Subscribe to Blog via Email
Archive:
Day: February 17, 2017
recidivist
https://www.quora.com/api/mobile… The Magister: True. But should you forgive the recidivist seven times? Nay, verily, seventy times seven. Alfredo Perozo: Recidivist… what a woody-sounding Masiello Mega Word! Recidivism – Wikipedia Recidivism (/rᵻˈsɪdᵻvɪzəm/; from recidive and ism, from Latin recidīvus “recurring”, from re– “back” and cadō “I fall”) is the act of a person repeating an undesirable […]
Why is using profanity sometimes referred to as “swearing”?
Because there used to be a taboo against swearing oaths by divine figures in Protestant England, and the taboo against oaths got conflated with the taboo against profanity, as Saying Bad Things. In fact, that conflation also applies to oath: the definition of oath 5. an irreverent or blasphemous use of the name of God […]
Why is the word Colonel pronounced like kernel when there is no R in the word?
Originally Answered: Why is the word colonel pronounced kernel? Vote #2, Daniel Ross: Daniel Ross’ answer to Why is the word Colonel pronounced like kernel when there is no R in the word? Vote #1 me, because I go a bit further. 🙂 I checked with OED. So, the word started as colonnello in Italian. […]
Is English a fascist language?
Arguendo, let’s accept your premisses: Everybody expects non native speakers to know English and speak it fluently and hate them for not doing so. Also this language is invading all other ones. That wouldn’t make English fascist, and using a loaded term like that inaccurately means people won’t take your argument seriously. (And that’s not […]
Is Classical Sanskrit the world’s first constructed language?
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-Sanskrit-and-Prakrit/answer/Neeraj-Mathur-13 There’s a spectrum between conventionalised and artificial, and Sanskrit is somewhere along that spectrum. Specialists other than myself can answer better than I as to how artificial Sanskrit is. We have no idea how old the Aboriginal initiate language Damin is, and therefore whether it is older than Sanskrit or not. It is clearly […]
Has a proto-language ever been accurately constructed prior to discovery of a historical text in said proto-language?
Vote #1, Daniel Ross: Daniel Ross’ answer to Has a proto-language ever been accurately constructed prior to discovery of a historical text in said proto-language? Vote #2, Brian Collins: Brian Collins’ answer to Has a proto-language ever been accurately constructed prior to discovery of a historical text in said proto-language? I’ll add that Linear B […]
Do Greeks marry Greeks or do they mix?
Depends on where and when, of course. In Australia 40 years ago: almost never intermarried. In Australia now: often do intermarry; intermarriage exceeded 50% some time in the last ten years. In Greece a century ago: almost never intermarried. There weren’t a lot of non-Greeks around to marry (depending on your definition of non-Greek, of […]