It occurred to me for the first time the other day that the word "sloth" is to "slow" what "warmth" is to "warm".
breadth, chillth, coolth, dampth, dearth, depth, filth, health, height/heighth, illth, length, roomth, ruth, strength, troth, truth, sloth/slowth, warmth, wealth, width, wrath, wrength, youth/youngth
(As a foreigner I’m curious what the original adjective was for filth, length, ruth, wealthy, wrath).
For example, apparently "filth" comes from the equivalent of "foul".
Looked the ones I didn't know the adjectives of up on wiktionary: foul, long, rue, possibly the archaic "wele" (but there are multiple etymological paths), and basically "wrath" but pronounced slightly differently going back thousands of years.
Weal is defined as happiness, well-being, prosperity, or that which is best for someone.
I am a little surprised that ruth is spelled that way instead of like rueth, which seems more like how I would expect it to be said.
strength <- strong
But enough jocularth can eventually result in -th becoming productive again!
I've heard this said, and seen this in plenty of codebases. `let width = 10, heighth = 10`
Its intuitive match to "width" makes me wonder why it ever became "incorrect."
Which makes me think: i am surprised that is not an excessively used term in the startup / brotrepreneur world...
Edit: It seems as though others do say slow-th, but it's not something I've really heard from the younger generation
The joking immediately stopped and he stared at me deadpan and said "not funny. No one could do that."
It was amazing.
After having had that voice on well-produced nature content for my entire life, I find most other nature-documentary voice-overs quite jarring. Even the British ones (Tom Hiddlestone had a go recently IIRC).
I will say though that I enjoyed Paul Rudd doing ‘Secrets of the Octopus’. Didn't overplay it, just did a really good job IMHO.
"Zoo Quest" is his first nature documentary series, from 1954(!), very different in style from today's nature shows. I remember as a child seeing clips of it when it was already ancient history -- grainy black-and-white footage of a very young and athletic Attenborough practically wrestling a lizard.
It was originally broadcast before colour TV existed in the UK (funnily enough, Attenborough was the controller at BBC 2 when they pioneered colour broadcasting) so everyone assumed it had been shot in black and white. But in 2016 someone discovered that much of the original footage was colour film. The restored version is absolutely gorgeous.
Yes! I think it's not just familiarity, what makes him definitive is a combination of factors: fantastic voice and deep domain knowledge and his very clear love and enthusiasm for nature.
You can get an actor with a great voice, Morgan Freeman or Tom Hiddleston or whoever, but you always know they're just reading from a script and probably don't know any more about the animals than you do.
And there are other experts with a knack for presenting, people like Mary Beard, but you can't just transfer that knowledge to a completely different subject area.
I have lots of time for well-meaning parody though, such as this one about the majestic Australian White Ibis (otherwise known as the bin chicken) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4dYWhkSbTU