Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 June 22

= June 22 =

"privately-held"
What does "privately-held" mean?68.148.164.166 (talk) 08:35, 22 June 2008 (UTC)


 * See privately held company. --Anonymous, 09:49 UTC, June 22, 2008.


 * (Responding to 68.148.164.166,) I noticed that you inserted a cleanup tag in the privately held company article with the remark that it 'does not define the term "privately-held"'. The term is clearly explained in the lead section of the article. The cleanup tag should be removed unless there are other reasons for it being there. --71.162.233.193 (talk) 14:03, 22 June 2008 (UTC)


 * It means it is not government and it is not shared publicly on the stock market. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 00:53, 23 June 2008 (UTC)


 * And I thought "privately-held" had an entirely different meaning: . StuRat (talk) 12:56, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

N Word
what is the N word? I thought it was nigger, but as I heard that Denise Richards has been called by the N word, I don´t know anymore.
 * Hi. The articles N word on Wikipedia and n-word on Wiktionary may help you. Thanks. ~ A H  1 (TCU) 17:48, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
 * BTW, this transcript may interest you Nil Einne (talk) 19:21, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Brought to you by that eminent ethnologist, Charlie Sheen. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:24, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I think he was using it metaphorically, as in Woman is the Nigger of the World. —Angr 04:27, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Kilometre Pronunciation
Moved from miscellaneous as requested by the questioner Fribbler (talk) 23:01, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Why do westerners (English speakers) say kilOMeter, instead of KILLometer? (accents indicated by bold caps) Why do we still use the French pronunciation just for this one but not for others ending in meter such as:
 * centimeter ,
 * millimeter,
 * decimeter,
 * micrometer,
 * mega meter,
 * nanometer,
 * picometer
 * femtometer
 * attometer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.76.232.210 (talk) 00:57, 22 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm British and I say KILLometer. It's not the universal British pronunciation though, as I sometimes hear other Brits say kilOMeter. To my ears, kilOMeter sounds slightly American. Also, I don't think kilOMeter can be described as the French pronunciation - I think the French say kilomETRE, or possibly kilometre (with no stress on any vowel). I think the Irish say kilOMeter, and the Germans say kilomETer . But in answer to your question, I have to say I don't know why many do say kilOMeter but MILLimeter, NANometer and so on.--92.40.24.228 (talk) 06:02, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm American and I say kilOMeter. But as far as micrometer goes, I say MICROmeter for the distance and miCROMeter for the measuring device. Maybe I'm just weird?  Dismas |(talk) 09:45, 22 June 2008 (UTC)


 * No, that's the same way I pronounce things in Detroit, USA. A KILLometer sounds like a device used to measure how dead something is (or is that a MORTgage ?). StuRat (talk) 14:02, 22 June 2008 (UTC)


 * BTW, this would have been an excellent question for the Language Ref Desk. StuRat (talk) 14:02, 22 June 2008 (UTC)


 * As the OP, I have no objection to this thred being moved to the language desk, if someone would kindly do that for me? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.69.161.174 (talk) 17:01, 22 June 2008 (UTC)


 * KILogram, KILowatt, kilOMeter, KILoton. Hrmph. I doubt there's any good reason for it. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 21:12, 22 June 2008 (UTC)


 * KILLometer sounds trochaic. KilOMeter sounds iambic. In William Shakespeare's Macbeth, the people spoke iambic, except the witches. They spoke trochaic, giving them an eery sound. I think this is why we use the iambic version, not the trochaic version.Coffsneeze (talk) 03:03, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Note that there are only three named multiples of a meter that are commonly used in English: the millimeter, centimeter, and kilometer. Of these only the kilometer has a name ending in -ometer. It seems a reasonable conjecture that its pronunciation was influenced by the various measuring devices whos names also end in -ometer, typically having with the O accented (thermometer, speedometer, etc.). Dictionaries generally don't give etymologies for pronunciations, so I'm not sure where one would look to see if there is research supporting or refuting this conjecture. An interesting case is the micrometer, which is accented on the O when it's a measuring device but on the I when it means 1/1,000,000 of a meter; but this does not refute the conjecture because the usual name for 1/1,000,000 m before the rise of SI metric was "micron", not "micrometer".

It should also be noted that the kill-O-meter pronunciation has a practical advantage: if all the kilo- units are accented on the first syllable, then many of their names sound very similar, which increases the chance that they will be misheard. If the primary accent had been on the third syllable, kill-o-ME-ter, that might have helped avoid this problem, but that's not a common accentuation pattern in English. Note also that the kilogram and only the kilogram is commonly shortened to "kilo", which again helps make it distinct from other kilo- units. (This issue of possible confusion does not arise in the language that we get these units from, because French does not have the pattern of strongly stressed and blurry unstressed syllable s that English does. It could be an issue in Russian, where unstressed syllables are blurred the way they are in English -- anyone know how these words are accented in Russian?)

--Anonymous, 03:55 UTC, June 23, 2008.


 * The only units of length my reference books have, the Russian words for kilometre, centimetre and millimetre, are all accented on the -me- syllable: kilo-MEtr, santi-MEtr, mili-MEtr.  The word for the measuring device the micrometer is accented on the -cro-: mi-KRO-metr.  --  JackofOz (talk) 07:28, 23 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Is a "santi-MEtr" used to determine who's naughty and who's nice ? StuRat (talk) 12:53, 23 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Maybe what we need around here sometimes is a sanity-MEtr". :)  --  JackofOz (talk) 12:57, 23 June 2008 (UTC)


 * This is probably incorrect, but I either say kilOMeter or more like KEY-lo-meter, the latter probably is incorrect, but I hear people say KEY-lo a lot too. KILL-o-meter just sounds ugly to me, like what StuRat said. And I'm also in the US. --Wirbelwind ヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 17:09, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

A few years ago it was common for American doctors to say "SAWNTimeter" in a pseudo-French pronunciation, which missed the mark by having "-meter" rather than "=metre" at the end. Sounded bogus. Edison (talk) 19:19, 23 June 2008 (UTC)


 * "KILL-o-meter" sounds like something Arnold Schwarzenegger would carry in one of his movies. Kill-OM-eter sounds nicer. But of course, being American, I usually just say "MILE." -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:48, 24 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Robert Frost is probably still grateful that you guys have dragged the chain on the metric thing. --  JackofOz (talk) 05:30, 25 June 2008 (UTC)