Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 April 29

= April 29 =

Master Of Ceremonies or Master of Ceremony
which is correct if it is only one event: Master Of Ceremonies or Master of Ceremony ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.129.162.191 (talk) 20:28, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The expression "master of ceremonies" is invariable. It's always the plural "ceremonies", even if there's only one ceremony, as is usually the case.  --  JackofOz (talk) 22:11, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * And "of" is usually not capitalised. So Master of Ceremonies is generally the correct form. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 22:41, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

The genitive
Which of these two are correct?:


 * the sons's car?
 * the sons' car?

Thank you. Fanoftheworld (talk) 06:50, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It depends on how many sons own the car. If there is only one son then it is "the son's car".  If there is more than one son then it is "the sons' car".  The apostrophe after the "s" is used when the possessive noun is a plural. Eiad77 (talk) 07:34, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * ... and unless this is some creature called a "sons", "sons's" is not correct. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 07:46, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Is joint ownership of cars common? Jay (talk) 08:56, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Opinion on whether sons' or sons's is correct depends which stylebook you use. Many modern ones specify sons's. (The one I recall is the UPI Stylebook.) RJFJR (talk) 20:34, 30 April 2009 (UTC)  (Strike out: I misremembered, note below RJFJR (talk) 14:28, 1 May 2009 (UTC))


 * Many modern ones? Really?  Are they serious?  Are they written by people who actually know a thing or two about English?  Are they published by reputable publishing houses?  What other choice gems of style do they advocate?  The only thing even approximating "sons's", that I would consider acceptable, is an abbreviation such as "My daughter's name is Mary; my son's's Peter". --  JackofOz (talk) 20:44, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree. The only time you add 's to a plural is when the plural does not end in s, e.g. "the children's car", "the oxen's heads", "the geese's wings", etc. But "sons's" is just plain wrong. —Angr 20:54, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * There's no better way of saying it than that. Any "style guide" that permits "sons's" should be given a very wide berth.  --  JackofOz (talk) 21:02, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I apologize, I remembered rule three but this case is covered by rule 2 taking precendence (I remembered a case of a singular, one syllable word, that ended in s.) I've struck my comment above.  I'll re-read the stylebook tonight.  RJFJR (talk) 14:28, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Estonian Given Names
I'm compiling a table with names translated in many languages and I'm searching for an online resource of Estonian given names. I mean official standard estonified forms (if they actually exist, 'cause I'm not sure about naming conventions in Estonia: do they use Russian/German/Maltese names instead?). For example, it's relatively easy to find corrispondances in other languages like Latvian (Alexander-Aleksandrs, David-Dāvids, Siegfried-Zigfrīds...), Lithuanian (Charles-Karolis, Henry-Henrikas, Martin-Martynas, ...), Finnish (Victor-Vihtori, George-Yrjö, Steven-Tapani, ...), but it's extremely hard to find real estonian equivalences (the only ones I found are James-Jaak, George-Jüri and John-Jaan). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.51.134.214 (talk) 11:51, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * My Google search for the character string "estonian name" found a number of websites which seem to fit what you want. Are they all inadequate somehow? -- Wavelength (talk) 13:47, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Category:Wikipedians by language has a link to Category:User et. -- Wavelength (talk) 13:51, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Here is a link to 28 Estonian Bible books: http://est.scripturetext.com/genesis/1.htm. -- Wavelength (talk) 14:00, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * See List of Biblical names. -- Wavelength (talk) 14:02, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * See BibleTab.com: Multi-Version Bible Concordance. -- Wavelength (talk) 14:04, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * See Concordance (publishing). -- Wavelength (talk) 14:07, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Because apparently these interconnected websites (to some of which I have given links) lack a complete Bible in Estonian, they do not show an Estonian passage together with passages in other languages, and a researcher needs to do more work by finding names in English Bibles, and then finding the corresponding names in an Estonian Bible. -- Wavelength (talk) 14:16, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The page http://www.searchenginecolossus.com/ has a link to http://www.searchenginecolossus.com/Estonia.html.
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 14:29, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much for the efforts, but I think that a biblical source wouldn't bring much to my research. A lot of Scandinavian/North European languages show a divergence between religious-bibliacal names and everyday first names: for example John the Baptist in Estonian is Ristija Johannes and not Jaan, even Pope John Paul II is Johannes Paulus II (also in Swedish, Saint Peter is called Petrus and not Per or Peter.) :-P --151.51.62.228 (talk) 14:34, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * That's true in a lot of languages. In German, SS. Peter and Paul are "Petrus" and "Paulus" but the usual given names are "Peter" and "Paul". In Irish, the Virgin Mary is "Muire" but the given name is "Máire", and the various Saints called John are "Eoin", which is possible as a given name too, but less common than "Seán". —Angr 14:40, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Speaking of Peters and Pauls: I was always puzzled by the name of Pier Paolo Pasolini. His first name appears to be a variant of Peter, yet as far as I am aware, the usual Italian form of Peter is Pietro. So where does Pier come from? — Emil J. 14:48, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, I'm Italian :-)! The name Pietro is the official translation of Peter, but it could be shortened to Piero (something like Pete). In composite names, its usually reduced in the form of Pier (for example Piergiorgio, Piercarlo, Pierfrancesco) in the sake of a better sound. That happens also to Giovanni (John): it can be shortened to Gianni and in composed name it turns to Gian (Giancarlo, Gianfranco). --151.51.62.228 (talk) 14:55, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I see. Thanks for the explanation. — Emil J. 15:54, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * See Europa - The European Union On-Line and LOGOS - Multilingual Translation Portal
 * and Category:Given name appendices - Wiktionary. -- Wavelength (talk) 15:59, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * See Internet Public Library: Estonia. -- Wavelength (talk) 16:13, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * See http://dict.ibs.ee/translate.cgi?word=name&language=English. -- Wavelength (talk) 16:17, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * See http://dict.ibs.ee/translate.cgi?word=English&language=English. -- Wavelength (talk) 16:19, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * See http://dict.ibs.ee/translate.cgi?word=Italian&language=English. -- Wavelength (talk) 16:21, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * See http://dict.ibs.ee/translate.cgi?word=Estonian&language=English. -- Wavelength (talk) 16:22, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * See http://et.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategooria:Eesnimed. -- Wavelength (talk) 16:30, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * See http://dict.ibs.ee/translate.cgi?word=list&language=English. -- Wavelength (talk) 17:14, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * See http://dict.ibs.ee/translate.cgi?word=table&language=English. -- Wavelength (talk) 17:15, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * In the original post, the correct spelling is correspondence (not to be confused with the Italian word corrispondenza). Incidentally, with cognate words in English and Italian, the English prefix re- corresponds sometimes to Italian re- and sometimes to Italian ri-.  The situation with de- and di- is a little more complicated.  One can browse a good bidirectional dictionary of Italian and English for details.
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 17:38, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * See WikiProject Estonia. -- Wavelength (talk) 17:51, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * From http://www.numberway.com/, I found White Pages - Estonia - Telephone Directory - Phone Book.
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 17:57, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I provided the links to word translations for use in Internet searches. -- Wavelength (talk) 17:59, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * See Estonian names keep on puzzling through the centuries (subscription required for viewing of complete article).
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 18:09, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I propose estonian honorary citizenship for Wavelength! Besides, I have found this interesting site: []. Names seem to generally have a correspondence in Estonian Wikipedia. :-) --151.51.62.228 (talk) 20:14, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * This request seems to be exceptionally challenging. If it is very important to you, and if you are prepared to spend a great amount of time, I recommend that you try your best to immerse yourself in all good information pertaining to Estonia, the Estonian language, and given names (you are already immersed in studying given names), as well as Internet directories, portals, and search engines.  Please remember that the language code for the Estonian language is "et" whereas the country code for Estonia is "ee".    You probably will find websites that you will want to bookmark.  Also, you might want to contribute your findings to Wikipedia or Wiktionary or both.
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 20:51, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * [I revised my message of 20:51, 29 April 2009 (UTC). -- Wavelength (talk) 05:50, 30 April 2009 (UTC)]
 * [I revised it again. -- Wavelength (talk) 18:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)]
 * See http://directory.google.com/Top/Reference/Ask_an_Expert/. -- Wavelength (talk) 05:53, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * You can search on this trilingual website: Estonian Government. -- Wavelength (talk) 14:43, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Born of / Born from
Hello everybody, I'm a french student, and when i was writing a paper for school, i hesitated on an expression. Which of the following sentences is correct (the syntax, not the meaning !)
 * Born of a revolution, romanticism will accompany many others.
 * Born from a revolution, romanticism will...

Thanks for your wise answers. 83.145.66.202 (talk) 12:04, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I would say "Born out of revolution...", but I am neither a native speaker nor wise. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 20:10, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Of those two choices, I'd say born of sounds less awkward, but the sentence as a whole does not really make sense. The phrase born of belongs to a formal, flowery, and somewhat old-fashioned register of English.  I don't think that it is used very often these days except in poetry or language meant to sound "inspirational".  Born out of revolution would be understood but doesn't sound quite right to my ears.  The next issue is a revolution.  Romanticism was not born during a revolution.  It was actually born somewhat before the French Revolution and, as I understand the history, primarily in Germany as a reaction to the hegemony of classicism and rationalism.  Even if Romanticism had come into being during the French Revolution, I think the correct form would be Born of revolution.  More importantly from a grammatical point of view, the birth of romanticism happened in the past, so it does not make sense to use the word will.  Instead, you need the past-tense would.  Finally, accompany many others is hard to understand.  Do you mean other expressions of the revolutionary spirit?  By itself, the sentence doesn't have any meaning.  The reader asks himself or herself "accompany many others of what?".  I would think carefully about what you mean to say and recast the sentence to say what you mean more clearly.  (I am a native speaker but not wise.)    Marco polo (talk) 20:25, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, thank you very much for your answer. Your remark about my use of "will" helped me a lot. It's a bad translation from the french, in which we use a "narration (or historic) present" that doesn't exist in English. If you can read French, this paper is very interesting : . Thanks again for the other remarks, and be sure that they won't be useless. 212.99.19.189 (talk) 08:38, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd say "Born in a revolution" or "Born in the midst of revolution" for what you're trying to go for. In French, would you say "Né de revolution", out of curiosity?  The Jade Knight (talk) 09:18, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * In French, i'd say "Né d'une révolution". And actually, the meaning of my sentence is rather "engendered by a Revolution" than "appeared during a revolution".212.99.19.189 (talk) 13:46, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Then born of fits. It's archaic; the example that springs to mind is a phrase in the Anglican(?) funeral service: "Man that is born of woman has but a short time to live and is full of misery" (likely misquoted). —Tamfang (talk) 19:04, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Two spaces after a full stop
I read today in:

Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive (spaces after a full stop/period)

That everyone agrees that 2 spaces are acceptable after a full stop. Please note that this is very bad practice, as a PC is already gauged to the correct spacing with just one space. Also, should you put two spaces and then justify your paragraph, which many reports, letter and legal documents are these days, you end up with just 4 words on a line which looks dreadful.

Can you please add this to the talk pages so that those commenting and who were taught pre 1995 can update their practices.

Many thanks

ANON —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.244.189.194 (talk) 14:52, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * From the current version of MOS: There is no guideline on whether to use one space or two after the end of a sentence (see Double-spaced sentences), but the issue is not important, because the difference is visible only in edit boxes; that is, it is ignored by browsers when displaying the article. Tonywalton Talk 20:04, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * That's a design decision that was enforced on the whole WWW by the designers of HTML, very sadly in my opinion. In troff and TeX the default was to provide extra space after sentences, and I still say that this style improves legibility.  (Outside of monospaced fonts the extra space doesn't have to be a full word-space, although in troff it is.)  Leaving the display of this space up to the viewer would have been in keeping with the Web's design philosophy, but that would have required markup to indicate what are sentences, and HTML does not provide for this markup.  (In troff, it's done by how you place the whitespace, and as I recall TeX does the same.)  --Anonymous, 02:00 UTC, April 30, 2009.
 * Well, I for one am glad that you can't see the difference between a single space and a double space between sentences at Wikipedia. We have enough edit-warring over pissant formatting issues already without adding the inevitable squabbling that would occur between those who prefer double spacing and those who prefer single spacing. —Angr 06:05, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll just note that I said it should be up to the reader, not the writer/editor. But, well, you don't always get what you want. --Anon, 04:44 UTC, May 1, 2009.
 * God, it's been years since I've seen anyone use pissant. Thanks, Angr; can pismire be far behind? Deor (talk) 06:10, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * TeX ignores multiple spaces in the input source exactly like HTML, and there is no reason why a web browser couldn't use the same algorithm as TeX to recognize sentence punctuation. — Emil J. 11:58, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I had a typewriter with a half-space key; I used a space and a half between sentences. —Tamfang (talk) 19:10, 5 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The poster of the original question should note that Manual of Style applies only to the style for Wikipedia, and isn't a style guide for everything anyone might write in the English language. Similarly, the talk page is for discussing Wikipedia formatting, not general style matters.  Therefore how text might look in legal documents or reports is irrelevant. --Maltelauridsbrigge (talk) 13:52, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * For practice outside Wikipedia, the OP might find Double-spaced sentences useful reading. It shows that usage varies according to media, font, style, and so forth. Within WP, you will find various people who like double spacing and those who don't. Gwinva (talk) 23:11, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

French slang
Hi, I'm an English speaker learning French, and in this YA novel I'm reading (set in Quebec) I keep running into the word tiens in sentences like "C'est comme la mode, tiens" and "En parlant de broches, tiens, je dois dire que je suis l'exception" I know tiens can be a plural pronoun for "yours", but I'm pretty sure it's not being used in that way. Neither my French-English dictionary nor Wiktionary have an entry for it, althought I'd understand that if it's fairly recent slang. Does anybody know what tiens means? Jonathan talk 20:30, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * See wikt:tenir. -- Wavelength (talk) 20:54, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Hercule Poirot was in the habit of using it – "Tiens! Hastings, I have been a fool!" That would literally translate as "hold", which makes little sense. I've always read it as a sort of general-purpose epithet of surprise, like "By heck!" or "Golly!". Meaning 6 (locution) of this link may be useful. Tonywalton Talk 21:02, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * See fr:wikt:tiens. -- Wavelength (talk) 21:13, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * "Tiens", in that context, is used to express that something that was just said, or that just happened is loosely associated to / caused the current train of thought. Bit of a filler word though. Can also be used to express mild surprise (in Tonywalton's example above, meeting someone unexpectedly). Equendil Talk 22:49, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * In some uses, corresponds to 'Hang on!' or 'Wait a moment!' --ColinFine (talk) 23:02, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * As you say: "a filler word". The word I'd been trying to remember is there in Wavelength's link to the fr Wiktionary - "phatique". Words like this are a bugger to translate appropriately. I find they're a bit of a shibboleth, in fact - non-en-speaking politicians throw in inappropriate-sounding phrases like "as a matter of fact" when interviewed on the TV, which just sounds ... odd Tonywalton Talk 23:30, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * My French teacher a couple years ago always said "Tiens!" whenever someone was badly misbehaving (which sadly was the norm in that class). I asked her what it meant, and she said "Behold!" or "Hey!"  Take this as you will though, she only lasted a semester, and didn't have enough of a handle on the class for me to really tell if she actually seemed to be good at using French. -- Falconus p  t   c 03:18, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * If you're being polite and vouvoying the other person, do you then cry "tenez!"? Or is that reserved for "I am about to serve!"? ---Sluzzelin talk  08:06, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I doubt Poirot would have tutoyéed Hastings, so if he said "tiens" when speaking to him, then it must be a fixed form used regardless of whom you're speaking to. —Angr 11:54, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * "Tiens" is used as mark of a personal reflexion of the speaker. It is rather something like thinking aloud than an apostrophe to someone else, so there is no vouvoying form". It can be used in an affirmative form, in order to emphasize an affirmation (as in your first example), in an interrogative form to express a surprise ("Tiens ? C'est nouveau, ça ?"), and in this case, it is often repeated ("Tiens, tiens" or even "Tiens, tiens, tiens..."). I hope my explanations are clear, because my English is not that good...212.99.19.189 (talk) 13:58, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * "Tiens" have several meanings in French. Here are several examples from my dictionnary (Robert&Collins). Tiens, voilà mon frère !: (surprise) ah, there's my brother, you can say to another personne Tenez, voilà mon frère !. Tiens, tiens...(no vouvoying form): well, well! Tiens, je vais t'expliquer or Tenez, je vais vous expliquer (to draw attention): look, I'll explain. Tenez, ça m'écœure or Tiens ça m'écœure: you know, that sickens me. — AldoSyrt (talk) 16:17, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Aside. 1/It is not French slang. 2/ In a French-English dictionnary the entry is Tenir. Tiens and Tenez are the forms of the verb tenir in the imperative mood. — AldoSyrt (talk) 16:28, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks for explaining that! I don't think tiens was being used as exclamations or attention-grabbers in my novel though. I think my examples are the reflective forms. So, based on what I just learned, I can translate "C'est comme la mode, tiens" as "It's fashion, I guess"... or in other places I'd probably just leave it out because the reflective spirit is already in the sentence. Sorry for not recognizing tiens as tenir XP Merci beaucoup Jonathan talk 16:59, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Tiens means literaly take this, or you could translate it as here it is in your example sentences, if you want to stay close to the original meaning. Tiens can now be used without any real need for it, just like I mean or like in English.--Lgriot (talk) 04:25, 3 May 2009 (UTC)


 * In Astérix (which gets most of the blame for my understanding or misunderstanding of French) I think Tiens can usually be translated 'Say,' or 'Look,...'. —Tamfang (talk) 22:10, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Incomparable crack
(Yes, I thought that'd get your attention.) The adjective "crack" is used in the sense of highly trained, extremely efficient etc., as in "crack troops", or a "crack [musical] ensemble". I've never seen any comparative form of this adjective (the options would seem to be "cracker" or "more crack"). An example might be "Of the two groups of troops the general inspected, the Southern Highlanders were cracker/more crack".

Is it the case that this adjective doesn't take comparative or superlative forms? Or is it that they exist technically but are rarely or never used, because of the obvious potential for confusion (e.g. "cracker troops" could be mistaken for bunch of loonies, and "more crack troops" sounds like they're on drugs and are after a fresh supply).

Are there other words in this category? -- JackofOz (talk) 22:31, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, and yes. There are several words like this - I would call them 'superlative adjectives' because the examples I can think of are all of that nature, but I don't know if there's a more general term. They also usually can only be used attributively, not predicatively. Other examples are 'ace' and 'star'. I can't think of one at the other end of the spectrum. --ColinFine (talk) 23:08, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * "unique". --jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 23:12, 29 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I think "unique" is a special case. If there's only one of something, it's inherently impossible to compare it with any other (non-existent) examples of such an item.  But there could be more than one "star forward" on a sports ground, or many "crack troops" in an army, etc.  If one wanted to compare two groups of troops, both of which were "crack troops", would it be necessary to say something like "They're both crack troops, but the first is more effective/highly trained/whatever than the other"?  --  JackofOz (talk) 00:12, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Good point. Contemplating. --jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 00:21, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I had to laugh at an American Idol review the other day which claimed that Adam Lambert is the "most unique" contestant AI has ever had. Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 23:51, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Comparison (grammar) talks of "absolute adjectives", which do not admit of comparison, and gives examples such as "igneous", "Cretaceous", "perfect", "unique" and "parallel". Something is either Cretaceous or it's not.  There are no grades of cretaceousness, although it talks of a context where that could apply.  I'm not convinced "crack", "ace" and "star" belong in that group, but I can see a case for it.  --  JackofOz (talk) 00:26, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The way the word is usually used, "crack" is like "top" or "best". "Crack troops" means "our top troops", not "our relatively good troops". If you are committing your crack troops, you won't later commit even more crackier troops, because there wouldn't be any. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 00:52, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Oh yes, I see that. But a group of crack troops from the Australian Army could be compared with a group of crack troops from the Venezuelan Army.  If we replace "crack" with "best", then we can't say that one group is more "best" than the other, because "best" is already a superlative.  We could say "Our best is better than your best".  "Crack" is positive in form, albeit superlative in meaning.  However, it's sometimes used not in a superlative sense, but in a comparative sense.  "Our son went off to the army, joined a battalion of crack troops, and was killed at Anzio" - that doesn't necessarily mean that the battalion was the very best in the army, but merely highly trained and highly effective, and there could have been a battalion in the same army of even more highly trained and effective troops.  But we still can't say that the latter group was "more crack" or "cracker" than the group the son joined.  --  JackofOz (talk) 02:11, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Am I the only one who's heard people say "more unique"? — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 02:49, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * No, you are not more unique than the rest of us. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:12, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps "crack" belongs on the same kind of scale as "not good, not very good, good, very good, extremely good"? You can say "very good" is better than "good", but you can't directly compare two things which are both "very good" and say one is "more very good" than the other?
 * So if we take "crack" to stand for "extremely highly trained and effective", then you can decompose that for comparison purposes and say "the US battalion is more highly trained and effective than the Venezuelan one". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 04:28, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, that's pretty much nailed it. Thanks, PG. Just thinking about the scale you mentioned, another way of saying that would be "The Crap-Crack Spectrum" (charming; I think I'll patent that term, but use it judiciously) .  "Crap" can be compared ("he's crapper than her") but "crack" can't.  Interesting.  --  JackofOz (talk) 05:17, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Err...I don't know if they do it differently down under, but isn't it "crappier"?  bibliomaniac 1 5  The annual review... 05:20, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, but that's the comparative of "crappy". "Crap" is also used as an adjective - "I went to see Titanic last night.  It was an absolutely crap movie!".  I would say "crap" is considerably more damning than "crappy".  "Crappy" suggests it has some redeeming feature, even if it only merits 1 star overall.  But "crap" means zero stars, or even negative stars.  --  JackofOz (talk) 05:28, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure if crack is an adjective;, if it is one, it's not a fully productive adjective, just one with certain set roles. It is not used in all the contexts where you can use other adjectives - you would say: They are crack troops but as a native speaker I don't think this is a correct English sentence: *These troops are crack In contrast the following are both valid They are igneous rocks These rocks are igneous It may be that "crack" is one of those adjectives that have lost their original linguistic versatility and become "dead" except for use in certain phrases or patterns (like the noun "let" meaning obstacle in "without let or hindrance"). It's possible that "crack troop" is a phrase like "shock troop" originally made from two nouns. You would need to check the etymology in more detail than I can find out - but as "crack" has many meanings as verb or noun but only this one as an adjective, this suggests that the origin of the phrase may have been the noun "crack", with it later generalised from "shot" or "troop" to other noun modificands. (Sorry this isn't very clear.) --Maltelauridsbrigge (talk) 14:16, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * See Noun adjunct. -- Wavelength (talk) 15:54, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Bomb
What is bombs?68.148.149.184 (talk) 22:49, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm guessing a loanword from football : "a long pass thrown to a receiver sprinting down the field." transposed to Ultimate Frisbee. Equendil Talk 23:08, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Makes sense. In that answer, of course, "football" means football (or theoretically, but not likely, football) as opposed to football, football, football, or football.  See football.  --Anonymous, 04:40 UTC, May 1, 2009.
 * The words opposed to are for use with opposites. The words distinct from are for use with entities which differ from each other.  North is opposed to south, but north is distinct from west. -- Wavelength (talk) 14:30, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, well, they're opposite in their status of being the right or the wrong meaning, aren't they? --Anon, -01:54 UTC, May 3, 2009.


 * Are there no opponents in a three-way contest? —Tamfang (talk) 22:12, 10 May 2009 (UTC)