Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2012 December 13

= December 13 =

Origin of fag = cigarette?
Important discussion over lunch at work today....

What's origin of the slang word "fag", meaning a cigarette?

We noted that it's old enough to be in the song Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag from 1915. HiLo48 (talk) 02:17, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I've always thought that it's short for "faggot" in the sense of "log for burning", because it's generally the same shape as a log, though smaller, and you burn it. I'll be interested to see if anyone can confirm or refute that. --Trovatore (talk) 02:34, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Me too, see faggot. Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:37, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Nope. According to etymonline "fag" as in cigarette comes from the 15th century meaning "loose piece" or "used up" or "tired out".  From "fag" (verb) to make tired (as in "I'm all fagged out"), to "fag end" as in a used up butt-end of a cigarette, to just "fag" for cigarette in general.   -- Jayron  32  02:40, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I wonder why they speculate "fag/loose piece" (n.) "may" relate to "flag/fag" (v.) instead of faggot (n.), when faggot (n.) is a bundle of pieces of wood and a fag is a noun? Alanscottwalker (talk) 02:57, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Etymonline is usually pretty good. I don't have an OED subscription, but I'm sure someone here does, and could check on their derivation.  -- Jayron  32  03:45, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * The way I read that EO entry, "faggot" implies a weak, submissive female or boy. I recall George Carlin once pointing out that in his day, "fag" didn't mean homosexual, it just meant someone who was "unmanly". Or, as he put it, "a fag was someone who wouldn't go downtown and help beat up queers." That "unmanly" sense is also conveyed in the song Money for Nothing, in which the appliance delivery guy repeatedly refers to a rock singer as a "faggot". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:37, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * "I'm just going outside for a fag. And after that, I'll probably feel like a couple of cigarettes".  :)  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  02:47, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * You might end up getting wet, so be sure to take your rubbers. We wouldn't want you to catch something and get sick.  StuRat (talk) 08:12, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I guess someone had to post that. Thanks for satisfying the need Jack. HiLo48 (talk) 07:04, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Oh, you can depend on me, HiLo. :)  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  08:04, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * My Shorter OED has the 15th century meaning given by Jayron32 (with no known origin), and the use to mean cigarette (as a shortening from fag-end) from 1888. Mikenorton (talk) 08:07, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

OED Online says that fag is a shortened version of fag-end, which originally meant "[t]he last part of a piece of cloth; the part that hangs loose, often of coarser texture than the rest" or "[o]f a rope: An untwisted end", and then by transference came to mean "[t]he last part or remnant of anything, after the best has been used" and "spec. The butt of a smoked cigarette, a cigarette-end". Fag-end is itself derived from the noun fag, "[s]omething that hangs loose, a flap", which is from the verb fag, "[t]o flag, droop, decline". The etymology of the verb is said to be obscure, but "the common view that it is a corruption of flag". — SMUconlaw (talk) 08:10, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * For a lengthy discourse on the etymology of the words "fag" and "faggot", see An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction, By Anatoly Liberman (p.68), although it doesn't mention the cigarette meaning. BTW Trovatore, a faggot in the traditional sense is a bound bundle of sticks rather than a log. Alansplodge (talk) 09:36, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Wow, that's detailed. Looks like an interesting book. — SMUconlaw (talk) 14:12, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I especially liked, "product of etymological despair." Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:37, 15 December 2012 (UTC)

GRAMMAR
What are the differences between the following two sentences? Thank you. 1. She has an umbrella. 2. She got an umbrella.123.231.40.219 (talk) 03:02, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * In the first one, the verb is "has". In the second one, the verb is "got".  I'm sure that doesn't answer the question you had in mind, but it does answer the question you actually asked. Looie496 (talk) 03:39, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The first implies possession, the second implies past action. "She has an umbrella" means one is in her hands right now.  "She got an umbrella" means she went somewhere and picked one up.  -- Jayron  32  03:44, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree with the above and will add two more things:
 * "She has got / She's got an umbrella" = colloquial way of saying "She has an umbrella."
 * "She got an umbrella" = dialectal equivalent, e.g. in AAVE. Compare "I Got Rhythm", "I Got 99 Problems". Lesgles (talk) 04:45, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I know you've had rain problems, I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems but an umbrella ain't one... -- Jayron  32  04:49, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I knew someone in high school – who was a white American – for whom got had become a regular present-tense verb with the 3rd person singular form gots. Angr (talk) 06:31, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * qv the ZZ Top song "I Gots to Get Paid". Maybe a bit more common than you think! --TammyMoet (talk) 10:35, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Just to make it explicit for the OP, in addition to the semantic difference that "has" implies possession and "got" means "obtained", in standard usage "got" is the past tense of "get" whereas "has" is present tense. Duoduoduo (talk) 17:03, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * This is a modern day example of a more common phenomenon in older Germanic languages where past forms with a present effect are used in the present tense. For example the sense of the verb to know evolved: "I know" < "I recognized/found out".  Or in the case of got, "I have" < "I received".  See preterite presents μηδείς (talk) 19:35, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

WP pages receiving redirects from their opposites
This is another fringe case. Is it a WP-related question or RD-style?

I found the page "Decency", subtitle: "(Redirected from Indecency)" - Is that a good redirect?

I could imagine certain "this vs that" cases where "that" is more encyclopedic than "this", and most of the content on "that" would concentrate on the things which are "that" vs. the things which are not. In that case, I wouldn't even argue, but the article on decency is more a disamb than anything else, and currently it is neither listed as a disamb nor a stub. One of the "hard" (undoubtedly encyclopedic) topics is Indecent exposure, and another is Sodomy law. Would it be good to group them away from the others, so that the target of the redirect could be changed to Decency#Indecency?

Another unrelated question. I heard the word "scythe" pronounced as ski-thee (think "skill" minus the L, followed by "thee"). Is that an uncommon way to pronounce "scythe" or is it the output of a confused text-to-speech program? (It was a quite "robotic" voice.) - ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 09:54, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * As to the first question, the Ref Desks are not really the ideal place for discussion of the project in general (consider Village Pump, Requests for comment, Centralized discussion, Help Desk, and of course the talk pages for the relevant articles to get deeper responses -- and probably more responders). That being said, I'd say the current arrangement seems to be a fairly intuitive one; if anything I believe the need here is in expanding Decency to an article, as it's clearly a concept that deserves thorough treatment at this location, even if it is somewhat redundant to the content of other articles on morality and social norms.  Then the linking of the other pages currently found on the disambig page could be determined, but I'm honestly pretty surprised to find a disambiguation page at that particle namespace, given the depth of the subject.  Concerning your second question: I've personally never heard "scythe" pronounced in that manner in English.  It's possible it has cognates that are pronounced in this manner in other languages or dialects of English, but I rather tend to doubt it.  If you heard it spoken by an artificial-sounding voice, then I dare say you have your answer. Snow (talk) 10:12, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Regarding "scythe" I am pretty sure the pronunciation you heard has nothing to do with old English pronunciations. My reason for saying this is that one of my ancestors in the 16th century was described as a "sithmaker" in his will: it seems he made scythes. I think you probably heard a confused robot. --TammyMoet (talk) 10:34, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * "Sithmaker"? There's a term you need to watch the typos with... Matt Deres (talk) 15:23, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I was thinking more of a Star Wars connection... --TammyMoet (talk) 18:52, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks all. I see that the principle of centralized discussion applies to disambiguation as well. One could call it "centralized disambiguation." There has been a notice that decency is discussed for merging with morality, so that would be the place where the question should be asked instead. Right?
 * Re "scythe" - That's the only instance I've heard it pronounced like that ever, so I was suspecting it. More so since it's not supported by the article. OTOH, I have not seen the spelling "sythe" in the wild; it seems to be extinct. So I wondered if "ski-thee" was near-extinct too.
 * Re "sithmaker", someone who trained Sith: quite powerful indeed. He must have disturbed the balance of the Force quite a bit. What are humans to think in the 25th century, if all that's known about me is that I'm a "starcrafter"? - ¡Ouch! (hurt me / more pain) 13:04, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh, I found another opposite redirect: pwned --> pwn.
 * Now I have to stop. Too much reminds me of different topics, the 50 words for snow (isn't Inuit language called Inuendo?), star-making, the "@ Twitter" topic, all somewhere in my 50 most recent edits. Looks like I should get a life ;)

Reading Arabic numerals in Arabic
I saw something written in Arabic with "52" in the middle of it, and I know it referred to "fifty two" because the French translation also contained "52". Arabic is written right-to-left. To me, "52" is written left-to-right, but maybe that's because (1) my native language writes everything left-to-right so I naturally interpret it that way, (2) in English it's pronounced "fifty two", with the first part of the pronunciation ("fifty") corresponding to the left most digit, and (3) if asked to pronounce "52" digit by digit I would pronounce the "5" first.

How would a native Arabic speaker see this? (a) Would he say it's written left-to-right or right-to-left? (b) In Arabic is the part of the number "52" corresponding to the "5" pronounced before the part corresponding to the "2"? (c) If asked to pronounce it digit-by-digit, would the Arabic speaker pronounce the "5" or the "2" first? Duoduoduo (talk) 17:16, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Pronunciation in English does not always correspond to the way numbers are written; 18 is pronounced eight-teen, reversing the 8 and the 1. In the past words like five-and-twenty were commonly used to say 25, and in many other left-to-right languages they still are. - Lindert (talk) 18:27, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * (a) In Arabic, numbers are written left-to-right, whether one writes them down with the "ordinary" Arabic numerals or with the Eastern Arabic numerals. "Five hundred and sixty-seven" is 567 or ٥‎٦‎٧ in Arabic text (٥ is 5; ٦ is 6; ٧ is 7).
 * (b) In Arabic, numbers are read out starting with the largest part, e.g. millions, then thousands, then hundreds, just like in English. By exception, however, the part representing the "ones" precedes the part representing the "tens", something which is also found in other languages, such as German and Slovene. In these languages (and in Arabic), the number 52 is pronounced "two-and-fifty", and the number 567 is pronounced "five hundred seven-and-sixty".
 * (c) Logically, the "5" is first, e.g. when reading out a telephone number. --Theurgist (talk) 17:54, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the very clear answer! Duoduoduo (talk) 20:06, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * A little of the history behind this: If you look at Classical (pre-modern) Arabic texts, when numbers are written out, they are written as, for example (567) "seven and sixty and five-hundred" or (1567) "seven and sixty and five-hundred and one thousand." This changes in the modern period, presumably because of influence from the West.
 * Because of this, I prefer to say that Arabs do read numbers from right to left, with the exception of numbers in the hundreds' place and higher, rather than the other way around.
 * Wrad (talk) 22:01, 13 December 2012 (UTC)