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It irritates me when people talk about "bitcoins", plural. Bitcoin is so divisible that it really seems like more of a "stuff" that can't be pluralized, like sa
by ryanthejuggler 13y ago
It irritates me when people talk about "bitcoins", plural. Bitcoin is so divisible that it really seems like more of a "stuff" that can't be pluralized, like sand or water[1].
I forgot where I read it but there was once a description of data that derided the term "datum", singular, to mean one data point. "To anyone who's ever worked with it, data is a _stuff_." Wish I could find the book or article.
[1] Yeah, you can use "sands" or "waters" in a somewhat poetic manner, but that definitely stands out as a special usage.
- SilasX 13y agoThe terms are "mass noun" and "count noun". You're saying that bitcoin should be regarded as a mass, not a count.
- keevie 13y ago"datum" is pretty common in academic literature. Even more common is treating "data" as grammatically plural: e.g. "The data show..." There are plenty of examples of plural mass nouns though, and they all have slightly different meanings than the usual sense of the word. peoples, monies, sands, waters, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun#Multiple_senses_for_one_noun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun#Multiple_senses_for_... language is complicated, and the rules aren't necessarily rationally intuitive.