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

done the mensa stuff. Did the home test and was most chuffed with the result so left it there in case I was pushing my luck!

ahhh, good for you Ictoan

I always fail rather spectacularly at those kinda things...

So where's the crossword thread, Ictoan?

F19585?thread=371212

Hmm, I may have comitted a bit of a faux pas the other day. I hesitate to bring it here as it may result in my being banned from this thread, but as it is here that it has been previously discussed I shall take my chances.
I used the phrase 'same as carbon based but with much fewer permutations.'
And I think perhaps I should not have done so as it doesn;t sound right. But since the permutations involved are finite (albeit very large) then the amount is quantifiable. So was I wrong or not?

I hate to be the one to cast the first metaphor ...

I don't care for the oxymoronic sounding MUCH FEWER.
I use "far fewer" but I don't have any real justification for my prejudice.

Or how about "many fewer"

Reasoning (sort of)

Fewer implies a number
Much doesn't

[BB]

My instinct was 'many fewer'.

There are a lot of oxymoronic comparatives: fall in house-price rises; increased tax cuts and so on.

Back to the subject of words with prefixes where only the prefixed form remains.

What about "Ignorant"? I know whe have gnostic, and gnosis, and indeed knowledge, but we no longer have gnore, or gnorant, which sounds like a product for destroying pests.

Ben

"You can also get mensa books from the library if you are really interested in the lateral cryptic thinking way, and also on mensa websites...I keep trying at those and some I can do and others - well I just have to slap my forehead once I'm told the answer..."

Any other old slappers hereabouts?

Yes, but not in the way you mean!

an old slapper called Ben

Re: Fewer

Another odd turn of phrase must be: increasingly less.

You have put your finger on it, TC. Increasing and increasingly are very dangerous words. "Increasing weight loss", "an increasing reduction in exports", "an increasing fall in house prices" "increasingly oxymoronic listings".

B

To tell the truth, that was just a guess - but it is a phenomenon in German, so I reckoned that it was a turn of phrase that could evolve in any language. One English word I would like to know which is a fairly recent thing in German is - how do you say "price increase" without actually saying "increase"? In German you get letters (most recently from the Gas Board) informing you that the price will be "adapted".

I have also been on the sending end of such letters, from work. It's horrible. Everyone knows it's euphemism, and reads "increase", so why bother?

Actually I have found several useful words like this. One is "project". If I haven't got the faintest idea what someone is talking about or if I forgot to ask the necessary questions (e.g. for passing a phone message on) or if the whole thing was too complex to summarise, I just use the word "project" and it all sounds as though someone is doing something serious.

Or, on a similar vein, to quote William in "The Truth" (the discworld book which says it all about journalism in particular, but language as well) "I have just been speaking to Commander Vimes and I want to see Lord Vetinari" (I'm not quite sure who he wanted to see, but it was someone who was heavily guarded. It might have been the chief dwarf or that zombie lawyer - what was his name? - it's along time since I read the book, but that sentence stuck)

Both facts were true, neither were connected (in fact Vimes had said he couldn't go in) but to a fairly dense guard at the door, they could be made to sound as though he had permission to go in.

English is brilliant for this. Anyone used any tricks like that? Or better, still, more recently read "The Truth"?

>> ..odd turn of phrase: 'increasingly less'. <<

Not to be confused with 'increasing lessness'.

Any increase in less will eventually create an increasing lessness but first there must be incrimental increases in increasingly less lessness.

For example:
If a company offers a general pay raise of ten percent, any worker currently making $1000 gets a $100 increase, while anyone already making $100,000 gets an additional $10,000. It's the same raise only different. And that's why the rich get richer and poor have to make do with increasingly less.


~jwf~

Oh, may I join? I am Germerican and need some brushup for my Enlish before it'll get all down the Southern drain.

I've read "The Truth" but not recently; it was a year or two ago, so I don't remember all the details. There is no doubt that Pratchett is a master of using English in unexpected ways.

I'd read it right away, but that would probably mean that no washing would get done for the second weekend in a row.



So "increasingly less" does have some justification, then?

For a start, it implies an acceleration in the decrease, as opposed to a regular lineal decrease

Really it's just the problem with the language of it - less can't be more, but lessening can increase?

Here endeth the first lessen.

Canicula,
You are welcome here, new perspectives on English are always useful.
It's rather a chaotic thread - sometimes weeks go by without much activity, but then there are sudden bursts of questions, musings and answers, and often one interesting question leads on to more intriguing ones.

*waves*

This isn't exactly a Brit. Eng. question, but what do you all think of people refering to the USA as simply "America"? There's a few people about in interwebland who object to it (usually they claim, "America is a continent," which is wrong, but I can't be bothered to argue). Are they just being overly pedantic or does it really sound wrong to American (uh, you know what I mean) ears?