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

InReplyTo post 6309

"appeal for witnesses" -- let us know that witnesses exist
"appeal to witnesses" -- hey, witnesses, tell us something useful!

That's my take on it, anyway.

TRiG.

>>"appeal to witnesses"

Surely that means 'find favour with distributors of Watchtower'?

Gosh Trig, that was a long backlog you've come out of!

The question was, why say 'police are appealing to witnesses to help with the case' and not 'appealing for witnesses'.

It looks right to me, the first version. They are already witnesses: "If you saw it, I appeal *to* you to come in and tell us". I'm not putting out a call for people to *become* witnesses, it's too late for that.

I could perhaps appeal *for* witnesses to attend while I did a deed or signed a paper.

.

Seth of Rabi asks:

>>> Is virtually literally or virtually literally or literally not literally? <<<

To date there have been no direct responses.
One hates to see a genuine go unheeded.
Perhaps the question ought to be rephrased.


~jwf~

probably deserved to go unheeded for being unnecessarily obscure, ~jwf~

Your posting 13062 showed me that I probably did not know the correct usage of "virtually", or at least the one you were referring to.

It's an interesting word and harks back to our autoantonym discussion since it can very nearly take totally contrary meanings.

It stems from "with virtue" (Latin - virtus) and therefore had connotations of excellence. At some stage, this seems to have been whittled down to a more utilitarian sense of "effectively" though my church Latin (virtualis) is not good to determine whether the usage was "successfully" or some sense of "acting by proxy" or "as nearly as makes no difference"

Take the examples:

John utilised his study time effectively
Following Charles' execution, Cromwell was effectively monarch
Following Truemans' hat-trick, the game was effectively won

Although the latter two could be seen as much the same usage, the "by proxy" sense seems to have evolved into the sense used in lterary criticism to mean "existing in thought but not reality" (recently further evolving to current usage of "virtual reality" which is considered no further).

"John utilised his study time virtually" now becomes (with excuses for the word order) pretty well indecipherable. Did he do his homework or didn't he?

So rephrasing my original question (with necessary punctuation and clarification)

Does "virtually" mean "literally" (in fact and completely), "virtually literally" (in fact and as near completely as makes no difference), or literally "not literally" (a complete figment of the imagination)?

So 'virtual' has connotations of virtue/excellence.

In optics, a 'virtual image' is one which can't be projected on a screen. Is there a sense of 'virtual' being 'so good it can't exist in the real world'? - shades of Platonic ideals?

So if something is 'virtually perfect' it's (kinda) as good as perfect?

Virtual/virtually seem to have lost the link with excellence that the base noun virtue still retains, in at least one of its senses.

"She is perfect in virtue" may grate in some aspects but not in literary meaning.

But then virtue has a second sense of "(mere) attribute" as in
"A virtual image possesses some of the virtues of a real image"

There seems to be a strong dislocation between the noun and the adjective/adverb.

In passing, the original Latin root derives from "manliness"

Which is where the word 'hero' derives from too. And it says 'fir' for men in Irish-themed pubs too.

Coincidence? I think not..

Fear / fir is the Irish for man / men. It is directly related to Latin vir from the parent Proto Indo European.

Yeah, I knew that. I'm feeling virtually virile today.

Following on, if virtue comes from 'man' or 'mannish', is there a word for woman with negative implications? I know that hysterical comes from the word for 'womb', so that doesn't *really* count.

The fir thing isn't so bad. The fact that the women's toilets say "Mna" sometimes causes confusion with drink-boggled eyes though.

I see, mistaking it to mean mna instead of womna.

Ed has hit on a wonderful way of characterising Platonism: to Plato the virtual is superior to the real. (A similar superiority is hinted at in the phrase 'moral victory'.)

Which makes it all the more curious that the Catholic Church adopted Aquinas as its philosophical guru; Aquinas sided with Aristotle, whose hardnosed scientific approach contrasts with the idealism of Plato.

That's idealism: valuing the ideal over the real.

Mná is (believe it or not) the plural of 'bean' (pronounced ban) meaning (believe it or not) woman.

Mna mna bom bommmmm bedada

Ah, but Aquinas was still a Zoroastrian at heart, so fundamentally earthly things were tainted.

didn't the muppets do a song using 'mna-mna' once?

Keep up, Ictoan. R'man's done that one.

...wheras I, as soon as I'd left my PC, realised that I'd confused St Tom Aquinas with St. Gus the Hippopotamus.

St Augustus has surely one of the greatest quotes of all time:

Lord, give me chastity, but not yet!

Yeah, me too mate.

Thanks Ed, I realised that once I'd posted it. Can't all be as sharp as you y'know

>> ...talking a while back to a veteran of The Great War for Democracy... <<

A few weeks ago I began reading Robert Fisk's 'The Great War for Civilisation' and have since been resisting the sophomoric urge to promote it here in any sort of off topic way. So thank you for this obscure excuse to mention this important work.

At first I felt that everyone should be forced to read at least the introduction. It left me twice as educated on the subject as I had been. Not everyone, but certainly the leaders and makers of forrin policies should be made aware of the history behind what's happening.

Then Chapter One came at me, one amazing and little known fact after another and I became quite agitated to realise that so many of us are still so uninformed about what is going on 'over there'. I heard myself shout out loud, "Outrageous!"

Somewhere after page 200 I began to wonder how Fisk managed to stay alive and stay sane. But I am exceeding glad that he did because the truth still needs to be heard.

And now as I approach page 300 with more than 2 million dead I am having trouble sleeping. There are 700 pages to go and the Americans still haven't started Desert Storm. Pray for me brethren.


~jwf~