How I Met My Wife (1994)
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
prepone - to reschedule to an earlier time
The page on defective verbs is also interesting.
It’s a true test of “Can you deal with the double negative?”
https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2020/07/difference-between-yea...
It's saying "I hear what you are saying, but I don't agree" with typical Aussie friendly honesty, with the implication that the proposition was unreasonable (often laughable).
Example, "Willing to swap late model Honda Civic for Ferrari or Lamborghini, must be road worthy and registered, cash my way if needed." Yeah, nah.
But a lack of intonation or performance delivery (that head nod or shake) leads to a lot of confusion.
Furthermore, in text form it can be downright ambiguous.
But I do smile when I hear:"Yeah nah, thanks tho' aay."
"Ja" is yes. "Nej" is no. "Nja" is neither. It's used to express uncertainty or that it's not as simple as yes or no.
For example if someone asks me if I want to go somewhere with them at a specific time, and I would like to go with them but I already plan to do something else at that time, then I would say “nja” and while I say that think out an alternative suggestion for when we might go.
Another example is if I talk with someone and they say something that I agree with but then say something I disagree with. Then I would say “nja”. In this case it would be similar to English where you might say “yes and no”. And then state what I agree with and what I don’t agree with and why.
> I was, after all, something to sneeze at, someone you could easily hold a candle to, someone who usually aroused bridled passion.
Rest are regular words, but "negated unpaired idioms", which seem to be easier to read.
Anecdote:
An MIT linguistics professor was lecturing his class the other day. "In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. But there isn't a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative."
A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right."
This may be one of those quips that is simply untraceable.
I have to ask: what is so special about it?
Most of the phrases are used in a way where it makes sense what’s being said, but most native speakers only use the phrases slightly modified to mean the opposite of how they’re being used in the writing.
Kempt vs unkempt for example.
I just meant that the frequency of occurrence is usually used in ways that mean the opposite of.
Kempt I would say has a rare occurrence in most speech.
Unkempt is much more common.
Disgruntled, for example is a common word; gruntled is not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-formation
Examples from the article:
- Disgruntled -> gruntled.
- Nonchalant -> chalant.
- Make no bones about it -> make bones about it.
- Traveling incognito -> traveling cognito.
- There were no two ways about it -> there were two ways about it.
- Inadvertently -> advertently.
- Misnomer -> nomer.
- Unrequited -> requited.
In general, these words and phrases formed by back-formation are not recognized as standard English. A native English speaker will see “gruntled”, have to pause for a moment, and consider that it must mean the opposite of “disgruntled”. Native English speakers will not use the world “gruntled” in conversation or writing unless they are doing it for comedic effect.
The verb “requite” and the adjective “requited” are quite normal English words, and “unrequited” is derived from them in the normal way.
“Unrequited” may be the form most commonly encountered (“mutual” is most common in many places “requited” would naturally fit), but the other forms are not neologisms created by backformation.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/disgruntle (from English)
https://www.etymonline.com/word/nonchalant (from Latin)
https://www.etymonline.com/word/incognito (from Latin)
https://www.etymonline.com/word/inadvertence (from Latin)
https://www.etymonline.com/word/misnomer (from French)
Requite is a currently recognised English word: https://www.etymonline.com/word/requite
Back-formation is just a process. If a language has a word that sounds like “prefix-X”, then back-formation is the process of creating the word “X” from it. Dis- is often a Latinate prefix meaning “apart”, “removal”, or “negation”, but in the case of dis-gruntled and dis-combobulate means “completely”, so the process of adding dis- and then removing dis- has changed the meaning of “gruntled”. It is therefore a new word (if it were the same word, it would have the same meaning).
Another problem is that the imported word may have changed in meaning. “Nonchalant” may have Latinate origin if you dig deep enough, but we really took it from the French nonchaloir to disregard and French indeed has the (uncommon) chaloir to regard. However, the English word “nonchalant” does not have the same meaning as the French word “chalant”—in English it is a feeling or attitude—so when you rip the non- prefix off you are not in any sense getting something that approximates the French “chaloir” that “nonchalant” was created from in the first place.
A final problem is that the affix may not exist in the first place. “Choate” is simply nonsense, “inchoate” comes from the Latin “incohare” which means to begin and there’s simply no affix to remove.
If you have a mathematical mind, think of it as non-commutative. You can add a affix, and you can remove an affix, and you can borrow the word into another language, but these are not commutative operations and the order in which you do things changes them.
“I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”
I think he uses it, not just in one of his books, but in several, maybe in slightly different forms.
Regarding the 1600's English, for me this is definitely easier to understand than Shakespeare.
This reminds me of hanging out with friends when someone wondered, "what is the opposite of nonchalant? Is 'chalant' its own thing?!"
It's only used anymore in the words "nonchalant" (someone to which things don't matter much) and the expression "peu me chaut" (it matters little to me).
But although "nonchalant" has a clear meaning, the meaning of "chalant" wouldn't be as obvious, since while it's easy to not care about things generally, "generally caring about things" is just the normal state of a person. It's the same reason you don't often hear about a stoppable force or a wieldy tool.
Guvf fgbel vf jevggra hfvat n frevrf bs Ratyvfu jbeqf naq svkrq cuenfrf gung abeznyyl bayl bpphe va n artngvir sbez, arire va n cbfvgvir sbez. Ubjrire, gur nhgube gerngf nyy bs gurz nf univat cbfvgvir sbezf gung jbhyq zrna gur bccbfvgr bs gur artngvir sbez. Guvf vf fhecevfvat naq shaal, ng yrnfg sbe angvir fcrnxref jub unir arire frra gur cbfvgvir sbezf orsber naq znl unir gb fgbc naq guvax nobhg jung gurl jbhyq gurbergvpnyyl zrna.
Rknzcyr: abaqrfpevcg (glcvpny, trarevp, beqvanel), qvfneenl (pbashfvba, punbf) → qrfpevcg (erznexnoyr, rkgenbeqvanel), neenl (beqre). Gur ynggre gjb jbeqf ner abeznyyl arire hfrq guvf jnl va cenpgvpr.
EDIT: BTW, is there another ROT13 encoder in a typical linux installation besides vim's g? command or emacs's rot13* commands?
EDIT2: Looks like the most practical one is:
tr 'A-Za-z' 'N-ZA-Mn-za-m'Try it here if you don't believe me: https://rot13.com/
The thing with text is that you can't really hear the sarcastic tone of voice, and people are so varied, it's believable that one isn't aware, as at least one user has mentioned here[1]. It's always best to just append an /s or a :P or something.
⏵ rot13
Command 'rot13' not found, but can be installed with:
sudo apt install bsdgames # version 2.17-28build1, or
sudo apt install hxtools # version 20200126-1build1 rot13 () { tr [A-Za-z] [N-ZA-Mn-za-m]; }BTW Never noticed before, but because 13*2 = 26, rot13 is both encoder and decoder.
Hence its popularity for very light obfuscation!
'rot13' only works with the alphabet. 'rot18' can do the same thing with numbers too, so rot13 + rot5 = rot18.
Pointless trying to obfuscate info if you can still see the numbers part 'en clair' to give the game away. (bank PINs, phone numbers, etc) Need to obfuscate the digits too.
Edit: nevermind. Long click gave me more options!
(I always wondered what people mean that something was sanctioned. It is so ambiguous!)
There are a few superfluous expressions, that make me think I'm missing something (but it's hard enough to read as it is, the reader needs something familiar to hang on to). e.g.
So I decided not to rush it.
But then, all at once,
I was, after all“But then, all at once, for some apparent reason…” might be the opposite of “little by little, for no apparent reason…”
this that | this or that | neither this nor that
----------+--------------+----------------------
T T | T | F
F T | T | F
T F | T | F
F F | F | T-Someone who majored in neither comp sci nor literature.
The humor of this is that they generally don't occur that way in English. That's why you haven't seen them!
(This is discussed in much greater detail elsewhere in the comments.)
Quite proud of myself :-)
Like many unpaired, it derives from French.
The common English expressions are:
“Nondescript” -> not memorable, doesn’t stand out
“disarray” -> messed up, disorganised
This is just changing those to the positive version, but those words are not usually used in English. So it sounds amusing to an English speaker.
You might translate the sentence to normal English as: “She was a striking and very composed person.”
Thanks, I hate it.
Got any more?
This feels twee and goofy, at best. Not sure why it's on the front page.
Personally, I find it fascinating that this is spectacularly harder to read than I think anyone would reasonably expect it to be.
Because it's twee and goofy.
It isn't often I come across something that is well executed and novel while existing simply for fun.
I feel as though I need more of that in my life.