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Canadian Arctic climate change study cancelled due to climate change | ||
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One of the headlines above is bizarre, and the other one, crazy. You get to decide which is which! | |||
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Don't you wonder, in 50 years, what people are going to say about this time period on earth? | |||
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People? In fifty years? I admire your optimism. "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
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Here's why those bloated station wagons (estate cars to you Brits) look the was they do! This headline from ABC News: Pregnant SUV driver arrested So, those Ess Ewe Vees are pregnant? Ya suppose collisions are actually copulations?  | |||
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From Reuters: Prolonged breastfeeding ups risk of severe dental caries Damn, that sucks. | |||
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And Louis Armstrong lips. | ||
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One of Yahoo's spam headlines states, "Itching this part of your body is a sign of Alzheimer's" It seems to me that saying "itching" instead of "scratching" is a sign that Alzheimer's won't matter to you. | |||
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A sub headline... Am I the only one who finds this a slightly odd thing to say. In an article about a man assaulting his father with a golf club and causing serious injuries, including a punctured lung the sub headline read "Michael Sargent was found hiding in a coal shed where the golf club - believed to be a three wood - was found." It's the focus on which club that seems out of place. "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
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It does seem to diminish the seriousness of the event. And is the writer sug that a putter or a iron would be more appropriate? | ||
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Bob, you are not the only one to find that odd. It's downright weird that they wrote that. Now I'm dying to know what part of the body! | |||
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Found in some business journal: Human-like creatures may have roamed Crete nearly 6 mn years ago Now they're in Washington, DC | |||
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How does one "itch their bofy"? I assume an itch is involuntary and can't be deliberately instituted. - even by such patients. | ||
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I suspect that itch to mean "scratch" is some sort of dialectal usage, some examples | |||
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Speaking of itch and scratch, when Ken and I were in Carbondale, we went to this excellent local brewery called Scratch. Guess what their wireless password was? I know; you'd all get it: itch.  Shu cracked up! | |||
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The imprecision re itch/scratch made me consider the term flash flood. Today local talking heads warned that heavy rain here could produce flash floods. Flloded ares is a distinct possibility but I associate the term more with arid deserts where iy's dry ne minute and inundated with swift-moving water the next. In my entire life here I have only seen low-lying areas fill because water won't run off but never anything "flash." Chalk it up to hyperbole? | ||
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I was sitting near the window in a small bar in Lanzhou about two months ago. The evening was dull and overcast but not raining. Then it was raining - hard enough that we couldn't see the cars parked outside. Thirty minutes later it wasn't raining. We left to walk back to the hotel and what should have taken about ten minutes took about an hour because many of the streets were under several feet of water. All of the subways were completely impassible. That was in thirty minutes. A month later I was in Yangshuo. It had been raining a little all day but there was no sign of flooding when I went to bed. When I got up the entire town, an area of about 3o square km was under between one and three metres of water. The new underground section of the shopping mall was filled with water. Flash flood? No hyperbole necessary. "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson. | |||
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Here are classic examples of "flash" floods. Most city flooding isn't of this incredibly rapid scenario. It is much more gradual, allowing people to escape (athough mot easily at times). | ||
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So a flash flood starts and stops quickly, leaving a lot of water? I've wondered about the term "flash flood," too. Speaking of which, hurricane season has really been going wild in the U.S. and Caribbean recently. | |||
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My thought for the day: Insurance premiums never go down until they cancel you. | ||
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Does this imprecision exist? Here are some examples of transitive "itch" from the OED:
When it is used transitively with an impersonal subject it means "cause to itch" or some figurative extension. "Itch" meaning "scratch" seems to be only used with a personal subject, as in wiktionary's examples:
I don't think that any of these could be confused with causative "itch". Is "itch" ever used transitively with an impersonal subject to mean "scratch", where it could be confused with the causative meaning? I searched some corpora and couldn't find anything. In fact I couldn't find it used transitively except with a personal subject where it clearly means "scratch":
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I wonder if those aren't incorrect uses of the term since I couldn't find a dic or thesaurus that recognizes that usage. Here is a typical thesaurus etry. | ||
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It's certainly nonstandard. I'm just not sure that it is ambiguous. | |||
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You can "scratch an itch" nut it's hard to "itch a scratch." | ||
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Webster's New World College Dictionary, 4th Ed.: 3. (Informal) scratch American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: 2. To scratch (an itch). The Wordsmyth English Dictionary-Thesaurus: definition 4: (informal) to scratch something that itches. | |||
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Interesting, Tinman. I've heard itch used that way a lot, but I've thought it was used wrong. | |||
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Why we need apostrophes: Marriott rescue ship after Irma left non-guests on the dock Headline on news story about a ferry that left stranded people because they weren't guests at a Marriott resort destroyed by Irma. | ||
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Where is the apostrophe supposed to go? | |||
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I'm too late to correct the post. I just realized I should have said commas and Goofy got there ahead of me.. | ||
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Where is the comma supposed to go? | |||
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...ship, after Irma, left... | ||
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I had to look up crash blossom and found this. | |||
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If taken literally, it can't mean a place where gents are disabled and babies are changed. Such a sign would be: Gents disabled & babies changed | |||
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The sign is in all caps: GENTS DISABLED & BABY CHANGE | |||
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Yes, sorry, I copied it wrong. | |||
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No, Kalleh, that remark was not meant for you. It was directed at goofy's response. He appears not to have clicked on your link. | |||
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Here'a odd phraseology: Newlyweds born just hours apart at Taunton hospital How did they schedule nuptials from Neonatal? | ||
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Sadly I could not get this link to load, Kalleh. If by any chance you meant Carbondale PA, I would gladly have driven up to meet you & Shufitz IRL at last! Our family made many a trip NW from our digs in NJ to my family in Ithaca, NY, & a few times Rte 80 was so bolluxed up that we went wandering, discovering Milford & Honesdale & Carbondale-- as well as the rural beauty of Sussex Cty NJ-- before getting back on track on Rte 81N... | |||
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context is all. Around here (NJ suburb in metro-NYC area), water runs off of everything-- because everything is & continues to be overbuilt: every new house built creates more overflow runoff. So "flash floods" to us means, if you're driving to work, you're going to suddenly w/little warning lose both exteme right & left lanes, & danger of hydroplaning in middle lane; if you're at home, better make sure sump pump[s] are in working order... | |||
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Bob, is that about overbuilding in flood areas? | |||
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Goofy, I know you are a descriptivist not a prescriptivist, & I take your meaning from these cites that 'itch' & 'scratch' have long been interchanged in historical usage. And surely, they are roughly interchangeable. But my interest is literary as opposed to common usage: I enjoy that distinction between the [latent] titillating urge to scratch vs the [manifest] response [scratching], & I admire literary authors who exercise the precision to distinguish between the two. It's a nuance. | |||
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. But note that in these 3 cites, 'scratch' (as a synonym for 'itch') is listed as 'informal' for 2, & as the 3rd [last] synonym in the other. That's tantamount to calling it an imprecise usage. | |||
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I'm now puzzled: Did Japanese movie maker Kon Ichikawa ever get his kawa scratched? BTW, if you've never seen his "Tokyo Olympiad," you've missed the best sports documentary ever! | |||
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Not so much a headline as an oddity: The head of the New Orleans agency in charge of controlling floodwaters is Paul Rainwater. | ||
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Indianapolis TV station WTTV has a meteorologist named Brittany Rainey. Peut-etre il pleut beaucoup en Bretaigne? | |||
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Annnnd, speaking of funny names, one of the funders of the PBS News Hour is Consuelo Duroc-Danner. Not funny unless you speak Russian. "Duroc" means "idiot." | |||
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I just came across this: Most people have a driver’s license or other state-issued ID for various reasons (e.g. to drive or, as above, to help get oneself a job). But for one Hawaiian lady, one ID wasn’t enough — she needed two. That’s because her name — Janice Keihanaikukauakahihuliheekahaunaele — features a 35-character surname, which was too long for the state’s drivers license to handle. As People explained, “the driver’s license, which does not include her first or middle name, has caused her travel problems, including being questioned by police at a traffic stop.” Ms. K also carried around a state ID, just in case, until the state changed the rules in late 2013, allowing for last names of up to 40 characters to appear on driver’s licenses. | ||
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