mark (04/02/83)
#R:mitccc:-41200:zinfandel:9300015:000:187 zinfandel!mark Mar 26 10:26:00 1983 ilk: A sick elk, as in "We'd better get that ilk to a veterinarian right away!" I don't remember where I saw it (Nat'l Lampoon years ago?) Mark Wittenberg ...!decvax!sytek!zehntel!mark
mark@zinfandel.UUCP (06/30/83)
#R:research:-35700:zinfandel:9300019:000:705
zinfandel!mark Jun 29 11:07:00 1983
Re: longest words whose letters are in order.
A quick perusal of /usr/dict/words shows these sixteen six-letter words
with their letters in (non-strict) monotonic order.
Non-indented words are in strict order. Note that "chimps" isn't here. (!)
I found no longer words in order.
We will probably be putting our 2.5 Mbyte dictionary on line soon;
I'll check it out and post any new results.
This is, after all, serious work.
abbott
accent
accept
access
accost
almost
bellow
billow
biopsy
chilly
choosy
choppy
effort
floppy
glossy
knotty
Mark Wittenberg
...!decvax!sytek!zehntel!mark
...!ucbvax!menlo70!sytek!zehntel!mark
...!teklabs!zehntel!markmark@zinfandel.UUCP (06/30/83)
#R:research:-35700:zinfandel:9300020:000:1693
zinfandel!mark Jun 29 13:19:00 1983
Re: longest words whose letters are in order.
New results.
A quick perusal of /usr/dict/words shows these words
with their letters in monotonic order. Note that "chimps" isn't here. (!)
Strictly monotonic words (2 words) (both are six letters):
almost biopsy
Non-strictly monotonic words (14 words) (all are six letters):
abbott accent accept access accost bellow billow chilly
choosy choppy effort floppy glossy knotty
*****************************************************************************
As promised, here are the words
from our 2.5 Mbyte dictionary.
Monotonic list (19 words, including two proper names).
(longest non-name is "egilops" at seven letters).
abdest acknow Adelops adipsy agnosy almost befist behint
beknow bijoux biopsy chintz dehors dehort Deimos deinos
dimpsy egilops ghosty
The non-monotonic list (41 words, including two proper names).
(longest non-names are "alloquy", "beefily", "begorry",
"billowy", and "egilops" at seven letters).
abbess abdest accent accept access accloy accost achill
acknow Adelops adipsy afflux agnosy alloquy almost beefily
beefin befist begorry behint behoot beknow bellow bhikku
bijoux billot billow billowy biopsy blotty chillo chilly
chintz chippy chitty choosy choppy clotty dehors dehort
Deimos deinos dikkop dimpsy efflux effort egghot egilops
ellops floppy flossy ghosty glossy knoppy knotty
Note that the longest non-name, strictly increasing word is "egilops"
at seven letters.
Mark Wittenberg
...!decvax!sytek!zehntel!mark
...!ucbvax!menlo70!sytek!zehntel!mark
...!teklabs!zehntel!markmark@zinfandel.UUCP (07/01/83)
#R:research:-35700:zinfandel:9300021:000:850
zinfandel!mark Jun 29 17:42:00 1983
Re: longest words whose letters are in order.
More new results.
Well, I missed a few 6-letter words earlier, but who cares about them
with seven letter words around.
Variation:
How about the longest words whose letters are in reverse order?
I found 5 7-letter ones: 2 had repeated letters and one of the
strictly monotonic ones was a name, leaving 2 strictly monotonic
7-letter non-name words. Thanks to Berry Kercheval for this suggestion.
Here they are, ROT13 (I should have done this
to my previous submissions -- sorry, I'm a slow thinker).
Words with their letters in reverse alphabetic order (7 letters):
fcbatrq
Gfbarpn
jebatrq
Non-strictly decreasing order (7 letters):
fcvssrq
gebbyvr
Mark Wittenberg
...!decvax!sytek!zehntel!mark
...!ucbvax!menlo70!sytek!zehntel!mark
...!teklabs!zehntel!markmark@zinfandel.UUCP (07/12/83)
#R:research:-35700:zinfandel:9300022:000:537 zinfandel!mark Jul 11 05:51:00 1983 Re: egilops or aegilops My Oxford English Dictionary gives only the "aegilops" spelling (the "ae" is a ligature). The (edited) definition follows. Aegilops (from Greek "herb eaten by goats" + "eye, face"): 1. (Medical). An ulcer or fistula in the inner angle of the eye. 2. (Obsolete). The wild-oat or other grass found as a corn-weed. 3. (Botanical). A genus of grasses, native to the south of Europe. 4. A species of Oak. Mark Wittenberg ...!decvax!sytek!zehntel!mark ...!ucbvax!menlo70!sytek!zehntel!mark ...!teklabs!zehntel!mark
donn@hp-dcd.UUCP (07/19/83)
#R:cbosg:0:hp-dcd:17900004:37777777600:240 hp-dcd!donn Jul 17 11:53:00 1983 Little strips of holey paper... My first computer prof called them 'zippers', which seems quite appropriate if your listing is stapled together there, and to get it apart you zip... Donn Terry ...hplabs!hp-dcd!donn ...csu-cs!hp-dcd!donn
preece@uicsl.UUCP (08/17/83)
#R:ecn-ec:12900010:uicsl:8600012:000:122 uicsl!preece Aug 16 14:14:00 1983 Neither I nor Webster's Collegiate (8th) distinguish between the sound of 'ough' in 'dough' and its sound in 'thorough.'
nathan@orstcs.UUCP (09/09/83)
#R:ihuxe:-29900:orstcs:9600001:37777777600:564 orstcs!nathan Sep 7 02:01:00 1983 re words that may be typed with one hand: I submit that the challenge is much more interesting with a Dvorak keyboard, as it is designed so that most words have you alternating hands (this speeds things up, just like overlapped seek). The Dvorak layout is a lot like this (not counting specials) / . , p y f g c r l a o e u i d h t n s q j k x b m w v z Curiously enough, after a bit of experience the "w" and "v" seem more easily accessible than, say, the "p". Can anyone find a word longer than 6 letters that can be typed with one hand?
donn@hp-dcd.UUCP (09/21/83)
#R:utcsrgv:-208300:hp-dcd:17900006:37777777600:311 hp-dcd!donn Sep 15 18:16:00 1983 (Just back from vacation, so a bit late; anyway:) In an discussion on natural language parsing in artificial intelligence the following came out: Time flies like the wind. Fruit files like the banana. This takes that same point about multiple parses and clubs you with it. Donn Terry hplabs!hp-dcd!donn
emrath@uiuccsb.UUCP (09/25/83)
#R:utcsrgv:-208300:uiuccsb:10500003:000:141
uiuccsb!emrath Sep 25 03:35:00 1983
And how 'bout this one we spotted in net.unix-wizards.
The UUCP manual (which HP calls "The HP-UX Asynchronous User's
Guide") ....notes@ucbcad.UUCP (10/06/83)
#R:utcsrgv:-208300:ucbesvax:6900006:000:337 ucbesvax!turner Sep 6 00:06:00 1983 The original joke goes (more or less) like: Time flies like the wind Fruit flies like a banana I mention this because of a paper I once read, co-authored by U.C. Berkeley professor Manual Blum, called Time Bounds for Selection to which I could only reply, Manuel Bounds for a Banana. [Michael Turner (ucbvax1ucbesvax.turner)]
emjej@uokvax.UUCP (01/07/84)
#R:gatech:-180400:uokvax:4500002:37777777600:114 uokvax!emjej Jan 5 10:08:00 1984 I also recall reading that French uses the present perfect almost to the exclusion of the past. James Jones
rh@mit-eddie.UUCP (Randy Haskins) (01/08/84)
On the subject of foreign tenses... When I learned Spanish, I was told "for the past tense, when in doubt, use the imperfect." Preterite is used minimally, the perfect is used about twice as much, I suppose. -- Randwulf (Randy Haskins); Path= genrad!mit-eddie!rh
elbaum@reed.UUCP (Elbaum) (01/08/84)
The present perfect has nearly replaced the past perfect in French,
and the pluperfect is replacing the anterior past. However, the several
other past forms, such as the imperfect, the past conditional, and the im-
perfect subjunctive, are still intact.
I think the past perfect (passe simple) is fading away because:
a) it covers almost exactly the same aspect and temporal range as the
present perfect; b) its usage has been increasingly confined in the last
couple hundred years to formal, historical, and poetic applications;
and c) the rules for deriving the various forms of this tense are more
complex than those for other tenses, and limited application makes learning
and using those rules less worthwhile.
-Daniel Elbaum
(teklabs!reed!elbaum)laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (01/09/84)
It is funny, but i was told the opposite -- use the preterite in Spanish when in doubt, not the imperfect. Strange, but when I travelled and lived in South America, I discovered that the imperfect was more heavily used. There is one advantage to using the imperfect over using the preterite. While Spanish is a lot more regular than in English, there are irregular verbs in the preterite (but they are all irregular in the same way..) while there are only 3 irregular verbs in the imperfect. So you can say anything correctly in the imperfect without working very hard at it, while doing the same thing in the preterite is much harder. (But still *tons* easier than in English or -- shudder -- Russian). Laura Creighton utzoo!utcsstat!laura
ellis@flairvax.UUCP (Michael Ellis) (01/09/84)
Spanish more regular than English?
Maybe if you only look at the spelling. The English verb system strikes
me as fairly elegant as these things go, in particular:
VP => {PAST|PRESENT} (MODAL) (have + EN) (be + ING) VERB
...which nicely generates a huge number of modes/tenses/what-have-you
in a single formula. Sure, we have irregular verbs, but even the worst has
only 7 forms (be am is are was were been being); most of our irregular
verbs require memorizing only one or two forms - the past participle and
preterit, when it differs from the past participle.
Too bad our spelling is so horrible, though. I always felt that deciding
when to double final consonants in the participles of `regular' verbs was
the most difficult spelling task of all. For instance:
travel => traveled (or is it travelled?)
edit => editing (or is it editting?)
occur => occurred (or is it occured?)
Anyway, ancient Greek always struck me as the messiest verb system I
ever saw. You thought Russian was bad!
-michaelrh@mit-eddie.UUCP (Randy Haskins) (01/12/84)
Well, when I was told to use the imperfect, it was by a teacher who was teaching with the Latin American style in mind. I don't know how the Castellano's (Spain Spanish) deal with it. How long ago was it you took Spanish, Laura? (Or would that be revealing sensitive info? :-) ) -- Randwulf (Randy Haskins); Path= genrad!mit-eddie!rh
grass@uiuccsb.UUCP (01/17/84)
#R:gatech:-180400:uiuccsb:10500015:000:1587 uiuccsb!grass Jan 16 10:42:00 1984 It never seemed to me that Russian was all that bad. The formation of verbs is pretty regular (with a few exceptions that have fairly consistent rules of their own). The biggest hassle is getting the difference between the imperfective and perfective straight, and that's really not that bad either. The difference is a lot like the difference between the preterate and imperfect in Spanish. Bulgarian is MUCH worse because it retained all the simple past tenses from Common Slavic as well as many forms of the compound pasts that are the only surviving past tenses in Russian (forms like "byl" and "chytal" are derived from what was a past active participle. Russian lost the helping verb, other Slavic languages didn't. See Czech.. ja jsem byla, or Serbo-croatian.. my jsmo byli). Add to this the fact that Bulgarian (and Macedonian) ALSO have the perfective, imperfective sets of verbs and you get a very difficult problem. A small consolation is that THOSE languages lost most of the case declention of the nouns (only personal pronouns decline). By the way, in Canadian French the simple past (passe simple) is an active tense used ORALLY, rather than just in writing as in "academy" French. They also use compound tenses built with avoir and etre in that form. Right now, Japanese wins my award for inscrutable verb systems. It's the only language I know that declines verbs on the basis of formality. Lots of verb forms with meanings that usually don't turn up as part of the verb in any language I have studied. (which includes Romance, Germanic and Slavic ones).
berry@zehntel.UUCP (02/28/84)
#R:linus:-64100:zinfandel:9300035:177600:690 zinfandel!berry Feb 7 09:43:00 1984 Holy ****, 'employe' IS in the dictionary (at least the Oxford Universal on my desk). It seems that the word is formed from the past participle of the French verb 'employer', and back when people cared about such things, it was 'employe' for male workers and 'employee' for females. (There should be acute accents on the second 'e' of each word.) Sort of like fiance and fiancee. Since English is by and large genderless, such distinctions have sort of been lost over the years except for a few newsmagazine holdouts, it seems. No-one uses 'naif' instead of 'naive' anymore (nor do they include the umlaut). Berry Kercheval Zehntel Inc. (ihnp4!zehntel!zinfandel!berry) (415)932-6900
berry@zehntel.UUCP (02/28/84)
#R:fortune:-249900:zinfandel:9300037:177600:235 zinfandel!berry Feb 15 14:20:00 1984 Dr. Brown learned PL/I from the (IBM?) manuals?? By himself?? (mostly) I am IMPRESSED! (NO :-) here! I mean it. Have you ever looked at those monsters?) Berry Kercheval Zehntel Inc. (ihnp4!zehntel!zinfandel!berry) (415)932-6900
hamilton@uiucuxc.UUCP (04/26/84)
#R:utcsrgv:-356400:uiucuxc:16800014:37777777600:185 uiucuxc!hamilton Apr 25 20:43:00 1984 "play out" makes at least as much sense as "run off" (sounds like chasing the disk down the hall). maybe they think of the analogy with tape or phonograph records, which are "played".
hamilton@uiucuxc.UUCP (04/26/84)
#R:boulder:-16400:uiucuxc:16800015:37777777600:123 uiucuxc!hamilton Apr 25 20:58:00 1984 as i understand, it's not a regional thing, but an occupational one; construction workers all over pronounce it "colyoom".
steve@hpfloat.UUCP (steve) (01/15/85)
>A usage peculiar to Wisconsin-ites is 'bubbler'. Its more common >name is water fountain (or drinking fountain or...). My wife, who comes from Worcester, Mass., also uses 'bubbler' to refer to drinking fountains. She assumed it was a regional usage of that area. ............................. {hplabs,ihnp4}!hpfcla!steve-t Stephen Taylor
rgh@inmet.UUCP (01/20/85)
The "Second College Edition" of the American Heritage Dictionary
[blue cover] drops the Indo-European appendix. [boo!] They have
also bowed to conservative pressure and dropped some of the most
popular 4-letter words in the lexicon. On the other hand, the
red-cover, full-sized edition of the AHD retains both features.
Randy Hudson
{ihnp4,harpo,ima}!inmet!rghdonn@hp-dcd.UUCP (donn) (04/23/85)
From my experience with Hawiian (what little I have), reduplication
seems to be formally part of the language:
mau fire
hale maumau the firepit in the crater of Kilauea volcano
(lit: house of much fire (no kidding! :-) )
This name seems to antedate the "pidgin" phenomenon in Hawaii as
I think it was known in the missionary era and before. Anyone
at noscvax or elsewhere in Hawaii care to correct me?
As far as the Polynesian languages all being very similar. Definitely.
The chiefs of Hawaii traced their lineage to Tahiti, and there is definite
evidence of some degree of "commerce" between Hawaii and Tahiti before
(but not much after) 1000AD. (Think about old world seafaring at the
time; it's impressive what the Polynesians did.) I can also make some
sense of Maori (to the extent I can make sense of Hawaiian) because of
the strong similarity of vocabulary. It's surprising how close the
various langages of Polynesia are (modulo consonant substitution).
In fact they might be closer than we think today, as the missionaries
"standardized" the spellings differently in different areas: in Hawaii,
the story goes that "k" won over "t" by one vote; "Waititi beach" does
look a bit funny now!
Donn Terry
HP Ft. Collins, Co. (Colorado? Talking about Hawaii???)
P.S. Yes, I know that Hawaii should really be spelled Hawai'i, but
that started after I left. (' is a glottal stop)berry@zinfandel.UUCP (04/25/85)
In article <451@utai.UUCP> gh@utai.UUCP (Graeme Hirst) writes: >In Australia, we always used to call them Chinese gooseberries, which makes >sense as they aren't gooseberries and don't (I understand) originate in China. Well, heck, that's OK: "English horns" are neither horns nor English! Any more self-contradictory words? -- Berry Kercheval Zehntel Inc. (ihnp4!zehntel!zinfandel!berry) (415)932-6900 (kerch@lll-tis.ARPA)
msb@lsuc.UUCP (04/26/85)
Ken Perlow: > > "Possession is nine points of the law." I asked about this > > one (often misstated as "Possession is nine tenths of the law.") Gary Levin: > Courtesy of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (a useful book > when reading net news) > > Possesion is nine points of the law -- It is every advantage a person > can have short of actual right. The ``nine points'' have been given > as: (1) a good deal of money, (2) a good deal of patience, (3) a good > cause, (4) a good lawyer, (5) a good counsel, (6) good witnesses, > (7) a good jury, (8) a good judge, (9) good luck. This looks quite unbelievable to me. Surely the original basis was indeed some phrase meaning 9/10, such as "9 points out of 10". (Which, of course, makes the "misstatement" quite correct, as someone else said.) And then somebody came up with the list in retrospect. Does Brewer's actually say that the idiom is derived from the list? ... I thought not. Maybe "N points" is an old idiom for "N points out of N+1", i.e. N/(N+1) ? Seems to me that I have seen "3 points drunk" for "3/4 drunk" or some such phrase somewhere in British writing, but I can't remember for sure. Mark Brader
muffy@lll-crg.UUCP (04/29/85)
In article <5043@umcp-cs.UUCP> chris@umcp-cs.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes: >I also read the "port out, starboard home" in a book, but I happen to >remember which book [I don't know why!]: it was one of the Three >Investigators mysteries, by Robert Arthur. This was the one with the >rhyming slang ("the bottle and stopper point the way" "the lady from >Bristol rides from a friend" "in the posh queen's Old Ned") ... I also >remember a harrowing scene with a houseboat, but for all the fragments >I remember, I've forgotten the title! > >Sigh. > >O well... does anyone know how reliable Arthur's etymology of "posh" was? >-- >In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 4251) >UUCP: {seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!chris >CSNet: chris@umcp-cs ARPA: chris@maryland Yes! This would be where I read it as well. The title is "The Mystery of the Dead Man's Riddle." Muffy
bwm@ccice2.UUCP (04/30/85)
In article <389@psivax.UUCP> al@psivax.UUCP (Al Schwartz) writes: >In article <490@scc.UUCP> steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) writes: >>> > I have always liked slogans that don't always say what >>> > they try to. For example, >>> > "No heat costs less than oil heat" >>> > This is true. It's cheaper, but colder. >My favorite: > "Nothing else is a Volkswagen". (insert your favorite noun for VW) "It's not a car -- It's a Volkswagen". Oh. -- ..[cbrma, ccivax, ccicpg, rayssd, ritcv, rlgvax, rochester]!ccice5!ccice2!bwm