I just learned an interesting bit of word history via Merriam-Webster’s delightfully discursive entry for caprice:
Etymology
borrowed from French, going back to Middle French, borrowed from Italian capriccio “whim, fancy,” earlier and medieval Tuscan caporiccio “bristling of the hair with fear, shiver of horror, shudder,” probably from capo “head” (going back to Vulgar Latin *capum, re-formation of Latin caput “head”) + riccio “hedgehog,” going back to Latin ērīcius — more at head entry 1, urchin
Note: Italian capriccio has been a word of disputed origin, the principle issue being the peculiar semantic shift from “shiver of horror”—a meaning easily explicable from the compound’s bases “head” and “hedgehog”—to “whim, caprice,” and hence to various further senses. On these grounds M. Cortelazzo and P. Zolli (Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana) consider the entire etymology uncertain, and speculate that two etyma of independent origin have somehow converged phonetically. Cortelazzo and Zolli state that the Sienese poet Cecco Angiolieri (died ca. 1312) used caporiccio in the sense “desire, wish” (“desiderio, voglia”), but in the sole occurrence of the word in the sonnets attributed to him, the meaning is actually far from clear. With this use set aside, the sense “whim, fancy” is not attested before the sixteenth century according to the Lessico etimologico italiano (vol. 9, column 1055), when the word was borrowed by French. The earlier meaning “shiver of horror,” first attested as a translation of Latin horror by the Florentine author Bono Giamboni (died ca. 1292), is apparently rare in Italian after the eighteenth century, but derivatives such as raccapricciarsi “to be horrified,” raccapriccio “horror, disgust,” are still current. The sense “whim, fancy” has suggested a connection with capra “goat,” an animal stereotypically known for its sudden leaps (compare capriole). The lexicographer Francesco Alunno, in Ricchezze della lingua volgare sopra il Boccaccio (1543), notes both meanings of the word without attempting to reconcile them: “And a sudden and unreasoning inclination is called capriccio, such as seems to come in the manner of goats, which all leap if one leaps. Likewise those shudders, shivers of cold that appear at the beginning of a still doubtful fever are called capricci.” (“Et Capriccio si chiama un’ appetito subito et senza rasone, tale, qual pare che venga alle Capre; che se una salta tutte l’altre saltano. Item Capricci si chiamano quei ribrezzi, griccioli del gielo, che vengono nel principio della febre anchora incerta.”) Whatever its etymology, caporiccio/capriccio is likely at least as old as the thirteenth century, given its rich attestation in dialects throughout the Italian peninsula, as documented in Lessico etimologico italiano.
I love all the detail, but I note with extreme disapproval the use of “principle” in place of the correct “principal.” Where have all the copyeditors gone? (The OED’s 1888 entry adds no useful information in the etymology but does note “About 1700 ˈcaprice was a usual accentuation; Pope rhymed the word with vice.”)
About 1700 ˈcaprice was a usual accentuation; Pope rhymed the word with vice.
“Cap rice”?? My hair is bristling with horror.
“Capricious” is in recent generations I think sort of inherently pejorative, but whoever at General Motors named the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Caprice apparently didn’t think that extended to the noun. I am now dimly remembering that my mom got a Caprice (’81, maybe?) as a replacement after 16-year-old me totaled her ’77 Impala after an unfortunate winter-night’s encounter with black ice.
Fittingly, I happened to read this post while listening to a violin piece by Paganini.
What’s the big semantic shift from “shiver (of horror)” to “whim?” They seem next-door neighbors to me. I can easily imagine an English idiom along the lines of “I had a shiver, and went and bought that dress in the window.”
Also, in the future, please put all mentions of Alexander Pope rhyming things behind a content warning. It causes me irreparable psychic harm every time I am reminded of his translation of the Iliad.
So caprice is horripilation.
I was sort of hoping for an astrological connection with Capricorn, but alas, they are not reckoned to be particularly whimsical, or governed by the moon.
Has anyone else suffered the caprice of the Hat web-server recently? A number of times in the last few days I’ve been unable to load the site.
Yes, I’ve contacted my hosting service about it but they haven’t gotten back to me.
Good luck. Sorry you have to go through a hassle for us all.
Does the “capo” in “capo riccio” denote the hedgehog’s head or the human’s? The prickliest parts of the two animals are the back and the back of the neck respectively, rather than the head.
@mollymooly: The sense I inferred was, “The hair on your head stands up, like quills on a hedgehog.”
Same here.
Buli has a proverb:
Yueng-peng a pisi piema kan paai kadek lo-kpak-a.
“The hedgehog collects arrows but has not got its own quiver.”
Sadly, Kröger’s nice dictionary gives you no clue as to just when you might deploy this proverb. (It’s vaguely reminiscent of some of the less transparent verses in Proverbs the Book.)
The Gulimancema proverb
Gudibiga kan pua nikuli.
“[Even] a little hedgehog doesn’t get punched.”
has more obvious applications, though.
@de
Just guessing:
1. CONVINCES OTHERS TO PROVIDE SUPPORT (quiver)
2. IF YOU BUILD IT (arrows) HE (quiver)
WILL COME
3. FUR COAT (arrows) AND NO KNICKERS (quiver)
I think these lead to an Ur-sense
0. BE PREPARED OR DEPEND ON LUCK.
“𝐼 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑒𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑙, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝐼 𝑛𝑜𝑡𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑒𝑥𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑒 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑣𝑎𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑜𝑓 “𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑖𝑝𝑙𝑒” 𝑖𝑛 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑡 “𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑖𝑝𝑎𝑙.” ”
I’m curious, why the “extreme” disapproval? You understood perfectly what was meant. Are you not an exponent on how language is used rather than adhering to strict rules and about how language should be used? Is it not your “principle” that language is an evolving entity and we must not make judgements about correctness? After all, the sentence is self-explanatory; therefore, usually countenanced by descriptivists. It is not an egregious solecism; it is perhaps a misspelling or just ignorance, which seems to be the genesis of how language evolves.
“𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑝𝑦𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑛𝑒?”
They have gone to AI where the job is completed far more expeditiously.
Well, naturally an “AI” feels that “AI” is better than a copyeditor. You must forgive us humans our archaic prejudices in favour of actual meaning.
@PP:
You could well be right in all your guesses. Proverbs in these languages occupy a somewhat different linguistic niche from proverbs in our culture; the ambiguity is often a feature rather than a bug, allowing advice to be given with tactful quasi-deniability, and the same proverb can have quite different implications in different contexts. Knowing how and when to deploy proverbs is a valued verbal skill in its own right. (There is a proverb about this …)
I’m curious, why the “extreme” disapproval? You understood perfectly what was meant.
Because I spent most of my working life as a copyeditor and I value adherence to rules in printed matter. This is entirely separate from my descriptivism, which applies to general language use, not publication standards.
They have gone to AI where the job is completed far more expeditiously.
This is idiotic. Perhaps you are, as DE suggests, AI yourself?
Further semantic shift: In Portuguese “capricho” can mean “whim”, but also “extreme care” (in performing a task). The adjective “caprichoso” – at least in Brazilian Portuguese – also means “careful, attentive to detail”.
Wow, that is very weird.
I knew a goat that was extremely careful and thorough about annoying me at every opportunity.
I guess it goes without saying that “caper” (not the salty kind) comes from “capriole” and thus is related. Oops, sorry.
The etymology of the salty kind goes back via Lat. to Gk. κάππαρις, which seems to maybe have a cognate in Persian (unless it was a loan in either direction?) but whose deeper etymology is said to be uncertain. Perhaps there’s an opening for goat-related speculation, though? Although with the complication that the Gk. cognate for Lat. goat-sense “caper” (κάπρος) means a different cloven-hooved mammal, viz. the wild boar. Which critter would have been more likely to eat unbrined capers in the wild? The Old English cognate is hæfer, which (somewhat to my surprise) is apparently not claimed to be ancestral to current “heifer.”
Related to German Habergeiß ‘folkloric caprine demon.’
The first set of page proofs of my forthcoming paper was generated by AI. It is an unmitigated catastrophe. I needed to make over 1,250 annotations, many of them concerning complete nonsense that no carbon-based copyeditor would ever commit.
Currently, over a month later, I’m waiting for the third set…
That would give -v-, not -f-; to explain -f- we need a loan or special shenanigans.
OE hæfer is probably the first component of my own surname, which appears to derive, via a long line of illiterate manglings by inebriate speakers of impenetrable Nottinghamshire dialect, from the toponym “Haversedge.” Sadly, the second element does not appear to mean “demon”; the sense is merely the rather pedestrian “Goat’s Ridge.”
Heifer doesn’t appear to have any plausible origin without at least some shenanigans. Here’s what the OED has to say about the etymology:
That the first element represents high looks reasonable; in addition to the Old English forms given above, there are Middle and early Modern English citations with the spellings: hayfre, hoyffer, hawgher, hayfare, heyfer, heyghfer, and heighfer. The second element is, as noted by the OED, much harder to make sense of.
So if we need shenanigans anyway, why hasn’t some speculative sort just latched onto hæfer as the etymon and just done some handwaving?
hf explains it fine: intervocalic -f- was [v], but -hf- would have to have been [xf].
I would not have guessed that Habergeiß (which I didn’t know) is pleonastic; I’d have taken the first part for “oats”, MHG haber (meanwhile replaced by Hafer from Low German, but there are still the last names Haberkorn and Habersack). Probably that’s exactly why the “goat” word died out.
There is also apparently one current descendant of Old English hæfer, “goat.” Hæfer-blǽte was used in Old English as a word for a snipe, transparently named for the bird’s goat-like bleating call. (The association of the snipe with goats is apparently common. The OED lists other examples: “German himmelziege, French chèvre-volante, Gaelic meannan-adhair air-kid, gabhair-adhair sky- or air-goat.”) The word still exists in Scottish English, in the form heather-bleat, which is obviously not regular and presumably arose as an eggcorn.
“𝐵𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝐼 𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑦 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒 𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑐𝑜𝑝𝑦𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑜𝑟 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐼 𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒 𝑎𝑑ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑟𝑢𝑙𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟. 𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑠𝑒𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑚𝑦 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑠𝑚, 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑐ℎ 𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑙 𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑢𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑢𝑠𝑒, 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑠.”
Descriptivism focuses on how language is used in everyday contexts, including publications. They refrain from imposing prescriptive rules in writing and general language. If I understand you correctly, “your” descriptivism only focuses on general language use; therefore, you do not practice the linguistic egalitarianism that you advocate. Writing is not a separate entity from language; it includes both written and spoken forms. Your principle should apply to both written and spoken usage. Otherwise, you are establishing different standards for two patterns of the same language.
“They have gone to AI where the job is completed far more expeditiously.”
“𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑑𝑖𝑜𝑡𝑖𝑐.”
I was being provocative. Actually, it’s not idiodic. As a test, I’ve used AI to proofread and edit documents that I’ve written and the results were instantaneous and efficient. I’ve used it specifically, and only, for that purpose, but I would never alter my vocabulary, grammar, or style of writing based on its suggestions. Also, I do not think AI is superior to a human copyeditor, but it does serve a purpose if one is on a limited time frame.
𝑃𝑒𝑟ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑠 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑟𝑒, 𝑎𝑠 𝐷𝐸 𝑠𝑢𝑔𝑔𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑠, 𝐴𝐼 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓?
As I’ve stated in previous comments, I am not an advocate of technology, nor am I a proponent of AI. I could also suggest that many of your posts are AI generated, but I won’t, because that would be “idiotic”.
Actually, it’s not idiodic. As a test, I’ve used AI to proofread and edit documents that I’ve written and the results were instantaneous and efficient.
Just not this time amiright ? Anyway instantaneous + efficient does not imply free of typos.
“Heifer doesn’t appear to have any plausible origin without at least some shenanigans”: that’s why it’s Anatoly Liberman’s favorite mystery word. There doesn’t seem to be any reason to describe a young cow as “high”, let alone “high-stepper”, he says. He has a detailed entry in his Analytic Dictionary and blogged on it more recently in a two-part entry discussing first heah (his interpretation: ‘enclosure’) and then fore (his interpretation: ‘in the presence of’, thus the heifer is an occupant of an enclosure, perhaps because calves were separated from their mothers but kept together, or because heifers were enclosed to protect them from bulls).
AHD connects the fore part with Old English fearr (as mentioned in the OED’s etymology), which they gloss as ‘calf’, but I think that’s misleading, since (at least, in the references I’ve looked in) it was ‘bull’ in Old English, ‘calf’ only in some distant cognates.
The pronunciation/spelling mismatch is because they come from different dialects, Liberman says.
just when you might deploy this proverb
This site of Mampruli Proverbs has that version, with a note:
Which I admit doesn’t help me as much as I think they intended; it isn’t even clear whether uncovered danger is a positive or a negative trait or both.
Hedgehogs + arrows is, I imagine, a pretty common association. For instance, St. Sebastian in Legenda aurea:
Légende dorée:
Caxton’s Englishing felt the need to explain the simile a bit:
Note how Middle English still had an heriçun word, surviving only in urchin.
If a descriptivist linguist doing field work hears a native speaker make an error and start over, are they obliged to write in their notebook:
kalo- eh, uh… talofa (noun): a kind of bird
No. Descriptivism still allows for the fact that language communities and individuals have rules that they sometimes fail to follow. It also allows for different registers to have different, and stricter, sets of rules.
For example, on the playground, “perhaps it is you who are the robot. Have you thought of that, eh?” is permissible, and even witheringly effective, as a riposte. On a blog full of language nerds who would rather attend a Republican gender reveal party than allow a homogenization algorithm to unhumanize their work, it lacks a certain… wit.
Well said!
Hedgehogs + arrows is, I imagine, a pretty common association.
To the point, in Oti-Volta, that several words for “hedgehog” are actually compounds of “arrow.” Buli yueng-peng is a case in point, as the peng element has the same root as piema “arrows.” It’s exactly parallel in formation to Mampruli yugumpiinni and Mooré yʋgempende in fact, though in a different “gender”/noun class. (The metathesis *gm > ng is regular in Buli.)
[Kusaal has the uncompounded form yugudir, with a different derivational suffix: *d instead of *m.]
@kts, de
Looks like my guesses were wrong. Next iteration:
1. ATTACKS (arrows) WITHOUT WARNING (quiver)
2. DISPLAYS HOSTILITY (arrows) OPENLY (no quiver).
3. HAS NO FILTER (quiver)
4. DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT
On further consideration of the Case of the Oti-Volta Hedgehog:
I can’t claim to know much Buli, but
Yueng-peng a pisi piema kan paai kadek lo-kpak-a.
hedgehog HABITUAL pick.up arrows not attain own quiver
seems to have just the same clause structure as the Mampruli version
Yugumpiinni kuri piima n-kɔŋŋi lɔkku.
hedgehog forge arrows LINKER-lack quiver
(In Kusaal, this would go Yugudir kud pimaa kɔ’ɔŋ lɔk.)
In both cases the construction is what I call “catenative” in my Kusaal grammar; this construction is generally – but wrongly – called a “serial verb construction” in WOV grammars. The nearest analogue in English is to take the second, subjectless, clause as headed by a “present participle.” The Mampruli verbs are actually perfective, so a more literal translation would be
“Hedgehog has forged arrows, having no quiver.”
(This sort of “gnomic aorist” use of the perfective is quite common in proverbs.)
In both the Buli and Mampruli versions, the “but” is a piece of introduced interpretation, not corresponding to anything specific in the original language. Certainly in Mampruli, and I think in Buli, a particularly contrastive meaning is not normal in catenative constructions.
I think the most natural interpretation is that the hedgehog hasn’t been planning ahead properly. (The use of the verb pisi “pick up” in the Buli, rather than ta “have, possess”, suggests this too, I think.)
I obviously can’t argue with your translation, but the hedgehog seems to manage fine without a quiver, so I wonder whether the point* is “Go ahead even if your plan seems incomplete.” At least sometimes.
*In the style of your earlier comment, I’ll add that hedgehogs are cute.
However, as I say, the proper use of proverbs is held to be a valuable verbal skill, not given to all:
Zɔlʋg ya’a siilim siiliŋ, li nwɛnɛ danuudi na yɛl ye o yis gun’a o nu’ugin nɛ.
“When a fool cites a proverb, it’s like a drunk trying to pick a thorn out of his hand.”
(Comment aimed at myself, not GF.)
@GF:
You may very easily be right: as I say, it’s not unusual for the same proverb to be used to make quite different points in different contexts. This seems to be very common in Africa, judging by Chapter 14 of the highly-to-be-recommended
https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0025
Apropos of nothing much, a cute Mooré proverb using the “forge, work iron” verb that features in the Mampruli hedgehog proverb:
Fo n kut la f zugdẽ.
“It’s you who’s working the iron and you who’s working the bellows.”
i.e. “you’re contradicting yourself.” (Not an approving statement about a multi-tasker, as one might imagine.)
Responce to S. Clayton:
” Just not this time amiright ? Anyway instantaneous + efficient does not imply free of typos.”
No, you’re not right, but you already knew that when you submitted your rather puerile ottusità.
I may have unfairly maligned the Oti-Volta hedgehog, on yet further reflection (and, let’s face it, it’s hard enough being a hedgehog in the savanna without people impugning your lack of foresight. Though I suppose that at least you’re less likely to be run over by a car.)
What I hadn’t taken properly into account is that in Mampruli
Yugumpiinni kuri piima n-kɔŋŋi lɔkku.
hedgehog forge arrows LINKER-lack quiver
kɔŋŋi, like kuri, is perfective aspect. Kusaal might not be a safe guide to Mampruli syntax, admittedly, but the languages are very closely related; and in Kusaal catenated clauses like this, perfectives are constrained to appear in “iconic” order, i.e. event order.
The Kusaal cognate of kɔŋŋi, kɔ’ɔŋ, can mean “lose” in the perfective; not sure about the Mampruli, but if so, the proverb might be rendered
Yugumpiinni kuri piima n-kɔŋŋi lɔkku.
“Having forged arrows, hedgehog lost the quiver.”
Mind you, that still seems pretty careless. Sorry, little fella.
David Marjanović says
“The first set of page proofs of my forthcoming paper was generated by AI. It is an unmitigated catastrophe. I needed to make over 1,250 annotations, many of them concerning complete nonsense that no carbon-based copyeditor would ever commit.”
Really? You do understand that copy editors are progressively incorporating AI into their system to enhance efficiency.
Of course he does, and he thinks it’s a disaster, as do I. It’s even more efficient to ditch copyediting altogether, as our local newspaper does. Efficiency is not everything.
“Having forged arrows, hedgehog lost the quiver.”
Better to have forged and lost, than never to have forged at all.
So true.
That’s the intent. The real effect is the opposite of the intent.
For example, sentences that begin with a comma because the first word was deemed unfit for the style. A few sentences later on the same page, that word is still there, because AI is inconsistent – unlike every “unintelligent” computer program. All dashes were removed for no discernible reason; they were replaced in various ways, some of which created total gibberish. Most, but not all, occurrences of “I” (I’m the only author) were replaced by passive constructions, some of which actually ended up making me sound more arrogant than otherwise. The Acknowledgments were turned into “Acknowledgements”, even though the journal explicitly wants American spelling, and entirely rewritten in the third person (“the author”), which is not only inhumanly stupid but also wasn’t quite done correctly. CIted references were jumbled (titles reinterpreted as publishers, publishers as places, that sort of thing). I could go on for an hour or two, and I type pretty fast.
As I told the publisher in my initial complaint, their AI is never going to save them money and is never going to be cheaper than carbon-based copyeditors.
All dashes were removed for no discernible reason
Maybe they’ve heard that dashes are hallmarks of LLM writing and decided to help you sound more human. There are places (not journals, AFAIK, but funding agencies) which straight up prohibit the first-person perspective, which makes writing proposals very awkward.
For the sake of efficiency, dishwater will be now served instead of the usual soup made by carbon-based cooks. Customers are expected to add salt and pepper to optimize the taste.
Huh, there actually is a frequency difference there, between AmE (‑dgm‑ more frequent) and BrE (‑dgem‑ now more frequent, but only since the 1960s!). I’d never noticed. The ‑dgem‑ spelling is not *wrong* in AmE, it’s given as a second option in American dictionaries. I doubt Americans would be bothered by this; it’s not like “colour”. Of course what you don’t want is flip-flopping between the options, and of course that’s *exactly* what an LLM can’t be stopped from doing.
Once or twice I’ve encountered an American who was bothered by “acknowledgement”, “judgement”, or “fledgeling” as some are by “colour”. Maybe three times.
(Whatever is checking my spelling underlined “fledgeling” but not the other two.)
@Jerry Friedman: “Fledgeling” looks significantly worse to me than the other two, although not as bad as “colour.”
This is one of Noah Webster’s innovations, and I had taken for granted all these years that it caught on in the US and nowhere else, like -or…
I’ve always used the -dg- spellings (at least, whenever I actually think about the spelling.) I had no idea it was American. I must start introducing the e‘s.
The -dge- spellings give me a shiver of a similar kind to reknown, but much less intense.
Colour is fine. It’s British.
“Acknowledgment” with ‑dgm‑ wasn’t Webster’s innovation; Johnson has (only) that spelling, and it was already predominant in BrE before AmE split off. (The earliest uses, from the 1500s, have ‑dgem‑, but it flipped to ‑dgm‑ by the late 1600s.) Apparently putting the e back was a 20th-century British innovation. Fowler in 1926 wrote (at judg(e)ment) that “modern usage, however, favors judgment”, but he advocated putting the e back in — a quest that eventually succeeded, at least in BrE.
OED’s note on spelling at judgement (revised 2013):
(I wonder if they meant Kersey (1702) was unusually *late*?) No such historical note at acknowledgement (revised 2009), unfortunately, just a label on the ‑dgm‑ spelling marking it “chiefly U.S.”, but of course they have historical British examples of it in the quotations.
I sit in awe.
@Y: The -dge- spellings give me a shiver of a similar kind to reknown, but much less intense.
For me, “reknown”, “supercede”, etc., are in a whole different category. ETA: I dislike the <dgC> spellings, but I don’t think I notice them when I’m reading.
Colour is fine. It’s British.
The Americans who said they (we) saw something wrong with it were referring only to uses by Americans. Of course. I’m pretty sure.
Supercede is a full-blown reanalysis; it is routinely used in ways where -cede makes sense and “sit” does not.
puerile ottusità
Our little AI bitch reveals a capacity for precious locution. Almost human, you might say. I can’t decide if it was more probably scraped from Mapp and Lucia, or Firbank.
“𝑂𝑢𝑟 𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑙𝑒 𝐴𝐼 𝑏𝑖𝑡𝑐ℎ 𝑟𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑠 𝑎 𝑐𝑎𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠 𝑙𝑜𝑐𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛. 𝐴𝑙𝑚𝑜𝑠𝑡 ℎ𝑢𝑚𝑎𝑛, 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑚𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑠𝑎𝑦. 𝐼 𝑐𝑎𝑛’𝑡 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑖𝑓 𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑠 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑦 𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑎𝑝𝑒𝑑 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑀𝑎𝑝𝑝 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐿𝑢𝑐𝑖𝑎, 𝑜𝑟 𝐹𝑖𝑟𝑏𝑎𝑛𝑘.”
Be careful, when you use profanity in an effort to sound cogent and witty it only exposes your facade of pseudo-intellectualism, which is quite evident in all of your posts.
First, for your edification, 𝑝𝑢𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑙𝑒/𝑜𝑡𝑡𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑎̀ are not part of AI’s lexicon, but based on your rather elementary and trendy-slang vocabulary you wouldn’t understand that.
Nevertheless, it would not have urged you from spewing out your infantile ad hominem attack. Do you think by belittling me you’ve achieved a quasi intelligent rebuttal? You haven’t. On the contrary, it’s just evidence of your lack of emotional intelligence. You’re foolishly denouncing AI rather than the content of what I wrote. As I said, I don’t use AI in my writing, but rather than intelligently discuss the content of what I wrote you resort to intimating my use of AI. It’s a typical dodge, and an example of a genetic fallacy.
Genetic fallacy? Why not go the whole maiale and attribute Stu’s puerile ottusità to genetic factors related to the notorious level of inbreeding to be found in his native Texas.
That’s more a Kentucky pastime, dear. Where I come from, ottusità is the preserve of men, not boys.
Kentucky banned first-cousin marriage in 1946, Texas in 2005. But maybe Texas had not been able to catch up in the interval.
Hat, can you please ask Jean-Antoine how many cars are in the image before their next post, so we won’t have to put up with this anymore?
That there law in Texas was on the books only for appearances, it never troubled nobody. Folks just did what they wanted, I sure did at any rate. In Texas you can’t infer from the mere presence of a law that it was actually preventing something.
how many cars are in the image
I always do really badly with those. Perhaps …
https://xkcd.com/329/
Jean-Antoine, you appear to belong to a particularly noxious species of pseudo-intellectual that tries to prove its impressively great superintelligence by pulling wads of carefully hoarded fancy words from a wicker basket and tossing them around promiscuously. Trust me, it doesn’t work. (I’m making the charitable assumption that you are not, in fact, a bot.)
No, yeah. There’s no reason why a bot could not have scraped “puerile ottusità” from a Firbank novel. It would have been smooth to drop it casually and keep moving. But the author comes back to be even more bitchy and pretentious about it.
He or it is clearly well pleased with his/itself and with the badmouthing too. That’s not an AI behavioral trait I’ve heard about. I hope they don’t add it to AI, I would hate to end my days listening to tired old queens carrying on as they did at the El Paso bars I frequented at age 13.
“We may follow the Oxford manner and write abridgement, acknowledgement, and judgement on the ground that these forms are more in accordance with English values of letters, but we should not object in the least to the Cambridge fashion of writing abridgment, acknowledgment, and judgment.”—Simeon Potter
Which suggests that abridgment is not only an abridgment of abridgement, but also a Cambridgment.
The things I learn.
𝐻𝑎𝑡, 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑝𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒 𝑎𝑠𝑘 𝐽𝑒𝑎𝑛-𝐴𝑛𝑡𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑒 ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑚𝑎𝑛𝑦 𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑠 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑖𝑚𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑛𝑒𝑥𝑡 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑡, 𝑠𝑜 𝑤𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑛’𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑢𝑡 𝑢𝑝 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒?
You possess a pen, use it.
“𝐽𝑒𝑎𝑛-𝐴𝑛𝑡𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑒, 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑎 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑦 𝑛𝑜𝑥𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠 𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑝𝑠𝑒𝑢𝑑𝑜-𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑖𝑡𝑠 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡 𝑠𝑢𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑏𝑦 𝑝𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑎𝑑𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑓𝑢𝑙𝑙𝑦 ℎ𝑜𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑒𝑑 𝑓𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑦 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑠 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑎 𝑤𝑖𝑐𝑘𝑒𝑟 𝑏𝑎𝑠𝑘𝑒𝑡 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑎𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑚𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑢𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑙𝑦. 𝑇𝑟𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑚𝑒, 𝑖𝑡 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠𝑛’𝑡 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘. (𝐼’𝑚 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑢𝑚𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑡, 𝑖𝑛 𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑡, 𝑎 𝑏ot.”
Languagehat, is this another example of your effort to avoid personal attacks? Noxious species? Really? Please elucidate, what have I said that is harmful or poisonous? Elaborate please, but don’t, because you will always justify your transgressions. My comments directed at you were about descriptivism. They were based on facts on the meaning of descriptivism. They were educational, but not pseudo-intellectual. I can’t argue about your definition for “fancy words”, because it is a matter of opinion; you have a preference for the fifty-cent word.
Regardless, I’m certain you could have easily created a more inaccurate aspersion than parroting my pseudo-intellectualism directed at one of the members of your nerdy squad. It seems to be a mindset of your pseudo-intellectuals on your team who expend time and words on expressions that might be meaningful to about <1% of the world population.
I submitted:
“𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟” 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑠𝑚 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑓𝑜𝑐𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑛 𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑙 𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑢𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑢𝑠𝑒; 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒, 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑑𝑜 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑝𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑐𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑢𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑐 𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑠𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑑𝑣𝑜𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑒. 𝑊𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑎 𝑠𝑒𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑢𝑎𝑔𝑒; 𝑖𝑡 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑙𝑢𝑑𝑒𝑠 𝑏𝑜𝑡ℎ 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑘𝑒𝑛 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑠. 𝑌𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑖𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑙𝑦 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑜𝑡ℎ 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑘𝑒𝑛 𝑢𝑠𝑎𝑔𝑒. 𝑂𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑤𝑖𝑠𝑒, 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑑𝑖𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡𝑤𝑜 𝑝𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑢𝑎𝑔𝑒.”
Please explain why you would classify that factual information, which is abetted by linguists, as noxious pseudo-intellectual-jargon and remotely associated with a pretense of “impressively great superintelligence”.
You seem to intuit that my philosophical viewpoints are antithetical to yours; therefore, you dismiss and ignore them predicated solely on its source rather than the content of the information. There is your genetic fallacy, which you and your cohorts indulge in with juvenile ad hominem attacks.
Stu’s statement, (which you enabled) : “𝑂𝑢𝑟 𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑙𝑒 𝐴𝐼 𝑏𝑖𝑡𝑐ℎ 𝑟𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑠 𝑎 𝑐𝑎𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠 𝑙𝑜𝑐𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛.” What it actually reveals is his incapability to formulate an intelligent argument; therefore, he can only resort to the ad hominem. Mind you, craven individuals are quite courageous behind a computer screen.
@ja
I can’t speak for Stu or hat, but maybe if you adapted your style a bit, your content and logical thrust would be clearer. Somehow I find your elliptic passages and the italic 8-point font you use remind me of “Le Petit Prince”; with a fake and nauseatingly sweet/banal tone that is perhaps best left to authors of children’s books.
There is an uncertainty or random element to your style which is reminiscent of text copied from multiple sources or excessive use of AI or thesaurus by a young person or L2 speaker.
To me, your points seem to be:
(1) you expect from hat and other posters a greater acceptance of confusing or non-standard written forms (in particular contexts?);
(2) your ego has been bruised;
(3) you feel the need to retaliate
(4) you consider other commenters to suffer from a genetic fallacy (whatever you mean by this) that is affecting their ability to appreciate your posts
Now that you have communicated these concerns, maybe you could chill a bit and think about how to tweak your style and approach.
Interesting. On my screen it has serifs but is almost as large as the normal font here.
We seem to have AOC on our team.
It’s not a different font. It’s italic letters which were incorporated into Unicode as distinct characters, most of them for the benefit of mathematicians. They were added to Unicode at different times, so only some of the older ones, like 𝑓 or ℎ (“Planck constant”) might be present in the default font for the comments, while newer ones have to be substituted from another font, chosen by the whims of the OS. That in part is why these italics look irregular.
I, for one, would enjoy reading Stu’s memoir about the El Paso bars he frequented when he was 13.
Yes, Stu’s memoirs would be a hot item.