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Comment by 01284a7e | Hacker News Reader

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The blog post isn't directed at 10-year-olds. In fact, you're pulling a phrase from a paragraph that's describing exactly how you should not speak when talking to a 10-year-old.

> The simplest constraint for anyone trying to explain a complex topic is to accept the request to “explain it to me like I’m 10 years old”. What’s packed into that request is, vividly exaggerated, the reminder that what seems obvious to an expert is often incomprehensible to the listener. Technical jargon and fusillades of acronyms are often used to convey an explanation that has been denuded of all the foundations and context that might allow it to make sense.

It's when multiple soldiers are ordered to fire their guns very quickly, either everyone at once or one after another.

I think that the author is doing it deliberately, to put the reader in the shoes of someone who has a hard time understanding some of the words, and reinforce his point.

As a non-native English speaker there are 4 words in this article that I had to look up, which is significantly higher than a typical article from HN frontpage (usually it's 0, occasionally 1).

If anyone curious, the words are: pellucid, fusillades, pram (idk, why I never heard it. I knew the word "stroller", of course, but I never thought about different kinds of strollers), octogenarian (this one I could have guessed from Latin roots and context, was lazy).

As a native English speaker; pellucid was new to me.

Fusillades specifically was unfamiliar but I inferred if from context and knowing fusilier.

There's also “lexiphanic” and “denuded” (uncommon but clear from context in this case).

Pram is common in British English. I'm guessing you learned US English, which doesn't use it.

Yes, as slang for ‘perambulator’, which is basically ‘stroller’

Not really a stroller is a pushchair.

A pram is a kind of mobile bed for babies.

Fair enough.

In my defence, I was coming at it etymologically, where (according to the OED), a perambulator is 'A person who walks or travels through or about a place' (hence 'walker') OR 'A carriage for a baby or young child, which may be pushed along by a person on foot. Now usually shortened to pram [...] a cradle mounted on four wheels'.

So 'mobile bed' is a perfect description

The word pram doesn't exist in American English, true, but you'll learn it anyway if you ever read Peter Pan.

Though even in the UK I think it has a slightly old fashioned feel -- I feel like parents are more likely to have a pushchair than a pram.

My understanding was that a pram is used for a younger child, they are laid flat. A pushchair/buggy for an older child, they sit. Language is often used incorrectly however.

A ring-sling suited us better.

I think the modern style is a multi-hundred pound (£) infant travel system. https://www.argos.co.uk/browse/baby-and-nursery/travel/trave... - up to £1500 in this relatively down-market UK shop.

I don't think the article itself was intended to be written for a 10-year-old to understand it.

Neither did the author

> If you are reading this column you definitely aren’t a typical 10-year-old, but the image of the bewildered 10-year-old gives the expert an anchor to help them slow down and simplify [0]

[0] TFA

Pirate books use it a lot!

I just checked on Gutenberg and was surprised to find that Hornblower doesn't use the word! But the second sentence of the first Sherlock Holmes book (A Study in Scarlet) introduces Watson as having been a member of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers.

> No ten year old knows that word.

Why would you think that?

Because they pretty much just learned to read?

... 5 years prior

Well I've got 38 years of reading experience and have never seen that word.

If you can't glean the definition from context, anyone 10 years old or older should be able to use a dictionary.

Can a 10 year old do that? Wtf are we talking about.

We were talking about how explaining something to a 10-year-old sometimes means that you use words that a 10-year-old doesn't know. And that a 10-year-old should have the ability to use a dictionary to look up unfamiliar words.

I was also implying that you, and I assumed that you were more than 10 years old, could also use a dictionary to look up words you weren't familiar with if you aren't able to glean their definition from context.

Can a 10-year-old use a dictionary? That's approximately fifth grade in the US. By 10 years old, they should be able to use a dictionary and encyclopedias to look up stuff. At the very least they should be able to go to merriam-webster.com or wherever and type in an unfamiliar word to get a definition.

You know how you'll see people talking about the difference between having five years of experience, or having one year of experience five times in a row?

Yes.

Could be your sphere of reading and / or age - it's common enough in (say) the British Ripping Yarns genre of boys own colonial adventures.

So UK, Canadian, Australian boys who were ten years old in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s would have encountered it. Anything that featured older school British Empire toy soldiers would have likely used the word, along with other military terms.

Rudyard Kipling is a typical kind of author who'd be read by ten year olds and who'd use that word and others of a similar pedigree.

Indeed, TFA isn’t exactly pellucid

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