"Oh So Very Many Questions Than Before Not Worth Their Own Thread" Thread Vol. XXVI

[Flying Pig]

Shakespeare regularly has time at night being counted by how many times the watch on the gate has been changed, which Caesar also does in his military writings. In the day, the position of the sun, angle of the shadows and general intuition probably worked well enough for cultures which didn't really do deadlines.

 

[BvBPL]

I do love this term. It does not really exist in Greek in any similar manner, due to the Byzantine timeline.

Mostly interested in why it was formed in this way. "Tower of the clock" or something similar would have been a lot more descriptive, although the later more common existence of such towers could render it a pleonasm.

In what language did the original phrasing appear? Also: how did it develop to the English one?

"Tower of the clock" would be the way a Romance language would use the term. In that case, "of the clock" is a prepositional phrase that modifies tower.

In "clock tower" the word clock becomes effectively an adjective modifying the noun tower.

In English is common, indeed nearly universal, to favor using the noun as an adjective by placing it ahead of the noun it is modifying. You can see this in street names. We have Park Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue, but France has Avenue des Champs-Élysées ("des" being a preposition meaning "of"). Instances were this rule is not followed become notable exceptions, such as Avenue of the Americas. (which, in that case, is in part necessary because the definitive article doesn't fit well into preceding a plural noun acting as an adjective. "(The) Parks Avenue" would sound funny. Also, the nonstandard use, as well as the conspicuous inclusion of the article, serve to emphasis the street as honoring the Americas.)

I suspect that this grammatical rule favoring preceding nouns that modify other nouns over prepositional phrases probably has Germanic roots.

 

[Kyriakos]

^Also likely it has to do with lack of noun clauses in most of those languages (although German does have noun clauses, while French does not).

Here the term would either be an adjective (eg The divine way) or use an article (Way of the divine), OR if it had a noun first (the name being two nouns in total) then the first noun would be in an altered clause, effectively making it mean the same as if an article would exist in the name

 

[Flying Pig]

Indeed - compare Schadenfreude, Gruppenleiter, Fussgaengerzone, and so on.

 

[Kyriakos]

Indeed - compare Schadenfreude, Gruppenleiter, Fussgaengerzone, and so on.

Schadenfreude?

Oh, you mean Epichairekakia

 

[BvBPL]

That example is a bit more complicated because divine has very different meanings depending on what part of speech it is being used as.

In "the divine way" the article modifies the noun "way," meaning there is one way that people are talking about, or at least one divine way. "Way of the divine" may mean either that there is one divinity and this is His way (used as an adjective) or that the way is the way of the one divine of which we are speaking (used as a noun).

 

[Kyriakos]

+1

Yes

I just used that example due to some of the possibilities there covering the clock-tower one (without using only nouns).

 

[Borachio]

Go to Search, select Advanced Search, and then play around with the fields in the Search Options.

 

[Kennigit]

nvm, ascending order of search results

 

[cybrxkhan]

In America, cottage cheese is typical eaten with what other things (that aren't sweet or fruits)?


Cottage cheese has been the latest addition to my allowed foods as I'm gradually returning to a somewhat more "normal" diet, so I was wondering; I ate cottage cheese before but now I'm liking its flavor, so I'm thinking of eating it more when I get well and have a relatively normal variety of foods to choose from (well, as normal as normal can be for a vegetarian with Crohn's disease).

 

[PlutonianEmpire]

When it comes to sparse and spotty wireless internet on a mobile, with only about one or two bars in the icon, which browser for Android handles it best, meaning the fastest retrieval of and/or downloads/uploads of data? Firefox, Chrome, or a different browser entirely?

 

[Daird]

In America, cottage cheese is typical eaten with what other things (that aren't sweet or fruits)?


Cottage cheese has been the latest addition to my allowed foods as I'm gradually returning to a somewhat more "normal" diet, so I was wondering; I ate cottage cheese before but now I'm liking its flavor, so I'm thinking of eating it more when I get well and have a relatively normal variety of foods to choose from (well, as normal as normal can be for a vegetarian with Crohn's disease).

Bagels immediately jump to mind.

 

[Hygro]

"Tower of the clock" or something similar would have been a lot more descriptive

Not every clock tower has to be a divine icon.

 

[Synobun]

After I eat cheddar cheese (specifically that, does not happen with any other), the front of my neck smells like it. It's not sweat, it's not spilled cheese. It also happens after I eat spaghetti, though then it's more of a spaghetti smell. It is only with these two foods. Possible causes?

 

[Dachs]

Hey anyone know WTH is inside water towers?

Mostly spiders, I hear.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It probably is sweat sysensa, just very small (but pungent smelling) drops you can't see.

 

[Borachio]

Smell is a most peculiar sense. Every now and again, when things seem to be going especially well (so, very infrequently), I can smell vanilla in the most unlikely places.

 

[cybrxkhan]

Smell is a most peculiar sense. Every now and again, when things seem to be going especially well (so, very infrequently), I can smell vanilla in the most unlikely places.

I can definitely understand this.


For instance a few years ago, there was a certain anime I watched. Every time I thought about that anime, and specifically a particular character, this certain odor came to my nose. It wasn't really pungent or nice smelling either, but it was certainly distinct. I have literally no idea what that smell was or how it came to be - perhaps it was something that was cooking in the background when I was first watching that series, I dunno. Anyhow it doesn't seem to happen to me anymore these days.

 

[Borachio]

Wow! You mean this sort of thing happens to other people?

I've never had any reason to think I'm different in any way, but I've been so mystified by this phenomenon that this is the first time I've ever mentioned it to anyone.

 

[Arakhor]

Previous thread.

Why do different countries have different voltages and sockets? Why haven't things been standardized?

The US still uses Fahrenheit, despite one of only a couple of countries in the whole world to still do so. What makes you think that the far more onerous task of converting every single electrical socket and appliance to work on a single voltage and/or socket would be even remotely easy?