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would you say an angry person has a temper, or has lost their temper? when your contract is up, is it better to resign or resign? why is it that some projects fail due to a lack of oversight, while others fail due to a huge oversight? if you find a $20 bill in your mailbox, should you pay it or spend it? why is it that when you get a strike in baseball it's because you didn't strike the baseball? when overlooking your results, how can you be sure you didn't overlook anything? just wondering.. |
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english..this happens when you have one word to describe 20 things. |
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did you find a My First Big Book of Riddles or something? |
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you know, they call them Grape Nuts, but there are no grapes and no nuts! what is the deeeal with that?! |
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actually, i was reading some mutual fund reports, and i kept coming up to the word 'oversight'.. which made me start thinking about other words with two opposite meanings.. and so i came up with this quasi-yogi/carlin/seinfield attempt at humor/wit. |
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the overlook and oversight ones don't work by my understanding of those words, they only have one use |
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i still wonder how come people don't mix up , and in english... but english is a great language. not full of aberrations, rules that make no sense, millions of exceptions that make even less sense etc like... well, every other language i know of! |
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the answer |
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would you say an angry person has a temper, or has lost their temper? an angry person has a temper. a person in a rage has lost their temper. when your contract is up, is it better to resign or resign? Hello American English - this is why it pisses me off. Resign has only one meaning and once it's done, you've resigned from your job. You can't resign a piece of paper, a contract, a document, a cheque. You sign it again. why is it that some projects fail due to a lack of oversight, while others fail due to a huge oversight? Isn't it that some projects fail due to lack of oversight, and some others due to a huge overhead? I don't know, I'm not too up on the meaning of the words.. if you find a $20 bill in your mailbox, should you pay it or spend it? Really don't see what the problem here is - you spend money, whereas you pay somebody money. they're two totally different verbs, one is a transitive, one is a ditransitive. why is it that when you get a strike in baseball it's because you didn't strike the baseball? Ask an American. Probably because it's an abbreviation for being "struck out". when overlooking your results, how can you be sure you didn't overlook anything? Hello American English again. More misuse of a word that distorts intended meaning - If you've overlooked your results, then you certainly can be sure you overlooked something (your results). If you've looked over your results, then it's a different story. Different usage of the verb, different meaning. Does this clear everything up? |
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fuck, messed up the formatting.. would you say an angry person has a temper, or has lost their temper? an angry person has a temper. a person in a rage has lost their temper. when your contract is up, is it better to resign or resign? Hello American English - this is why it pisses me off. Resign has only one meaning and once it's done, you've resigned from your job. You can't resign a piece of paper, a contract, a document, a cheque. You sign it again. why is it that some projects fail due to a lack of oversight, while others fail due to a huge oversight? Isn't it that some projects fail due to lack of oversight, and some others due to a huge overhead? I don't know, I'm not too up on the meaning of the words.. if you find a $20 bill in your mailbox, should you pay it or spend it? Really don't see what the problem here is - you spend money, whereas you pay somebody money. they're two totally different verbs, one is a transitive, one is a ditransitive. why is it that when you get a strike in baseball it's because you didn't strike the baseball? Ask an American. Probably because it's an abbreviation for being "struck out". when overlooking your results, how can you be sure you didn't overlook anything? Hello American English again. More misuse of a word that distorts intended meaning - If you've overlooked your results, then you certainly can be sure you overlooked something (your results). If you've looked over your results, then it's a different story. Different usage of the verb, different meaning. Does this clear everything up? |
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On second thoughts about the resign/resign thing, it could actually be easily distinguishable in speech.. Resign (pronounced with an 's' - risaI∫) - to sign a something again Resign (pronounced with a 'z' sound - rizaI∫) - to resign from a job |
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let me be the first to say, real people don't know / care what a ditransitive verb is, and plus the word in question there (bill) is a noun right? |
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yeah, well you can always ask or go find out. i missed the fact that the example was focusing on the ambiguity of the word 'bill' - i thought it was looking at pay/spend. In that case, "a twenty dollar bill" is different to "a bill for twenty dollars" and that's how the two meanings are differentiated. |
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thanks for clearing that up, I was going out of my head here |
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A contact is never resigned (for continuation) it is renewed. Plus you can't resign (termination) upon the expiration of a contact as you haven't anything to resign from. |
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Lack of oversight implies that there has been poor supervision of a project. Huge oversight means that there has been a major (unintended) omission or mistake. Strike, in baseball terms, is the reduction of the phrase "to pitch a strike" in that the pitcher offers the batsman the opportunity to strike the ball. If the batsman fails to hit the ball within that allowed number of pitches they are "struck out". |
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i'm having a question about a particular sentence in a text...: « And since my mother's death, which was six months before we lay by the eel traps under the stars, my father's yen for the dark, his nocturnal restlessness had grown more besetting. » what i don't get is "lay". present? what's the meaning here? (if someone had asked me whether this was gramatically correct or not, i would have said it was not...) |
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if you find a $20 bill in your mailbox, should you pay it or spend it? is a joke about the fact you can call paper money a bill, redrum |
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Context chaps, context. Ignore the context at your peril. If you are too stupid to work it out in its proper context you're too stupid to be speaking the langauge. ner. |
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lay is a stupid word. lay in this case is a verb rather than the past tense lie (as in lie down). It was heavily used in nautical terminology and that seemed to make the leap to mainstream English. In the context of your sentence it means 'situated ourselves'. |
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yeah, i know, i corrected myself. ecnadniarb: i don't know about that.. would one lie beneath the stars, or situate themselves beneath the stars? |
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i think "lay" in that case is just the past-tense of the verb "to lie down" |
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yea that's okay |
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to lay would be to position themselves. "lay up" when a ship was in for repairs, possibly the origin of the phrase "laid up with (an illness etc.)". "lay by" remaining stationary while heading into wind, used now as a term for a road side area to stop in. But there are tons more uses of the word...like "lay into" meaning beat the shit out of someone. |
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i thought the past tense of "lay" was either "laid" or "lain"... my mistake : X |
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And since my mother's death, which was six months before we lay by the eel traps under the stars, my father's yen for the dark, his nocturnal restlessness had grown more besetting. The whole sentence is in the past-tense. "Since my mother's death", "was", "six months before", "we lay", "his resltlessness had grown"... Presuming an "eel trap" is some kind of fishing vessel which can have the action of "lay by" performed on it, "lay" would have to be put into the past tense. Since the vessel is the object of this strange nautical maneuver, the sentence would be written as: ...we layed/laid by the eel traps under the stars... just like one could say, "he was laid to rest" or "i laid the flowers on the table" - once "lay" is taking a direct object, its past tense changes to "laid". Here, the sentence is in the past tense, but the verbform doesn't change, indicating that there is no direct object and that the meaning of the sentence is simply that "we" (whoever that is) used to lie on the ground by the eel traps, under the stars. |
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Get laid. to put ones wee wee inside a ninny |
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It depends, as i outlined in my previous post: I lie on the bed. I am lying on the bed. I lay down on the bed. I laid the flowers on the table. |
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shh this is serious now dave |
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sorry,i do get carried away |
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thanks |
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1. An angry person has a temper. When they're actually being angry they've lost their temper. 2. You can only resign if the company wants you. Resigning from a contract is a different thing. 3. The lack of oversight is poor planning and means they didn't plan ahead. The huge oversight means they put too much faith into the success. 4. That's just stupid. They're two different things. 5. Also stupid. |
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And since my mother's death, which was six months before we lay by the eel traps under the stars, my father's yen for the dark, his nocturnal restlessness had grown more besetting. I read it as though it was setting a scene. They are currently situated under the stars by the eel traps and the references to the past are providing a background. You could be right though, it depends on what preceded and follows this sentence. |
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I think some people are not getting it; he's not genuinely confused about the meaning of the word, he is just pointing out that there is a large scope for confusion in the english language, which non native speakers have agreed about |
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from your post: he's not genuinely confused about the meaning of the word from uzim's original post: what i don't get is "lay". present? what's the meaning here? |
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i knew the meaning of the verb, i just thought it was the present tense instead of the past tense and wondered what was the meaning conveyed by what i had wrongly identified as present... |
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from the dictionary.. overlook: tr.v., -looked, -look·ing, -looks. a) 1. To fail to notice or consider; miss. 2. To ignore deliberately or indulgently; disregard. b) To look over; examine. basically, the word is it's own opposite.. same thing for oversight. |
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ok.. when someone has lost their temper, do they still have a temper? |
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no,because they cant find it |
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it's a saying, an idiom. don't take it so literally. that's not how language, especially in the case of an idiom, is used. as for your definition of "overlook", how's about you look in a proper dictionary, and NOT Webster's. |
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It's the evolution of poor english. What should really be said is that they've lost control of their temper. |
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show me a dictionary that doesn't have both definitions. |
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i don't imagine the oxford english dictionary has both. that misusage of "overlook" is an americanism. it's not found in british english.. at least i've never come across it. i'd be very, very surprised if both definitions were in the OED. |
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yes but you're irish and they make up words which aren't in the OED. |
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the 'compact' online oxford dictionary says.. overlook • verb 1 fail to notice. 2 ignore or disregard. 3 have a view of from above. • noun N. Amer. a commanding position or view. |
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well, there you have it. |
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Of course english looks poor on paper. But it all works out well in practice. |
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