Yeah, we're building a race of frog-people. It's a good time

Xander ,'Selfless'


Natter 68: Bork Bork Bork  

Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.


Ginger - Aug 24, 2011 12:59:45 pm PDT #22024 of 30001
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda

Why does it mean both?

As I understand it, it's for the same reason we have flammable and inflammable. Its original meaning was "every two months," but people kept using it as meaning twice a month, and the powers that be gave up.

Signed,

My twice-weekly college newspaper was semiweekly, not biweekly


-t - Aug 24, 2011 1:02:16 pm PDT #22025 of 30001
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration

Someone explained to me the difference between flammable and inflammable once, and it made perfect sense, but then I forgot it.

It's possible that was a dream.


SailAweigh - Aug 24, 2011 1:03:47 pm PDT #22026 of 30001
Nana korobi, ya oki. (Fall down seven times, stand up eight.) ~Yuzuru Hanyu/Japanese proverb

ita ! I've been doing the stairs at work, too. I started out only going down. Then I slowly started adding going up a floor at a time (I park on the third level and work on the seventh floor.) I've been going down every evening for a while and then I slowly started going up a floor at a time, week by week. I can make it 3-1/2 to the full four floors now every morning. I started doing that about a month and a half ago. Today, I only made it up two floors in the morning (the humidity was something fierce and the stairwells aren't air conditioned), but I went out for lunch with seven floors down and four floors up, so I feel I made up for my early morning wimpiness. I think it's a great way to build cardio endurance.


Ginger - Aug 24, 2011 1:06:04 pm PDT #22027 of 30001
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda

Someone explained to me the difference between flammable and inflammable once, a

They both mean "this shit will burn." The original word was inflammable, from the Latin for "to set fire to." People kept thinking the "in" meant "not," so people labeling dangerous things went with "flammable."


Strega - Aug 24, 2011 1:09:11 pm PDT #22028 of 30001

Semi means half. A semicircle is half of a circle. A semiannual publication comes out twice a year. Semimonthly means twice a month.

Bi- is always unclear and is best avoided because it just means "two", without indicating if you're halving or doubling.


Ginger - Aug 24, 2011 1:11:06 pm PDT #22029 of 30001
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda

This is why I don't buy the argument that we should accept definitions "everyone" uses, even when they're, wrong, wrong, wrong.


-t - Aug 24, 2011 1:13:56 pm PDT #22030 of 30001
I am a woman of various inclinations and only some of the time are they to burn everything down in frustration

Why is using "two" to mean "half" okay?

It might have been inflammable and combustible. That would make more sense.

To be fair to the rise of "flammable", I have seen "inhabitable" used to mean "not habitable" in official documents and that is just confusing.


§ ita § - Aug 24, 2011 1:15:38 pm PDT #22031 of 30001
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

I have to go up the whole ten floors at once, because we have split elevators, and the eleventh floor is the first floor on the top half. So you can only get to it from the ground floor and the floors above it by elevator. No gradual working up to that!


msbelle - Aug 24, 2011 1:18:01 pm PDT #22032 of 30001
I remember the crazy days. 500 posts an hour. Nubmer! Natgbsb

Allyson, have you contacted detnews.com? They have a whole Autos section for news on auto industry, they have an auto blog, and they have a direct contact for GM news.


Jesse - Aug 24, 2011 1:38:58 pm PDT #22033 of 30001
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.

Why is using "two" to mean "half" okay?

Cut it in two pieces.

Oh man, at the end of the work day I hit the worst introvert wall. I know it's partly because I'm tired, but I am currently scared about having more plans over the next few days. Here's hoping I go to bed early and feel better in the morning.