Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 January 6

=January 6=

Therapy
In the holiness article, some editor claims that therapy means to heal. The idea seems to be to show that the desired result of modern psychotherapy is the same as the idea of "to be holy". This reads like an psychology student's term paper (Write 600 words on "Psychotherapy as the new religion"?), and I have a major problem with the claim that "therapy" means "to heal". It does not mean "to heal" in modern language, and I found no evidence that it has ever meant anything other than simply "to treat (medically)". Does anyone have information that therapy does etymologically relate to healing, other than the thesaurus type of connection. --Seejyb 09:20, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


 * The Greek verb therapeuō is defined in my middle Liddell and Scott as originally meaning "to be an attendant, to wait on, to serve", but also developing the meaning of "to tend the sick, to treat medically, to heal, to cure". P.S.  There should be an article on Liddell and Scott... AnonMoos 12:24, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Five-penny nail ?
What's the origin and meaning, for that matter of an "n-penny nail". StuRat 15:23, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


 * It's the amount of money paid for 100 nails in the old days. tells the tale nicely. --jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 16:00, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks. It's rather foolish to name your product after the current price, somebody should have told Netzero that. StuRat 17:32, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, just buy your nails in Canada and you will find them labeled by length. --Anonymous, January 07, '07, 05:37 (UTC).

... or Motel 6. I wonder how long it'll be before the 99 Cents Only Stores gets in trouble. Bunthorne 00:53, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Don't be ridiculous. They'll go the way of the five-and-dime. Black Carrot 17:54, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


 * You have to understand that people once viewed gold and silver not merely as solid commodities embedding value but as the definition of value. If something cost an ounce of silver, that was understood as its value - as an immutable property of the thing that was the same everywhere and forever. Mercantilism covers some of that idea.


 * So long as currency units were understood as nothing more than measures of quantities of precious metals, and as changes in industrial productivity were so slow that they were difficult to see over the course of a lifetime, there was no reason to ever expect that the price of a core commodity like nails should ever have to change in price, or vary significantly over a single currency area. You still see vestiges of the idea that metal, currency, wealth, and economic value are synonyms in the vocabulary of many European languages.  Most germanic languages still use the same word for "gold" as for "money", while French uses the word for "silver" for money in general.  Currency units like the pound stirling, peso, lira and ruble all derive their names from the quantities of metal they once represented.


 * Economists by the 19th century already understood that gold and silver were just shiny metals and industrial-age currency was an artificial commodity linked to more fluid concepts like credit and liquidity, but folk mercantilism is a deeply embedded concept in people's minds. It was only with late 19th and early 20th century changes in productivity and inflation that the link was broken for most people - that they began to see currency as something less constant and prices as something flexible.  Even today, most people still think of their own wealth in terms of their immediate access to a quantity of money, as if they had a stack of gold ingots in their basement instead of a rather less solid mass of social and legal obligations.


 * But seeing how long those ideas persisted, and how deeply they are embedded in occidental culture, it's no big shock to see them reflected in vocabulary. --Diderot 19:05, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
 * On the other hand, with something like nails, it makes sense -- it would be a premium for the workmanship on the relative value of iron vs. that of copper pennies, perhaps? --jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 19:22, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd say that amounts to the same thing, but taking labour, iron and copper as the constant measure of value instead of gold and silver. If relative metal prices are steady and labour productivity is roughly constant, there's no need to expect prices to change and value can be expressed as a constant in a universal unit.  People once thought of the dollar as a unit of measure as fundamentally unchangeable as a foot or a gallon. --Diderot 19:32, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

self preservation
hello. im christina and im having a difficult time coming up with my final essay in english because its with relation to the play "a dolls house" but i have to write about noras "SELF PRESERVATION" i dont really know what self preservation is and i cant seem to find a helpful / easy understood definition. please help. thank you SO much —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Christina130 (talk • contribs) 03:40, 7 January 2007 (UTC).
 * Basically, self preservation is a selfish will to survive, literally or figuratively. On a side note, be sure to clean up on your grammar when you actually type the essay.--SeizureDog 06:07, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Self preservation isn't necessarily selfish. Clarityfiend 06:14, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Concerning trademarks with punctuation at the end of sentences
Which is more correct: Asa Shigure is a character in Shuffle! or Asa Shigure is a character in Shuffle!.

Shuffle! being the actual title of course. And if the second option is correct, what about when the trademark doubles the punctation normally used? The next example involves Whose Line Is It Anyway?

Have you seen Whose Line Is It Anyway? or Have you seen Whose Line Is It Anyway??

Personally, I go by dropping periods (full stops) and identical punctuation marks, but keep exclamation points and question marks if they differ (so I would say "Have you seen Shuffle!?"). Of course, ideally you avoid the problem by making them not at the end, but let's just forget that.--SeizureDog 06:03, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Using italics should help, like you did! :-) Carcharoth 06:31, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Additionally, double exclamation or question marks, or even combinations, can be used to mean something, both for extra emphasis and in chess notation. See !!, ??, !?, ?!, and so on. Hmm ?? is missing from that list. Carcharoth 06:34, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Added ??. Hands up though who had never heard of an interrobang! :-) For those who are interested, !? and ?! mean 'interesting' and 'doubtful' in chess notation. Carcharoth 06:36, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Its vs it's
I recently got into a discussion with someone about its versus it's, and they said: "As for using "it's" to describe "the property of it", that's not a typo, I choose to write it that way" - does anyone know what justification might be used for this? Carcharoth 06:28, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


 * The three I can think of are called ignorance, wrong-headedness, and stubbornness. --Lambiam Talk  06:51, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


 * If this person writes "his" and "hers", you might also cite inconsistency.--Shantavira 09:35, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I imagine the justification is that it's simply "it" plus the possessive suffix -'s, like most possessives which are written with apostrophes. --Ptcamn 09:44, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


 * In which case (as Shantavira alluded to) the person should also use "I's", "He's". "She's", "We's", "You's", "They's" and "Who's" in place of "my", "his", "her", "our", "your", "their" and "whose". D  aniel  (‽) 17:52, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Named for it
I keep coming across the expression "named for it", which in the UK would invariably be "named after it". (For example, in Vale of Tempe we find "The city of Tempe, Arizona is named for it.") Is "named for it" really considered correct usage in the USA? Is "named after it" correct everywhere?--Shantavira 09:29, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
 * We Americans use both versions. --SeizureDog 11:51, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


 * See Reference desk/Archives/Language/2006 November 6. --Lambiam Talk  14:38, 7 January 2007 (UTC)