Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 December 2

= December 2 =

Plural compounds: trunkful vs. fleur de lys
How come either trunksful or trunkfuls is acceptable but only fleurs de lys is acceptable (that is, it's not okay to say "fleur de lyses"?? Georgia guy (talk) 02:11, 2 December 2018 (UTC)


 * I would spell the first as "Trunks full" (two words). In general, the first member of an English noun compound isn't plural unless the plural has an irregular form ("women friends" is OK, while "girlsfriends" or "girls friends" isn't) or the meaning of the plural is significantly different from the meaning of the singular... AnonMoos (talk) 03:06, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Most people who say "trunkful" and most who say "fleur de lys" belong to two different groups. Those who are likely to say "fleur de lys" are generally better educated, more sophisticated, and more sensitive to the rules of English grammar. —Stephen (talk) 21:42, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I might believe that except that Fleur-de-lis is the main emblem of Scouting, which broadens its use group. Rmhermen (talk) 21:50, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
 * *Trunksful is not acceptable. I think you're conflating [a] trunk full [of] and [a] trunkful [of]; the former, pluralized as trunks full [of], refers to the trunk, while the latter, pluralized as trunkfuls [of], refers to what's in (or could be in) a trunk. Likewise the only accepted plural of handful is handfuls. --Lazar Taxon (talk) 21:42, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Bail out/dodge/evade
I recently asked here for help with a Latin passage about a duke who made a vow to join a crusade, but then found clever ways not to follow through on this commitment. What's the best verb, in English, to describe what he did? Did he bail out of a crusade? Dodge a crusade? Evade a crusade? Something else? — Kpalion(talk) 10:18, 2 December 2018 (UTC)


 * He reneged on his vow.  Dbfirs  12:26, 2 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Agree with reneged - Henry III of England and Emperor Frederick II are sometimes described as having reneged on their vows, or breaking their vows. Breaking the oath is the significant part, not avoiding the trip. But which duke was it? It's possible that if they found a clever way of avoiding the crusade themselves, they could have fulfilled their vow in another way (paying for someone else to go, for example). Adam Bishop (talk) 13:43, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Oxford Online Thesaurus also suggests "default on, fail to honour, go back on, break, back out of, pull out of, withdraw from, retreat from, welsh on, backtrack on". The verb "to welsh" is thought somewhat offensive these days, especially by Welsh people.... Alansplodge (talk) 20:49, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * It was Leszek the White. He didn't really break the vow, he just renegotiated it and fought the Baltic Prussians instead of the Arabs. So "renege" is not really what I'm looking for. I need a verb to fill in the blank in: "Leszek the White _____ the crusade." — Kpalion(talk) 10:10, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think "dodge" or "evade" are good options, as they are ambiguous (they could mean he was a potential target of the Crusade, but managed to avoid it). "Bail out" suggests he took part, but then quit part way through.  Unfortunately I can't think of a simple verb to describe renegotiating the target of the Crusade. Iapetus (talk) 10:35, 3 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Oh yeah, that’s a great example. I’ve seen “transferred his vow” or “transmuted his vow” used for cases like that. Adam Bishop (talk) 10:39, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
 * OK, how about "he shirked the crusade" or "he wriggled out of the crusade"? Does any of these sound right? Note: this is not for Wikipedia, the tone doesn't need to be serious. — Kpalion(talk) 14:10, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
 * He still went on crusade though, right? It was the Prussian Crusade. Adam Bishop (talk) 16:33, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, you could say so, but I don't want to labor this point. The question I'm asking is a linguistic one; it's not about historical details. I know the history, I'm just looking for the right word for what I want to say. — Kpalion(talk) 16:41, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
 * What's wrong with "He avoided going on the crusade" Simple, direct, to-the-point, and not colloquial or slangy like some of the other ideas.  -- Jayron 32 16:50, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Or rather he seems to have crusaded in a different direction. Alansplodge (talk) 17:04, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
 * How about "chickened out"? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:28, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
 * "Avoided going on the crusade" works, of course. I was just hoping for something shorter, without the "going on" part. — Kpalion(talk) 00:19, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * "Avoided crusading". I'm not sure how to get the character count down from that one, though.  Two words is about it.  -- Jayron 32 13:15, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, . It's not really about character count, though; I'm just looking for a verb that the noun "crusade" could be a direct object of. And, in fact, I do want it to sound colloquial or slangy (as I wrote, this is not for Wikipedia). So, with these criteria in mind, do you think "wriggle out of" is a good choice? — Kpalion(talk) 15:49, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Why not "evading crusading"? Has kind of a nice ring to it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:49, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
 * This is good, ! I like it. — Kpalion(talk) 10:37, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Adjective and objective
'Objective' can be both a noun and an adjective, but either way it's stressed ob-JECT-ive.

I suspect 'adjective' can be an adjective, stressed ad-JECT-ive, but its most usual use is as a noun, stressed AD-ject-ive.

So, why do we have AD-ject-ive but not OB-ject-ive? I want some objective answers to this question. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]
 * Because English. --ColinFine (talk) 21:23, 2 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Wiktionary gives only the first syllable stress on “adjective”, for both the adjectival and the noun usages. So “adjective” is like “objective” in that the stress is on the same syllable regardless of which usage applies. Loraof (talk) 22:28, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Don't know about anyone else, but where I'm from the two objjectives are not pronounced the same. --Khajidha (talk) 23:38, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Maybe that's an Indian English thing? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:42, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, Indian, Sri Lankan and South Asian accents generally tend to bring the main stress in words of 3 or more syllables closer to the start of the word: my SL partner always talks of "AHM-rica", "RI-dic-yulus", "CON-tain-ment", etc. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:23, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Native speakers of any language tend to make foreign words fit the normal sounds and accents of their respective languages. For example, the Spanish word for "football" (soccer) is fútbol, a word which means nothing in native Spanish but approximates the English word. Then there's "baseball", which Japanese transliterates as something like "beh-sue-baw-ru". And we could write a book on how English speakers mangle foreign words. As to "OB-jective" and "RI-diculous", those make some sense if you haven't been taught the exceptions as per your original question. We say "RI-dicule", so "RI-diculous" follows logically. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:46, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * That might be logical for some other language, but not so much for Latinate vocabulary in English, where stress-shifts are quite common -- pho-to-GRAPH vs. pho-TOG-ra-phy etc. AnonMoos (talk) 15:48, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Not PHO-to-graph??? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:53, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I should have written PHO-to-GRAPH, since there's a secondary stress on "graph". The same pattern as RID-i-CULE.  (I sometimes confuse primary and secondary stress...) -- 03:14, 5 December 2018 (UTC)


 * The usual adjective derived from adjective is adjectival, which does stress on the second syllable. Such words just seem to have totally random pronunciations: OBstinate, obSTRUCtion, absoLUTE, ABstract, ADvertisement (AmEng), adVERTisment (BrEng), auDItion, AUDit, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:56, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Third syllable for adjectival? (/ˌædʒə(k)ˈtaɪv(ə)l/)  Also third syllable for adverTISEment in some regions and usually adVERtisement in the UK.  I agree that it seems to be just convention rather than a rule.  The BBC changed the pronunciation of controversy a few years ago.  <i style="color: blue;">D</i><i style="color: #0cf;">b</i><i style="color: #4fc;">f</i><i style="color: #6f6;">i</i><i style="color: #4e4;">r</i><i style="color: #4a4">s</i>  09:48, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, the BBC changed the way they instructed their news presenters to pronounce "controversy". Other people will continue to pronounce it however their particular dialect does so.  -- Jayron <b style="color:#090">32</b> 12:10, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, I still continue with the "old" British pronunciation /kənˈtrɒvəsi/, but the OED has picked up the advice of the BBC pronunciation unit and, as of their Third Edition update in December 2015, now put /ˈkɒntrəvəːsi/ first. Have Americans always put the stress on the first syllable?   <i style="color: blue;">D</i><i style="color: #0cf;">b</i><i style="color: #4fc;">f</i><i style="color: #6f6;">i</i><i style="color: #4e4;">r</i><i style="color: #4a4">s</i>  19:22, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I've never heard it any other way but the first syllable, by Americans. But you never know. How do you say "kilometer"? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 00:49, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
 * ... KILOmetre (/ˈkɪləˌmiːtə/), with stress on the first syllable, like centimetre and millimetre, but the version with stress on the second syllable is becoming more common (for kilometre only) in the UK.  <i style="color: blue;">D</i><i style="color: #0cf;">b</i><i style="color: #4fc;">f</i><i style="color: #6f6;">i</i><i style="color: #4e4;">r</i><i style="color: #4a4">s</i>  07:32, 5 December 2018 (UTC)