Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 March 1

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March 1

Guajillo chili

"Guajillo chilies are used in marinades, salsas, pastes, butters or adobos (spice rubs) to flavor meats and fat or oil with other ingredients." Or - and - or. I am lost - is this just a bad sentence in the article or I am too tired to untangle its meaning? Rmhermen (talk) 03:37, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

You might look at the way the article read a couple of years ago and see if that makes it clearer than it currently is. It looks like someone took two or more sentences and ran them together. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:41, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

It's a bad sentence, and shows ignorance of the meanings of "and" and "or". If the chillies are used for all those things then it should be "and" all the way through. A replacement might be Guajillo chilies are used in marinades, salsas, pastes, butters and adobos (spice rubs) to flavor meats, fat and oil with other ingredients., but as I have no idea what "adobos" means I'll leave it to others to decide. Bazza (talk) 09:41, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

It's a bad sentance. Looking through the history, it appears someone mangled it (back in Nov 2018) while adding links to some of the terms. The original wording was: Guajillo chilies are used in marinades, salsas, pastes, butters and/or adobos (rubs) to flavor all kinds of meats. It is often used to flavor the fat or oil where other ingredients will be cooked in. Iapetus (talk) 10:44, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

(ec) Adobo is a term used in Latin America both for a marinade (a culinary method of preparation applied before cooking) and for the sauce or seasoning mix used in the marinade. In Mexico, it refers to a condiment or cooking sauce with a base containing chillies. Puerto Rican-style adobo is seasoned salt used for meat rubs. In view of the variety of region-dependent senses, it may be better to replace "adobos (spice rubs)" by just "spice rubs". The very earliest version of the sentence (Guajillo chillies are great in pastes, butters or rubs to flavour all kinds of meats - especially chicken.) already used the conjunction "or". In subsequent edits it acquired and lost an Oxford comma, being replaced by "and/or" before being brought back to just "or". In between, there was a bad "simplification", signalled by Bugs, in which the two sentences

Guajillo chilies are used in marinades, salsas, pastes, butters and/or adobos (rubs) to flavor all kinds of meats. It is often used to flavor the fat or oil where other ingredients will be cooked in.

were run together into

Guajillo chilies are used in marinades, salsas, pastes, butters and/or adobos (spice rubs) to flavor meats and fat or oil with other ingredients.

I suggest, after untangling, to combine this with the following sentence (The guajillo chili, with its leaner flavor profile, is used with fish and chicken, or added to salsa as a side dish.) while changing the order, into:

Guajillo chilies, with their leaner flavor profile, are used with fish and chicken, or added to salsa as a side dish. They are used in marinades, pastes and spice rubs to flavor meats, and to flavor butter and oil used for cooking.

I left out "salsa" in the last enumeration because it has already been mentioned twice at that point in the text of the article.  --Lambiam 11:06, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Thanks for the explanation of "adobo", and recommendation it's replaced with "spice rub" which is comprehendible here. Is there a more understandable term for "leaner flavor"? This British English speaker has no idea what it's meant to convey. Bazza (talk) 12:12, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Milder, less dominant, unobtrusive. In the context of chilies, "mild" may easily be misunderstood as "mildly pungent", that is, packing low Scoville heat. Although guajillo chilies have a mild heat, this use of "leaner flavor" is meant to be (I think) not about pungency, but purely about the flavour, chicken and most fish meats not having a pronounced taste, so it is better not to use the term "mild". Perhaps with their more delicate flavor? (Disclaimer: my understanding of guajillo chilies is not based on familiarity, but purely on my interpretation of some relevant Wikipedia articles.)  --Lambiam 12:55, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

@Lambiam: Thanks for the lesson. I had guessed that is might be subtler than the usual crude heat ratings we get here (mild, medium, hot, very hot). Your suggestion of "more delicate flavor" would fit well, I think. Bazza (talk) 13:02, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

I've been bold. Bazza (talk) 13:43, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

German bike and German phrase

When referring to a fictional motorcycle or bike, such as Tron's lightcycles, Kaneda's bike, or the motorcycles of Extreme G Racing, do German people use "Motorrad" or "Fahrrad" as if they would refer to a real-life motorcycle design? I know that Motorrad in particular usually strictly refers to a bike powered by petrol, and a fictional futuristic bike is most likely powered by something unfeasable or not real, hell it might even fly; could "Motorrad" still apply to such a bike? An over-the-top design that looks like it was pulled right out of fiction yet nonetheless exists in this world such as the Dodge Tomahawk or the Kawasaki Concept J would still be referred to as any other normal bike frankly because it looks like one, regardless if it has more than two wheels (I think at the most I would get "Zweirad" or simply "futuristische Rad"). But I do vaguely remember having a bootleg VHS copy of Tron when I was a kid, and I think the dubber used a literal translation of "Lichtrad", in the place of "lightcycle".

My other question concerns the phrase "Get out of my sight!". Is "Geh mir aus den Sicht!" a good equivalent, or would it be better to go with something more abstract or poetic (something more like "vanish from the peering eyes")? I know that German idioms and phrases often do not directly translate into their English equivalents, so I was a little curious when I found this one. --72.234.12.37 (talk) 15:00, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Second question: Geh mir aus den Augen! would be the idiomatically closest expression. Yours should be Geh mir aus der Sicht!, but that's not really idiomatic I think (strange when you become uncertain about your own language — do we say that, is it an Anglicism?). -Wrongfilter (talk) 17:36, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

de:Akira (Anime) and de:Extreme-G both use Motorrad, while de:Tron (Film) avoids mentioning motorbikes altogether, as far as I can tell. Alansplodge (talk) 18:07, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

In a user review on Amazon.de of the movie, the light cycles are referred to as "futuristische Motorräder (Lichtrenner)", in translation: "futuristic motorcycles (light runners)".  --Lambiam 08:03, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

In Plautus' play Casina (play), Stalino/Lysidamus asks, Abin hinc ab oculis? Loeb's edition translates this as "Won't you go out of my sight?", but German translations have, more literally, Geh' mir gleich aus den Augen. (The form abin, short for abisne, can also be used as an imperative.) Elsewhere, in his Amphitryon, the playwright has Jupiter ask, Abin e conspectu meo? This is, literally, "Won't you go out of my sight?", which is how Loeb's translates it as well, and which I find translated in German (in the translation by Jürgen Blänsdorf) as Verschwindest du aus meinem Angesicht? As a command, one might say, Hinweg aus meinem Angesicht! – more suitable for the theatre, though, than for causal use; cf. Die Walküre: Act 3 Scene II, where Wotan sings, aus meinem Angesicht bist du verbannt. It has a Biblical ring; 2 Chronicles 7:20 has, in the Einheitsübersetzung 2016, Dieses Haus, das ich meinem Namen geweiht habe, werde ich aus meinem Angesicht wegschaffen und zum Gespött und zum Hohn unter allen Völkern machen. In the KJV: "and this house, which I have sanctified for my name, will I cast out of my sight, and will make it to be a proverb and a byword among all nations."  --Lambiam 08:47, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

"Get out of my sight!". The translation depends on the style level. Jesus commands the devil "Hebe dich hinweg!" (Get thee hence, Satan). The normal style in writing would be "Geh' mir aus den Augen!", but in everyday language or even vulgar language other idiomatic expressions like "Hau' ab!" would be used. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 15:11, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Regarding Motorrad for fiction motorcycles, I expected as much. I guess in the bigger picture its nothing different to how we would still call a futuristic flying spinner a car if it still retains the basic shape or function as one. I don't know why I was hoping for some cool term or endonym about this, in much the same way like how Japanese Transformers fans use the name "Convoy" to refer to G1 Optimus. Please excuse my lapse of judgement. --72.234.12.37 (talk) 05:10, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

@72.234.12.37: Do not change my contributions in any way! ([1]) --Wrongfilter (talk) 07:34, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, Wrongfilter. I initially did that for myself under Show Preview to better see the difference in your sentence as I could not initially make out the difference, I've since saw that it was der versus den, and I guess I forgot to remove it afterwards. My mental health is not exactly the best and I've been struggling with my body refusing to go to sleep when I want to, which is why my general sense of awareness is dropped. I am not a vandal, at least not an intentional one, and I am a regular visitor here, even though I probably should not be. Again, please forgive my lapse in judgement --72.234.12.37 (talk) 10:00, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Snowplough/Snowplow

Just notice that we have an article called Snowplow, and one called Snowplough turn. Clearly US vs UK spelling. The latter also being the Australian spelling I've grown up with. We also have Plough. (Plow is a redirect to that one.)

A Plough is "a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil". How did it also become a device for moving snow off roads? Snowplow doesn't tell me. The latter obviously doesn't dig up the road.

And, how do Canadians spell it? This seem to tell me that even they can't agree. HiLo48 (talk) 23:42, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Not an answer to your question, but this just brought back a Warren Miller film that showed a clip of Gerald Ford skiing. Voiceover: Here President Ford is doing something no US president has ever done. [Waits a beat] He's...stemming.
In fairness I should note that Ford's reputation for physical clumsiness was totally unfair, based on one incident and turned into a "thing" by Chevy Chase. --Trovatore (talk) 23:50, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

A snowplow makes furrows in the snow. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:25, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

That's not what your link says at all. It says Canadians use "plow". As one of many years standing (Canadian, not a plow), I agree. I can't recall ever seeing it spelled "plough". Clarityfiend (talk) 05:41, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

The "official" part of the link says Canadians use "plow", but the comments section contains much dissent on the point, and some of it comes from persons who claim to be Canadian. I imagine that's what HiLo48 meant by saying they can't agree. --Trovatore (talk) 06:11, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

A snowplough ploughs through the snow – hence the name. Why isn't it spelled snoughplough though?  --Lambiam 08:55, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

The guttural ending of "plough" began to fade several hundred years ago, but the spelling remained.[2] Though the roots of "snow" look to have had a guttural ending, both the pronunciation and the spelling changed long ago.[3] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 09:06, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Some comments in the Canadian source seem to indicate a difference between the verb and the noun. Is it possible to "plough with a plow" (or even to "plow with a plough")? --T*U (talk) 09:18, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Here's one example (from a construction zone in Toronto) of a temporary sign for drivers of "snow plows". Perhaps more interesting, here in the Ontario Highway Traffic Act you will find "plow" spelled that way to refer to the snow-removal kind, but "plough" for the farming kind. (Just search in your browser for the two forms.) Personally, I always use "plow", but that's because I prefer American spelling, so it's not evidence for anything.

As to the original question, they both use a diagonal blade dragged through a powdery material to push it sideways, don't they? --142.112.149.107 (talk) 09:42, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Another usage, by Gilbert and Sullivan: "Come friends, who plough the sea..." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:35, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Metaphorically, of course, the hull of a ship has the same effect on water as the blade of a plow does. --Jayron32 12:40, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

"Plough Monday" appears to be the day after the Sunday following the Epiphany (6 January). There are Sunday services in e.g. Chichester Cathedral and the surrounding countryside [4]. Noah Webster (dictionary maker and spelling reformer) explains why he changed the spelling [5] (see also page 53). The "plow" spelling in English is very ancient [6]. 146.199.206.11 (talk) 13:54, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Note that the first earlier snow ploughs were for steam locomotives and bore a closer resemblance to agricultural ploughs in form and function. Alansplodge (talk) 14:04, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Canadian Press (which we use up here instead of AP) says plow, not plough. (Source: The Canadian Press Caps and Spelling 20th edition) And as for how plow came to be part of the word, I have not found a reference, but would also vote for the above speculations that it came from the triangular shape of the first snowplows, and/or the motion of turning the snow over. Look at the quote OED uses for its earliest use of the word in print: 1792 J. Belknap Hist. New-Hampsh. III. 79 When a deep snow has obstructed the roads, they are in some places opened by an instrument called a snow plough. It is made of planks, in a triangular form, with two side boards to turn the snow out on either hand. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 15:21, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Great research. Can it be added to the article? Alansplodge (talk) 16:29, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Sure Alansplodge, go ahead! I cannot provide my OED online link as it includes the name of my institution in the URL, but perhaps you can just cite to OED generally? The entry is for snow-plough, n. It is flagged "This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1913; latest version published online December 2020)" and the full entry is: Forms: Also snow plough, U.S. -plow. Frequency (in current use). Etymology: < snow n.1 Compare German schneepflug, Danish sneplov, Swedish snöplog. 1. An implement or machine for clearing away snow from a road, railway track, etc. A number of the various makes are described in E. H. Knight Pract. Dict. Mech. 2230–1 and Suppl. 826.

1792 J. Belknap Hist. New-Hampsh. III. 79 When a deep snow has obstructed the roads, they are in some places opened by an instrument called a snow plough. It is made of planks, in a triangular form, with two side boards to turn the snow out on either hand.

1829 ‘D. Conway’ Journey Norway 148 Immediately after the snow has ceased the snow-plough is used.

1858 P. L. Simmonds Dict. Trade Products Snow-plough, a machine for clearing away snow from railway tracks.

1888 J. A. Lees & W. J. Clutterbuck B.C. 1887: Ramble in Brit. Columbia (1892) xxxiv. 379 The huge snow ploughs (driven sometimes by six or eight locomotives) had been at work.70.67.193.176 (talk) 17:49, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

The Belknap quote can be linked directly to the source.  --Lambiam 12:05, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks both, now done. Alansplodge (talk) 14:19, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Spelling differences have been debated for centuries: see English-language spelling reform, of which Noah Webster was a chief proponent in the US. The Simplified Spelling Board included Melvil Dewey and Mark Twain. Spelling reform rejects etymological reasoning in favour (favor) of simplicity. A snow plough looks exactly like an earth plough and works in exactly the same way, except it works entirely above ground. Sometimes snow plows are colored gray. Americans go to a movie theater, we Britons go to the cinema, since we have an inbuilt inability to reproduce foreign-sounding words such as kinematograph. MinorProphet (talk) 18:15, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

You can blame Latin, or French.[7] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:20, 9 March 2021 (UTC)