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A better example for why regionality matters: what does "pants" refer to?
by Izkata 2y ago
A better example for why regionality matters: what does "pants" refer to?
- lupusreal 2y agoThat's what a tired dog does.
- gerdesj 2y agoNo, they only pant. ----------------- OK, at this point I really need to explain what on earth is going on here: "what does "pants" refer to?" - pants refers to trousers and pants refers to underpants and of course pants refers to pants as a noun. Pants also refers to heavy breathing as a verb. I have absolutely no idea how we ended up with this situation, where pant(s) is a noun and a verb and really odd. I'm going to blame Britain, US and Italy (via Latin) and not necessarily in that order. "A dog pants when they are hot but they only pant when they are hot." Note how I end up slapping an extra s in for no apparent reason - actually, it is when I don't put a verb in front of that word. So: "a dog will pant" ... "a dog pants". The extra s on the word seems to make it a verballish thing. On the bright side this is why phishing emails always look a bit wank.
- marky1991 2y ago"will pant" uses the infinitive, it's not conjugated at all. "He/she/it pants" is the third person singular conjugation.
- smcin 2y ago> how we ended up with this situation, where pant(s) is a noun and a verb and really odd. I'm going to blame Britain, US and Italy (via Latin) and not necessarily in that order. Because (in English) adding -s(/-es) makes plurals of (most regular) nouns, and also makes 3rd person singular declension of (most regular) verbs. Other examples of noun+verb collocations: books, shows, scents, raises, views, votes, comments, dates, dogs, aims, bugs, ends, grades, hunts, launches, lifts, marks, moves, posts, rains, rates, records, rows, sets, signals, tracks... Examples with -es: searches, watches, punches (This is going to be much more common in English than Italian/Spanish/Latin because English uses -s/-es for both nouns and verbs.)
- singleshot_ 2y agoGuy from jerkcity.
- inkyoto 2y agoRubbish / nonsense / drivel / twaddle / claptrap etc. Virtually unknown outside the UK.
- filterfish 2y agotwaddle is word I haven't heard for a long time (I moved from the UK to Australia 27 years ago). It's a great word!
- inkyoto 2y agoIt is a lovely word, indeed, and it is undeservedly heavily underutilised, hands down. I find myself using it nowadays rather sparingly and mostly in just one phrase (and its semantic derivatives): «all that twaddle […]».
- ghaff 2y agoI would say nonsense was quite common in the US. Otherwise agree (although I would get the meaning).
- inkyoto 2y agoIt is all pants to me (I was actually «translating» pants into Universal English).
- waldothedog 2y agoRubbish, nonsense, drivel, and claptrap all recognizable to me, a Yankee. Twaddle is a new one tho!
- mkl 2y agoAll of these are common in NZ ("twaddle" is a bit old-fashioned). I had no idea "nonsense" was supposedly regional, and four dictionaries I just checked make no mention of that (and include American sources of quotes).
- d1sxeyes 2y agoFor what it’s worth, although this is often considered an Americanism, a lot of regions of the UK (particularly in the North) have consistently used “pants” to mean trousers. https://www.ourdialects.uk/maps/clothing/ https://www.ourdialects.uk/maps/clothing/