Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 April 14

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April 14

⍼

I was just reading U+237C ⍼ RIGHT ANGLE WITH DOWNWARDS ZIGZAG ARROW and wondered whether someone here might be able to come up with an answer; what is ⍼ meant to represent? Where did it originate from? Also see this redirect.

Fun fact: " & # x 2 3 7 C ; " and " & # 9 0 8 4 ; " (without the spaces) render as ⍼ and ⍼ even if you wrap them with code or nowiki tags. 76.216.220.191 (talk) 04:21, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

There are many Unicode characters whose purpose is a mystery, and this is one of them. In the unlikely case that I need a symbol as a warning that a pole that was supposed to be vertical is actually not, I might use this one, but then I will need to explain its meaning to anyone perusing my notes. You can display an HTML character reference such as ⍼ by using & to represent the character &.  --Lambiam 08:28, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

According to xkcd its meaning is Larry Potter.^[1]  --Lambiam 08:34, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

So Randall Munroe has it down as a "math symbol" of some kind. I think it has Unicode character property "math symbol", but I don't know where to look that up definitively. It's listed as such on codepoints.net. Oh, this is in the OP's link, I now see.  Card Zero  (talk) 09:17, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

I need to use U+2368 a lot more often. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:23, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

߳~ ^{? ~̤ !  --Lambiam 08:32, 15 April 2022 (UTC)}

It looks like a smiley, although it seems to be dependent on correct fonts and browsers, installed, so there might be simpler ways to make one... 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:43, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

alias smirk  Card Zero  (talk) 17:11, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Explain XKCD says

No purpose is known6; speculation includes "Y axis continues downward" and "diode with a gate".

Jonathan Chan's article has updates that maybe the asker has not seen.

--Error (talk) 20:52, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

...and those updates are? Doesn't look like Chan knows either. 2600:1700:D0A0:21B0:13D:DA3C:F3BD:6B51 (talk) 01:39, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

"Caution: pole dancer descending, do not tip." Martinevans123 (talk) 11:12, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

I would like to see a Wikipedia article on Unicode characters that nobody knows the meaning of. Aren't there some Chinese characters that they think might be typos?

Found some other fun ones:

� (U+FFFD) REPLACEMENT CHARACTER - Mentioned on Specials (Unicode block).

⯑ (U+2BD1) UNCERTAINTY SIGN

(␚) (U+001A) SUBSTITUTE - We have an article on this one: Substitute character

🯄 (U+1FBC4) NEGATIVE SQUARED QUESTION MARK -- See Wikidata [2]

Fun fact: Wikipedia doesn't try to render  or  (U+001A).

2600:1700:D0A0:21B0:13D:DA3C:F3BD:6B51 (talk) 01:39, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Ghost word says:

The JIS X 0208 standard, the most widespread system to handle Japanese language with computers since 1978, has entries for 12 kanji that have no known use and were probably included by mistake (for example 彁). They are called 幽霊文字 (yūrei moji, "ghost characters") and are still supported by most computer systems (see: JIS X 0208#Kanji from unknown sources).[citation needed]

There are also Unicode characters for undeciphered scripts such as the Phaistos Disk or Linear A.

--Error (talk) 19:10, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

There is also the Man in Business Suit Levitating emoji. --Error (talk) 19:25, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

There is now a Half as Interesting video on this character: "Why Nobody Knows What This One Unicode Character Means". (I hate it when people title things "Why XYZ is so", when in they end they only state that indeed XYZ is so, without telling us why.)  --Lambiam 20:09, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

Pull your finger out

What is the origin of the phrase "pull your finger out"? Does it have anything to do with that legendary Dutch boy fingering a dyke? Thank you. 86.188.121.114 (talk) 09:41, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Seems to be unknown. A naval origin has been proposed, although it sounds unlikely. I had basically always assumed it was short for "... your arse/ ass", possibly related to terms such as uptight, anal, stick up one's ass. (Also the origin proposed on Wiktionary, although no sources are given.) 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:20, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Agreed, the American analogue is ""Get your thumb out of your ass" [3].

A famous but more polite use of the phrase was in 1945 by prisoners of war awaiting liberation from a prison in Rangoon, who wrote on the roof JAPS GONE - EXTRACT DIGIT. Alansplodge (talk) 10:52, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Jackspeak: A Guide to British Naval Slang & Usage (p. 173) suggests that it was part of the procedure for reloading a muzzle-loading ship's cannon, where one of the gun's crew was required to hold his thumb or finger over the vent-hole while the gun was cleaned out reloaded, to prevent oxygen entering the chamber and igniting the new charge. Our Cannon_operation#Renaissance_to_early_19th_century article suggests that the sequence was more complicated than the source above suggests, and anyway, many other sources have it's origin in the RAF in the 1930s or 1940s. [4]

However, Dictionary of Catch Phrases (p. 291) quotes Kingsley Amis:

The full reading is take your finger out and get stuck in and has to do with a courting couple.

Alansplodge (talk) 11:33, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

I wouldn't put it past Amis père inventing that. DuncanHill (talk) 18:52, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

The OED has a citation from an Australian soldiers' magazine in 1919. The naval explanation seems unlikely - see here - and the Amis suggestion, though very characteristic of him, seems only slightly more plausible. (e/c: I agree witrh Duncan on that.) AndrewWTaylor (talk) 18:54, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Is the term "bone-in chicken" commonly used outside of the United States/North America?

I've recently learned from watching American food videos that Americans call chicken with bones "bone-in chicken" (in contrast to chicken without bones, or stuff like chicken tenders and chicken nuggets). Over here in my Asian country, the term seems to be virtually non-existent (at the very least I've never heard it used it here). While boneless chicken is a known term over here, I've never heard the term "bone-in" chicken being used to refer to chicken with bones. Is the term "bone-in" in the context of chicken mostly an American or North American term, or is it also used in other Anglophone countries outside North America? Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 12:04, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Yes, it sometimes appears in British English. [5] Bazza (talk) 13:07, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

It would be understood in British English, but it is not commonly used in the UK. Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:09, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

We sometimes talk about "beef on the bone", an expression I particularly associate with the BSE scare of 1997, which resulted in it being banned from sale for a few years. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 18:42, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

I've not heard it in North America. It would be interesting if you could provide some examples. --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:28, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

@Baseball Bugs: It's commonly used by the US-based food website (and its associated YouTube channel) Mashed. An example of the channel using that term is in this YouTube video (the term is used shortly after the timestamp). I think I've also heard the channel and others using the term, but other examples don't come to mind right now. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 03:48, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Looking around I've also come across other American websites that use the term, mostly cooking sites or restaurant menus. Some examples include [6], [7], [8], and [9], among others. I'm not sure if it's more commonly used among the general American public but at the very least it seems to be common among American cooking and restaurant circles, so I was wondering if it was also commonly used in places like the UK or Australia, or if it's a predominantly North American term. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 04:16, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

One of the biggest chicken outfits is KFC, and I don't see anything about it on their website.[10] However, in Google there seem to be plenty of references, mostly touting how leaving the bones in enhances the flavor. It does seem like a more technical term, as at a place like KFC it would be pretty obvious which items have bones and which don't. --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:04, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

KFC (or a restaurant in general) isn’t the place to look, since their fried chicken is always bone-in; they don't need the word. Look at supermarkets that sell bone-in and boneless chicken thighs and breasts side by side; they use those phrases so the buyer can differentiate between the two (especially when the product is in a cardboard box or other opaque container).

They differentiate because although bone adds flavour it also adds weight, and the consumer should know what they're paying for. Also, some recipes (fried, roasted) are better with bone-in, skin-on chicken, and some (stews, curries) are better with boneless and skinless. 24.76.103.169 (talk) 02:54, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Some uses found on British web sites:

• (Leicestershire-based) — "Chicken supremes are bone-in chicken breasts with part of the wing bone still attached."^[11]
• (North Somerset-based) – "For this recipe we’ll be using bone in skin on chicken thighs."^[12]
• (The Independent) – "900g bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs or drumsticks (4 to 6)".^[13]

Attributes like bone-in and skin-on are the attributive uses of (with the) bone in and (with the) skin on, as in: "chicken breast (skin on / bone in)", offered for sale by a butcher webshop based in Cambridgeshire, England, who further advertize their offer with, "We've left the bone in and skin on these breasts to lock in the moisture while cooking, so they’re extra juicy and succulent."^[14] Here a butcher's in Yorkshire offers "bone-in chicken thighs" for sale, while the URL of the webpage uses the slug free-range-chicken-thighs-bone-in.  --Lambiam 08:19, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Does it talk? --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:45, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Slug free chicken! The best kind. DuncanHill (talk) 03:05, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

The usage "bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs or drumsticks" seems very odd indeed to me. I would expect thighs and drumsticks to be on-the-bone and unskinned unless otherwise specified, not the other way round. DuncanHill (talk) 03:03, 20 April 2022 (UTC)