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Comment by arthurcolle | Hacker News Reader

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arthurcolle

Their use of ‘advantage’ as a word reminds me of this classic Calvin & Hobbes strip.

https://www.languagetrainers.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/201...

Looks like the 80s/90s kids that were brought up on these skits are finally taking over!

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You can also "noun" verbs. One I hear in SV is "an ask". I find myself a bit peeved by it but I don't know why.

One of the ones I hate the most is "let's find a solve" when they mean to say "let's find a solution."

I almost involuntarily downvoted you when I read that

I can sympathize.

I think it's worse when they flip it around and inappropriately use a noun as a verb: "Let's solution this."

"Let's solve the problem."

“Ask” has had a noun form for as long as I can recall in British English. Phrases like “that’s quite a big ask” and “what’s the ask?” are commonplace IME.

Just out of curiosity, I looked it up in an American dictionary and it does have a noun form over here, as well, but it's noted as "chiefly British, informal".

Although, the term "big ask" is something I'm certain I've used before, as well as others, but more in a business/corporate context.

Or maybe I've just watched a lot of British television?

I remember that phrase appearing seemingly out of nowhere 10 years or so ago. (UK)

Very weird. Maybe it had been percolating in business circles earlier than that. I don't tend to mix much in those circles.

I still want to believe it’s people dropping the “t” in “task”.

I’ve heard both phrases you mention a lot in American English too.

Much as I tend to be in favor of language evolving, I react almost viscerally to 'compute' as a noun. It is a major irk.

Wait a minute, did you just "noun" irk? I'm irked.

Wait a minute, did you just "verb" noun? I'm adjectived

Yes it is called "verbing"

Did you just adjective adjective?

Technically he just verbed the noun 'adjective'

No, it’s used as an adjective here

When people say they grok something it hurts me deep inside.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/grok#etymonline_v_14297

Why?

Maybe because to truly grok a person, you have to eat them [1]. I’d imagine that could hurt that person deep inside if they were alive when you started.

[1] Per the end of A Stranger In a Strange Land

Eating someone isn’t required to grok them in a Stranger in a Strange Land, it’s an aid in doing so.

I wonder if that whale groks Michael Packard.

Yeah, tell me about it. People nouning things... argh, eyeroll.

What’s a better noun for “abstract resource I can use to do computations on?” Because computer is too general — literally encompassing everything, or too specific — as a synonym for a PC.

Wait until you hear someone noun “solve,” it’s the most infuriating sound to leave a PMs mouth.

I’m hoping we can come to an agreement during this meeting to find the solve.

Would ___ work for this solve?

I love that. It's an attempt to look smart when it really only makes you look stupid or pretentious. Or both. Do they not realize that there's already a word for that - solution?

A "solve" is common parlance in puzzling in my experience (ie puzzle hunt). Never used it in my day to day PM role though, agreed it would sound awkward.

”Learnings" is the one that gets my goat.

With no context, that sounds like a trading term to me, like "a put".

You can "hit the ask" during a trade

This is incorrect, old sport. You hit the bid and lift the offer (in your parlance "ask" although no one actually calls it that IRL).

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hitthebid.asp

You can. It just doesn’t seem as clever to say “‘noun’ verbs”. It doesn’t have the property where the term is an example of itself.

In context it sounds like calling in a favor, like “calling in a chit”, in that it’s transactional unlike of the common usage.

You’re peeved by “ask” as a noun?! How the hell is “math” plural?! Why maths? The subject (singular) is math (singular). Do you study Englishes? Anthropologies? Medicines?

Mathematics are plural because it's a group of several disciplines, arithmetic and geometry today (music and astronomy used to be two other math branches in the past). It's actually an adjective that became a noun, so these four were the disciplines mathématiques, becoming simply les mathématiques later on.

At least that's why it's plural in French. I wouldn't be surprised if the English term is plural simply because it comes from French.

There are shortened forms of singular nouns that end in -s, which also end in -s. Some forms are more common in some cultures/places - "stat" vs "stats" for "statistics" comes to mind.

Yes, I'm also very peeved by "maths". And a million other things. Calling Universities "Uni". Horned-Rim glasses. A whole slew of grammatical oddities.

I guess that's why I ended up on this site.

You know that “math” is just the abbreviated form of “mathematics” right?

"mathematics" may end in "s", but that doesn't make it plural. We say "Mathematics is a science" not "Mathematics are sciences" (replace with "art/arts" if you don't belive it's a science). We also say "mathematics is a growing field", not "mathematics are growing fields". Because it's singular, the fact that it ends in "s" doesn't naturally require shortened forms of it to carry the last letter at the end. I get that in the UK people say "maths", but let's not make this out to be like one side is correct and the other is not because mathematics ends in "s". Particularly as "math" was first coined in the U.K. (much of contemporary U.S. English is an older form of contemporary British English).

I didn't say it's plural, I said it's the abbreviated form. Math and maths are both abbreviations of mathematics.

You changed the post I was responding to, which was something to the effect of "don't you know mathematics ends with 's'"?

No, I did not.

In case you're interested, word creation is a pretty interesting topic in linguistics. The wikipedia page on this -- they call it "conversion" [1] -- seems like a good starting off point for someone interested in the subject.

[1]: Conversion (word formation), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_(word_formation)

Perhaps they use the word “advantage” specifically because it has no clearly defined meaning, so it is just a weasel word for legal purposes. Clarity is not your goal when the wrong sentence could cost a metric fuck tonne of money in court.

Lol. Calvin & Hobbes is amazing.

Randal Munroe has one in a similar vein: https://xkcd.com/1443/

I am grateful to Bill Watterson for gifting us with that.

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