The Word Is Not 'Stockade'!
Ostadan
Posts: 1,130
I see a new product, “Muelsfell Medieval Cages, Chains and Stockades.” It contains a ‘Personal Stockade’ prop. This is not a stockade. It is a pillory. It is often confused with ‘stocks’ (which held people's ankles). But a 'stockade' is something else entirely, a wall made of upright posts. Since about 2010, I have been hearing Renaissance Faire customers using ‘stockade’ for the prop pillory (boyfriend confidently mansplaining this to girlfriend, typically) and correct them when I can (including some juicy stories of actual cases from Elizabeth's time when someone was punished in the pillory, which was a very severe punishment indeed), but had no idea that this misinformation had become so widespread. I do not know what people now imagine when they see a Civil War-era movie and hear that someone is to be confined to the stockade.
Bless me, what do they teach them in these schools nowadays?
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Comments
It's fine. Humans don't need to know what words mean, so long as the Ai systems all agree.
I feel your pain, but it's as hopeless as explaining the difference between rogue and rouge in World of Warcraft. Or when to use an accent grave against when to use an accent aigu, which even every single newspaper gets wrong every single time..
Or when NATO is an acronym and should be capped and not included in news text as 'Nato' by the BBC. How would they like it if we referred to them as the 'Bbc'?
Brits commonly spell pronounceable acronyms like NASA (unlike a TLA like BBC) with only an initial cap. At least it is a consistent practice, though annoying when applied to a word like NASA which is a proper name. Nevertheless, I do not think it unreasonable to expect people who are selling a commercial product to make at least a bit of effort to use words correctly.
Much farther back than that. The RenFest in Minnesota had a set listed as a "stockade" in the 1974 & 1975 programs. By 1979 they'd shortened it to "the stocks" (I haven't seen programs from 1976-1978, so not sure where in there it changed).
But it's not even NATO. It's OTAN (According to France ;) ).
I agree about the pillory, stockade & stocks issue. The whole point of language is to let people know what you mean. Using the wrong word entirely means that people get the wrong end of the stick, or end up on the wrong side of the pointed log wall.
Regards,
Richard
Another mistake I often see is mistaking a lectern for a podium. A podium is the stage or platform one stands on, and the tall desk is a lectern. I even hear this on the news when someont is making a speech. That one bothers me a lot.
I can't even comprehend how anyone could mistake stockade for stocks
maybe it's because Eureka Stockade is a well known uprising against the government on the goldfields in Australia so a term one would not think of as anything else but a barricade
I can understand mistaking stocks for a pillory, I have used both interchangeably myself though to be fair the stocks I picture have both hands and feet fastened.
With most of the news agencies they continually refer to the "T" as Turtle instead of Tortoise, and the "N" and "A" as "North American" instead of "National Association (of)"... They start going on about what is basically an organization created by tortoises seeking to improve their communities through charity work and late night card games (with some heavy drinking involved) as though it were some sort of quasi-military organization protecting Europe from the forces of evil or something...
Which really annoys most of the turtles I know because most of them belong to the NOTV (National Organization of Turtle Volunteers) which you virtually never hear about and actually is out there protecting the entire world from evil organizations and various space aliens...
Their founder, Gamera recently mentioned something about their frustrations with this situation in an interview on Good Morning America.
In general if you get a little beer or scotch in a turtle and there's no shutting them up about that.
I generally don't know a lot of Tortoises, so I don't get to hear the other side of the argument and the one tortoise I still keep in touch with is a Galapagos Tortoise and he's like 145 years old and senile as hell...
He still keeps talking about the Titanic like it happened last week... in his defense his brother was a crewman onboard and White Star Lines never officially acknowledged his sacrifice by staying below decks with the other electrical engineers to keep the lights on till the ship's last moments.
I'm not even sure how he knows that, but I think an otter who worked with his brother once told him that.
But yeah... The National Association of Tortoise Organizations (which if you think about it is just a weird moniker, like a hat on a hat) NATO does good work and definitely keeps the liquor industry in business, but it's no NOTV, and Turtles do have a understandable reason for being annoyed by how mainstream media overlooks their works.
Even scientific organizations hardly acknowledged the recent near miss by the football stadium sized (UEFA class 4 sized) celestial object "2024-MK" was the work of Gamera who flew out into space to divert it from earth... not only that, but if it weren't for the work of thousands of turtles who volunteer their time tracking celestial objects, we might have woken up one morning to a very big surprise.
Sorry, I guess I've been hanging around with turtles too much...
Which in itself is a little weird, because the turtles around here are mostly Box Turtles who bear many superficial similarities to Tortoises but are not tortoises, and every time they get drunk and start going on about this whole thing, most of the other patrons at the bar are like "Shut up, you are a tortoise, you jerk"... which really gets them mad... if you really want to see a turtle throw hands, call them a tortoise... granted even if they start to rush you, you can usually casually walk away and get another drink and use the restroom by the time they get halfway towards you, but it's still awkward.
Anyway... I seem to have forgotten my point... something about football stadium sizes? Not even sure if I was talking about real footballs or those brown rugby balls... ?
Whatever...
Enjoy this timeline (not sure which one this is) and till the next time I find my way back here, have a great time and stay safe, hugs and puppies and all that rubbish.
Bye!
yay McGyver is back
edit see he never left complaint thread but I never go there as get too many Mod emails
It's just how words are. They change meaning. People borrow new ones from other languages. Schools can only keep up as the street will always far outpace them.
Even the multinational companies step on these land mines. Mitsubishi, for example, brands a popular SUV as pajero world-wide, except in Spanish speaking countries. Thanks, BBC, for an enlightening explanation why this is so.
Cheers!
Since when do Brits care what France has to say about anything?
For me, the worst is people mispelling "fantasy medieval (whatever)" as "viking"
True, that's why we called the UK terminus of the Eurostar rail network Waterloo.
The AI will probably think it's a beverage. Lemonade, Gatorade, Stockade. It's statistically likely that words ending in "ade" are beverages.
And Charade is just a shortened version of Cherryade
You've got me there. Regards, Richard
My last job was in records for a multinational corporation. Among other things, I had to help make sure everything was entered correctly in the computer system so it would be retained/destroyed properly. Came across a lot of entries titled "Receipts for the Bimbos."
...turns out it was a bakery. The person I was working with and I both had a good laugh when I explained what that means in the States. I'd been thinking their team building parties were a lot wilder than ours.
'I couldn't care less' except when the phrase is changed to 'I could care less', but it, somehow, still has the same meaning!
Not quite :)
'I couldn't care less' = I have reached my bottom limit of caring.
'I could care less' = I still care a little bit but I am near my bottom limit.
Not Brits the English. Scotland, part of Britain, had a very good relationship with France up until the English stole our King and called us United (No I'm not a Scottish Nationalist.)
It's the usual suspects, our american friends. Merriam-Webster has a little etymology on it...
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/could-couldnt-care-less
'I couldn't care less' = 'I could care less'
They then go on to show where each is used in the proper place and then say they are interchangeable when they have already proved they aren't :) Anyway, Grandma's grammar was always right :)
We need a real life Hari Seldon to set up a foundation, to keep real knowledge safe while the world descends into chaos.
That's already happened: Wikipedia. <snigger>
Regards,
Richard
Well I finally found out the source of 'NATO|OTAN'! Got to love the French. I never heard that when I served in Germany, Greece, or England. Thanks for clearing my confusion up.
Mary
In French, NATO is: "Organisation Du Traite De L'Atlantique Nord". I dare not try to say it, as my accent is vile and mispronounciations are rife.
I once went to a conference in Paris, and followed some fellow Brits into my hotel. They asked for their keys in English (which I feel is a bit rude in the capital city of a country), and the staff behind the counter acted all blank, not appearing to know what was being requested. After a long pantomime which involved the main man almost reaching over the counter to get his own key, they left for their rooms. I tried my vile French, and suddenly the counter staff were all smiles and knew English, to a much better standard than my French. Oh dear.
Regards,
Richard
I feel like crying seeing this
it gets worse as you scroll down
I have to admit, I couldn't care less about what they say about 99% of the english language and how to handle it.
Maybe we could get the Internet turned off, and then back on again. That might fix it.