Recent content by Meevar the Mighty

Adorno said:

Is the word "to" in that sentence optional, or wrong/right?
I mean, you can leave it out, so it's: "... that oughtn't have more than ..."

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You're 100% correct. "Oughtn't" is a perfectly good construction and the "to" is fairly superfluous, though valid. Personally, "ought not" seems like a friendly/concerned suggestion and "ought not to" seems decidedly upset/strict.

Adorno said:

'til is an abbreviation of until, and means the same as the word till.
What's the point? Is there any difference at all?

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The main difference is that "till" has a heap of other meanings, while "'til" has just one meaning.

"Till" is actually the much older word, with "until" growing from it. The "un-" describes the approach, while the emphasis on "till" is the end point, but I'd say that this nuance is not apparent in modern use.

Compare to "to" and "unto".

Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James said:

Yes there is lol, it sounds ridiculous.
I know you're a card-carrying langauge prescriptivist but surely even you have to admit that if something has completely fallen out of use, it is no longer part of the language, especially for an adhoc pidgin like English where misuse of the "standard" grammar can be used to convey more information like mood and complex tense or even social class.

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I admit that it's no longer common, but it's not as though I've deliberately taken on the usage to make a nuisance of myself; it's just the natural usage that I learned as a child. While my generation lives, I hardly think it can be truly called "archaic".

In my experience, the disappearance of the distinction has been pretty rapid. Good cookbooks from pre-2000 can be expected to refer to "molten" chocolate, butter, sugar and so forth, but just a couple of decades later, most people seem to have become completely used to the simplification.

It's not something that upsets me greatly, for some reason, though it is a nice word. I should say that its full and proper use is sumptuous, rather than ridiculous.

There's nothing wrong with proclaiming butter or ice cream to be molten (unless it isn't molten, in which case this is VERY WRONG - I know that you will appreciate the tautology of my explanation). If someone criticises you for this usage, the problem lies with their own education, as it is the more accurate word to use in all of your examples. At worst, it can be considered old fashioned.

Conversely, it sounds juvenile to say "melted rock", though it's perfectly accurate to say "the rock has melted".

This is because "melted" wasn't originally an adjective, but it's been conflated with "molten" (indeed, by juveniles, who are the class of people typically tasked with learning language and later propagating it). This process has come far enough that most people today probably don't regard it as juvenile to say "melted ice cream".

I use it like this:

It is melted.
It has melted.
It has molten.
It is molten.

Archaically, as I understand it: "it is molten, because I molt it" - similar to "it is chosen, because I chose it" etc.

Because "molt" has fallen out of use, the word "molten" is melting into "melted" in popular usage.

I would guess that it's hanging on tighter in reference to geology, because molten rock isn't a part of everyday life for most people, so references to it normally come from geologists, who have a greater likelihood to have learned about their subject from archaic tomes than has the average source of complaints about ice cream fluidity, making the word less prone to erosion in that field.

Counselled missiles. Hitchhiker's Counsel to the Galaxy.

I more or less agree though that it's close enough to tautological to sound somewhat daft.

I think a case can be made, however, that if one offers counsel and has it ignored, one has counselled, but not guided - a person being counselled can choose whether they let the counsel guide their actions.

If you look at it like that, "guidance counsellor" sounds like a kind of criminal, who won't take "no" for an answer and forces their victims to accept counsel.

If you're not aware, most, if not all of your suggested substitutes are indeed in common use for the same job description - the title varies from place to place.

Orion said:

What constitutes "several" of something is contextual, I would say. Things which typically come in small numbers may be referred to as several when in numbers as low as three and still convey the described connotation. If someone were to say they had several nipples, you might not find their choice of words frustrating if it turns out they have three as you would naturally expect people to only have two. Anything more than two is exceptional, justifying the use of "several" if the requirement is the connotation described.

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I guess a someone with three nipples who can't count to three could be considered utterly flawless and beyond reproach, but somehow, idk, I think the description would still lead to some amount of disappointment in the discovery of its mismatch with reality.

To me, someone saying "several", when they could, without error, say "three" is plainly hamming it up, rather than using the word accurately. It should be used for a number where the difference between any potential exact figures isn't significant.

Someone with three nipples could be expected to describe them as "countless!", but contextual acceptability of inaccuracy doesn't accuracy make.

I do appreciate your seemingly rational attempt to eat away at the edges of reasonable enumeration, but I think we must sever the head, lest it lead us to some circle of hell roughly between seven and twelve.

Adorno said:

can two people be alone? For example "let us be alone together".

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Sure thing - groups can be alone. In your example, the thing that lacks company is the "us", rather than its individual constituents.

People can also be alone from something in particular. Even being alone from each other is something that two people can do together - being united by their shared situation, rather than physical proximity.

Alternatively, they could be alone in their respective activities, despite being physically touching, e.g. "They sat and held hands, but John was alone in his quest to memorise Pi in its entirety, while Jane had no company in her pursuit of making louder noises than the human mind can withstand".

But this one has been In Progress for a year. I don't want to lose all of that progress.

After a long hiatus, I reinstalled with the latest patch today. Still won't launch.

I appreciate that it's still Early Access, but this seems like a pretty serious problem to leave hanging for over a year.

All snow is a single physical object and thus has no plural. However, "snow" can also be a verb and the occurrence of this verb can be described as an event, which can be pluralised. "There was a snow last week", "There have been several snows in the last month".

As for "several", the definition is kind of contentious. It comes from the same root as "sever", implying "split into more than one", but the existence of the word "couple" overrules all other words in this class, making their lower bound at least 3. A lot of dictionaries will thus place the lower bound of "several" at 3, making it synonymous with "a few" and "some".

Personally, I decidedly number among those who regard this as infuriating.

The word has a connotation of referring to a number that may be large enough to slightly surprise the listener. It's generally used similarly to the term "quite a few". Because 3 is the lower bound of "a few", describing 3 as "several" seems disingenuous.

A lot of people mistakenly connect the word to the number seven, so it's popularly used to mean either "at least seven" or "around seven", which, while etymologically false, is both an appropriate niche for the word and also the niche in which it's typically used.

If you use it for 7-12, you won't make any enemies. I would strongly advise not using it for a number below 5 or above 20.

Flin Flon said:

If anyone is interested, would appreciate someone with a decent grasp of English proofreading my motivational letter to a uni in exchange for a steam game.

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What I can tell you, free of charge, is that your sentence doesn't clearly articulate whether it's you or the proofreader who gets the Steam game out of this racket.

It happens if you steal her clothes.

I stopped reading when the rockism reared its ugly head.

Still can't run the launcher... which means no multi and no mods. I've been making a bunch of custom banners, but I can't test them, since I need a mod to paste them into the editor now. Feels a bit silly that I can run the game with full settings, max battles and no stutter, yet the simple launcher window somehow can't launch itself.

Can a cat's tail bend like that? It looks very uncomfortable to me.

Really like the glass and the windowsill though. The candle's spot on too.

1. Start a new game.
2. Make note of the ages your character is when they make the decisions, to help the blacksmith or run away on a horse, for example.
3. Return to original playthrough.
4. Make sure your children are offered the same opportunities at those ages.

Note: for this to work, the mother and her partner must have selected a role from among the viable options (must be the same role for both) at the time of birth. Neither may diverge from this role until the child has left home and become independent.