunity 

[at9]

If you use fruity computers you'll get greengrocers' apostrophes!

[Puffer]

1 hour ago, at9 said:

If you use fruity computers you'll get greengrocers' apostrophes!

My laptop is HP - but it doesn't make everything I write saucy.

[Shyheels]

Some of the things I write on my Apple turn out to be lemons. 

[mlroseplant]

I work with a lot of guys who claim to be terrible spellers, and they're not lying.  The difference between those guys and me is that I look shit up when I'm not sure. They just roll with whatever comes out of auto-correct.

[at9]

58 minutes ago, Shyheels said:

Some of the things I write on my Apple turn out to be lemons. 

Other fruits are available.

How many fruity brands can you think of? Apricot used to be a maker of computers. Mango are a fashion company. Orange are (in the UK they were, don't know about elsewhere) a mobile phone company.

Long before Apple computers, the Beatles used Apple as a brand for their records.

[Shyheels]

And of course there was the Blackberry

And Fruit of The Loom

Edited February 17, 2020 by Shyheels