I am amused that the Snowdon Mountain Railway, which exclusively used steam traction until the 1980s, now divides its services into "Heritage Steam Experience" (ugh!) and "Traditional [sic] Diesel Service".
I am amused that the Snowdon Mountain Railway, which exclusively used steam traction until the 1980s, now divides its services into "Heritage Steam Experience" (ugh!) and "Traditional [sic] Diesel Service".
It's a bit like "Traditional Ales" which actually means keg fizz, because if it could be called Cask or Real Ale it would be.
I always wonder about "home made". If it doesn't mean someone made them at home and brought them in in a tin, it's rubbish.
I am irked by the use of 'that ilk' by non-Scots, when they mean 'that sort of thing'. In formal Scots, I understand, 'Sir Hector McTavish of that ilk' means 'Sir Hector McTavish of McTavish', in other works, Sir Hector is descended in the direct male line from the original McTavishes. These things are important in Scotland. I'm not Scottish, but perhaps a Scots shipmate could enlighten us as to the correct usage.
I am irked by the use of 'that ilk' by non-Scots, when they mean 'that sort of thing'. In formal Scots, I understand, 'Sir Hector McTavish of that ilk' means 'Sir Hector McTavish of McTavish', in other works, Sir Hector is descended in the direct male line from the original McTavishes. These things are important in Scotland. I'm not Scottish, but perhaps a Scots shipmate could enlighten us as to the correct usage.
You're right that "McTavish of that Ilk" would be the style of a clan chief. Different clans use different styles, so some will be "Name of Name" and some "Name of that Ilk". But "ilk" isn't a magic word that means something aristocratic and clannish - it has been re-adopted into English from Scots, but it's wider use is also prevalent in Scots.
Using "Jim and his ilk" to mean "people like Jim" is perfectly normal in contemporary Scotland. My Scots granny used to use it all the time.
I was wondering how long it would be before the language populists would descend like the Assyrian, like the wolf on the fold... Longer than I thought, actually...
I often hear someone describing their reversal of their position on an issue as having done a 360. Well, no. A 360 puts you back to where you started. A reversal of position would be a 180, but somehow seems inadequately emphatic for those who failed geometry.
Re: Where are you living at? I remember hearing a fellow student (I think a Nola native) asking me "Where you at?" i.e., asking me how I was. I knew him to speak perfectly grammatically, so took it as rather charming turn of phrase.
I was wondering how long it would be before the language populists would descend like the Assyrian, like the wolf on the fold... Longer than I thought, actually...
I often hear someone describing their reversal of their position on an issue as having done a 360. Well, no. A 360 puts you back to where you started. A reversal of position would be a 180, but somehow seems inadequately emphatic for those who failed geometry.
Re: Where are you living at? I remember hearing a fellow student (I think a Nola native) asking me "Where you at?" i.e., asking me how I was. I knew him to speak perfectly grammatically, so took it as rather charming turn of phrase.
Populism is an interesting turn of phrase; I have always seen it as descriptivism. When I started studying linguistics, it struck me as revolutionary to record what is, rather than what should be. At the same time, obviously one can teach about appropriateness in various contexts.
I often hear someone describing their reversal of their position on an issue as having done a 360. Well, no. A 360 puts you back to where you started. A reversal of position would be a 180, but somehow seems inadequately emphatic for those who failed geometry.
This is an ongoing argument between my husband and I.
There is somewhere we drive to, which is on the right hand side of the road, but there is a "no right turn" there. So we drive on to the next roundabout, go all the way round and return on the same road, in order to make a left-hand turn into the place.
I say we do a 360 at the roundabout because we go round the whole circumference of the roundabout - 360 degrees.
My husband says we do a 180 at the roundabout because we enter it with the car pointing south, and exit it with the car pointing north - 180 degrees.
Your husband is correct. You need to ignore the fact that you have driven round a roundabout and consider the situation if it had just been a simple crossroads instead.
If you go straight on you will have turned through 0 degrees.
If you turn left OR right you will have turned through 90 degrees.
If you do a U-turn in the road (not recommended!) you will have turned through 180 degrees.
Turning through 360 degrees means doing a complete circle on the road and then continuing in the same direction you were going at first - pretty but pointless!
But if I over-laid a giant full-circle protractor on top of the roundabout, I would be entering the roundabout at 0 degrees, driving all the way round and exiting at 360 degrees, surely?
Never mind Americans and Brits speaking different languages - when it comes to directions whilst driving we have passenger and driver speaking different languages.
Get a satnav involved it's even more fun. Especially if it hasn't been updated to take account of the extensions to the M8 this side of Glasgow. 'Turn left in 500m. Turn left in 100m. When convenient, make a U-turn and leave the next roundabout at the second exit. What the f*ck are you doing driving down the middle of a field?'
But if I over-laid a giant full-circle protractor on top of the roundabout, I would be entering the roundabout at 0 degrees, driving all the way round and exiting at 360 degrees, surely?
Never mind Americans and Brits speaking different languages - when it comes to directions whilst driving we have passenger and driver speaking different languages.
No, because while you do 360 degrees clockwise (well, nearly so; the exit comes a few degrees before the entry or there'd be carnage) on the roundabout, you do 90 degrees (or nearly so because as above) anticlockise as you enter and exit, making 180 altogether.
This is an ongoing argument between my husband and I.
Please tell me that the devil made you use the nominative pronoun as the object of a preposition.
My husband and I have an ongoing argument.
It wasn't the devil - it was the fact that my mind is so confuddled with the idea that the dot marked 360 degrees on a full circle protractor actually indicates 180 degrees that my ability to write grammatically shrivels and vanishes.
Have enough years passed for it to be traditional to have a yearly thread to gripe about grammar and then argue about the evolution of language yet?
It's a tradition across English culture, isn't it? I don't know if it's so common in the US, or for that matter Scotland or Ireland. But it gives that delightful mix of snobbery, pedantry and nostalgia that is rarely equalled.
jj watches Irksome solecisms gradually morph into Grammar wars.
I'm going to hate myself for saying this, but you can always start (another) Grammar thread! jedijudy
Heavenly Hostly Thread Herder
My husband says we do a 180 at the roundabout because we enter it with the car pointing south, and exit it with the car pointing north - 180 degrees.
Which of us is correct?
Your husband is correct - you have used the roundabout to turn your car by 180 degrees. The fact that you have done so using (almost) 360 degrees of the roundabout as a turning device isn't relevant - you could have barged across the central reservation and done a u-turn or a 3-point turn, and you'd still have "done a 180" because you have altered the orientation of your car by 180 degrees.
But if I over-laid a giant full-circle protractor on top of the roundabout, I would be entering the roundabout at 0 degrees, driving all the way round and exiting at 360 degrees, surely?
No. The 0 degrees should be at the top of your roundabout (i.e. the straight-ahead exit) as you have turned neither to the right nor to the left to get to it. If you were turning right or left, you'd only have turned 90 degrees - even though you've travelled much further round the roundabout to get to it!
I know it seems a bit of a paradox. You might find it easier to think in vector terms:
Straight ahead = 0 degrees.
Right turn = +90 degrees.
Left turn = -90 degrees.
About turn = +180 degrees.
About turn in reverse = -180 degrees (but you'd probably get hit by a lorry before you got there).
Misreading the signs, getting totally muddled, missing the straight-ahead exit and driving all the way round again to get to it: +360 degrees.
Indeed so. There is one major roundabout near us which was resurfaced last year. When they repainted the lane markings, they did so wrongly, in a way that was positively dangerous. The Council had to hurriedly erase and re-do them.
By the time you get out of the roundabout and are back in (or nearly so) your original position on the road, you have done 180 degrees. The roundabout, on the other hand, has done 360.
No?
Well, then, to conflusticate things even further, consider your state if you had gone two or three times round the roundabout before exiting it. 180 degrees, or 720? 1080?
I am thinking everyone is right and everyone is deserving of praise for their reasoning. Alice in Wonderland has this lovely segment in it:
the Dodo suddenly called out 'The race is over!' and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, 'But who has won?'
This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo said, 'everybody has won, and all must have prizes.'
If you merely bend in one direction and then bend back so that you're going the same direction you started, you've done 0 degrees. 180 means you're heading back the way you came.
A 360 would be to go all the way around the roundabout and exit on the opposite side you came in -- a 0 degree plus a loop de loop.
<mumbles> It's all in unit circle trig. What do they teach them in these schools?
My way of thinking about it would be that to go straight ahead at the roundabout you have travelled on 180 degrees of the roundabout but your direction has changed by 0°.
My way of thinking about it would be that to go straight ahead at the roundabout you have travelled on 180 degrees of the roundabout but your direction has changed by 0°.
You have, but you also travelled 90° in the other direction on entry and exit, which reduces the net deflection to 0°
Unmathemathical as I am, I can see that the car you are in changed its orientation by 180°. The dimensions of the space in which you did this are irrelevant..
But if I over-laid a giant full-circle protractor on top of the roundabout, I would be entering the roundabout at 0 degrees, driving all the way round and exiting at 360 degrees, surely?
Never mind Americans and Brits speaking different languages - when it comes to directions whilst driving we have passenger and driver speaking different languages.
No, because (assuming driving on the left) you turn 90° left onto the roundabout, then 360° right on the roundabout then another 90° left. That totals 360° right and 180° left giving a sum of 180° right.
The 180/360 degrees might be easiest understood if you consider the car staying still, and the roundabout/road/world turning. I find this easy as the universe does actually revolve around me.
If you view it this way, the world has to turn 180 degrees to get you pointing back the way you came. The fact you actually have to drive around all of the roundabout to do this is irrelevant. If you continued, very shortly, you would join where you arrived again, and have turned 360 degrees. The difference between the exit and entry is really important. you really only turn at the far end of the roundabout*.
At the same time, I find those who would put mathematical accuracy above clarity of speech very irritating. Including myself.
*In fact, on a large roundabout, you turn the wrong way firstly, which is why you have to turn so far back, before turning the wrong way again on exit.
There is one that bothers me at the end of Prayers of the faithful/people/ Intercessions: "all those whom we love or are called to love"
What does that imply?
One's putative grumpy old Auntie, the cat that shat on the mat, "the poor"??
This afternoon, on the CBC R1 national newscast, We were told that people have been "flaunting" Covid regulations. Ughhhh!
I'm sure we can find some people who have been bragging about their country's regulations, and how they are better than some other country's inferior attempt...
Comments
It's a bit like "Traditional Ales" which actually means keg fizz, because if it could be called Cask or Real Ale it would be.
I always wonder about "home made". If it doesn't mean someone made them at home and brought them in in a tin, it's rubbish.
You're right that "McTavish of that Ilk" would be the style of a clan chief. Different clans use different styles, so some will be "Name of Name" and some "Name of that Ilk". But "ilk" isn't a magic word that means something aristocratic and clannish - it has been re-adopted into English from Scots, but it's wider use is also prevalent in Scots.
Using "Jim and his ilk" to mean "people like Jim" is perfectly normal in contemporary Scotland. My Scots granny used to use it all the time.
*sings*
Ilka lassie has her laddie
Nane, they say, hae I
Yet a' the lads they smile at me
When comin' thro' the rye.
AIUI, that's an altered version of Burns' song 'Comin' thro' the rye', and I take Ilka to mean each or every, in this context.
I often hear someone describing their reversal of their position on an issue as having done a 360. Well, no. A 360 puts you back to where you started. A reversal of position would be a 180, but somehow seems inadequately emphatic for those who failed geometry.
Re: Where are you living at? I remember hearing a fellow student (I think a Nola native) asking me "Where you at?" i.e., asking me how I was. I knew him to speak perfectly grammatically, so took it as rather charming turn of phrase.
Populism is an interesting turn of phrase; I have always seen it as descriptivism. When I started studying linguistics, it struck me as revolutionary to record what is, rather than what should be. At the same time, obviously one can teach about appropriateness in various contexts.
Yes, actually, it does. Look it up in any good-sized dictionary, such as M-W or the OED.
We don't have to agree with the Romans, just with one another. They're dead. Fuck 'em.
This is an ongoing argument between my husband and I.
There is somewhere we drive to, which is on the right hand side of the road, but there is a "no right turn" there. So we drive on to the next roundabout, go all the way round and return on the same road, in order to make a left-hand turn into the place.
I say we do a 360 at the roundabout because we go round the whole circumference of the roundabout - 360 degrees.
My husband says we do a 180 at the roundabout because we enter it with the car pointing south, and exit it with the car pointing north - 180 degrees.
Which of us is correct?
If you go straight on you will have turned through 0 degrees.
If you turn left OR right you will have turned through 90 degrees.
If you do a U-turn in the road (not recommended!) you will have turned through 180 degrees.
Turning through 360 degrees means doing a complete circle on the road and then continuing in the same direction you were going at first - pretty but pointless!
Never mind Americans and Brits speaking different languages - when it comes to directions whilst driving we have passenger and driver speaking different languages.
No, because while you do 360 degrees clockwise (well, nearly so; the exit comes a few degrees before the entry or there'd be carnage) on the roundabout, you do 90 degrees (or nearly so because as above) anticlockise as you enter and exit, making 180 altogether.
Please tell me that the devil made you use the nominative pronoun as the object of a preposition.
My husband and I have an ongoing argument.
It wasn't the devil - it was the fact that my mind is so confuddled with the idea that the dot marked 360 degrees on a full circle protractor actually indicates 180 degrees that my ability to write grammatically shrivels and vanishes.
It's a tradition across English culture, isn't it? I don't know if it's so common in the US, or for that matter Scotland or Ireland. But it gives that delightful mix of snobbery, pedantry and nostalgia that is rarely equalled.
I'm going to hate myself for saying this, but you can always start (another) Grammar thread!
jedijudy
Heavenly Hostly Thread Herder
Your husband is correct - you have used the roundabout to turn your car by 180 degrees. The fact that you have done so using (almost) 360 degrees of the roundabout as a turning device isn't relevant - you could have barged across the central reservation and done a u-turn or a 3-point turn, and you'd still have "done a 180" because you have altered the orientation of your car by 180 degrees.
I know it seems a bit of a paradox. You might find it easier to think in vector terms:
Straight ahead = 0 degrees.
Right turn = +90 degrees.
Left turn = -90 degrees.
About turn = +180 degrees.
About turn in reverse = -180 degrees (but you'd probably get hit by a lorry before you got there).
Misreading the signs, getting totally muddled, missing the straight-ahead exit and driving all the way round again to get to it: +360 degrees.
By the time you get out of the roundabout and are back in (or nearly so) your original position on the road, you have done 180 degrees. The roundabout, on the other hand, has done 360.
No?
Well, then, to conflusticate things even further, consider your state if you had gone two or three times round the roundabout before exiting it. 180 degrees, or 720? 1080?
I'll shut up now.
A 360 would be to go all the way around the roundabout and exit on the opposite side you came in -- a 0 degree plus a loop de loop.
<mumbles> It's all in unit circle trig. What do they teach them in these schools?
You have, but you also travelled 90° in the other direction on entry and exit, which reduces the net deflection to 0°
No, because (assuming driving on the left) you turn 90° left onto the roundabout, then 360° right on the roundabout then another 90° left. That totals 360° right and 180° left giving a sum of 180° right.
But the car simultaneously completes a 180 degree rotation about its own centre.
Shall we start a driving thread? (Which I'll avoid, as I don't drive.)
Ewwww! Mousethief! If YOU'RE into necrophilia, by all means, get to it! But leave the rest of us out. Dirty old rodent. 🤣🤪
I knew someone would go there. So. It was you.
If you view it this way, the world has to turn 180 degrees to get you pointing back the way you came. The fact you actually have to drive around all of the roundabout to do this is irrelevant. If you continued, very shortly, you would join where you arrived again, and have turned 360 degrees. The difference between the exit and entry is really important. you really only turn at the far end of the roundabout*.
At the same time, I find those who would put mathematical accuracy above clarity of speech very irritating. Including myself.
*In fact, on a large roundabout, you turn the wrong way firstly, which is why you have to turn so far back, before turning the wrong way again on exit.
If it's inaccurate, how can it possibly be clear? It seems to me that being right is necessary, but not sufficient, for clarity.
I find myself wanting to say "passed what? the driving test? a large bowel movement?"
What does that imply?
One's putative grumpy old Auntie, the cat that shat on the mat, "the poor"??
I'm sure we can find some people who have been bragging about their country's regulations, and how they are better than some other country's inferior attempt...