Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 December 24

= December 24 =

Vivid? Really?
On (US) television an advert is currently running, perhaps for a stop-smoking drug. Per FDA regulations, nearly half the ad is disclaimers, one of which is "may cause vivid or intense dreams."

Does anyone know what the FDA-approved, medical definition of a "vivid dream" might be? Surely it's more than just bright colors, because lots of drugs (most of which don't require a prescription!) can induce that, right?

Happy holidays to all, by the way...

--DaHorsesMouth (talk) 02:39, 24 December 2009 (UTC)


 * It sounds kind of like weasel-words, in sort of a good way; not just the "vivid" part, but the "intense" part. Whether a dream is vivid or intense would be a judgment call on the part of the dreamer. It's unlikely there's a federal standard for the term. It's probably more of a summary of observed results. By the way, "vivid" derives from "to live", hence it means "lively", and one of its synonyms is "intense". So it may cause intense or intense dreams. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:47, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * My understanding of "vivid" in this context was dreams that are a lot more realistic, perhaps even difficult to distinguish from reality. — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  02:51, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Could be. But you don't have to be on drugs to have vivid and/or intense dreams. They might have been better off saying "more vivid or intense than you normally get". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:55, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * And as with any other drug, it would have been through a battery of tests, in which such side effects would have been observed. If you get any kind of prescription drug nowadays, you get like a book that explains every possible side effect of the drug. Those effects would be known through testing required for FDA approval. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:57, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * You can also get intense dreams without being on drugs. In general, when someone says "vivid dream" I don't think intense, I think realistic.  Maybe it's just me. — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  03:33, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * "Vivid" literally means "alive" or "living", i.e. seeming real. The disclaimers are likely just trying to come up with a couple of words to summarize what they observed during testing. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:39, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I suspect that this is based on self reporting rather than some sort of objective standard in a laboratory. — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  03:58, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * A fair amount of lab testing would involve self-reporting. If someone says, "This drug makes me nauseous", I don't know how you could measure that. More likely what they would measure is the percentage of test subjects who reported a given side effect. Like if they tested 100 people and only 1 of them had vivid dreams, vs. 50 of them having vivid dreams. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:03, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

I think the definition of "vivid dreams" is pretty much the one suggested by a straightforward interpretation of the English words: Abecedare (talk) 04:34, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * This paper describes the term parenthetically as "unusually clear, long dreams with elaborate scenario and possibly strong emotions, that occurred only when sleeping and were acutely remembered".
 * The Parkinsons Disease Non-Motor Scale has a question for the patient on the topic, which simply asks if they have experienced "Intense, vivid dreams or frightening dreams". Since the patient is given no further information on how to interpret these terms, the answer would reflect the usual layman understanding of the terms. The use of the term in the ad you saw is likely to be similar, rather than there being a special "FDA approved" definition.


 * I think 'acutely remembered' is important. As a layman, my impression of a vivid dream was one that, even if you knew you were dreaming, still seemed completely realistic. Or that after you woke, instead of it seeming like a dream, it still seemed completely real even though you now realized it wasn't. kwami (talk) 06:21, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

So funny -- I actually just had a seminar on the tobacco cessation drug to which you are referring, varenicline. "Vivid dreams" is a formal term used to describe intense dreams, the content of which one might normally not experience. Suicidal thoughts and irrational behavior are also side-effects.  DRosenbach  ( Talk 18:11, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Six days left and I'm still uncomfortable calling them the "ohs", "aughts" or "noughties". How about you?
Civic Cat (talk) 17:17, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Do you have a intelligible question?  DRosenbach  ( Talk 18:07, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * 2000's. What do you call them?Civic Cat (talk) 18:16, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * 2000s itself isn't very satisfying, because it is ambiguous. We use terms like 1800s and 1700s to refer to entire centuries, so 2000s could seem to refer to the entire 21st century.  On the other hand, when I was a child (1960s-1970s), I remember the decade 1900–1909 being called the 1900s, so maybe there isn't such a risk of ambiguity while the century is still underway.  I agree that aughts and noughties are also unsatisfying.  Neither has caught on in the United States.  Also, the first sounds archaic, and the second sounds silly.  The word nought is not in common usage in the United States at least, so the word sounds like naughties, and for most people, the decade has not been fun at all, much less "naughty".  (What went on on Wall Street and in the City of London went several steps beyond naughty.)  There isn't a widely accepted term for the decade in the United States, but I think we will end up with 2000s or ohs.  I prefer the latter.  Looking back on the decade, a sigh seems fitting.  Marco polo (talk) 18:57, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Not this time around, but "oughty eight" was customary, if informal, American in 1908. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:38, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks Marco Polo, and may you (and all Wikipedians) have a merry teens. :-D Civic Cat (talk) 19:20, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The expression "2000s" might refer to a decade, a century, or a millennium. -- Wavelength (talk) 19:22, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * For disambiguation with written figures, I propose the 200 0 s, the 20 00 s, and the 2 000 s, respectively.
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 20:54, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Here is another proposal: the 200\0s, the 20\00s, and the 2\000s. -- Wavelength (talk) 06:33, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I propose the two thousands for the millennium, the twenty hundreds for the century, the twenty zeroes (abbreviated to the zeroes) for the first decade, and the twenty tens (abbreviated to the tens) for the second decade.Wavelength (talk) 19:56, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, good luck with that. I propose "the third millennium" for the millennium, "the twenty-first century" for the century, "the first decade of the twenty-first century" for the first decade, and "the second decade of the twenty-first century" for the second decade. +Angr 21:32, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia has information about determining the first year and the last year of a decade, a century, and a millennium.
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 23:24, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * "Twenty aughts" and "twenty tens" are pretty normal, even if the former sounds a bit 19th century. kwami (talk) 04:21, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
 * In my dialect, "noughties" sounds just like "naughties". That one won't get very far except in retrospect by our puritanical grandchildren.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  19:51, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I doubt there's any dialect of English where they aren't homophones. +Angr 10:30, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
 * For the record, the decade still has a year and a bit to run. Since the system started on year 1, the next decade should start in 2011. And yes, I attempted to celebrate teh millenium in 2001; nobody listened to me then either. Of course you could say that a decade is simply a period of ten years, in which case, every day is the end of one.- Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 20:21, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I think you're going to find that convention will say otherwise. There are already stories appearing about the first decade of the 2000s (which I would tend to call the "early 2000s", just as 1900-1909 is the "early 1900s"). That's counting 2000 through 2009, because 2000 begins with "two thousand". This is not to be confused with the 21st Century, which began on January 1, 2001, and will end on December 31, 2100; nor the Third Millenium, which began on January 1, 2001, and will end on December 31, 3000, assuming nothing bad happens In the Year 2525; if man is still alive. :) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:31, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
 * That's simply an inappropriate appeal to popularity. Most people are wrong. Now, let's see whether I can find any lives to ruin, grass to protect, etc. etc. etc.... :) - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 20:34, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The dilemma is that reliable sources and common usage will trump what we might think is the "true" way of saying it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:48, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Serendipitously Washington Post has just published an article addressing the OP's question. Abecedare (talk) 04:48, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Names of decades, centuries, and millennia 1000 years ago
One thousand years ago, how did people refer to the decade 1000–1009, the decade 1010–1019, the century 1000–1099, and the millennium 1000–1999? (Incidentally, I am aware of the Italian expressions for some centuries in Italian culture: Trecento, Quattrocento, Cinquecento, Seicento, and Settecento.) -- Wavelength (talk) 21:28, 25 December 2009 (UTC) ..... [I am revising my message. -- Wavelength (talk) 21:36, 25 December 2009 (UTC)]
 * I wonder whether people 1000 years ago referred to decades as unitary concepts at all. I suspect that thinking of "the fifties", "the sixties", "the seventies", etc., is a relatively modern thing to do. I know the 1890s were called the "Gay Nineties" (at least, after the fact they were), and maybe some other decades in the 19th century were thought of as identifiable units, but does it go back earlier than that? +Angr 23:21, 25 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Around 1000 A.D., very few people (other than a few scribal monks) commonly encountered Dionysian A.D. dates in the course of their everyday life. That's part of why there was no real "Y1K" panic -- some people might be alarmed if they were told by one of their friendly neighborhood monks that it was approaching 1000 years since the birth (or death) of Jesus, but unless they were told by a monk etc, the vast majority of people would have no idea when such an anniversary occurred... AnonMoos (talk) 00:03, 26 December 2009 (UTC)


 * According to Arabic numerals, the use of Roman numerals continued to predominate in Europe after the year 1000 (in Roman numerals, M). That might have some relevance.  2009 = MMIX.  2010 = MMX. -- Wavelength (talk) 02:22, 26 December 2009 (UTC)


 * They also didn't need to differentiate between decades, since, unlike the past couple of hundred years, nothing much really changed decade to decade. Adam Bishop (talk) 05:21, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Some events are mentioned in the articles 990s, 1000–1009, and 1010s. -- Wavelength (talk) 05:54, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Sure, but that doesn't mean people at the time thought about these decades as entities needing a name. +Angr 10:30, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
 * There is the Latin word "decennium", but similar words can be made with any number and time period ("millennium" for example). Adam Bishop (talk) 03:56, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The Oxford English Dictionary's first recorded use of the word "century" to refer to a 100-year period ending in a "00" year comes from 1638. The first similar use of "decade" also dates to the 17th century. Same with "millenium." That's only English, of course, but it gives some indication that measuring time according to the Dionysian system of years was not a major priority in the Middle Ages. If required to identify a range of years in the past, a Medieval scholar might refer to the king who was ruling at the time. ("In the time of the second King Henry after the Conquest," e.g.) -- Mwalcoff (talk) 08:02, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Company Of Heroes (game)
In the WW2 game CoH, the Americans sometimes shout something that sounds like 'Krauts have got a feed on us'. Is this correct? --  KageTora - (影虎)  ( Talk? )  21:55, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * "Have got a bead on us" (i.e., "have us in their gun sights"), perhaps. This sense of bead doesn't seem to be covered in the Wiktionary entry; see, however, senses 7 and 19 here. Deor (talk) 22:07, 24 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Ah, excellent, thanks! I suppose that makes some sense. Would anyone know if this has been taken from a film or if American soldiers do/did in fact say this sort of thing? --  KageTora - (影虎)  ( Talk? )  22:44, 24 December 2009 (UTC)


 * According to my old Webster's, one version of a bead is a small knob of metal on a rifle, near the muzzle, used for a sight. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:16, 25 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I think that this is the sort of thing that soldiers would have said during WW2. I don't know if the expression remains current.  Marco polo (talk) 01:46, 25 December 2009 (UTC)


 * to draw a bead on H. L. Mencken in The American Language calls an obvious product of pioneer life, when discussing phrases which originated around the time of the revolutionary war. I found the phrase in a number of memoirs from World War II.&mdash;eric 03:15, 25 December 2009 (UTC)