Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 August 2

= August 2 =

What is/are the Spanish term(s) for "UFO"?
I'm participating in a couple of AfDs related to events which happened in non-English cultures. The first topic is clearly not notable if we only looked at English sources, but given that the event happened in the Canary Islands where Spanish is the predominant language, that's hardly surprising. There may be additional sources in Spanish that nobody has found yet. The second topic IMHO is notable in English sources, but it would help me if I could find additional Spanish sources. The problem is that I don't speak Spanish. So, trying to find additional reliable sources in Spanish is a bit of a challenge. To begin with, I'm not sure what to even search for. What is the Spanish term for "UFO"? And whatever that term is, does it depend on which Spanish culture we're talking about? IOW, is the term for "UFO" in the Canary Islands the same as in Mexico? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:19, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Articles for deletion/1976 Canary Island UFO sighting
 * Articles for deletion/Coyame UFO incident (2nd nomination)


 * https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objeto_volador_no_identificado OVNI] Belle (talk) 00:36, 2 August 2014 (UTC)


 * One question is what usage of "UFO" you mean. While the original meaning was simply a flying object which had not been identified, in popular culture it has come to mean a flying saucer, piloted by aliens.  Spanish may not have a single word with the same double meaning. StuRat (talk) 03:04, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The Spanish article seems to indicate OVNI is a back-formation from UFO, and indeed refers to "flying saucer" (platillo volante). ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:21, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * OVNI is also the French term (fr:objet volant non identifié). Like UFO it could just mean any unknown object, but like in English it basically always means a flying saucer. But French also uses the English "UFO" (as in "ufologie"), so I wonder in Spanish does too? Adam Bishop (talk) 03:27, 2 August 2014 (UTC)


 * OVNI(s), platillo(s) volador(es), extraterrestre(s), alienigena(s). Take your pick.-- MarshalN20 T al k 04:15, 2 August 2014 (UTC)


 * There used to be a group of luchadores named Los Cadetes del Espacio. They flew, and nobody's really sure who "Discovery" (the yellow one) was. He later became a blue Power Ranger knockoff, which at least some Mexicans called "Power Raider Azul" before the lawyers grounded them (Boomerang and Frisbee became Blanco and Rojo).


 * There was also a Volador, who they now call Super Parka. Still looks like some sort of alien, as does his offspring. InedibleHulk (talk) 05:00, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Different uses of the word pretty
The word pretty can mean "beautiful" or "attractive". (Examples: She is a pretty girl. That is a pretty dress.  Etc.)  The word pretty can also mean "quite" or "significantly". (Examples: The room is pretty cold. The exam was pretty difficult.  Etc.)  Those two definitions seem rather different and distinct, with no common ground. Is there any logical nexus by which one word definition morphed into the other? Or are they just two completely unrelated concepts? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 03:32, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * If I tried to explain it, it would turn about as long as the EO entry, so you may as well read it. The common thread seems to be the notion of "skillful" or "artful". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:02, 2 August 2014 (UTC)


 * According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, the adverb meaning "to a considerable extent, considerably; fairly, moderately, tolerably" is originally derived (mid 16th century) from the adjective, which has had the following meanings over time:
 * cunning, crafty
 * excellent or admirable in appearance, manners, or other qualities
 * attractive and pleasing in appearance
 * Of a quantity or amount: considerable, great, eg costing "a pretty penny"
 * Mitch Ames (talk) 04:06, 2 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Jolie is the French word for pretty. Is it possible that it was stolen by the English to become "jolly", in the sense of, e.g. "jolly good", which is pretty, or jolly, close to "pretty good"?  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  09:18, 2 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't know. English seems to pick its intensifiers at random. "Awfully good" is one that really makes no sense but caught on. --Nicknack009 (talk) 10:18, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Actually, "awfully good" as in "so good it inspires awe" makes sense - it's the meaning of "awful" as "horribly bad" that is off-kilter. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:26, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * We tend to say "awesome" nowadays, so the old "awfully good" translated to modern slang could be "awesomely good". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:57, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * That's a terribly good answer. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:05, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I remember, as a child, finding the expression Oz, the Great and Terrible very strange. Is he great, or is he terrible?  Make up your mind. --Trovatore (talk) 22:27, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I have abolished all forms of choice and its attendant riskiness from my world. For example, if one comes to a fork in a road, one takes both routes simultaneously.  What could be simpler than that? --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:41, 2 August 2014 (UTC)


 * According to SOED, jolly is originally from the Old French jolif (later joli), meaning "merry, pleasant, pretty". Mitch Ames (talk) 12:56, 2 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Joseph A. Spadaro -- some speakers of United States English some of the time would make a distinction in pronunciation between [prɪtiː] adjective and [prɨtiː] intensifier adverb (just as there can be a distinction between [dʒʌst] adjective and [dʒɨst] adverbial particle, or between [ðæt] demonstrative and [ðət]/[ðɨt] conjunction). AnonMoos (talk) 17:18, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

English does, as Nicknack says, get pretty random at times, but I can't help noticing a similarity with the words "nice" and "fine", which can also mean both "attractive" and "exact". I wonder if there is some allusion here to the fact that something precise or (in the case of pretty) substantial is desirable and therefore, by analogy, attractive? Grutness...wha?  13:25, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Ah, random, now there's another word that seems to have acquired some different meanings recently. HiLo48 (talk) 02:50, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I seem to recall that nice was originally not at all a compliment when applied to a person; I think it had something of the value of fastidious nowadays. This usage survives in the fixed phrase "a nice distinction". --Trovatore (talk) 22:29, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * SOED lists 14 different meanings for nice including "foolish" (up to mid 16th century, now obsolete), "fastidious, hard to please" (from late Middle English). Mitch Ames (talk) 02:30, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I would submit that in some contexts today "pretty" means "attractive and pleasing in appearance, but not very bright", as in "not just a pretty face". HiLo48 (talk) 02:50, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Odd. I'd have thought it means the opposite - surprisingly bright.  I accept it's often used ironically, but the default usage would be as a compliment, not a put-down. No?  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  19:02, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I think that the phrase "not just a pretty face" is indeed a compliment. I means not only do you have a pretty face (good looks), but you also have intelligence, brains, etc., behind those good looks.  Referring to HiLo48's comment above:  the expression "just a pretty face" (without the "not" qualifier) is the put-down.    Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 22:09, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Ah, I misread it. HiLo's saying the word "pretty" by itself means "attractive and pleasing in appearance, but not very bright".  But I still disagree.  I don't know where he got the last 4 words from.  If I say a girl is pretty, that is purely a statement about her appearance, and it says nothing at all about her intelligence.  Why can't one be both pretty and bright?  The expression "not just a pretty face" is acknowledging her prettiness first of all, then adding a further compliment.  It doesn't mean that people who are called "pretty" are by default not smart.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:41, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Back to the original question I would challenge the assertion that the meanings are that far apart. There are other words which have a similar dual meaning. 'Good' is also used to mean mean an attractive person ("good looking") and a bigger than average quantity ("good sized"). These don't seem to be two distinct meanings/words but different ways of using the word good to mean something positive/bigger/better. So I can see pretty working the same way, meaning "good looking" in some contexts on its own, "good sized" in other contexts with constructs like "pretty large". 'fine' is another word that can means good looking/good on its own but also is a quantifier ("a fine distinction"). Again these meanings don't seem that far apart.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 22:50, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, your "good looking" yields "good sized" analysis does seem to make sense as a link between the two meanings of pretty. Thanks.   Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 01:52, 4 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Another example is 'great'. "that's great!" == "that's good", but "great" or greater" means big or bigger in many contexts.


 * But a more interesting example, from a language unrelated to English, is, hăo from standard Chinese. It does far more than the English word 'good'; it means 'well' in the common greeting , nĭhăo, delicious in , hăo chī, etc. But it also is commonly used for 'very', such as in , hǎo lěng for very cold etc. I don't believe this is coincidental, but natural that words that mean 'good' are interchangeable with those meaning 'more/large/very', especially in less formal contexts.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 02:20, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 19:16, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

What is the author alluding to by "the footballer"
The following is taken from the novel "Lionel Asbo: State of England" by Martin Amis: Des reached for 'the Sun', which at least looked like a 'Lark', with its crimson logo and the footballer's fiancee on the cover staggering out of a nightclub with blood running down her neck. I wonder whom the author is alluding to by mentioning the footballer. I need your opinion. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.249.223.192 (talk) 03:54, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Unless the book makes it explicit elsewhere, I suspect this might be a reference to some generic WAG. The Sun is notorious for Paparazzi photos of such people on its front page.  Rojomoke (talk) 04:49, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Verb tense question
Sometimes, in older texts an/or in poetic settings, you can find an odd variation of the perfect tense. Whereas normally you'd say, e.g., "He has arrived", you see "He is arrived". Is there a specific name for this (is it, for instance, regarded as a different tense, or a specific figure of speech), or is it simply regarded as an archaic form of the perfect tense? Thanks in advance, Grutness...wha?  13:20, 2 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Isn't that the Historical present? - Nunh-huh 16:00, 2 August 2014 (UTC)


 * No, not the historical present. See "Early Modern English" and "Unaccusative verb". Gabbe (talk) 16:58, 2 August 2014 (UTC)


 * It's normally just called a "be perfect". It's a remnant of a common pattern found in many Germanic languages, typically seen with intransitive verbs of movement or change of state. Still current according to pretty much the same principles in German and some other Germanic languages. There are also similar phenomena in Romance languages, e.g. French, IIRC. The historical reason for the split is that perfects with both be and have grow out of resultative constructions, where a perfect participle encodes the resulting change as a property of the affected participant. With prototypical transitive verbs, a change of state usually affects the object of the action, so you "have" that object in the changed state ("I have the enemy bound" -> "I have bound the enemy"). With change-of-state and movement verbs, the affected entity is the subject itself, so the subject "is" in the state denoted by the participle, and these cases then develop into be perfects. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:09, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Similar to the handful of French verbs which use "être" rather than "avoir" in French to form the perfect, then? Grutness...wha?  01:26, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's pretty much the same phenomenon. Interestingly they were independently developed in parallel in both languages, not borrowed from each other. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:39, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * There was a medieval Western European sprachbund of languages from several groupings (at least Romance and Germanic) which all had a contrast between a simple past and a perfect, where the perfect was expressed by HAVE + past participle for transitive verbs and BE + past participle for intransitive verbs. In many modern forms of those languages (e.g. French and many forms of spoken German) the simple past vs. perfect contrast is defunct, or not what it used to be.  In modern English, the simple past vs. perfect contrast is alive and well, but the BE + past participle construction has been eliminated, except in a few archaic phrases ("Christ is risen" etc.)... AnonMoos (talk) 10:22, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Not much different from saying the guy who "has" gone "is" gone. Some things are adjectives and verbs. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:30, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Are you suggesting that "gone" in He has gone is a verb, but in He is gone is an adjective? --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  19:00, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Yep. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:05, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The two things are not necessarily always distinct. The composite perfect forms seem to derive from the adjectival usages.
 * A couple of English examples I like:
 * Tell me thy mind; for I have Pisa left

And am to Padua come, as he that leaves A shallow plash to plunge him in the deep And with satiety seeks to quench his thirst.
 * Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds
 * And the still hour Is come of the sea tumbling in harness
 * --Trovatore (talk) 18:40, 4 August 2014 (UTC)


 * See Participle for the use of participles as adjectives. HenryFlower 20:27, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * To simplify this as much as possible, the early modern English perfect was expressed by to have exed with transitive verbs (I have the book, read) and expressed by to be exed (I am gone) with intransitive verbs. French and German maintain this pattern.  English and Spanish have switched to the sole use of to have for the perfect due to the influence of analogy in language change. μηδείς (talk) 00:42, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Need a name for a Spanish warship.
Hi, WP:RD linguists!

I need to name an 'age of sail' warship for a fictional "mirror world" set in the late 1700's. I need the ship to be the "opposite" of the classic "HMS Surprise" (a real ship - also widely known from the "Master and Commander" books and movie). So I'm thinking of using a spanish word meaning something like "Expectation"...so what Spanish antonyms of "Surprise" could I choose from? Bonus points if it's a word that would have been used in that era rather than some more modern word.

Thanks in advance!

SteveBaker (talk) 16:44, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Esperanza — (hope, expectation, prospect, think, promise, anticipation). You're welcome in advance!   —71.20.250.51 (talk) 18:02, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * P.s.: there was a Spanish warship by that name involved in the Battle of Martín García (1814). See: ; also: List of ships of the line of Spain § Spanish battleships of the period 1640-1858 — 71.20.250.51 (talk) 19:24, 2 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I take the idea of "Surprise" to be a danger that's present when you're not aware of it; so in this context the opposite would be a danger that you feel afraid of even when it's not immediately present. I like Amenaza (menace), also Advertencia (warning) or Ominoso (ominous). --Amble (talk) 00:05, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Or to take it in a different direction, Monotonía. --Amble (talk) 01:25, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Previsión ... Calma ... ---Sluzzelin talk  00:31, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Many thanks - you guys rock! I'll let you know which one we pick. SteveBaker (talk) 00:53, 3 August 2014 (UTC)


 * To continue Sluzzelin's line of thought: How about wikt:providencia (Providence)? No such user (talk) 11:32, 4 August 2014 (UTC)


 * We went with Esperanza...the fact that numerous Spanish warships actually took that name around that time-frame settled it for us.  Many thanks!  WP:RD/L is an awesome resource, keep up the good work. SteveBaker (talk) 13:01, 4 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Well, thank you, Steve! I need the bonus points  (I'm saving up for a Carrera GT).   — 71.20.250.51 (talk) 16:03, 4 August 2014 (UTC)


 * What's Spanish for Anticlimax? —Tamfang (talk) 00:11, 6 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Molino de Viento ? ---Sluzzelin talk  16:55, 6 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Perhaps something the opposite of "Fearless" ? How about "Trembling", in Spanish, of course. StuRat (talk) 17:38, 6 August 2014 (UTC)