h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

and another circle:

trees and logs

Yes, I'd use girth for those too. Mostly for waist mind you, and rarely for the male member!

A word I particularly like describing a man's girth, or more specifically, his belly or paunch, is 'corporation'. That has a nice solid ring to it. Mustn't be a wobbly one, though; needs to be fairly solid!

My Dads more than generous girth has always been referred to a the Massif Centrale.

Mainly due to the copious quantities of good food and wine consumed in its evolution!

turvy

I was wondering today how many words have one or more quite different meanings. The one that came to mind was 'repair' - can be either to mend, or to go somewhere.

Any thoughts?

To clarify - I didn't mean 'how many words have different meanings' - more, why is it that words have more than one meaning.

convergent linguistic evolution Words move closer to each other and end up sounding the same, then get spelled the same.

No, I don't know either

Separate question:-

I heard, on one of those crime programmes the other night where they appeal for witnesses and stuff, one of the presenters saying theat the 'police are appealing to witnesses to help with the case'.
Now, for some reason this sounded wrong, I'm sure it should have been 'appealing for' not 'to'.
I think my reasoning is that they don't know if there are any witnesses or if they do, they don;t know who they are.
The 'for' form seems generic 'is anyone out there' whereas the 'to' form sounds more specific 'we know you are there, come talk!'.
I suppose it could be ploy to make people come forward, i.e. they might think that the police know they are there so they may as well come forward of their own volition.

Thoughts? Or is this just me being odd again?

Gee, I thought it sounded like the witnesses found the police attractive.

I have a general and likely unhelpful response to you query. The connotations of prepositions in English have historically been very mutable (and they continue to have regional variations). Prepositional phrases are often substitutes for lost dative, instrumental, genetive (or ablative, vocative, locative) cases of nouns. Some of these cases, such as the dative, instrumental and genetive are fairly consistent (to the dog, with the stick, of the boy), but other case functions, the ones the ablative performed in Latin, for example, are very mutable. I think there is something of the ablative in the example you are citing; it's almost a dative sense but not quite which may be why "to" doesn't sound quite right.

I just drone on and on and on . . .

Perhaps if they'd said appealing to 'any' witnesses, that would sound OK?

>> I just drone on and on and on . . . <<

Try breaking up your lectures with more of them references to 'boys', 'sticks' and 'dogs'. These are things we know and we can fool ourselves into thinking we understand. If these could somehow be used to demonstrate or clarify the meaning of terms such as ablative, dative and instrumental we'd all gain much more from what you have to say. Some of us may still remember that 'genitive' is sorta like the 'possessive' case if I'm not mistaken.

Yes, I can reason to justify an 'appeal to' (potential witnesses) based on the presumption of police that someone had to see it. An 'appeal to' implies a reasonable living mind on the receiving end of the appeal. As any good cop will tell you, "These things don't just happen in a vacuum y'know. Somebody knows something."

And generally an 'appeal for' would be limited to 'things'. These are not minds that need to make proper civic choices but are just inanimate objects like money, food and clothing. Things like donations, especially of time and services BY people, might require some thought but that is implicit in the 'appeal for' the things and does not constitute an 'appeal to' the potential donor even if it is an 'appeal on behalf of' those who might benefit.

Perhaps I'm just restating part of your case.
But objects in motion tend to stay in motion.


~jwf~

I appeal to you to let me present my thoughts, unappealing as it may seem, given the possible girth of the discussion.... "Appealing for" is just more clear than "appealing to" because of the double-meaning problem with "to". Personally, I think the cops got themselves gussied-up for a hot night on the town, and were flaunting their assets in front of the witnesses.

'gussied up' ? That's a new one to me
Care to explain, does it have something to do with polishing your gusset before going out on the town?

>> ..'gussied up' ? That's a new one to me <<

It's not unknown to me in Canada. But like so many familiar-but-strange expressions we hear and think we know and take for granted, I had never paused to consider its origins until this moment.

Yes by crikey, now I think on it, it does make me wonder what 'gussets' might have to do with making a sartorial effort.

Unless, and I warn you this is a very subjective interpretation, for some like me getting gussied up is seldom more than pulling up my trousers and tucking in my shirt tails. That is to say, my entire effort is limited to pulling my baggy gusset upwards. I do wonder...
peace
~jwf~

Here's what my favourite webpage says:

"gussy - 1952, Amer.Eng. slang, apparently from Gussy
(1940), name for an overly dressed person, perhaps related
to gussie (1901) "effeminate man," and somehow connected
to the nickname for Augusta and Augustus. "

Perhaps connected to Gorgeous Gussie (?)Moran an early Wimbledon tennis player, who was the first to wear skirts short enough to reveal her knickers?

>> ..short enough to reveal her knickers <<

Would they have been called bloomers back then? Knickers is quite modern isn't it? Bloomers were much fuller, thicker, longer, stronger, of a coarse burlap material similar to tent canvas and about as pliable and disinclined to being put up.


~jwf~

careful now; it sound like you're familiar with them.
'Which as we discussed, is strictly a comfort thing.'

German students of English - or rather teachers of English who have been through the mill of studying English at university and (preferably) have spent some time among native speakers - reply unanimously and immediately that the most difficut part about English is the prepositions.

German prepositions I only learnt by rote - to some of them there is no logic whatsoever. These problems are universal. In the next post (in case someone wants to yikes it ) I will quote a classic example.

Here we go:

In German you say: " Bei diesem Wetter" (by)
In French it is: "de ce temps-là" (of)
On English you say: "In this weather"
In Spanish they use "con ese tiempo" (with)

Not sure if I've confused Italian and Spanish there - have a momentary blackout. It may be "con" in Italian, too, but I suspect they say "di questo tiempo".

The Italian is "con questo tempo" my husband just told me. He teaches Italian.

And a girth as far as I know is an official way of measuring a horse. Along with hands and so on. Or was it the strap that holds the saddle? I wouldn't know - I haven't been on a horse for about 40 years.

Might girth be related to girdle (a priest's string belt)? The German gurt and gürtel also mean belt. This would suggest that historically girth was used about people's middles rather than trees'.

About prepositions, are there any that are exact equivalents of ones in other languages? Prepositions that are really describing the positions of things are usually pretty obvious (dans, in =in; sous, unter=under etc), so in dictionaries that is the meaning given. When the phrase is more idiomatic, different prepositions are used in different languages, like TC's example about the weather. Incidentally, Greek prepositions change their meaning depending on what case is used after them. For example 'dia'+ acc. =because of, while 'dia'+gen.=through.
bet you were all dying to know that!