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English is weird
pwhodges:
Those match the primary usages reported by the (UK) Oxford English Dictionary.
Morituri:
Oh good, someone actually knows. :-)
When I'm speculating on the Internet, I at least *try* to mark it out as speculation, instead of giving people stories that I suppose are probably true or think ought to be true or just hope are true, instead of just pretending something is true.
But, while marking it out is at least better than not, obviously it isn't all that helpful when I'm only speculating because I'm too lazy to go look up the facts.
Hmmm. If it was beef instead of pork fat when we were putting out suet for birds, then it's confusing how much they smell alike.
Tova:
--- Quote from: Morituri on 13 Nov 2020, 11:03 ---Hmmm. If it was beef instead of pork fat when we were putting out suet for birds, then it's confusing how much they smell alike.
--- End quote ---
You mentioning putting suet out for birds inspired me to dive for the book again and quote a section.
--- Quote ---Suet
Suet is an ingredient seldom seen in recipes today. For many people it conjures up images of bird feeders rather than culinary delights. Suet is the fat that surrounds an animal's kidneys, and although all animals have it in varying amounts, in the kitchen the term usually means beef suet, which is the most readily available. Suet is a very hard fat with a high melting point, making it excellent for deep-frying and pastry. Rich, but with no strong beefy flavor, suet is good for both savory and sweet dishes. While it is best known for enriching mincemeat, suet is essential for steamed puddings and make slight, fluffy dumplings. Unlike other animal fats, suet doesn't need to be rendered before use; it can simply be grated, making it a great fat to have on hand. So get that suet out of the birdfeeder and put it back in your kitchen.
--- End quote ---
The book also mentions dripping - "the fat released when the meat is roasted." I remember my parents buying dripping from time to time.
Morituri:
Okay, here's a thing. The word 'Quixotic' - denoting a great deal of effort spent on a cause clearly futile or unnecessary from the outset.
I grind my teeth every time I hear someone saying it "Quick Sot Tick" because long ago I remember that word as "Key Hoe Tick" - and then it occurred to me that I hadn't heard the correct pronunciation in a long time - even from pros, like TV news presenters.
We Americans often "text regularize" things - turning the phonetic spelling thing on its head by pronouncing things the way they're written. So a word that was originally a Spanish name, for example, gets pronounced as though it were a different word. This new word is pronounced as though the same sequence of letters represented English-default orthography, and coincidentally, spelled the same!
Is this now understood to have happened to 'Quixotic'? Do people actually consider the new pronunciation correct?
IIRC we've sort of done the same thing to 'Fresnel.' The man was French and in his name the 's' was silent. But when we're talking about the type of lenses he invented, which arre putatively named after him, the 's' is frequently voiced, resulting in me being annoyed.
Even though actually voicing the 's' turns it into the sound we'd write as 'z' if we wanted to be more specific.
Cornelius:
Ironically, with Fresnel, you arrive back at the historical French pronunciation, which I understand is still used in some dialects.
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