The thread of learning something new every day
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The Cartoon Mystery That Stumped the Internet
Do you recognize this elf-like man? No, he’s not from “The Littles.”
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@Bones said in The thread of learning something new every day:
Geek out nerds
I only discovered about 4 months ago - that "Spendthrift" meant the opposite of what I thought it did. What I'd thought it meant for decades.
Still fucking furious. -
@Kruse said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@Bones said in The thread of learning something new every day:
Geek out nerds
I only discovered about 4 months ago - that "Spendthrift" meant the opposite of what I thought it did. What I'd thought it meant for decades.
Still fucking furious.Fuck. That's today for me
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Jimmy Webb's Wichita Lineman is actually an unfinished song.
Webb, while proud of the song, has always insisted it was unfinished, and says he initially considered that famous couplet "the biggest, awfulest, dumbest, most obvious false rhyme in history". He wrote the song to order in 1968, after Campbell had found success with another of his songs, By the Time I Get to Phoenix. "They called me and said, 'Can you write us a song about a town?'" he recalled in a Radio 2 documentary about Campbell's career. "And I said, 'I'm not sure I want to write a song about a town right now. I think I've overdone that'. "He said, 'well, can you do something geographical?' and I spent the rest of the afternoon sweating over Wichita Lineman." But while Webb worked on the lyrics, Campbell and his producer Al DeLory were getting impatient. They were in the recording studio, with a tight deadline, and no song to record. "They said, 'We're really in a hurry, send it over'. And I said, 'OK, but the third verse I don't have'." DeLory wrote an evocative orchestral arrangement in which the strings mimicked the sighing of the telephone wires. To get around the problem of the unfinished third verse, Campbell picked up fellow Wrecking Crew member Carol Kaye's DanElectro six-string bass guitar and improvised the song's famous solo. Webb, however, thought they'd rejected the song. "A couple of weeks later I ran into him [Glen Campbell] somewhere, and I said, 'I guess you guys didn't like the song.'" he recalled. "He said, 'Oh, we cut that'. I said, 'It wasn't done! I was just humming the last bit!'" "He said, 'Well it's done now!'" -
@Kruse said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@Bones said in The thread of learning something new every day:
Geek out nerds
I only discovered about 4 months ago - that "Spendthrift" meant the opposite of what I thought it did. What I'd thought it meant for decades.
Still fucking furious.Hi 🙋♂️
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@Tim said in The thread of learning something new every day:
Do you recognize this elf-like man? No, he’s not from “The Littles.”
i love that kind of stuff because thats exactly the kind of thing i would do...remember something from the a show i watched as a kid...and then spend far too long trying to work out the name etc
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@dogmeat said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@voodoo I had to check to see if I had the correct understanding.
I did
You kids' obviously didn't get a proper education.
I asked my wife and the 4 people in my team - we all had it the wrong way!
I feel like I might be the butt of some elaborate prank here...
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@voodoo said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@dogmeat said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@voodoo I had to check to see if I had the correct understanding.
I did
You kids' obviously didn't get a proper education.
I asked my wife and the 4 people in my team - we all had it the wrong way!
I feel like I might be the butt of some elaborate prank here...
Yeah - I was thinking about this, the fact that so many of us seemed to have it wrong.
Was there some common author that we all read, that also had it wrong? Most of my vocabulary comes from reading... if W.E. Johns, or Alastair MacLean, or Jack Higgins, or Clive Cussler - had it wrong... I could easily have been vocab-infected as a child.
eg: I think there's an example of Mark Twain using "literally" incorrectly, which might have been a factor in today's sad state of understanding/use of that word.
And don't get me started on "acronym"... although I hate to admit defeat, I 'm starting to think the dictionaries should just fucking surrender and update the definition of that word to mean what every fluffybunny thinks it means.
I'm still fucking angry about this.
I'm even willing for the dictionaries to change/update the definition of "acronym", in trade for reversing the definition of "spendthrift". -
@Kruse said in The thread of learning something new every day:
And don't get me started on "acronym"... although I hate to admit defeat, I 'm starting to think the dictionaries should just fucking surrender and update the definition of that word to mean what every fluffybunny thinks it means.
So, again, I had to look up the definition of the word to see if I had it wrong. I don't - so how is it being misused?
The one that got me was ironical. I would hear people using it and think 'how ironic'. Then I discovered. Ironical is an actual word. That means ironic. Go figure....
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@dogmeat said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@Kruse said in The thread of learning something new every day:
And don't get me started on "acronym"... although I hate to admit defeat, I 'm starting to think the dictionaries should just fucking surrender and update the definition of that word to mean what every fluffybunny thinks it means.
So, again, I had to look up the definition of the word to see if I had it wrong. I don't - so how is it being misused?
The one that got me was ironical. I would hear people using it and think 'how ironic'. Then I discovered. Ironical is an actual word. That means ironic. Go figure....
Acronym - most people use it in place of the correct word - "initialism".
eg: FBI - is NOT an acronym. Because it's pronounced "Eff-Bee-Aye"... spelling out the letters. It's an initialism.
But POTUS - IS an acronym (AND an initiatlism) - because it's pronounced as a "word" - this being the key bit that people ignore.
NZRU - initialism, not acronym.
Laser - acronym, and initialism.
Oh - and I think the definitions are subtly different in various dictionaries, but to my understanding - an acronym is not ALWAYS an initialism.
eg: Benelux - IS an acronym, but NOT an initialism. -
@dogmeat said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@Kruse ah Thanks. NASA vs NSA
Yep - exactly.
But - 99% of the english-speaking world uses "acronym" to mean "initialism"... so... it's probably just a matter of time before the definition is simply changed.
I still like to grumpily mutter "initialism" whenever anybody uses "acronym" incorrectly in work meetings though... there's always a confused pause, the start of "what was that?", and the obvious decision to ignore me and just move on. -
@Kruse said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@dogmeat said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@Kruse said in The thread of learning something new every day:
And don't get me started on "acronym"... although I hate to admit defeat, I 'm starting to think the dictionaries should just fucking surrender and update the definition of that word to mean what every fluffybunny thinks it means.
So, again, I had to look up the definition of the word to see if I had it wrong. I don't - so how is it being misused?
The one that got me was ironical. I would hear people using it and think 'how ironic'. Then I discovered. Ironical is an actual word. That means ironic. Go figure....
Acronym - most people use it in place of the correct word - "initialism".
eg: FBI - is NOT an acronym. Because it's pronounced "Eff-Bee-Aye"... spelling out the letters. It's an initialism.
But POTUS - IS an acronym (AND an initiatlism) - because it's pronounced as a "word" - this being the key bit that people ignore.
NZRU - initialism, not acronym.
Laser - acronym, and initialism.
Oh - and I think the definitions are subtly different in various dictionaries, but to my understanding - an acronym is not ALWAYS an initialism.
eg: Benelux - IS an acronym, but NOT an initialism.Do we have a pedant award in the Fernies, if so you're a lock this year against the your/you're crowd.
I do believe that when words meanings change that dictionaries are slow to change them, despite the fact they're less than 200 years old and had constant shitfights over meanings when they were being developed. I think it's somewhat silly to hold on to a historical definition if the meaning has clearly changed. No doubt I will be a hypocrite and will argue the opposite for a word I like in the future.
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@Nepia said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@Kruse said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@dogmeat said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@Kruse said in The thread of learning something new every day:
And don't get me started on "acronym"... although I hate to admit defeat, I 'm starting to think the dictionaries should just fucking surrender and update the definition of that word to mean what every fluffybunny thinks it means.
So, again, I had to look up the definition of the word to see if I had it wrong. I don't - so how is it being misused?
The one that got me was ironical. I would hear people using it and think 'how ironic'. Then I discovered. Ironical is an actual word. That means ironic. Go figure....
Acronym - most people use it in place of the correct word - "initialism".
eg: FBI - is NOT an acronym. Because it's pronounced "Eff-Bee-Aye"... spelling out the letters. It's an initialism.
But POTUS - IS an acronym (AND an initiatlism) - because it's pronounced as a "word" - this being the key bit that people ignore.
NZRU - initialism, not acronym.
Laser - acronym, and initialism.
Oh - and I think the definitions are subtly different in various dictionaries, but to my understanding - an acronym is not ALWAYS an initialism.
eg: Benelux - IS an acronym, but NOT an initialism.Do we have a pedant award in the Fernies, if so you're a lock this year against the your/you're crowd.
I do believe that when words meanings change that dictionaries are slow to change them, despite the fact they're less than 200 years old and had constant shitfights over meanings when they were being developed. I think it's somewhat silly to hold on to a historical definition if the meaning has clearly changed. No doubt I will be a hypocrite and will argue the opposite for a word I like in the future.
Yeah - like I say - I fully expect the definition to be changed, considering the widespread misuse ('evolution') of it.
BUT - probably the thing stopping it - is that there already IS a perfectly good word for what people think it means.
And by changing the definition of this word - you're actually REMOVING a word from circulation, as there's no longer a word to mean what the current definition.
If that makes sense? If they change the word "acronym" to mean "initialism" - then we no longer have a word which means "abbreviation which is pronounced as a word".Also - I would wear a pedantry award with pride. Words have meanings. For a fucking reason. There's a REASON that "you're" and "your" are two different spellings... they fucking MEAN two different things. The whole goddamn point of language.
"spendthrift".... fuck. What a fluffybunny.
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@Kruse said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@Nepia said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@Kruse said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@dogmeat said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@Kruse said in The thread of learning something new every day:
And don't get me started on "acronym"... although I hate to admit defeat, I 'm starting to think the dictionaries should just fucking surrender and update the definition of that word to mean what every fluffybunny thinks it means.
So, again, I had to look up the definition of the word to see if I had it wrong. I don't - so how is it being misused?
The one that got me was ironical. I would hear people using it and think 'how ironic'. Then I discovered. Ironical is an actual word. That means ironic. Go figure....
Acronym - most people use it in place of the correct word - "initialism".
eg: FBI - is NOT an acronym. Because it's pronounced "Eff-Bee-Aye"... spelling out the letters. It's an initialism.
But POTUS - IS an acronym (AND an initiatlism) - because it's pronounced as a "word" - this being the key bit that people ignore.
NZRU - initialism, not acronym.
Laser - acronym, and initialism.
Oh - and I think the definitions are subtly different in various dictionaries, but to my understanding - an acronym is not ALWAYS an initialism.
eg: Benelux - IS an acronym, but NOT an initialism.Do we have a pedant award in the Fernies, if so you're a lock this year against the your/you're crowd.
I do believe that when words meanings change that dictionaries are slow to change them, despite the fact they're less than 200 years old and had constant shitfights over meanings when they were being developed. I think it's somewhat silly to hold on to a historical definition if the meaning has clearly changed. No doubt I will be a hypocrite and will argue the opposite for a word I like in the future.
Yeah - like I say - I fully expect the definition to be changed, considering the widespread misuse ('evolution') of it.
BUT - probably the thing stopping it - is that there already IS a perfectly good word for what people think it means.
And by changing the definition of this word - you're actually REMOVING a word from circulation, as there's no longer a word to mean what the current definition.
If that makes sense? If they change the word "acronym" to mean "initialism" - then we no longer have a word which means "abbreviation which is pronounced as a word".Also - I would wear a pedantry award with pride. Words have meanings. For a fucking reason. There's a REASON that "you're" and "your" are two different spellings... they fucking MEAN two different things. The whole goddamn point of language.
"spendthrift".... fuck. What a fluffybunny.
They could just keep both words but update the definition of acronym to include the new (and retain the old, they do that right?)
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@Nepia said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@Kruse said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@Nepia said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@Kruse said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@dogmeat said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@Kruse said in The thread of learning something new every day:
And don't get me started on "acronym"... although I hate to admit defeat, I 'm starting to think the dictionaries should just fucking surrender and update the definition of that word to mean what every fluffybunny thinks it means.
So, again, I had to look up the definition of the word to see if I had it wrong. I don't - so how is it being misused?
The one that got me was ironical. I would hear people using it and think 'how ironic'. Then I discovered. Ironical is an actual word. That means ironic. Go figure....
Acronym - most people use it in place of the correct word - "initialism".
eg: FBI - is NOT an acronym. Because it's pronounced "Eff-Bee-Aye"... spelling out the letters. It's an initialism.
But POTUS - IS an acronym (AND an initiatlism) - because it's pronounced as a "word" - this being the key bit that people ignore.
NZRU - initialism, not acronym.
Laser - acronym, and initialism.
Oh - and I think the definitions are subtly different in various dictionaries, but to my understanding - an acronym is not ALWAYS an initialism.
eg: Benelux - IS an acronym, but NOT an initialism.Do we have a pedant award in the Fernies, if so you're a lock this year against the your/you're crowd.
I do believe that when words meanings change that dictionaries are slow to change them, despite the fact they're less than 200 years old and had constant shitfights over meanings when they were being developed. I think it's somewhat silly to hold on to a historical definition if the meaning has clearly changed. No doubt I will be a hypocrite and will argue the opposite for a word I like in the future.
Yeah - like I say - I fully expect the definition to be changed, considering the widespread misuse ('evolution') of it.
BUT - probably the thing stopping it - is that there already IS a perfectly good word for what people think it means.
And by changing the definition of this word - you're actually REMOVING a word from circulation, as there's no longer a word to mean what the current definition.
If that makes sense? If they change the word "acronym" to mean "initialism" - then we no longer have a word which means "abbreviation which is pronounced as a word".Also - I would wear a pedantry award with pride. Words have meanings. For a fucking reason. There's a REASON that "you're" and "your" are two different spellings... they fucking MEAN two different things. The whole goddamn point of language.
"spendthrift".... fuck. What a fluffybunny.
They could just keep both words but update the definition of acronym to include the new (and retain the old, they do that right?)
Booooo.
Fuck that. You're trying to take away the only moral high ground I've ever had.
Flatten the hill I've pegged out to die on.Goddamn monster.
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@Kruse said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@Nepia said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@Kruse said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@Nepia said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@Kruse said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@dogmeat said in The thread of learning something new every day:
@Kruse said in The thread of learning something new every day:
And don't get me started on "acronym"... although I hate to admit defeat, I 'm starting to think the dictionaries should just fucking surrender and update the definition of that word to mean what every fluffybunny thinks it means.
So, again, I had to look up the definition of the word to see if I had it wrong. I don't - so how is it being misused?
The one that got me was ironical. I would hear people using it and think 'how ironic'. Then I discovered. Ironical is an actual word. That means ironic. Go figure....
Acronym - most people use it in place of the correct word - "initialism".
eg: FBI - is NOT an acronym. Because it's pronounced "Eff-Bee-Aye"... spelling out the letters. It's an initialism.
But POTUS - IS an acronym (AND an initiatlism) - because it's pronounced as a "word" - this being the key bit that people ignore.
NZRU - initialism, not acronym.
Laser - acronym, and initialism.
Oh - and I think the definitions are subtly different in various dictionaries, but to my understanding - an acronym is not ALWAYS an initialism.
eg: Benelux - IS an acronym, but NOT an initialism.Do we have a pedant award in the Fernies, if so you're a lock this year against the your/you're crowd.
I do believe that when words meanings change that dictionaries are slow to change them, despite the fact they're less than 200 years old and had constant shitfights over meanings when they were being developed. I think it's somewhat silly to hold on to a historical definition if the meaning has clearly changed. No doubt I will be a hypocrite and will argue the opposite for a word I like in the future.
Yeah - like I say - I fully expect the definition to be changed, considering the widespread misuse ('evolution') of it.
BUT - probably the thing stopping it - is that there already IS a perfectly good word for what people think it means.
And by changing the definition of this word - you're actually REMOVING a word from circulation, as there's no longer a word to mean what the current definition.
If that makes sense? If they change the word "acronym" to mean "initialism" - then we no longer have a word which means "abbreviation which is pronounced as a word".Also - I would wear a pedantry award with pride. Words have meanings. For a fucking reason. There's a REASON that "you're" and "your" are two different spellings... they fucking MEAN two different things. The whole goddamn point of language.
"spendthrift".... fuck. What a fluffybunny.
They could just keep both words but update the definition of acronym to include the new (and retain the old, they do that right?)
Booooo.
Fuck that. You're trying to take away the only moral high ground I've ever had.
Flatten the hill I've pegged out to die on.Goddamn monster.
My bad, I withdraw my comment, a man should never interfere with another mans hill to die on.
