Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 April 3

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April 3

Clash of ofs

In my editing adventures, I came across this bit of text at Adrian Boult:

• In 1918 he gave a series of concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra, which included important recent British works, among them Vaughan Williams's A London Symphony, of which he gave the first performance of the revised version ...

The meaning's clear enough: there was the original version, and later there was a revised version, and Boult gave the first performance of the revised version. Although, whether that first performance occurred in the same 1918 series of concerts is not stated, and indeed, it happened some years later. So it's trying to get across 2 ideas: (A) Boult conducted the original version in 1918 (but was not the first to do so), and (B) he was the first to conduct the revised version (but this did not happen in 1918). Maybe it really needs separating into different sentences.

As for the grammar, it feels like a clash of "of"s; the first one's referring to the symphony in general, the second to the revised version specifically.

I tried the pedantically correct way and inserted a "later" for clarity:

• ... among them Vaughan Williams's A London Symphony, of the revised version of which he later gave the first performance ...

but that sounds just that, pedantically correct. Nobody would ever talk like that, not these days.

I could try the parenthetical approach:

• ... among them Vaughan Williams's A London Symphony (he later gave the first performance of the revised version) ...

which works best for me if we keep it as one sentence.

Is there an even better way? I'm not wanting to change it for the sake of change, but I would need some convicing the current text is OK. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 00:26, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

...the revised version of which he gave the first performance? rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:29, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

That's missing an of, Rjanag. One gives the first performance <of something>; one does not give the first performance <something>. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 00:57, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Then you can add it: ...the revised version of which he gave the first performance of. Or, even simpler, ...the revised version of which he was the first to perform. rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:37, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

You could just leave the "of which" out and start a new sentence: ...which included important recent British works, among them Vaughan Williams's A London Symphony. He gave the first performance of the revised version, a performance "rather spoilt by a Zeppelin raid". Oh wait, you already said this. I agree. 81.131.55.149 (talk) 00:45, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I consider the cited text to be correct, and a parse tree might convince you that it is. -- Wavelength (talk) 00:55, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Can you explain further, Wavelength?

How about:

• In 1918 he gave a series of concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra, which included important recent British works, among them Vaughan Williams's A London Symphony, the first performance of the revised version of which he later gave. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 01:02, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Ack! Ptui! Burn that last monstrosity. (Brushing up on your bureaucratese?) I'd split it into two sentences. The parenthetical version would be my second choice. Clarityfiend (talk) 01:09, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I am avoiding spending the time to design a parse tree, so here is a parallel sentence.

• In 2009 Xavier hosted a smörgåsbord with his family, which included seafood dishes, among them lobster roll, of which he supervised the first use of the revised recipe the preparation of the revised version. -- Wavelength (talk) 01:46, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

[I am revising my sentence, because recipe is used with for (as in recipe for lobster roll). -- Wavelength (talk) 03:35, 3 April 2010 (UTC)]

Grammar aside, the last Zeppelin raid on London was on 20 October 1917, which rather spoils a good story. Alansplodge (talk) 02:17, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

But when was the last false alarm? Alternatively, maybe the LSO had a gig in Birmingham. 213.122.26.30 (talk) 09:44, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

After a bit of research, the date of the performance was 18 Feb 1918[1], and on that day there was a Gotha Raid which failed to penetrate the London anti-aicraft defences[2]. Alansplodge (talk) 16:33, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Like Wavelength, I see nothing wrong with the original. A phrase X, of which he complexverbed can be transformed to and he complexverbed of X, even if the expansion of complexverb contains of (give the first performance of the revised version). Overlapping scopes do sometimes bite one, but this is not such a case. —Tamfang (talk) 03:02, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

First, there's nothing all that wrong with the original, but "of which" is a phrase that's usually best avoided. If you want to keep it close to the original, I suggest that the obvious improved version is:

• In 1918 he gave a series of concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra, which included important recent British works, among them Vaughan Williams's A London Symphony, whose revised version he gave the first performance of.

But one or more people above said that the intention was obviously to say that he later gave the first performance of the revised version, but that doesn't fit with the article about the symphony, which says it was revised in March 1918. So I think the meaning is that in this concert series he gave the first performance of the revised version. In which case the sentence can be simplified considerably:

• In 1918 he gave a series of concerts with the London Symphony Orchestra, including the first performance of Vaughan Williams's revised A London Symphony as well as other important recent British works.

--Anonymous, 03:54 UTC, April 3, 2010.

Wow, Anonymous. Leaving aside the factual/historical issues, I'm still a little flabbergasted by "whose revised version he gave the first performance of". It would be a bold editor indeed who inserted that form of words into an article and expected it to survive for long. I know that the proscription against ending sentences with prepositions was never ironclad, but there are still times when doing so is a bad thing, because it sounds ugly, and this is one of those times. Also, isn't "whose" confined to humans? -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 04:16, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

See Definitions of whose - OneLook Dictionary Search. -- Wavelength (talk) 04:31, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Heh. That sent me to the Wikipedia article Whose [sic] Afraid of Virginia Woolf. :) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 04:41, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

OK. Thanks for all the feedback, folks. Seems I'm alone in thinking the current text is problematical. But since it still rankles, I think I'll go the parenthetical way, and then we're all happy. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 10:22, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

You're not alone. But the problem is stylistic, not grammatical. --ColinFine (talk) 21:58, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Computer art scene groups' names

I was going to ask this at the Computing desk at first but after browsing through some of the posts there it looks like that place is strictly for technical questions, so I thought this page would be more suited to ask this; something that I've always wondered about since I started BBS'ing in the early 1990s: Why did the computer art scene groups back then, such as ACiD and iCE and many others, feel so compelled to lower-case the letter i in their names?? From what I can guess it has something to do with leetspeek, but why the letter 'i'? why not 'h'? or 'g'? or 'p'?? and exactly when and how did this custom start? The leetspeek article does not address this. -- œ^™ 03:28, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, in the case of ACiD it matches the capitalization pattern of the full name, and they probably liked the way it didn't look so much like "acid", which sounds nasty. If they were a particularly important group, perhaps others just copied the lower-case i from them. But this is just conjecture -- perhaps someone has a source that gives a better explanation. --Anonymous, 03:59 UTC, April 3, 2010.

In some sans serif fonts, I (the capital letter) and 1 (the numeral) look the same. Likewise with O (the capital letter) and 0 (the numeral). There is therefore a convention for computer people (especially older computer people) to emphasize the differences. Using i vs. I may have been a way to do that. The other option is that they went the e e cummings route and thought that alternative capitalization schemes were "cool" (see also leetspeak). That survives today, in some respects iPod, iPad, and iMac all use a lowercase "i" to be "hip", despite the fact that it ultimately derived from an abbreviation for "the Internet", which most traditional sticklers insist on capitalizing. -- 174.31.194.126 (talk) 18:47, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Abbreviation

I was reading (the book) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and in the narrative the following sign is observed: "5,000 new homes: no dwn. payment required for vets". Assuming "vets" means "veterans", this still leaves me at a loss to explain why "down payment" has been abbreviated like that. I can't imagine "dwn." is much shorter that "down". Can anyone shed any light on this? One plausible answer might be to fit it neatly onto lines (in the "fictional" world, i.e. on the poster/sign), but as I say it's hardly shorter at all. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 09:10, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Another commonly seen example is 'til, short for until, but no shorter than till, which is synonymous. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 21:24, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

A period (full stop) takes up a lot less space on a line (except in monospace) than an o. 79.183.136.131 (talk) 22:46, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Obviously the advertiser is part of the O Cnservatin Mvement. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:31, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so you want to take up less space on the line . . . sure. But why, why, WHY would you abbreviate "dwn" and not "pmnt" or "req'd"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.104.119.240 (talk) 05:31, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

It's a work of fiction and you would have to "get into the head" of whichever character "wrote" the poster or the advertisement. Nothing more than that, I assume. I doubt that the author had any other meaning or intent. Also, in the world of real estate, perhaps that is standard abbreviation / terminology? Thanks. (64.252.65.146 (talk) 16:13, 5 April 2010 (UTC))

Verb usage

What is it called when a verb is used once in a sentence but in two different manners, eg 'The children went off in a bus and in high spirits.'? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.11.43.155 (talk) 20:52, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Syllepsis, or semantic zeugma, as in Charles Dickens' "[She] went straight home in a flood of tears, and a sedan chair". Dbfirs 21:07, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

This is my favorite example of it, and online. rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:14, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Heh, I was going to quote Flanders and Swann in "Have some Madeira, my dear", but he stole my thunder. -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 21:22, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks all. This was beginning to get on my nerves so tonight I shall sleep easy. 92.11.43.155 (talk) 21:28, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

(Adding Joel Stickley's "How to Write Badly Well" to Favorites") . . . I think I'm in love. 71.104.119.240 (talk) 05:37, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Why are penises called "cocks"?

This may look like a trolling question, but it is not. Where does the association of chicken with male genitalia come from? Interestingly, not only English seems to do so; Castilian Spanish uses "polla" (literally "cock" and a slang term for "penis"). So, why is that? --Belchman (talk) 21:16, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

At a guess, male chickens (cocks) typically display what is generally considered to be arrogantly masculine behavior (strutting, fighting over hens, aggression towards anyone that interferes with their 'turf', calling out challenges to rivals). They are much more obvious about it than other domesticated animals. The comparison with certain kinds of men - and the extension to male genitalia more generally - would be natural. --Ludwigs2 22:22, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

So, what about the association of chickens with mechanical devices, as in "half-cocked" and "stopcock"? 81.131.48.116 (talk) 22:44, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

The cock of a flintlock firearm bore a resemblance to the head of a cock[3]. Alansplodge (talk) 23:02, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

I always thought it was a reference to a cock's erect head. Online Etymology Dictionary seems to confirm it: "cock (v.), seeming contradictory senses of "to stand up" (as in cock one's ear), c.1600, and "to bend" (1898) are from the two cock nouns. The first is probably in reference to the posture of the bird's head or tail, the second to the firearm position. — Kpalion^(talk) 23:15, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The OED says of the penis sense, "In origin perhaps intimately connected with sense 12", where sense 12 is "A spout or short pipe serving as a channel for passing liquids through". (German Hahn is also used in both these senses.) With regard to the "spout" sense, the OED is dubious about its connection with the "male chicken" word, noting that "the origin of the name in this sense is not very clear". Deor (talk) 23:22, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

So the connection between spouts and chickens is unclear, but also exists in German where the word sounds totally different? Odd. 81.131.48.116 (talk) 00:18, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

You have it backwards, actually — "cock" predates "penis". Penis is scientific slang for cock. ¦ Reisio (talk) 01:31, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

"Cock" may predate "penis" in English, but "penis" was around in Latin long before there was such a thing as an organized scientific vocabulary. Of course, if English had been the international language of science a few hundred years ago instead of Latin, "cock" might be the more proper term, and "penis" would only exist, in some form, as vulgar slang in a few countries in Western Europe. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.104.119.240 (talk • contribs) 05:29, 4 April 2010

Like I said. :) ¦ Reisio (talk) 07:26, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

I'd add that the metaphor really seems to be widespread - besides Castilian Spanish polla, Bulgarian also uses a word that means - or rather, originally meant - a rooster: кур. However, the root's original meaning of "rooster" was lost in the language a long time ago, leading to much embarrassed laughter when Bulgarians learn the Russian word for "hen" (курица, куры). Nevertheless, there has been a more recent re-tour of nearly the same semantic shift - modern Bulgarian slang uses патка, which literally means "duck" (and, strangely enough, the word belongs to the feminine gender, so it either denotes the species in general or specifically the female; thus, behavioural similarity as suggested by Ludwigs2 can't be the origin of the metaphor here). By the way, this leads to even more merriment when the Russian word for "partridge", куропатка, is brought up; it sounding more or less like "dick-cock". Anyway, this use of the word "duck" may confirm Kpalion's supposition that the upright position of the bird's neck is compared with an erect penis, and the bird's body is compared with the testes. In contrast, vulvae seem to be more commonly compared with more "compact", crouching mammals such as beavers (English), mice (Swedish) and squirrels (Bulgarian).--91.148.159.4 (talk) 18:13, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

…and naturally (& often wholly) obscured by hair. (more amusing bird-related etymology) ¦ Reisio (talk) 20:37, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

apros pos, maybe? --Ludwigs2 21:07, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Castilian Spanish uses, among others, "conejo" (rabbit) for the female genitalia. Heh. --Belchman (talk) 21:04, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Cats are also furry. Particularly "pussy" cats.  :) -- Jack of Oz ... speak! ... 21:46, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Beaver, cat, mouse, squirrel, rabbit (this last one came as a surprise to me)... I'm beginning to think that at least within (furry) mammals, the question is not which animal could serve as a euphemism for the vulva, but which one couldn't. I suppose that the animal shouldn't be: 1. Too large (dog-sized or larger); 2. Too elongated (hardly anyone would use "otter"); 3. Too noxious or vicious (a rat, a weasel); 4. Otherwise too uncommon (a platypus). Penes, on the other hand, have been predominantly avian so far.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 23:36, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Except when they're serpentine, of course, as with the Yiddish word "schlong", meaning snake; or the rather silly expression "trouser snake". --FOo (talk) 06:30, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, the next natural conclusion is that penes are diapsida, whereas vulvae are synapsida. :) This principle could not apply to non-amniotes, of course; but no non-amniote euphemism has been brought up so far. The only one I can think of is "clam" for the vulva. --91.148.159.4 (talk) 19:22, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Do any of those words (кур, etc.) also refer to some kind of spigot or pipe? 81.131.35.17 (talk) 00:45, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

No.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 00:57, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

It does in Polish. The Polish word for a spigot is kurek which is a diminutive of kur (archaic word for "cock", only in the avian sense) and originally referred to a weathercock. — Kpalion^(talk) 18:46, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Russian has курок for the cock of a weapon (whereas Bulgarian uses for the same thing петле, which is, guess what, a diminutive of петел, the currently used word for a "rooster"). But all in all, the languages that do use the root kur- for "technical" terms (Russian, Polish) don't seem to use it for genital euphemisms, and vice versa, Bulgarian and Serbian don't seem to use it for technical terms; so it seems unlikely that the euphemism use developed from the technical use.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 19:22, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

On a side note, after Facebook stopped being a serious networking site and people started throwing sheep at each other and other stuff you might expect in a kindergarten playground, I noticed people were randomly 'cock-blocking' me. I was quite surprised at this and quite offended that Facebook should allow such an activity, as, being British, I had never heard the term before and thought it meant something to do with my genitals. Can anyone explain what this activity is? --KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 14:34, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

See cock block for general info. I don't know what it means when someone randomly cock blocks you on Facebook. The Hero of This Nation (talk) 17:12, 6 April 2010 (UTC)