Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 October 12

= October 12 =

"Bomb girls" or "Shell girls?"
I'm watching a series set in Canada during WW2 about women working in a munitions factory, Bomb Girls. They are clearly making artillery shells, and the shells are periodically fired off from artillery pieces to test them. They are never dropped from an airplane. Did Canadians actually refer to shells as "bombs" during World War 2, or is it just a quirk of the show's writers and producers? My own female ancestors told me about making shells during WW2 in the US and certainly never called them "bombs." I realize that back in the early 19th century when Francis Scott Key wrote of "bombs bursting in air" he referred to fused artillery shells, hollow iron spheres filled with gunpowder and fired from cannons or mortars. But after WW1, when there was the capability to drop explosives from planes or dirigibles in the form of aerial bombs, did the Canadians persist in conflating artillery shells and aerial bombs? Edison (talk) 03:15, 12 October 2013 (UTC)


 * No, but if they called them "shell girls", that just sounds silly. It's not just the show, that's what they were really called. Judging from the title of this book, they were also called "bomb girls" in Britain. Adam Bishop (talk) 08:43, 12 October 2013 (UTC)


 * And the reason "shell girls" sounds funny is that shell has many meanings, and the artillery shell meaning is way down the list. So, if you call somebody a "shell girl" they might think of Venus on the Half-Shell, a woman working for Shell Oil, etc. StuRat (talk) 10:52, 12 October 2013 (UTC)


 * "Bombshell girls" would have a different connotation again. Particularly if they were blonde, or Bolivian.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  18:44, 12 October 2013 (UTC)


 * And a slight correction Edison, but strictly speaking, shells were fired from a howitzer, while bombs were fired from a mortar although they were pretty much the same thing. Francis Scott Key was watching a bombardment by a force that included several Royal Navy bomb vessels, which were small warships with a big mortar mounted amidships. Alansplodge (talk) 19:11, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I take it all back - I've just seen that you mention mortars too - I somehow missed it first time around. Alansplodge (talk) 19:23, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
 * A great coined term for WW1 female munitions workers: "Munitionettes.". No indication in the recent article that the term or any other cute term was used during WW1. I didn't find period references to either "bomb girls or "shell girls" during WW2 or for decades after. The term used by the US government in WW2 was "woman worker". After the war, women workers I knew described themselves as "Rosie the Riveter." -- 19:58, 12 October 2013‎ User:Edison
 * One pseudo-cutesie term which seems to have been actually in use during WW1 was "farmerettes" for members of the Woman's Land Army of America (though the word sounds extremely stupid to me, and probably seemed stupid to many at the time...). AnonMoos (talk) 21:18, 12 October 2013 (UTC)


 * In World War I, female munitions workers were known as "canaries" because the chemicals in the TNT turned their skin yellow. Alansplodge (talk) 09:51, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

The Japanese word "youmu"
There's currently an anime airing called Beyond the Boundary, where one of the main characters is half-human and half-"youmu" (妖夢), which apparently is a kind of monster. The Japanese article for the series does not define what a "youmu" is, and a search for "Youmu" and "妖夢" without searching for the series' name only results in hits for a Touhou Project character. So is "Youmu" (妖夢) an actual word or concept in Japanese? Or is it just made up by the author of the light novel which the anime is based on? Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 05:32, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Youmu is a coined word/name for the fictional monster in the book/anime. Oda Mari (talk) 07:26, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the information. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 23:32, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

English grammar question (deverbal nouns)
I have been thinking about the form of a verb that describes the action in a sort of abstract way. I'll give some examples then ask a couple of questions

My questions are: -- Q Chris (talk) 08:43, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
 * What is the name for this form of a verb?
 * Do words that change to -ion, -ent or share the -eng form with the continuous action have different origins?
 * Why does English have so many forms and not juts "judgation", "swimation", etc.


 * Firstly, it's not a form of the verb - it's a derived noun.
 * Secondly, yes, these forms have different origins. The -tion ones are almost entirely Latin, while the -ment ones come through French (compare jugement, for example - notice that a lot of these, including all three of yours, are used in legal contexts) and the -ing ones have Germanic roots. All these are rules of thumb - there are bound to be exceptions.
 * And thirdly, English isn't built systematically, it just accumulates through usage. Points one and two combine here - often the derived nouns exist as nouns in the source languages, and English adopted them along with, or later than, the verb. AlexTiefling (talk) 09:11, 12 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Further to what Alex said: a common term for these kinds of words would be action noun; the more general framework for describing such relations is derivation. Historically, the reason for this particular kind of messiness in English grammar is the fact that English took over so many French elements during the Middle Ages, and then again Latin elements during the Renaissance, giving its word formation patterns a largely hybrid character, with Germanic and Romance patterns competing with each other. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:45, 12 October 2013 (UTC)


 * See verbal noun. --Nicknack009 (talk) 10:50, 12 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Better yet, see Deverbal noun. Duoduoduo (talk) 14:09, 12 October 2013 (UTC)


 * A general term is nominalization... -- AnonMoos (talk) 18:09, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks that was very interesting. -- Q Chris (talk) 09:54, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

Phrase search
Some time ago I saw a reference here to a specialized search engine which if I recall correctly, given a word or phrase, created a graph of the year-to-year frequency of use of that word or phrase. I have lost the link.

I hope I've described this clearly enough that someone can figure out what I mean and give the link. Thank you. Wanderer57 (talk) 14:20, 12 October 2013 (UTC)


 * See Google Ngram Viewer.—Wavelength (talk) 15:01, 12 October 2013 (UTC)


 * That is it. Thank you. Wanderer57 (talk) 18:59, 12 October 2013 (UTC)