Language desk
< January 8	<< Dec \| January \| Feb >>	January 10 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 9[edit]

Love[edit]

What does "love" mean translated from Greek and Hebrew? Veronica —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.203.220.176 (talk) 02:41, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Um, translated from those languages, it means "love". You may be interested in reading our article Greek words for love, though. We don't seem to have an article Hebrew words for love. —An gr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 05:19, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See also wikt:Love, because Wiktionary articles include translations. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:56, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Or rather, see wikt:love, because Wiktionary articles are case-sensitive, even for the first letter (unlike here). —An gr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 05:23, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

ATM machine and PIN number[edit]

Why do people say ATM machine? That just means automatic teller machine machine. Same with PIN number.03:07, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

People who are aware of the "machine" contained in ATM are likely to say ATM only (as in our ATM article); those who are not are likely to say "ATM machine". It's only natural. For foreign words, we are very likely to be redundant that way, as we're are not aware of the literal meaning of the word. If you're interested in this kind of fault-finding, you can take a look at List of redundant expressions, a typical original research on Wikiepdia.--K.C. Tang (talk) 04:16, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See also Redundant Acronym Syndrome syndrome. Foxhill (talk) 15:09, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

When in Los Angeles, be sure to visit The La Brea Tar Pits, fully translated as The the Tar Tar Pits. --LarryMac | Talk 15:21, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you like that, you'll love Hillhillhill Hill. Algebraist 15:52, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Don't forget to see the Big River River. —An gr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 20:02, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Does it have an ABS system?" is another common one. Lanfear's Bane | t 16:54, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The "acronym common-noun" pattern can be legitimate in that the acronym serves as a tag to specify what kind of common-noun is under discussion. A sentence like, "The TCP protocol has various congestion control features" treats TCP as a specifier for what protocol you're talking about, and you could easily change it to "The SMB protocol ..." just by changing the tag. I think fundamentally it's the fault of the namers of the thing for not just calling it the "AB system/TC protocol/AT machine" or whatever since people are going to end up sticking the common noun on the end anyway. --Sean 18:44, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Do Americans still buy "tunafish"? Matt Deres (talk) 14:40, 13 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, Chicken of the Sea, for example. -- Coneslayer (talk) 17:01, 14 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

V-words associated with anger[edit]

Vicious, vituperative, venomous, virulent, vitriolic, vilification, invective … there are probably others. Is it just a coincidence that all these v-words are associated with anger and aggressiveness, or is there another explanation? -- JackofOz (talk) 13:06, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Vehement? AnonMoos (talk) 13:53, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think I've read (though I can't seem to find the source) that vocal sounds tend to gravitate towards words that match the sound's facial expressions. So when you make a "V" sound, you lift your upper lip into a bit of a sneer. When you make an "M" sound, you have a wider, more contented expression, hence the profusion of Mother/Mama/Madre/Mere/Mutter/etc. Likewise No/nyet/nie/etc. Whether it's a meaningful correlation or just noise isn't clear to me. jeﬀjon (talk) 15:06, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your argument here doesn't work. All of those v- words listed are of Latin origin, where they were pronounced with a /w/ sound. All of the "mother" words you listed are actually etymologically related, so it's not strange at all that they all begin with /m/ (although it is true that many, though by far not all, languages from around the world have a word for "mother" beginning with /m/). And the same is true for your "no" words - they all have the same origin etymologically, although in this case most languages around the world do not use /n/. Macnas (talk) 21:29, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A similar phenomenon is "gl-" words for shiny things: glisten, gleam, glint, glare, glam, glimmer, glaze, glass, glitz, gloss, glory, glow, glitter, and, er, glockenspiel. :) --Sean 18:32, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In German, nouns starting with "kno-" and "knö-" are mostly small and round: Knoblauch "garlic", Knöchel "ankle", Knödel "dumpling", Knolle "tuber", Knopf "button", Knorren "knot (in a tree)", Knospe "bud (of a plant)", Knoten "knot (in string or rope)". Knochen "bone" might count since some bones are small and round (like the ones in the wrist and ankle), and long bones like femurs and humeri are rounded at the ends. Knorpel "cartilage, gristle" is a little harder to fit into the category, but I suppose a lump of cartilage or gristle can be small and ground too. —An gr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 20:01, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You might be interested in this article on "Phonological Clusters of Semantically Similar Words". SaundersW (talk) 20:42, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, thanks, what a very interesting read that was. Even more interesting is that not a great deal of study has been done on such things, so three cheers (that's one each) to Messrs Firth, Marchand and Bolinger. -- JackofOz (talk) 20:52, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And if that was interesting, how about this comparison of dirty words in Chinese and English? Sometimes I really envy the things people find to study! SaundersW (talk) 21:45, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And one more reference for you where it is argued that all phonemes have connotative meaning. SaundersW (talk) 22:30, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why no one has mentioned the article sound symbolism, though not a very good one?--K.C. Tang (talk) 09:55, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I recommend chapter four, "the spell of the speech sound", from The Sound Shape of Language by Roman Jakobson and Linda Waugh. 194.171.56.13 (talk) 11:10, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

<unindent> An excellent and very readable little book is Euphonics: A Poet's Dictionary of Enchantments by John Mitchell (ISBN 904263 437). The entry for V begins:

Vital and vigorous but vain and vicious.

Vitality is in words which relate to the Latin vita (life), vis (force) and vigor. In English are vim and vigour, vitality and velocity. The effect of V can be described as very vivacious. Like several other sounds V has a second, opposite meaning. In accordance with its relationship to the sounds W and F it is sometimes weak and flustured (German venwirrt), as in the words vain, vacuous, vapid, vague, vacillate, vagrant, vaporous, vertigo, veer, and vary.

Hope this is of interest. BrainyBabe (talk) 14:01, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, yes. Thank you all. These intellectual victuals have verily revivified me. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:40, 12 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Phonestheme is a technical word for this concept. Steewi (talk) 02:06, 15 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What do you call a list of movies, articles, etc. which won a certain award?[edit]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:GA is an example of such a list. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.189.60.89 (talk) 13:47, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, why is the word 'refrain' such a contradiction?[edit]

'Refrain' means to stop doing something. But as a poetic device, it means to repeat something again and again. Why is that so? Anajus (talk) 15:40, 9 January 2008 (UTC)anajus[reply]

The noun and the verb are really two different words. The noun ultimately comes from a Latin word meaning "break again"; we "break" the song "again" to insert the refrain. The verb stems from the Latin word for "bridle". --Milkbreath (talk) 15:54, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For other words of this type you might be interested in Auto-antonym. There are more than I suspected. SaundersW (talk) 20:36, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

From that page...is the correct spelling "contronym" or "contranym?" The article says "...frequently misspelled as "'contranym,'" but then links to the wiktionary article wikt:contranym! Neither spelling is in Merriam-Webster online, and Google seems to favor "contronym." -01:46, 10 January 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Elmer Clark (talk • contribs)

The prefix is contra- before a consonant or contr- before a vowel. The ending is -onym. So "contronym" is the etymologically correct spelling. But in the end, usage determines correctness. --Anonymous, 01:55 UTC, January 10, 2008.