Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 March 6

= March 6 =

Abbreviation (2)
What does the edit summary mean ("lc")?174.3.110.108 (talk) 00:19, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Probably "link correction". r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 00:19, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
 * "Lc" usually stands for "lowercase"—the editor changed "Multiple" to "multiple" (as well as eliminating the redirect in the link). Deor (talk) 00:24, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, right. r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 00:27, 6 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Please see Edit summary legend.--Shantavira|feed me 08:50, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

What
What does mean?174.3.110.108 (talk) 00:25, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
 * A typing error for "hot". Deor (talk) 00:27, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Most words
Which language has the most words? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ixiecon9 (talk • contribs) 11:38, 6 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Ultimately, the question depends on what you mean by "word". For example, do hapax legomena count? How about compound words? You can read an interesting (but certainly not exhaustive) discussion about this here. Gabbe (talk) 13:18, 6 March 2010 (UTC)


 * English does. I don't have an immediate reference, but the OED general reference material has, someplace. The *reason* English does, as I recall some of the explanation, is that it is it a modern, eclectic language that is readily willing to adopt words from any culture it comes in contact with. (And since the British Empire covered a good part of the world, that meant close contact with very many cultures.) English has become an international standard that some professionals are required to learn -- to some degree. An example is international airplane pilots. That's a disincentive for other languages to create their own words. Piano non troppo (talk) 01:55, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Know all men by these presents
"Know all men by these presents" is a phrase commonly seen in legal documents. What does it mean exactly (i.e., literally)? Especially the "presents" part? And how is that word pronounced? Is it pronounced as in "I bought John two birthday presents" ... or as in ... "The Mayor presents the award to the most deserving citizen" ...? Thank you. (64.252.68.102 (talk) 13:20, 6 March 2010 (UTC))
 * See this thread from last July. It's pronounced like the birthday kind. Deor (talk) 13:26, 6 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Wonderful! Thank you!  Now, I have a side question, which I have often wondered about.  How exactly is it that you (or anyone else) would know off the top of their head that this very question (or some close variant) was asked nearly a year ago?  I have seen that response somewhat frequently on the Reference Desks (i.e., "that question was asked and answered here in the past, so here's the link").  And it has always puzzled me as to how editors could possibly know and/or remember such individual questions, given the many thousands of questions asked here over time.  Thanks.   (64.252.68.102 (talk) 14:39, 6 March 2010 (UTC))
 * I can speak only for myself. I remembered that thread because I participated in it; sometimes I remember other threads because they were, for one reason or another, particularly . . . well, memorable. Having remembered the thread, I went to the top of this page and entered "these presents" in the handy archive-search box (a good initial resource, by the way, for anyone with a question that may have been asked before), and the thread I was looking for came up fourth in the list of hits. Deor (talk) 14:51, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I remembered that too - only saw this question after it was answered, so I didn't need to go off and search it. If questions are basically exactly the same, they're bound to trigger a memory. For questions asked long ago, it's a feeling not dissimilar to deja vu - except it really did happen. For me, at least. Vimescarrot (talk) 19:14, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Some folks (me included) are blessed/cursed with a knack for remembering trivial details. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:46, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the above input ... it was helpful and much appreciated. Thanks! (64.252.6.148 (talk) 13:55, 22 March 2010 (UTC))

Dangling modifier: ambiguous?
A sentence I recently wrote begins: ``My fingers would trail across the numerals on the page, smudging them as [...]"  I take this sentence to mean that the numerals were smudged, but could it be interpreted to mean that the fingers were smudged?  Any thoughts? Should I ditch the dangling modifier, and make the sentence more sober?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.119.159.130 (talk) 15:24, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I think it is ambiguous. I would try "My fingers would trail across the numerals on the page, smudging the [adjective] figures as..." Insert an adjective, such as "small", "black", etc. Xenon54 / talk / 15:47, 6 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I think the sentence is not great ... and could probably use refinement. However, I thought that "smudged" meant to take something that is concrete, clear, visible, and discernible (like the printed numbers on the page) and to smear or obliterate them to render them not clear, visible, or discernible.  Thus, the page numbers can get smudged.  Fingers, however, cannot get "smudged" in this sense.  They can get dirtied or tarnished or soiled or stained, etc., but the fingers themselves do not get "smudged" (obliterated) per se.  The fingers do not change from clear, visible, and discernible objects into the opposite.  At least, I don't think so.  In other words, the fingers are (actively) doing the smudging, but the printed text is what (passively) gets smudged.  So, to that extent, the original sentence is not really ambiguous ... but could use better wording.  Thanks.   (64.252.68.102 (talk) 17:05, 6 March 2010 (UTC))


 * It's not really ambiguous, as "My fingers" remains structurally the agent (subject) of smudge. For me to get the other reading (the numbers smudged my fingers) it took some mind-bending; that reading would come from a sentence like "my fingers would trail across the numerals on the page, which smudged them...". r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 17:09, 6 March 2010 (UTC)


 * The sentence is fine and unambiguous, as Rjanag said. —Bkell (talk) 18:11, 6 March 2010 (UTC)


 * A lot of this is context, too; you'll want to use different constructions depending on whether this is art or artisan writing. for a simple fix, just move the object to the sub-clause to remove the ambiguity: My fingers would trail across the page, smudging the numerals as....  -- Ludwigs 2  19:14, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks everyone! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.119.159.130 (talk) 19:28, 6 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree with Rjanag and Bkell. It is not ambiguous.  Even if it were possible for fingers to be smudged, the sentence structure makes it impossible to reasonably read it as anything other than the fingers are smudging the numerals, so no change is required. --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   19:58, 6 March 2010 (UTC)


 * 'fingers smudged' is a common shorthand for having smudge on your fingers, which is easily accomplished by touching wet ink. -- Ludwigs 2  20:22, 6 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay, I guess I can see how the sentence can be read in the other way. It could be read like the sentence "The cars drove through the mud, dirtying them," which presumably means that the cars were being dirtied. But I don't think this is really a grammatical sentence, because the dangling modifier seems to say "The cars were dirtying them," which doesn't make sense. If anything, it should be "…dirtying themselves," but that sounds clumsy. So I still stand by my belief that the original sentence about fingers smudging numerals is unambiguous—it requires an ungrammatical reading of the sentence to pick up the second meaning. —Bkell (talk) 08:45, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
 * We shouldn't take into account all or any possible ungrammatical meanings of the sentence, because (a) there's potentially no end to them and (b) it's wrong in principle. Someone, somewhere, could read the sentence as meaning "There are no green sheep in Persia".  Unlikely, you say?  That, to me, is no more unlikely than someone reading it and getting the message that the "them" refers to the fingers as opposed to the numbers.  --   Jack of Oz    ... speak! ...   09:27, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Logo
What is the correct pronunciation of logo? Is it: LOGGO or LOW GO? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.76.171.183 (talk) 21:16, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I (in the UK) pronounce it "low go". -- Arwel Parry (talk) 21:39, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Likewise in the US. According to my Webster's, it's basically short for "logotype", a word coined in the early 1800s to give a name to "a single piece of type or a single plate face with a term (as the name of a newspaper, or a trademark)." "Logos" is Greek for "word". I would say the concept is similar to, but not necessarily the same, as "Boilerplate (text)". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:02, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Seconding the above; it's low-go —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bartender, bloodwine! (talk • contribs) 22:07, 6 March 2010 (UTC)