In looking for another word, I came across:

lampas noun
1. an elaborately woven textile.
2. a mucous-membrane congestion in horses.


Now, how did one word end up with two completely unrelated meanings? And are there more that have no noticible relationship?

Morgan, I never heard of "lampas" (how did you find it?), and thought that with such an unusual word your etymology question would be a stumper.

But lo and behold, Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology indicates different sources for the meanings, saying:

• The "horse" meaning is from Old French lampas and farther to dialect words for "throat" and "gums", from the German word for "lap" (in the sense of to lap up with the tongue).
• In textiles, the word refers to two kinds of cloth. One is from the dutch lampers; the other (OED hedges on this) is from french.

Your more general point is a very interesting one. To be continued.

quote:

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Now, how did one word end up with two completely unrelated meanings? And are there more that have no noticible relationship?

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I'd bet there are a lot of these, and I found some with a bit of digging.

bit:
- a bit of food, or a drill bit: from M.E. bite, a morsel
- a computer bit: acronym for binary digit; coined in the 1940's by J.W. Tukey

bat:
- as a baseball bat: partly from O.F. batte; akin to the verb to batter
- the flying mammel: from M.E. bakke, tracing back to Scandinavian

mine:
- belonging to me: from O.E.
- a place to dig for ore: from vulgar latin
- to "bat" (flutter) one's eyelashes: probably from a falcon "bating" (fluttering) its wings frantically

There are tons of words like that in the English language - they're called homonyms - and that's where it derives a lot of its humour (in addition to playing with homophones).

Take this for example:

Energizer Bunny arrested: charged with battery.

The gravestone of a deceased lawyer:

Even my tombstone gives the truth away.
It says to all who face this little hill,
"Hic jacet; here I lie." Or should it say,
"Here I lie -- still"?

This all reminds me of an old favourite.

"Because he wasn't fired with enthusiasm he was fired with enthusiasm."

Purgamentum init, exit purgamentum

Read all about my travels around the world here.

A few more:

I used to work in a blanket factory, but it folded.

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

Condoms should be used on every conceivable occasion.

quote:

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Originally posted by museamuse:
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

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The above line is often used as an example of why there will never be a satisfactory computer program that effectively translates one language into another, especially if one is English. There is no way to "explain" to a computer program how to differentiate among the many varied meanings of individual words.

There's an old story along these lines (probably just a story although I would like to believe it) about an early attempt to program a computer to translate English into Russian and vice versa. During one test, a scientist attempted to stump the machine by typing in the English idiom "Out of sight, out of mind" but when the Russian translation came out, they noticed that all the Russian-speaking programmers happened to be away at that moment. Rather than wait for one to return, the programmer simply retyped the Russian phrase, letter for letter, back into the computer to see what came back.

The response in English was "Invisible, insane."

Along similar lines, when I was in high school a teacher told us of a similar incident where a visiting Russian was shocked to hear that a female student had been suspended for smoking on school grounds. Using his or her Russian/English dictionary, this person then reported back to friends in the (at that time) U.S.S.R. that the American punishment for high school smoking was hanging!

And, one last example, when I was a student in a military school dealing with aviation, Iranian students were famous for never asking questions in class. They would take copious notes and then study together after class working out problems with the language with their bi-lingual dictionaries. One day's class dealt with icing, the problem of ice forming on the wings of aircraft, a topic vital to any pilot since icing can cause an aircraft to crash. "Any questions?" the instructor asked. No, no, no. Of course not. Not, that is, until the next day when the Iranians finally asked their first question:

"What does frosting on a cake have to do with flying a plane??"


Ah, English!!

Nonetheless, CJ, CAT (Computer Assisted Translation) is rapidly improving. Just last week I saw a demostration of a program called SYSTRAN. We fed it three different texts. The first was a legal text with loads of legalese and standard phrases. The translation into Greek was close to perfect.

Second was an article from a newspaper. This time the translation was not so good and needed editing.

The third text was an excerpt from a book of literature. As you may well imagine, the result was (happily for me!) abominable!

It seems the higher the level of idiomacy, the more difficult it is for the computer to recognise the chunks of language and translate them appropriately. But I have a nasty feeling, the programmers will be able to lick this problem soon too.

By the way, this isn't a problem only with English. Most other languages have problems with CAT because of idioms and multiple meanings of words.

Joking aside, however, CAT can be a great tool for translators and help them wade through masses of texts, allowing them to edit where needed.

Moral of the story: if I stick to translating literature, I may be able to keep my job for the next few years. Otherwise, forget it!

[This message was edited by museamuse on Tue Dec 24th, 2002 at 5:36.]

Absolutely. We must not write off computerised translation systems simply because, at the moment, they are not perfect.

When word processing first came in I read a very well-constructed argument from a printer who suggested that such systems would never replace traditional hot metal type simply because of the huge number of different fonts that existed and the complexities of variable spacing, leading and kerning.

Of course, he was right about the systems then with their monospaced type and nine-pin dot matrix printers. Now, less than two decades on and word processing systems can do everything that hot metal could and more. And they can do it more cheaply and quickly as well.

Where computers still lack is in creativity (they're not good at writing novels, for instance). However translation (as opposed to arranging, interpreting or summarising) is a mechanistic operation for which the rules (albeit there are thousands) can be programmed into a system. That it's not yet been done doesn't mean that it can't be.

To show how mechanistic it can be, we could look at the example quoted, "...Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana..."

Our reasoning will follow this sort of process. First we recognise the words - that's the easy bit. Then we recognise the clusters and we know from our own programming that "time flies" is an idiomatic expression conveying a sense of urgency. We also know that "fruit flies" are small insects. If we didn't have this knowledge the expression would mean no more to us that it does to a computer. Once we apply this knowledge then the different meanings of the two sentences are clear.

To show how difficult it can be even for us to understand a sentence when we don't have all the information, try translating the following sentences. The only information missing is the punctuation.

"Time flies we cannot they pass too quickly"

"A woman without her man is useless"

And I agree, well-written literature will be one of the last translation tasks to be successfully computerised.

Richard English

[This message was edited by Richard English on Tue Dec 24th, 2002 at 5:51.]

[This message was edited by Richard English on Tue Dec 24th, 2002 at 5:53.]

Energizer Bunny arrested: charged with battery.
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Many electric storage devices, when discharged and left in that state, form metallic salts. Thus one might have a salt and battery.

A condom should be used at every conceivable occasion.
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I think this is a misconception.

While on this fetile subject, I'm reminded of how some words have very different, but somehow complimentary meanings. For example, "Oh! Ohhhh! I'm coming!" he ejaculated. :

Muse, I think you'll have your job for a long time! I recently was trying to use the translation program for something I was trying to post here and could not make hide nor hair of what they were saying. The words appeared in all sorts of languages.

There are so many examples of multiple meanings of words--plane for example, as posted in another thread is one of my favorites. Then of course there is plain, to boot. Or even hide as used in this post, versus to hide from someone. It all makes the language so interesting!

According to Guinness there are 168 different meanings of the word "set" or "sett".

Richard English

I received a copy of "The Mother Tongue" by Bill Bryson as a Christmas gift, and although I have just started reading it, I am finding some very interesting facts which no doubt, I will be sharing with you all for some time.

It does state here that "English... is the only language that has, or needs, books of synonyms like Roget's Thesaurus. Most speakers of other languages are not aware that such books exist."

They also talk about other languages though, besides English. Such as how Eskimos (Inuit) have 50 words for types of snow, yet no word for just plain snow. Or how Italian has some 500 names for different types of macaroni!

I guess it could be worse!

That's an excellent and entertaining book, Morgan (and if I could just find my copy, I'd have something to say here). [mutter]

quote:

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Originally posted by museamuse:
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

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Not to mention "fly" as a portion of men's trousers.

[And if anyone attempts to linke this with muse's word banana, I say, "Honi soit qui mal y pense." The explanation of which I leave to our British latinate scholar.]

quote:

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It does state here that "English... is the only language that has, or needs, books of synonyms like Roget's Thesaurus. Most speakers of other languages are not aware that such books exist."

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I don't agree with Bill Bryson here, Morgan. In Greek at least, there is such a thing as a thesaurus. It's called a Antilexicon. Admittedly the one available is out-of-date, but a new improved version is under publication.

Did you know 'thesaurus' is a Greek word? It means 'treasure'. And rightly so!

Did you know 'thesaurus' is a Greek word? It means 'treasure'. And rightly so!
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Oh, here I go being confused again! I thought that "saurus" was the Greek term for "lizard," so it was the ancient hero Theseus' lizard.

So "Roget's thesaurus" means "Roget is the lizard?"

"Roget is the lizard?"
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Really Shufitz, revealing that you call your lizard "Roget" is more information than I needed to know!

While I haven't been able to convince my law-student daughter to post with us, she definitely has become more aware of, and enamored with, words because of wordcraft. Her newest question is: Why does "enjoin" have 2 opposite meanings? In law school (and, indeed, in our AHD) it means "to prevent". Yet, it also means "to join" or "to impose with authority and emphasis".

Why does "enjoin" have 2 opposite meanings?
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An injunction literally means, "a joining in or to." If a legal body is in agreement as to changing a subject's actions, it is THEY who are actually enjoined, but their action is upon the one on whom the injunction is filed. Thus, the apparent contradiction isn't really a contradiction.

Thanks, Asa. Spoken as a true barrister! (See, fellow Brits, we do use your terms sometimes! )

I found the perfect word for this thread today. I was writing about a seminal publication and then wondered if the word really meant what I wanted it to convey (thinking of the seminal duct in the back of my mind). Sure enough--seminal means "a creative or original piece of writing" for my purposes and "relating to semen" for reproductive considerations. Makes sense--each meaning comes from "seed", or "contributing to later development".

Sure enough--seminal means "a
creative or original piece of writing" for my purposes and "relating to semen" for
reproductive considerations. Makes sense--each meaning comes from "seed", or
"contributing to later development".
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This, I'm sure, is why so many enjoy seminars! They can be soooooo satisfying!

Would that make a Seminole Indian with a vasectomy a confliction of terms?

Not to mention that young men, in training to become priests, are refered to as seminarians.

Given the 'seed' root, it seems odd that seminary used to refer typically to a school for girls (as at the end of the quotation here.)