5 ms·
Why not use proprietor?
by monkeybutton 4y ago
Why not use proprietor?
- causalmodels 4y agoBecause it leads to confusion. Example: Is the proprietor of a bar the person running it or the landlord who owns the building?
- akhmatova 4y agoActually, it is generally understood that the owner/proprietor of a bar is the business owner (aka license owner) -- and that this in general is not the same person who owns the bricks. A more clearcut case of semantic confusion I can see a crappy AI creating out of the blue would be: "My proprietor said if I didn't pay the rent soon she was gonna ..." Which clearly has a very different (and basically nonsensical) meaning than a the more natural formulation using the now thankfully forbidden L-word.
- causalmodels 4y agoAgreed, I was just trying give an example of why using proprietor would create confusion.
- akhmatova 4y agoRight -- the "bar's landlord" is in general not it's proprietor.
- vorpalhex 4y agoWhy not use Landlord, a word everyone understands?
- ehsankia 4y agoHere's the definition of landlord I see > A landlord is the owner of a house, apartment, condominium, land, or real estate which is rented or leased to an individual or business How is that different from "property owner"? The difference is that to you, a native English speaker, landlord is a word you're familiar with. To others, it's a whole new word they need to learn, whereas property-owner is self-descriptive. It's like using good variable names in your code, you don't need to look up the definition of every word when you use re-use words that are common.
- School-Cotton 4y ago> How is that different from "property owner"? They mean different things: one is a subset of the other. A person who owns their own home that they live in is a property owner, but not a landlord.
- ehsankia 4y ago> that they live in Well that's new to me, because I absolutely do not get that from the term "property owner". For example, if I have a place I own that my brother lives in, and someone asks my brother "who is the property owner", he would definitely answer me. I own that property. How does the term property owner say anything about where the person lives in?
- akhmatova 4y agoBecause it promotes wrong and harmful thinking. And must therefore be extinguished.
- nicbou 4y agoPerhaps it's a very specific answer, but I write in simple English, since many of my readers are not native speakers. I stick to words people are likely to understand. Our local immigration office recently picked a newer, better name, but since no one uses it, I'm sticking to the old one. Another one is expat vs immigrant. I favor immigrant, but I can't rename expat insurance to immigrant insurance. The latter does not exist. I use the gender-neutral "they" across the website, but sometimes "he" would be a lot clearer when replacing a singular noun like "the landlord". Sometimes the common word is the right word to use. When in doubt, I refer to Google Trends.
- burkaman 4y agoIf you say "I paid my proprietor this month", nobody will understand what you mean. It's simply a different word with a different definition.