Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 November 19

= November 19 =

What does "going down on me" connote in Irish English?
The term pretty much only means performing fellatio on me in American English, unless you pick some odd context like a stock investment, which does not apply here. Does Irish have that meaning for the phrase as well? Does it have any other literal or figurative meaning? Might it be a double entendre? I came across the phrase in a text written by an Irish author, but don't want to mention the text for fear of prejudicing responses--and it's not Joyce, but contemporary. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 02:28, 19 November 2014 (UTC)


 * When I was involved in managing mainframe computers, the system crashing was often described as "the system went down on me". If it happened often, it would be "the computer kept going down on me". HiLo48 (talk) 07:01, 19 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Don't let the sun go down on me ... ;) — SMUconlaw (talk) 08:56, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * @HiLo48 I've heard that in my local New England dialect as well. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 14:28, 19 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Clarification, the definition of fellatio involves a penis. The phrase in AmEng can also refer to other forms of oral sex, e.g. cunnilingus. I have also heard HiLo's example usage in AmEng, all across the country. Oxford dictionaries have British uses here, including something about going to prison or finishing at university. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:37, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Those are really just uses of 'go down'. Someone finishing their studies at an Oxbridge college is said to have 'gone down', as in" He went down from Cambridge without a degree", while someone is 'sent down' from court to prison on conviction (from the time when court rooms were physically above the gaol) - "he was sent down for 10 years for murder". Neither of these can be used with 'on me'. I have to say, I've never heard it used here in Ireland to mean anything other than 'perform fellatio', so I think I'm going to have to ask to ruin the surprise and find out what the context is before judging whether there is some other sense intended. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 15:51, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * If you can say "he went down" you should be able to say "he went down on me" if that affected you. For example: "He went down for 10 years for murder on me and left me alone with the kids". Contact Basemetal   here  17:58, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Should, eh? Hmm.  I've never heard anyone say "He went to jail on me", or "He got caught on me".  But "He went to town on me" is possible, and usually involves not leaving the house at all.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  19:03, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Maybe this is an AmEng thing? Basemmetal's examples are roughly what I was thinking of too, and though I haven't heard it specifically, I wouldn't balk at "He went to jail on me" in informal speech. A more realistic example that would be perfectly intelligible (but perhaps rustic/rural/informal) - "The old car went and died on me" - i.e. "on me" can be tacked on to many phrases ending in intransitive verbs, and it means that it has affected the speaker personally. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:22, 19 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I've heard it as a horse racing term (both Irish and GB English) to mean that the horse(s) you backed have failed to win. - X201 (talk) 18:05, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

What I am looking for is idiomatic uses of "to go down on". I mentioned the stock went down on me. But the analysis there is (the stock went down)(on me), Not (the stock went down on)(me, not her). The context is the lyrics to the song "Until the End of the World" by U2:


 * "Until The End Of The World"


 * Haven't seen you in quite a while
 * I was down the hold just passing time
 * Last time we met was a low-lit room
 * We were as close together as a bride and groom
 * We ate the food, we drank the wine
 * Everybody having a good time
 * Except you
 * You were talking about the end of the world


 * I took the money
 * I spiked your drink
 * You miss too much these days if you stop to think
 * You lead me on with those innocent eyes
 * You know I love the element of surprise
 * In the garden I was playing the tart
 * I kissed your lips and broke your heart
 * You...you were acting like it was
 * The end of the world


 * (Love...love...)


 * In my dream I was drowning my sorrows
 * But my sorrows, they learned to swim
 * Surrounding me, going down on me
 * Spilling over the brim
 * Waves of regret and waves of joy
 * I reached out for the one I tried to destroy
 * You...you said you'd wait
 * 'til the end of the world

which appears to depict the Last Supper and portray Jesus and Judas as lovers. I suggested to the person who asked me this question that it was perhaps a double entendre given the greater context. Since falling or raining down on me would be more idiomatic, the choice of "going down on me" seems deliberate. I am satisfied with the answers above, and will pass them on. Thanks for the help. μηδείς (talk) 19:25, 19 November 2014 (UTC)

This seems to be an example of how common words sometimes have sexual meanings in very particular contexts. Other examples include 'do' ("I would totally do her"), 'have', 'go with', 'know'. Usually they only have a sexual meaning if both the subject and object is an individual person, and even then not always. You can see why such usages arise, to let you discuss sexual matters without using rude words, perhaps to seem more polite, perhaps to disguise what you are saying so only those who are paying attention or who catch your suggestive glance understand your real meaning. I don't know if there's a general name for this phenomena. It would seem to be common enough and I would not be surprised if other languages have something similar.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 18:47, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * The general term for using ambiguity to hide an indecent meaning in decent wording is double entendre. This is extremely common in movies from the beginning of talkies to the mid sixties and on US TV until the mid eighties, when Louise famously called George an ass (they had been building up to this with the use of jackass) on The Jeffersons. The kids would miss the innuendo while the adults laughed inwardly. μηδείς (talk) 20:05, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Not sure that's the most appropriate term; looking at it double entendre is something with two meanings, making it the basis for a joke or embarrassment, or both. But the point here is these are mostly entirely unambiguous, if the subject and object is a person. Perhaps a better word for them is euphemism. The examples under euphemism include "doing it" and other examples using common non-sexual words.-- JohnBlackburne wordsdeeds 21:00, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I did not understand you were excluding jokes double meanings and just referring to hidden meanings. μηδείς (talk) 21:34, 20 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Ronnie Barker had the last word on doubles entendres: "The marvellous thing about double entendres is that they only ever mean one thing". --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  07:51, 21 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Only one thing. All of them. Contact Basemetal   here  09:53, 21 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I thought I made it quite clear that Mr Barker had the last word on the matter. Or are you practising your ultimoverbulence?  :)  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  10:04, 21 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I was going to say that, but I knew you'd understand. Contact  Basemetal   here  10:18, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Languages in censuses
Hello, Dear wikipedians. I invite you to edit and improve this article and to add information about your and other country.--Kaiyr (talk) 08:00, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't the plural be 'censi'?  KägeTorä - ( 影 虎 )  ( Chin Wag )  12:04, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
 * No, the Latin plural of 'census' is 'census'. - Lindert (talk) 12:11, 22 November 2014 (UTC)


 * With long u though. Contact Basemetal   here  12:21, 22 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Define "shouldn't". AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:11, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Define 'Grump'.  KägeTorä - ( 影 虎 )  ( Chin Wag )  17:42, 22 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Most Latin nouns with nominative in –us are o-stem (also called second declension) with plural –ī (formerly –oi as in Greek), but there's a significant minority of u-stem nouns (fourth declension) with plural –ūs; examples include manus, spiritus, cantus, apparatus, flatus. —Tamfang (talk) 08:29, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

West African origin of a Polish fish paste
I'm trying to trace the origin of a popular Polish paste made of fish, rice, tomatoes and spices, called paprykarz szczeciński. According to our Wikipedia article, it was inspired by an African dish known as chop-chop, which included a mysterious ingredient called pima. The same story can be found in several other places in the Internet (all in Polish), but they all cite a single original source: the memories of a one-time employee of the fish processing company that first produced the Polish paste. Now, while I believe that the African inspiration is plausible, as Polish deep-sea fishermen did work off the West African coast in the 1960's, I am quite convinced that the guy got the names wrong. Chop-chop and pima both link to disambiguation pages, but none of the meanings listed there fit.

Pima almost certainly refers to piment, the French word for a chili pepper. The use of a French word in West Africa is no surprise. Chop-chop is more difficult to identify, though. My guess is that the African delicacy in question may be thiéboudiène – a Senegalese dish made of fish, rice and tomatoes among other ingredients; but the name is not even close to chop-chop. I've also found that tchop means "to eat" in Camfranglais, the pidgin language of Cameroon. But Cameroon is quite far from Senegal. So my question to anyone familiar with languages spoken in West Africa is whether something that sounds like "chop-chop" could possibly be the name of a dish or be otherwise related to eating in any of the languages spoken in the area where thiéboudiène or something similar is a popular dish. I know it's a pretty vague question, but any suggestions or guesses are welcome. — Kpalion(talk) 18:01, 19 November 2014 (UTC)


 * "Chop-chop" to me means a mull for a bong. (Not that I'd know anything about such things, you understand.)  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  18:59, 19 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I'd look at ketchup, which has a suspiciously similar name, and evolved from pickled fish and spices, later with tomato. This may be a wanderwort as is common with many related food recipes and spice names. μηδείς (talk) 20:30, 19 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Not really related, but "chop chop!", meaning "hurry up", is still heard in London. Alansplodge (talk) 11:41, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
 * In a parallel universe, we're all editing Chopedia. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 212.95.237.92 (talk) 14:00, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers so far. μηδείς's hint has led me to cachupa, but this Capeverdean dish is not as close, in terms of ingredients, to paprykarz szczeciński as thiéboudiène is. I will keep on searching, but any further clues will be appreciated. — Kpalion(talk) 11:26, 21 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Given you presumably speak Polish, look at pierogi and see how unspecific and contentious it is, User:Kpalion. μηδείς (talk) 00:18, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Term meaning
Can someone help me here, as you might now I am not a native English speaker and I ran across this expression "high energy bicycle accident", and I couldn't help but wonder what does the term "high energy" mean. Does this refer to a high speed or something? Thanks in avance.  Miss Bono  [hello, hello!]  20:08, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It means that the vehicles involved in the accident have high momentum. Momentum is is the product of mass and velocity.  So speed is a component, but so is mass.  It suggests that the bicyclist hit a heavy object at high speed or that a heavy object hit the bicyclist at high speed. Marco polo (talk) 20:22, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks.  Miss Bono  [hello, hello!]  20:29, 19 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Kinetic energy is more relevant, which is proportional to the square of the velocity: $$. μηδείς (talk) 20:33, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Which means that the phrase could also include a low-speed accident where the other vehicle was a large one. --65.94.50.4 (talk) 04:24, 21 November 2014 (UTC)


 * It's just a high speed bicycle accident. But it's the first time I've heard a bicycle accident described this way. Somebody thought they were being clever introducing physics jargon into bicycle accidents. It is from a press release from the hospital (see for example here). It is repeated textually everywhere and enclosed in quotes. Enclosing it in quotes suggests: "I wasn't the idiot who was trying to be clever, I'm just repeating what I was told". Contact Basemetal   here  20:39, 19 November 2014 (UTC) PS This is not an answer to Marco Polo or Medeis. I was answering the original question but as usual I got an edit conflict so it looks like I'm responding to Marco Polo and Medeis. Contact  Basemetal   here  20:42, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Put (ec) or use a bullet if you don't want to be seen as responding to the response immediately overhead. I used a bullet because I wasn't responding to Miss Bono's thanks. μηδείς (talk) 20:51, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * You're not saying anything that is consistent with WP:INDENT. If you wanted to make it clear you were not replying to Bono, a simple single indent would have been fine. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:32, 20 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Indent is an essay. I don't like to indent and answer a person directly above me, and have five people below me also indenting just one space from the person above me, often without leaving spaces between their response and the one above it, so there's a six paragraph wall of text that, unless you pay attention, appears at first glance all to be by one author.  Bulletting addresses this problem.


 * Well ok. But you've got to admit in 2014 this system is antiquated. When are we gonna have a decent piece of software to automatically handle these things? Contact Basemetal   here  20:57, 19 November 2014 (UTC)


 * That's an ongoing topic of conversation, someone can point you to the past botched rollouts and the dastardly 'flow' (note the similarity to flu, as in virus). My opinion is that learning these things serves as a gatekeeper function.  Make people buy their own magic markers, rather than handing them to every juvenile graffiti artists who passes by. μηδείς (talk) 21:09, 19 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I would guesss - purely speculating - that the 'high energy bicycle accident' was a head-on collision, as Bono was trying to avoid another cyclist. (Side note: Jet-lag + sunglasses + winter are not the ideal conditions for cycling through one of the world's busiest cities)  KägeTorä - ( 影 虎 )  ( Chin Wag )  13:04, 20 November 2014 (UTC)


 * One of the sources I read said swerved and fell over. Most likely they'd have reported a collision, or a second person involved. There'd also likely be a police report, given the severity and possible liability. μηδείς (talk) 19:58, 20 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Here's the CNN article. They put that "high energy" in quotes, as if to say, "We didn't invent this phrase." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:40, 21 November 2014 (UTC)


 * So you think CNN is better than BBC? Contact Basemetal   here  10:04, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Not exactly. I had assumed that CNN quoted BBC. It was the "scare-quotes" which seemed relevant. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:57, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
 * BBC has no adverts. CNN is about 75% adverts (most of which are for itself - bizarre, because if I am already watching something which is free, then why advertise it? I always hated the 'And after the break....' bit. OK, the part they were promising to show you 'after the break' was technically after the break, but it was also after several other breaks, if they even showed it at all.  KägeTorä - ( 影 虎 )  ( Chin Wag )  10:45, 21 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Agreed with all this. I was referring to the respective websites. I was just teasing Bugs because I had already linked to the BBC article. Don't know if Jesus would have approved though. Contact  Basemetal   here  11:11, 21 November 2014 (UTC)


 * It means that he was accelerated to nearly the speed of light in a bicyclotron --Wikimedes (talk) 12:25, 22 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Now that the better answers are out of the way, here's High Energy challenging Money, Inc. for the WWF World Tag Team Championship in 1994. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:11, 22 November 2014 (UTC)