Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 March 4

= March 4 =

Hungarian references: 19th century electrical inventions by Jedlik
Assistance is needed by editors who can make sense of references in Hungarian regarding the inventions of Ányos Jedlik. Hungarian sources are claimed to state that he invented the electric motor and the electric car in 1828, including motors with two sets of electromagnetic coils and a commutator, and that he invented the dynamo. Most histories of electric motors and generators, from the 19th century to the present, credit others with these discoveries. The few English language sources giving Jedlik any credit for these inventions just cite Hungarian sources. Assistance appreciated. Was he an early experimenter who did not publish, patent, or widely demonstrate his devices? Is he the "true inventor?" Or did he duplicate published inventions after the fact? Did his work advance the art? Edison (talk) 04:37, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Name origin for D'elormie
I was wonderi ng about the name of the dead love in Poe's poem, Bridal Ballad.

I know it's just there as a rhyme, but is it a real name? What might be it's origin? I know Delorme is an actual name... 128.239.177.28 (talk) 05:05, 4 March 2009 (UTC)WildernessOfMonkeys


 * Several books suggest Poe took the name from De L'Orme; Or, The Comte de Soissons a book by G. P. R. James which is about Marion Delorme. This suggests Delorme (without the I) means 'one who lives by an elm tree'. Not having read that poem until today I am inclined to agree with Aldous Huxley that it is a "poetical disaster".  meltBanana  15:16, 4 March 2009 (UTC)


 * More literally, de l'orme = of (or from) the elm. &mdash;Tamfang (talk) 05:30, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Word for the animal vs. the word for the meat
If you speak a language other than English, Polish, or Mandarin, do you mind letting me know if the language you speak uses different words for the animal and the meat? Like in English, there is "cow" and "beef". I know in English, the animal uses the word from Old English (and thus likely has Anglo-Saxon roots) whereas the meat uses the word from the French spoken by the Norman conquerors. I am trying to judge whether this author's claim is almost wholly wrong or just overstated.--droptone (talk) 14:54, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The English beef article has a long list of links to other languages down the left-hand side. It is possible to glean meaning even if one's language skills are rusty, as the basics are all in the intro para, and common nouns have nice links to their own articles and photos to check if you're not sure. I went first to the French article and it says "boeuf" is the vernacular name for the animal and for the meat (and also there are names for bull, cow, and calf). BrainyBabe (talk) 15:05, 4 March 2009 (UTC) PS I'm not suggesting that we won't get fantastically erudite answers here from our multilingual refdesk crew, but just to point out that there are literally dozens of non-English "beef" articles linked to our English one, many of which might be quite straightforward to figure out (and fun!). BrainyBabe (talk) 15:12, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * In both Irish and German, the names for various types of meat are usually compounds of the form "animal name" + "meat", i.e. "cow-meat", "pig-meat", "lamb-meat", etc. In German at least (not sure about Irish) you can usually drop the "meat" part from the name if it's clear from context and just refer to the meat by the name of the animal. Although people are fond of pointing out the Anglo-Saxon = animal / French = meat relationship in English, it doesn't always hold. The meat of fish is called fish and the meat of turkeys is called turkey; the meat of chickens is called chicken, while the French loanword pullet does not refer to the meat specifically but to a certain sex and age of chicken. —Angr 15:22, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Since you didn't exclude dialects, let me add two observations on animals and their meat in Swiss German. The compound rules laid out by Angr apply for the most part in this dialect too, with two exceptions:
 * For chicken (and as far I can tell, only for chicken) people retain the Germanic word for the animal and borrow the French word for the meat (Poulet or even the franco-germanic compound Pouletfleisch, i.e Poulet-meat).
 * For pork, you can form the compound "Schwiifleisch" (pig meat), but "Schwiinigs" is correct too (It would be "Schweiniges" in German: neutral substantivized adjective meaning "porcine" or "belonging to the pig"). For some reason, you can't use these adjectival forms for any other types of meat; you have to say "Lammfleisch" instead of "Lammigs" for lamb or "Chalbfleisch" instead of "Chalbigs" for veal. ---Sluzzelin  talk  15:48, 4 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually, I mentioned in a thread above that 'cow', 'beef' and 'moo' have the same origin, actually. But anyway, I don't know any language that consistently distinguishes either, including English. (E.g. While 'cow' and 'beef' are distinguished, 'chicken' is not.) Words come from necessity, so I think it's more a question of what you eat on the particular animal. Chicken meat is essentially 'dark meat' and 'light meat' but without any really big difference in taste. Whereas say, pigs, have pork, bacon, ribs, which all taste different and are prepared and eaten differently. Wherever there's that kind of difference in how it's eaten, I'd expect separate terms. --Pykk (talk) 16:16, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * It's true that "cow" and "beef" are cognates, as both derive from Proto-Indo-European . But "moo" is just an onomatopoeia; it isn't related. —Angr 17:33, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, it's related in the sense that the original PIE word is believed to be an onomatopoeic for the sound a cow makes. Which would essentially mean being the same 'word' as 'moo'. --Pykk (talk) 15:05, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Korean uses animal name + meat for the meat of livestock and game, but not for fish or seafood. With fish or seafood, you just use the name of the animal. --Kjoonlee 16:43, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Hm, for fish, you can say fish name + flesh in Korean. --Kjoonlee 16:44, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * And for both animals and fish, you can say body part + flesh. --Kjoonlee 16:45, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The word for fish in general is roughly watermeat, BTW. --Kjoonlee 16:47, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the first chapter of Robert Burchfields The English Language (p. 18-19) ends with a discussion of one enduring myth about French loanwords of the medieval period that needs to be discounted because it is merely a half-truth, i.e. precisely the Germanic-animal-words vs. Romance-meat-words distinction, because the restriction of these French words to the sense 'flesh of an animal eaten as food' did not become general before the eighteenth century and goes on to explain that Samuel Johnson referred to 'a beef' being killed in his Journey to the Western Isles and William Cowper to A mutton, statelier than the rest etc. --Janneman (talk) 17:28, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Cattle are still occasionally referred to as "beeves". Who then was a gentleman? (talk) 00:38, 5 March 2009 (UTC)


 * In Slovene, the words for "animal" and "meat of the animal" are roughly different. For instance, (a female) cow would be krava, whereas beef is govedina. Of course, it needs to be said at this point that govedo is a plural noun similar to cattle in English, and the "+ina" could probably be roughly said to mean "coming from sth", so govedina could be roughly broken down to mean "that which comes from cattle". Pig is a bit different: prašič (animal) vs. svinjina (meat). Again, the "+ina" part is roughly "coming from", while svinja is not a plural noun, but rather the word for "sow" (as in, female pig). Mutton: this time, the words in question are ovca (sheep), jagnjetina (mutton) and jagnje (meaning lamb) as the forming word for the name of the meat. Chicken, other fowl and fish mainly just use the same word for animal and meat (chicken, for instance gets a separate word in some dialects, but not in official Slovene). So, basically, there's no real rule here, but the main meats do get their own separate names, which can, however, be traced back to some name of the animal. TomorrowTime (talk) 08:27, 5 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Turkey in German is bred as "Truthahn" or "Truthenne" and eaten as "Pute" or "Puter". Chicken is often identified by the way it's prepared e.g. broiler (more common in the East), "poularde", "Grillhaehnchen" (which can be a chicken).  When they first tried to introduce ostrich in the US they were casting around for names to call the meat that would be "palatable".  I think they settled for leaving it as it was.   76.97.245.5 (talk) 08:33, 5 March 2009 (UTC)


 * In Portuguese, every meat usually (possibly every time, I can't recall any exception) shares the name of the animal it comes from, however, when one is refering to pig (porco) or cow (vaca) it is common to say that one is eating pig meat or cow meat (carne de porco/vaca). Instead, when refering to rabbit (coelho) or chicken (galinha/frango) one just says "I'm eating chicken/rabbit". When eating fish it usual to say that one is eating fish (peixe) or the specific kind of fish (mackerel, sardines, whatever...), it depends on the context. 213.13.148.4 (talk) 11:06, 5 March 2009 (UTC)


 * In Hungarian, I think there's no word that refers to the meat from a particular animal. There is a generic name for cattle: marha (or szarvasmarha), and gender-specific names for the same species: tehén means calf, ökör means ox, and bika means bull, and of these a particular living animal is more likely called a gender-specific name, whereas meat is almost always just cattle meat (marhahús) or calf meat (borjúhús), but that doesn't actually make any of these words specific to food.    Variations of this applies to some animals other than cattle.
 * There are a few words that refer to meat from a certain part of an animal, and some of these are specific to one kind of animal because that particular meal is made from only that animal: examples are bélszín, hátszín, felsál, which are all some parts of a cattle. Obviously there are lots of dishes that can only be made from one kind of animal but whose name does not refer to that animal, eg. any egg dish is likely made of chicken's egg, and while shops do sell goat milk or goat cheese or sheep cottage cheese, unqualified milk will usually imply it's made from cows, and particular kinds of cheese (there are a lot of these) unanimously refer to one animal.  This happens with meat too: gulyásleves (goulash soup) can only be made of cattle, though its drier counterpart pörkölt (goulash) can be any of beef, pork, or chicken.  Similarly, hurka is a kind of sausage made of pig meat, and there are other such examples as well.
 * Finally, for people like me who grow up in the city and barely even see live cattle, there are some names of dishes such that I know the meal it refers to, but have never actually seen the animal it comes from: in particular, for all I know hekk might not be a real fish but could be entirely synthetic with the fishbone there only for confusing us.
 * By the way, what other such words are there in English other than beef–cow, veal–calf, pork–pig? &#x2013; b_jonas 11:36, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Update: there are a few other cases similar to dairy products: grapes are szőlő and wine is bor, and obviously wine is supposed to be only made of grapes; also caviar which is the edible eggs of some kinds of fish is kaviár, and honey (méz) is not the same as the bees (méhek) that make it.  &#x2013; b_jonas 11:41, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

name for a concept
What do we call a word or expression which falls into disuse, and then comes back as the name for something utterly different? To wit, "wireless" used to be the standard British English word for a radio receiver, and then became old fashioned and faded away in that meaning. Now "wireless" has new life as the method of transferring data between router and laptop. One was a machine and one is a technology, not strictly something one can touch, but still. Is there a name for this phenomenon? You could think of it as a zombie word, something coming back to life from the undead, but that doesn't quite cover the situation, because that meaning has gone forever. It is not a gradual evolution to deal with technological advances, as with carriage --> car. What is it? BusinessAsUnusual (talk) 14:58, 4 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Not an answer to your question, but your suggestion of the term "zombie" reminded me that I sometimes refer to revived languages like Manx and Cornish as "zombie languages", not just because they've been brought back from the dead, but also because they have to "feed" on living languages to get new vocabulary. —Angr 15:31, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * And so far only one zombie has eaten enough brains to grow up big and strong. Say, if Manx is a zombie, does that make Esperanto Frankenstein's monster? L ANTZY T ALK 17:19, 4 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Another such word is "earthling"... AnonMoos (talk) 17:30, 4 March 2009 (UTC)


 * And "computer". L ANTZY T ALK 17:57, 4 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Not an example: it was in still use referring to people when it began to be used referring to machines. As to the question, I don't think there is a term for it. --Anonymous, 05:21 UTC, March 5, 2009.


 * Lazarus language -_- --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 21:57, 4 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Anachronism? -- Rixxin (talk) 17:31, 6 March 2009 (UTC)


 * How would it be an anachronism? Referring to my car as a "horseless carriage" might be a linguistic anachronism, I suppose; showing up at work in an actual horsed carriage would be an attempt at a visual anachronism; putting a car in a historical novel would be an anachronism.   Lazarus rose from the dead, but he was the same as he had ever been -- not the case with these words, that keep only their shell of sound and spelling, and hold a new content of meaning.  Zombies differ by culture, I guess: if they are seen as NOT the same person they once were (such that it is OK to kill them on sight), then perhaps that is the closest we have come. But it is not a solution that pleases me. BrainyBabe (talk) 08:45, 7 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, with respect, of course it is a lingustic anachronism! That is what the OP requested help on, and, oh look!  This the language desk!
 * From the first paragraph of anachronism (emphasis mine):
 * An anachronism (from the Greek "ana" "ανά", "against, anti-", and "chronos" "χρόνος", "time") is an error in chronology, especially a chronological misplacing of persons, events, objects, or customs in regard to each other. The item is often an object, but may be a verbal expression, a technology, a philosophical idea, a musical style, a material, a custom, or anything else so closely associated with a particular period in time that it seems odd when placed outside its origins.
 * So, to take the OP's example of "wireless" being used in the past, falling into disuse, and the re-use for a conceptually similar but altogether different technology, I think this word fits. -- Rixxin (talk) 09:36, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
 * No, sorry, I, the OP, still don't see it. My understanding of the word "anachronism" is of an error, a word that appears in the first sentence of the definition. I don't see the new use of "wireless" as an error.  I would be interested to know of its coinage, but I imagine that whatever engineers or marketers came up with the word were simply creating a description of the new technology, something that works without wires, hence wireless.  They were not referring to the radio receiver of yore, and were therefore not, in my estimation, making an error. My understanding of an anachronism would include both the "verbal expression" (e.g. a child in 2009 reads a book written in 1940 that uses the word "wireless", and mistakenly assumes that internet technologies existed back then) or of the technology itself (e.g. an adult in 2009 writes a novel set in 1840, and mistakenly includes a radio in the domestic set-up). The phenomenon of unconsciously recycling a word is something altogether different.  "Wireless" is just one example; it would be good to come up with more examples, as well as a satisfactory term for the phenomenon. BrainyBabe (talk) 21:08, 8 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure I agree with that. Referring to a 2009-built radio as a "wireless" would indeed be an anachronism.  But referring to an internet connection that does not depend on wires as "wireless internet" is a completely accurate decription, and the adjective "wireless" here has nothing to do with the noun "wireless" as applied to early-model radios.  Just because a word was coined to refer to a particular thing way back when, does not mean the word can't be applied to later, unrelated things, because words often acquire many meanings over the course of their lifetimes, and can occur in various parts of speech.  --  JackofOz (talk) 20:53, 8 March 2009 (UTC)


 * What are you disagreeing with, Jack? I like your grammatical dissection, but an addition to it is the common use of "wireless" now as a noun, as in "Do you have wireless at home?" (cf "Do you have running water/electricity at home?").  So what can we call this phenomenon, of a second, mostly unrelated, definition developing for a word? BrainyBabe (talk) 21:34, 8 March 2009 (UTC)


 * My post (at 20:53) was disagreeing with Rixxin. Yours came along later, at 21:08, but you placed it before mine, making it look like I'm disagreeing with you, but that's not the case. --  JackofOz (talk) 22:39, 8 March 2009 (UTC)


 * From such technological kafuffles do human misunderstandings spring. Thanks for clarifying, Jack!  (I could have sworn I began to write what I eventually posted at 21:08 before anything from you was visible, but no Edit Conflict templates came up when I pressed Save Page.) Thanks also for demonstrating that I'm not the only one who doesn't see an anachronism here.  BrainyBabe (talk) 22:49, 8 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Maybe Jack posted after you loaded the page and before you clicked 'edit'. You might well scroll down to "Rixxin" and begin writing, without looking again at what might be below that.  (If I were responding to the last item in a block, I'd jump to the bottom with one keystroke and then would notice the addition.  But I know that not everyone uses the keys as I do, or even has the same cursor movements available.)  &mdash;Tamfang (talk) 05:38, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Use of "only" in sentence structure
OK, so I'm writing a webpage for this automotive site that I'm the co-owner of, but I'm not sure what the correct sentence structure for only is.

Basically, I am trying to say that the Ford Focus is offered as a hatchback and sedan in one country, with only those two bodystyles offered.

These are my current sentences: The Ford Focus is sold here as a hatchback and sedan only. It is available with 1.6, 1.8 and 2.0 petrol engines only here.

The GLX trim level is offered with the 1.8 and 2.0 engines only; Style trim has the 1.8 engine only.

What's the correct way to phrase this?? Sorry if it sounds unclear and the post is rushed... I'm just trying to get this done (posting from Internet cafe's public terminal here!) --84.45.219.185 (talk) 15:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)


 * None of your sentences is incorrect, but a clearer way to write them is like this:


 * The Ford Focus is sold here only as a hatchback and sedan only.
 * It is available only with 1.6, 1.8 and 2.0 petrol engines only here.
 * The GLX trim level is offered only with the 1.8 and 2.0 engines only ; Style trim has only the 1.8 engine only.


 * Incidentally, one of the signature quirks of Indian English is the ability of the word 'only' to migrate to almost any position in the sentence. You'll hear things like "Only I'm kidding", "There's one only way to do it properly", etc. L ANTZY T ALK 16:32, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I would consider moving the "only": "The GLX trim level is only offered with the 1.8 and 2.0 engines; Style trim is only available with the 1.8 engine. cheers, 10draftsdeep (talk) 20:08, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Nah. The literal-minded will read "The GLX trim level is only offered with the 1.8 and 2.0 engines" to mean that offered is the only thing the GLX trim level is. For that reason it's better the way 10draftsdeep Lantzy had it. A sentence should yield its meaning upon careful analysis (Fowler), and never is that more true than when deciding where to put an "only". --Milkbreath (talk) 20:29, 4 March 2009 (UTC)


 * There are some cases where the position of "only" matters greatly. "Only I am a human being" means something rather different from "I am only a human being". The surefire method is to attach "only" to the thing it's referring to.  But it can be taken to extremes, because there are many sentences where the meaning is clear regardless:  "We will allow you to borrow books from the library only if you are a paid-up member" and "We will only allow you to borrow books from the library if you are a paid-up member" mean the same thing, to all but rigid pedants, so insisting on the 1st version is unnecessary.  But the case in question is one where it could go either way (although I suspect 10draftsdeep's version is the version most people would naturally favour, and would not misinterpret), so if there's any doubt, it's best to be safe and put "only" where it cannot be misinterpreted, even by a small minority.  --  JackofOz (talk) 21:29, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * But these examples are about logic rather than English grammar; of course the position matters, you are moving "only" from a clause to another! I mean, that's not a peculiarity of "only" only, nor of English grammar only. (PS: should I say ""only" only" or "only "only"" ?)--pma (talk) 19:58, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd say That's not a peculiarity only of "only". Some would say That's not only a peculiarity of "only", but that could be misinterpreted to mean that whatever "that's" is referring to is not the only interesting feature of the word "only".  For example, "That's not only a peculiarity of "only", but it's one of its defining characteristics".  I generally don't see a case for putting "only" after the thing it's referring to. --  JackofOz (talk) 22:54, 5 March 2009 (UTC)


 * To clarify, I think that JackofOz and Milkbreath endorse Lantzy's wording, as do I. Marco polo (talk) 23:32, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Right. Oops. I could add that in speech we all put "only" wherever it feels right, and its placement rarely causes problems, but speech and writing are two different things. --Milkbreath (talk) 01:39, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
 * From my experience I'd say people put words wherever they feel right in speech as well as in writing. --Kjoonlee 16:32, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Considering a simple sentence like "We have been sitting here for three hours," English Syntax by C. L. Baker notes the following: However, your mileage may vary. --Kjoonlee 16:41, 5 March 2009 (UTC)


 * If not too late… there are ways to reword it without using the word "only".
 * Example 1 (you could omit the phrases in parantheses):
 * (Here in __name of country__) The Ford Focus is available as a hatchback or as a sedan. (We regret that other bodystyles are not available.) You can choose from three sizes of petrol engine: 1.6, 1.8 or 2.0. Buyers of the 1.8 and 2.0 engines have the option of the GLX trim level. Style trim is available for the 1.8 engine.
 * Example 2 (create a table):


 * {| class="wikitable"

! Bodystyles !! Engines !! Trims
 * + Available bodystyles, engines and trims for the Ford Focus
 * Hatchback || 1.6 || (none)
 * || 1.8 || GLX, Style
 * || 2.0 || GLX
 * Sedan || 1.6 || (none)
 * || 1.8 || GLX, Style
 * || 2.0 || GLX
 * } Best, WikiJedits (talk) 19:47, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Sedan || 1.6 || (none)
 * || 1.8 || GLX, Style
 * || 2.0 || GLX
 * } Best, WikiJedits (talk) 19:47, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
 * || 2.0 || GLX
 * } Best, WikiJedits (talk) 19:47, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
 * } Best, WikiJedits (talk) 19:47, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

An archaic culinary name for gull meat?
A couple of decades ago, I saw the old English (poss. Scottish?) culinary name for gull meat stated in a newspaper article (IIRC, it was in a Q+A column where someone had written in to ask whether gulls were ever eaten by people). Unfortunately, I can no longer remember the word. I'm almost certain that it wasn't scorrie (as has been suggested to me). Does anyone know/have any likely suggestions as to what it might be? --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 23:05, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * In days of yore, restaurants would often serve seagull to patrons who thought they were ordering squab. The deception rarely succeeded, because the seagull's diet of garbage and rotting fish imparts an unmistakable flavor to the flesh. L ANTZY T ALK 01:11, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Is the word scrabe or scraber? The OED marks both as Scottish, and the citations indicate that the terms were applied to various edible sea fowls. L ANTZY T ALK 01:22, 5 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't think it was either of those. The word may have sounded slightly French, now that I sit and think about it. I'm sorry that I can't remember any more than this. It was a long time ago now... --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 02:21, 7 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I've had a thought. Alan Davidson's The Oxford Companion to Food lists gull. Apparantly they were "kept in poultry-yards and fattened for consumption".  Robert May explains this husbandry, of "herns, puets [...], gulls, and bitterns". No special name is stated for the meat.  There is a cross-reference to the entry for May, professional cook and author of The Accomplisht Cook (with a comprehensive 1000 + recipes), which says that he worked in France for years, so that may account for any French names.  His magnum opus was first published in 1660 (hey ho! for the fancy cooking of the Restoration, after a Lenten inter-regnum of metaphorical gruel), reprinted in 1685, and reissued in facsimile of the latter in 1994.  If you can get hold of one of these facsimiles, it should tell you much more about cooking gulls. (And possibly even four-and-twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie.) BrainyBabe (talk) 01:20, 10 March 2009 (UTC)