Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2009 September 11

= September 11 =

Shot
When this refers to ammunition (in a cannon, for instance), the plural is shot. I'm having a hard time figuring out, though, if a plural or singular verb is used with it. Is anyone able to help? ÷seresin 00:00, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Example, please? Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 00:35, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Wiktionary describes the word as being uncountable, which means it would generally take the singular. See mass noun. I'm not sure what Bugs wants an example of. Matt Deres (talk) 02:10, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * To me, saying "The shot perform badly" just sounds wrong... I think it's singular.  "The shot performs badly." Falconus p  t   c 02:42, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I wanted an example of usage, since I don't often hear that term as the subject of a verb. Now you've given one possibility. "The shot performs badly" sounds like it would be right, although it's kind of a weird thing to say. How would shot "perform badly"? Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots 02:50, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't know... I'm not a firearms expert. I would suppose that if I tried to use birdshot on a grizzly bear, it would perform badly in the given task (essentially I'd end up being injured far worse than the bear by the time it finished mauling me).  Falconus p  t   c 03:52, 11 September 2009 (UTC)


 * New YouTube site? "Shot behaving badly" matched with "Big Shots behaving badly? —— Shakescene (talk) 04:33, 11 September 2009 (UTC)


 * More seriously, it's a bit hard to pull usage examples from memory, because it's hard to know, to pick one example, whether "no shot was fired" refers to single shots from rifles or collective shot from a cannon. All you know is that "no shot were fired" is rarely or never said when repeating such a cliché.—— Shakescene (talk) 04:42, 11 September 2009 (UTC)


 * It should be "performs", not "perform". When you say "the shot performs badly [against bears]", you're referring to the kind of shot, not all the little individual pieces of shot. So the noun itself is singular. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 04:38, 11 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with Matt - the "shot" performs badly, even if it is the kind of shot. If you want to talk about the collective group of shots that belong to this type of shots, you could say "these shots perform". "The shot" is singular, even if it refers to a group (a singular group). --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 04:48, 11 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Shot can be both an uncountable noun (of course used always with a singular verb) or a countable noun, with an invariable plural form. If I read the thread carefully, all the examples produced are of the first class.
 * The second class corresponds to round shot. You may perfectly say: "shot were continuosly fired from the Bucentaure", though I guess most editors will prefer "rounds were continuosly fired". My first source at hand was the OALD, but now I read in here that the countable noun with plural unchanged can also be used in the sense of shotgun load. Pallida  Mors  11:48, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, when one or more shots are fired from a shotgun, the shot are projected from the barrel. Lead shot are more effective than those made from plastic.    D b f i r s   07:58, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Except that looks wrong - "When one or more shots are fired from a shotgun, the shot is projected from the barrel. Lead shot is more effective that that made from plastic." would be my (English English) choice of words. Bazza (talk) 14:33, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, you are correct, that does sound more natural. I was just trying to show that shot can be plural, but it is more usual to treat "shot" as a (singular) collection of individual pellets.    D b f i r s   15:54, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Eyethangyew
Is "Eyethangyew" some kind of meme? If not what does it mean?174.3.110.93 (talk) 06:03, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It is simply "I thank you", as a comedian or other performer would say it at the end of their set. In discussion forums and the like, it is often appended to lame jokes, puns etc. as an apology.--Rallette (talk) 07:09, 11 September 2009 (UTC)


 * It was a catchphrase of the late great Arthur Askey.--Shantavira|feed me 07:42, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

is there a term for the phenomenon where -
- you stare at a word too long or say it too often and it starts to become meaningless? (I guess it's a matter of looking at it less as a symbol than as an object).

thanks Adambrowne666 (talk) 10:34, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * There is no word mentioned, but Jamais_vu tries to explain the phenomenon. Here's a relevant discussion from the science desk two years ago and one from this desk a few months later. Aside from Jamais vu, it doesn't look like anyone found a specific term to describe this. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 10:51, 11 September 2009 (UTC)


 * "Defamiliarization" in a special sense? -- AnonMoos (talk) 14:28, 11 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I always wondered about this. If I said a word over and over (in my mind at least) it would start to sound . . .well, odd.  L&#9786;g&#9786;maniac chat? 16:07, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Same with me - it starts to sound like a meaningless sound rather than a word. --Tango (talk) 18:09, 11 September 2009 (UTC)


 * After a newsreader, a public speaker, a preacher or an actor says the same words over and over and over and over and over again, this can become a real problem: you have to remember what the words are trying to say in order to deliver them in any useful way to anyone else. And if your job requires you to repeat the same disclaimer or explanation in almost exactly the same words over and over and over again, your drone stops making much sense to the next recipient (let alone yourself). I sometimes startle someone delivering such a spiel by asking them to repeat or explain what they just said, not out of malice but because I want to make sure I understand it (especially when being asked to sign something). And when I'm giving the same explanation or disclaimer to someone else, I try to vary it enough to make sure I'm using real words at the recipient's own level of understanding, and not just shooting blank, abstract verse. Employers didn't always like this because quite naturally they like to be able to say in good conscience that every client is always told "[institutional or corporate boilerplate, carefully constructed by the legal department]"—— Shakescene (talk) 18:37, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

In Korea and Japan they call it "gestalt collapse." I don't know if it's related to gestalt therapy or gestalt psychology. --Kjoonlee 08:20, 12 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Probably not... I think it's just a literal description of what happens - your gestalt of a word or character collapses into its constituent parts. It's a good phrase; I like it. Indeterminate (talk) 19:38, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's called semantic satiation. The term was in vogue in 1997 and I haven't heard it since. Vranak (talk) 18:53, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

discastery
What is a discastery? as in "...the Holy Office was the preeminent discastery of the Roman Curia. ..." JACK 43 (talk) 19:28, 11 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I think this is a misspelling. I think our article titled Dicastery is what you want.  Marco polo (talk) 19:56, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Kai Shu Chinese Font
Is there anywhere on the internet that I can download a free (and by that I mean legally free :P) version of a Chinese kai shu font? i.e. - it has the kaishu style in it, and looks more handwritten and not as boxy as most regular Chinese computer fonts do. Preferably I'd like to find a simplified Chinese one, but ideally I'd like both simplified and traditional. I haven't been able to find one on the internet through my web searches. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yakeyglee (talk • contribs) 19:57, 11 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Have you tried to look around? This fantastic site gave me over 11 million hits. Sorry, joking aside, I looked through some of the links, and this one seems to have a few fonts which you may find fit your needs. Check out the rest, too. Good luck.... (might download a few of these, myself.....) --KageTora - (영호 (影虎)) (talk) 09:12, 12 September 2009 (UTC)