User:Quercus solaris

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Salients

The awesome (and awful) nature of natural language: It's strange to ponder the contrast that (1) human minds master fluency of natural language so easily (that is, it is the norm for one's native natural language, and it often happens for additional ones, too), and yet (2) exhaustively documenting it in dictionaries and thesauruses is such a vast task. How does each of us effortlessly know so much that each of us by ourselves is almost hopelessly hard-pressed to write it all down?

The foregoing thought (awesome/awful) also makes me think of the science of natural language acquisition (i.e., humans' attempts to figure out how such acquisition works), where we face the paradox whereby children's vocabulary grows so fast during certain phases (of development) that it doesn't even make sense, from the viewpoint of acquiring lexemes by exposure, that some of these lexemes are acquired at all. The thought is mentioned in one of Pinker's books. My own hunch is that the paradox is resolved by the idea that human knowledge is more triangulated than the exposure notion suggests. Which is to say, some of what humans know is interpolated by triangulation between nodes, involving fuzzy pattern analysis performed upon the blizzard of neuron firings. I don't pretend to understand or explain that thought entirely; I just have a hunch that it's a component of the truth. Which is to say that I guess my brain triangulated a fuzzy notion of it.

That line of thought is about the contrasts of human knowledge versus communication thereof within any one human mind, but the foregoing thought (awesome/awful) also makes me think of the contrasts of human knowledge versus communication thereof in aggregate, across many human individuals. For any topic that you can name, there are some people who are knowledgeable experts, and there are more who are semi-knowledgeable laypersons, and yet many more who are sadly ignorant about it. But the extent to which the latter two groups can quickly and easily find a cogent yet complete summary/overview of (the important upshots of) the knowledge of the first-mentioned group—and ideally one without cost at the point of access, regardless of creation and maintenance costs at upstream points of the value stream (which of course must be paid somehow, but the question is which models for how)—is still lamentably primitive and incomplete in our era. Granted that you can find a sea of low-quality bits and pieces in our era, content-farmed and COI-filled and otherwise, but we still have far to go before we have a really excellent solution as defined herein.

Ontology begins at home.
And then never stops. (Lifelong learning.)
"As opposed to what?"
"Is that the same thing as ?"
"And things like that."
"And so on."
"Not to be confused with ."
"Also known as ."
"A type of ."

People who are masterful (in work, in life, in whatever) have cognitive mastery of—that is, familiar grasp with instantaneous application of—such framing and plumbing and wiring; they do not experience the world as just a basket of random black boxes, as others often do; rather, they inhabit systems, with some clue of the systems' structure.

Wiktionarian corollary: "We aim to include not only the definition of a word, but also enough information to really understand it."

About

Why am I here?

First of all:

Yes, I am aware that this is a waste of my time from various valid viewpoints; but one must understand that I take bites from this apple the way you eat candy from your candy dish:

It's diverting (in a polysemically delicious way: temporarily and entertainingly digressive);
It's often trivially easy (which makes the fact that almost no one does it telling, in an ironic way);
- I keep reminding myself that no one cares — which is to say that out of about eight billion meatbags, fewer than about perhaps a hundred thousand or so truly seem to give an actual real logical fuck about avoiding being moronic, where that activity is defined from some angles that are useful and have some important value,^^ whereas the rest are just spitballin bullshit and smashing one another over the head (shooting from the hip, and building ever-better robots to hallucinate yet more confabulated hip-shooting because they're too lazy to spew all the mindless hip-shootery themselves) — but I've been having some trouble strangling my last shred of give-a-fuck about humanity (it keeps stubbornly refusing to choke to death), for whatever reason. Some might say I'm just a sucker, or a pussy, but to my mind it seems that there's no point in fast-forwarding from 89-seconds-till straight to the plunger-killswitch event itself, and as far as I can tell, most of these other meatbags agree with me on that, even if they don't consider accurate and complete reference works to be worth a rat's ass or an ounce of shit.
  - The standard pros and cons apply. For example:
    - Cons:
      - Cons: fuck em: leave em to their own devices, their just deserts, handwave etc
    - Pros:
      - Pros: fuck em: put em to shame, run rings around em, over and over and over again
        Granted that you can't shame someone who is shameless, which is to say, unshameable. But you can reveal their state for the lols.
      - Pros: be the change you wish to see; model the state you wish to handwave etc
      - Pros: amuse oneself, build a shelf, note to shelf, handicraft handwave etc
    - Cumulative weighting: current status: continue embarrassing them; continue relishing this special species of vicarious embarrassment for them, as a counterweight to the tiresome smugness and self-righteousness that they often exhibit (albeit often merely overprotestively, as a defense mechanism)
      - Addendum, a month or so later: my mind detects the presence of analogy with a seed or microbe landing on fertile soil nearly alone (i.e., one of very few landing there): there is so much potential for the propagation of its genome within this space (i.e., generation of biomass) — essentially an amazing magnitude of such potential — but only because of, and precisely because of, the somewhat surprising lack of any competition from other seeds or microbes where there ought to have been more, according to some respectably sensible modeling. Thus, somewhat surprising, and from some viewpoints counterintuitive, although probably not paradoxical if enough circumspection can be arranged. But there is a rub there, right in that spot. The amount of zen or zenlike whatever that it takes, both to see and to accept the reason for that dearth (upon the earth), is problematic for someone who is able to detect the existence of the dearth.
Each visit starts with just a bite but of course "betcha can't eat just one";
I know I should stop, but the bites are tasty and (like many other people) I like me some comfort food, to take a diversion and blow off some stress;
Because procrastination (e.g., whether between sets or instead of them);
It's probably better for the world if someone fills this pathetic gaping vacuum, anyway;
Set examples of what can be achieved at Wiktionary, regardless of whether the world bothers to achieve it at Wiktionary;
During online meetings, I may sometimes multitask when listening to the presentation is only taking half of my cognitive bandwidth (I am far from alone in this);
On the other hand, after a long session of work that took all of my cognitive bandwidth (plus mopped the floor with it), it helps to decompress for a few moments with something constructive but also pretty easy. The cognitive equivalent of the cooldown walk after a long race. Regarding any counterargument about wasting time: hey, any physical trainer can tell you that skipping the tapering/cooldown is false economy.
- A slightly paradoxical inverse relationship: sometimes the more insanely chaotic things get IRL, the more I blow off steam by making some Wiktionary edits, whereas you would think that it might be less. But I do it for the short bursts of escapism. My brain is built to pay close and calm attention to one mental landscape for a long time on end — both longer and closer than most other people's, in various ways, more often than not. The more the rest of the world IRL insists on acting like twitchy/tweaky toddlers with ADHD who are on crack — a phenomenon that has gotten noticeably worse in the 21st century, by the way, although it wasn't invented in this century — the more I need to take some breaks from their ceaseless error-riddled bullshit. It's a journey and it's a process: one of putting up with as much as one can find a way to manage to put up with.
Things like ChatGPT, as impressive as they are (regarding their nature, and the nature of their output, as far as it goes), are mere confabulatory mechanical ducks (and dangerous ones at that, buzzsaws with no guards and no PPE); what will be more helpful is when they are hitched to (wired up in sequence with) semantic/ontologic sanity tests, and Wiktionary and Wikipedia can help with that, if they are built well enough.
The above concerns Wiktionary's mainspace. Here's a bit of note about this userspace, in all seriousness (notwithstanding all the jokery elsewhere herein): This is my place to go swimming and stretch my legs all the way out, never pulling any punches or wasting half the water down the drain. Elsewhere I must (constantly), but not here in my little fishpond. Hopefully, dear reader, you'll gather that I'm speaking of swimming in a nonaquatic way. In this pond I explore all the way out to the outermost limits of my ability to abstract, in some places herein. In other spots I also just clown around, but there is usually a layer of abstraction that is tingling while I do so. The common theme that you may detect is factiveness — there is an external reality that I am mapping as hard as the mapmaking will take me (that is, mapping my ass off, if you will, and some of you will more than others). Mind your map–territory relations, dear reader; your safety (and mine, and that of all) may depend on whether humans can do so to a sufficient extent (even just halfway might be enough).
- PS: The degree to which you find my userspace worth reading or skimming — anywhere from not at all up to somewhat — will vary quite widely depending on who you are. (Carrollian caterpillar's aside: who are you?) My userspace is of a weird genre that has no name yet. It is a sandbox containing a mixture of (1) notes to self; (1a) partially redacted notes to self; (2) stuff that is holding my interest in recent days and that I am experimenting with writing explications of because (2a) my own self later could possibly find them partly interesting and partly useful too, as feedstock for future extensibility (possible later iterations), and (2b) other people could possibly find them partly interesting and partly useful too; (3) parametric sandboxing (or in some cases beatboxing) that sometimes happens to be partially and coincidentally poeticness-adjacent; (4) part Advent calendar;^ and (5) part other shit that I lack time and reason to list exhaustively here because handwave etc.
  - Dramatis personae: old no-eyes (who turned out to be a Cornish miner, in a nonmineral way); box cat (a distant cousin of the famous one); duck-rabbit (who hopes that you will try to view him from his best side, whichever it may be); and, last but not least, User:Quercus solaris, a character we hope to learn more about in future seasons — so far we know that he is multifaceted and that some Quercuses are more solaris than others.
    - PS: I'm aware that some of these characters are one-dimensional, and that's OK; as with various other semijocular genres, it's accepted that some of the characters are developed with less depth than others. Relatedly, I well realize that some people will be annoyed by the way my scribblings loop back to themes and turns of phrase repeatedly. Closing circuits, shorting them out for kicks sometimes just to see the spark, and recognizing or tracing connections and finding common ground (riding the bus) is part of what this odd genre does. To escape the forms of a genre, one can choose not to read, view, or listen (choosing something else instead), or one can do some more shorting and pull in other regions of material that formerly were insulated. Those are the sorts of options that are available if one wants a change of scenery.
      - PPS: One aspect of the Advent calendar aspect is the consequence that this genre is a hypertext-native genre, to the point that there's no reason even to read a lot of this page at all if one is not going to hover, click, or tap (thus, preview or click through), which I find funny, because I've ended up surprising myself in that respect.
For internal use only:
- Reminders: jotted at 2022-03 (SZ); 2024-02-05 (shittiness calibration)
  - There are leaves, and there are trees, and then there are forests; there are byways and then there are highways (and landmarks). A person is not a motorist-trip, although one can be said to be many such trips, in a manner of speaking.*

Then:

On another level of why: Just take a look around, and see how low the fruit is hanging. It's everywhere you look, if you know what you are looking at. If one can amuse oneself with crosswords or sudoku or tetris or puzzles, with no betterment of the outside world thereby, then one can also amuse oneself here, and simultaneously help build a better set of free resources for the rest of the world. Plus, I just enjoy chipping away at ignorance, and I enjoy continually refining my own and others' command of things like ontology, semantic relations (which amount to the same thing), and critical thinking. For various reasons, I do nonetheless go back and forth on whether to simply stop bothering to contribute to Wiktionary at all, but so far I keep landing on continuing, because a fact about most paywalled reference works, as regards most contexts, is that almost nobody uses them despite pretending that they do, which leaves Wiktionary and Wikipedia as the best places where correct information needs to be/exist, to be found when most people go goo-goo-googling their way through life (both their work life and their personal life; emphasis on the goo-goo, in terms of epistemologic prowess). I should clarify here, though, that people who aren't foolish (and exactly how narrow of a cohort is that, one might well ask) will and should consult good-quality noncrowdsourced reference works first and then consult Wiktionary and Wikipedia in addition to them; and besides the various quite nice ones that are available for free, depending on one's location (e.g., e.g., e.g., e.g., e.g.), anyone who is not destitute should also pony up for access to the ones that cost a bit of money but not much, and anyone who can pay to send their kids to expensive schools but can't fork over a bit more for the rest (that cost somewhat more) is not as clever as they might think.

Then:

On the next level of why: I enjoy causing Wiktionary to eclipse noncrowdsourced dictionaries in its lexicographic coverage's comprehensiveness and also, in many specific cases, quality (although there remain countless holes in its quality, to date). Exactly why I enjoy that is a complex topic. Maybe someday I'll work up a full analysis and explication of it. It has to do with the fact that although there are many fine dictionaries in the world (there truly are, and I value them, and pay for subscriptions to quite a few), there are not yet any truly comprehensively good ones, in the sense of almost exhaustively good ones. I enjoy advancing the front, the leading edge, in that regard. I enjoy poking holes in the shroud of ignorance that envelops us in the form of yet-unrealized dictionary entries or portions thereof that are missing in action, to date, and whose missingness is explained by nothing more than that no competent person ever yet merely got around to cutting that particular hole—until I did. There is a potential that one day Wiktionary may arrive at the state of being the best dictionary in existence. Not the only dictionary that humanity needs—no, we'll always want more than one, and we'll always want a nice variety, and we'll always want the OED and the AHD and the MWU, and medical dictionaries and chemical dictionaries and pharmaceutical dictionaries and engineering dictionaries. But we might eventually find Wiktionary to be the best, in a way where it enters every descriptively valid lexeme, even the ones that no other enters, and it somewhat consistently tends to have an exhaustive list of senses and usage notes for each lexeme. It could happen. And if it does, I'll have helped make it so. And even if that day is many years away (or never arrives), or even if Wiktionary ends up being only the source of many suggestions that show other dictionaries which gaps in their content they need to fill (in case Wiktionary itself is prevented from reaching its potential), in the meantime I enjoy the fact that every day, thousands of people googling particular words often end up at Wiktionary fulfilling the desire for a decent or half-decent entry thereon—in some cases, the only entry thereon to be found in any major dictionary, and in other cases, a better (less omissive) entry than the homologous entries in other dictionaries. And in some of those instances, as a person arrives at one of those Wiktionary entries, its existence or its quality (or both) came from me. I like that. In the interim, until such a day when Wiktionary may be the best (if that day ever arrives), even today it is true that Wiktionary has become a necessary complement to the other major ones, filling the holes that they have left unfilled to date, and is getting continually better at fulfilling that purpose, every time I or one of my many Wiktionarian colleagues makes yet another improvement to it. And every time that happens, we punch another hole into human ignorance, which is enjoyable.

Also:

Now With 80% More Who-Gives-A-Fuck-Anyway™! (Powered by Premium Prioritization For Lower-Pearl Feeding of Swine*)

This tip/lifehack cuts both ways: It's fine to engage in hog husbandry, as long as you keep shit out of the feed.

Corollaries:
- And by shit I mean stuff.
- You don't have to not feed or not husband/shepherd; rather, you just have to do it right.
- Analogue: Anyone with half a head can tell you: By far, the best way to treat hardware disease is to prevent it.
  - Corollary: You gotta keep shit outta there. Corollary: Ralph said that the doctor said that his nose wouldn't bleed if he'd keep his finger outta there.
  - Corollary: Swine and cattle need feeding—and they love it too; and it's fun to feed them. (Regarding cows' barnyard cousins, the hogs, they often talk about wasting one's time and annoying the pig, but the opposite is also true: a pig loves to eat and a swineherd likes to feed him. The difference between love and annoyance lies merely in what's on the menu today.) And it's OK for the feed mixer/blender to keep vitamin powder canisters in the feedroom, but the measuring cup is an important intermediary between the shelf and the bin. What the animal knows or experiences is tastiness and healthiness. She knows not of other stuff, and doesn't want to, or need to.
  - Corollary: When the system fails and there's a nail in there, why doesn't she realize it before she swallows?
    - It's because reasons. She doesn't eat quite like we eat. And that's only natural, and she is quite lovable (that is, we love her anyway), although it inherently predisposes her kind to GI distress. (Even in a world without wire and nails there are sticks and stones and thorns.)
      - Corollary: Who is each person who helps her, either preventively or Tx-wise? Are they a farmer, a rancher, a herder, a vet tech, or a vet?
        Any of the above, contextually. Farmers wear many hats, and a man can be two things.
      - Corollary of the fact that she doesn't eat quite like we eat: the fact that she doesn't eat quite like we eat doesn't mean that she's not good at eating; after all, on some dimensions, she'll kick your ass at eating; for example, she'll eat more just for breakfast than you'll eat all day (and kicking someone's ass is also eating someone for breakfast, or eating their lunch). It also does not mean that the feeding of her is inherently unprofitable, even though our world is inherently unstickandstonable. Multiple dimensions of quality exist for the nature of the eating and feeding.
        Corollary: For mere herders who were hired to reduce the incidence of hardware disease, what are the scope and parameters of that process? They are determined by its constraints. A good engineer can tell you the difference between a problem and a constraint. It's serene.
        Counterpoint: Tabby knows a degree of cheat: he's (ever) clever with a lever. You don't have to not lift, you just have to do it right. It's just a coinstantiation of what they say: Salix ventorum.

—
*Refined pearl diversion saves your time and placates the pig. Hog husbandry varies. YMMV.

What is my nature?

Wiktionary:Babel

en	This user is a native speaker of English.

de-1

Dieser Benutzer beherrscht Deutsch auf grundlegendem Niveau.

nl-1

Deze gebruiker heeft elementaire kennis van het Nederlands.

fr-1

Cet utilisateur dispose de connaissances de base en français.

es-1

Esta persona tiene un conocimiento básico del español.

it-1

Quest'utente può contribuire con un livello elementare d'italiano.

pt-1

Este utilizador tem um nível básico de português.

Search user languages or scripts

As for me, I contain multitudes, but as for the subsets of me that constitute User:Quercus solaris, I can say that I used to think of User:Quercus solaris as a Wikipedian who sometimes edits Wiktionary, whereas lately it seems like User:Quercus solaris is a Wiktionarian who sometimes edits Wikipedia. I suppose it hardly matters, especially given that I've no doubt that it will wax and wane again eventually, anyway. And after all, some Quercuses are more solaris than others. By historical accident I was joined to the subset of those humans with interests in the concern that the basic level of mental ontology that undergirds vocabulary and in fact (even more generally) word finding itself in educated human sentience is yet insufficiently represented or captured across both Wikipedia and Wiktionary and frankly thus also across top hits in STFW instances. Fixing that gap holds substantial promise for improving aggregate QoL and standard of living among humans in various ways (direct and indirect). You're welcome, although in truth I do it more for me than for you, to ward off the concomitants of the current state of hyperendemic ignorance and epistemic impairment. Sometimes finding a way of coexisting is coinstantiated with finding a reason to stay alive.*

Other interesting facts that I can share about myself in this context are that I am a human who lives on the planet Earth, and that I appreciate the Sun, that is, our sun, especially sunshine, although I also appreciate rain, as there are times and places for both, and one cannot live by either alone. Other facts about me are irrelevant to the building of an optimized dictionary and an optimized encyclopedia, as phenomena such as verifiability and blueness of skies are epistemologically independent of (and epistemologically supersede) both personality and personal authority. Moreover, the facts that the misvaluing of personality and the misvaluing of authority are types of neuropsychological incompetence, and that that fact also makes them logically coordinate to, albeit not synonymous with, criminal insanity, are sources of motivation for the building of an optimized dictionary and an optimized encyclopedia. If the work is done well, it will be an honor to, and an honor of, those who did it; and you can be one of them (any of you), which puts some sensible limits on the relevance and importance of me.

Botanical metaphors, like all metaphors (some more than others), do have limits; I like Quercus solaris, but I also like Salix ventorum, especially given that I've no doubt that it will wax and wane again eventually, anyway. Any given selfsame hardy tree both loves the sun and respects the wind, no matter its name, and smells as sweet regardless. Call me fishmeal lol; the chips were carted off a million years ago, although I do like me some fish and chips.

—

*;

Shortlisted toward oughta

Main: oughta

Context

Instantiating a can't-even-swing-a-cat subclass.
In a world of more than a billion English speakers (E1L and ESL/EFL), these are some of the many many words that are attested in many publications (scores, hundreds, thousands) but yet not one single person has ever yet bothered to enter them in any nonpersonal dictionary (that is, neither in any reference work dictionary nor in any of the major COTS spellcheck dictionaries in extremely widely used apps (MS Office, major browsers, and similar);
Regarding "yet": that is, as of the moment that I encountered them as they stood in the way of getting my work done.
I don't even have time to enter each one as I encounter it, because there are so frickin many of them; I don't any longer want to solely add them to the sea/ocean of oughta alone (pending entry later), because when that was all I did then I did not have them marked as shortlisted for entry later (during downtime) (that is, I would lose track of them in the sea/ocean of oughta, and would have to find them again by repeated re-skimming); thus, list them here first, as mere chaotic triage (which BTW is apparently all the more that most people's entire cognitive/conscious experience is, judging from the evidence), which allows for the shortlisting function as well.
- Corollary: If it is here, then yes, it is already attested (in technical content if not lay chatter), which is why it is here.
- Another corollary: People who want to build a competent COTS spellcheck dictionary for English (as opposed to incompetent ones, such as those that ship with MS Office and major browser apps) would do pretty well if they took the population of en-Wiktionary entries that have H2 English, subtracted things such as this, this, and this, and dumped to a .DIC file. It wouldn't be perfect, but it'd be much better than any spellcheck dictionary that Big Tech has supplied so far.
Is it odd that the most comprehensive dictionary of the English language in existence — the English Wiktionary·ʷᵖ — has more than half a million headwords (way more than even the OED or MWU have·ʷᵖ), and yet one can still easily find another workaday, well-attested word to add to it almost every single time one cracks a book, newspaper, or magazine (digital or print)? It strikes me as counterintuitive. And yet here we are.

List population

Top subclass, pending:
- insularity
  - heterosemy, allosemy, heteroseme, alloseme, and a dozen others: extracted theme regarding the lack of lexicographic coverage to date:
    - Worked up here but then redacted. F 'em. I can sense outlines of what it's all about. But it is not for here and now though. All I'll say here for now is that humans make their own beds, and on top of that fact, some people do a lot more bedmaking than others do.
      - PS: The next day: It's weird that yesterday I stepped through my redacted little snit (above) and then this morning I was skimming (the transcript of) Krugman's and Ritholtz's recent conversation and I ended up glancing as well at Smith's mentions (circa 2021) of epistemic trespassing and epistemic squatting, and the open question of how one even defines the boundaries thereof or therebetween. It's all one, all of this jam session. It has to do with the boundaries and limits of expertise (which is not the same as any so-called death of expertise: merely a logical modulation regarding how to do it right), and how the IT of the 21st century has forced humans to recombobulate themselves regarding that ball of wax.
- a bit of empiricism
  - A glance at superempirical prompted the thought that a glance in the corpus would no doubt find that ultraempirical aka ultra-empirical and hyperempirical aka hyper-empirical would be plenty well enough attested albeit uncommon. Yup, the gut was right as usual. But I won't bother to enter them for now because no one else on Earth can be arsed either and handwave etc.
- taxonomic nomenclature of botany: New Latin terms: varietas, subvarietas, forma, subforma
- a rockpicker (person or machine component) does a lot of rockpicking:
  - subsenses
    - a farmer or laborer reducing the stoniness of farm fields
      - in this context, the rockpicker role is a role, not a vocation; the same person may be a fruitpicker this month (for fruitpicking), a cornshucker next month (for cornshucking), and a rockpicker and roadworker the month after that (for rockpicking and roadwork)
    - cleaning out the rocks during ore dressing
      - in this context, a laborer or a machine component may be the rockpicker
  - all of these words are adequately attested in the Google Books corpus
- letterword: synonym of initialism, coordinate term of acronym
  - Some reference works use this synonym. Not many that I know of.
    - Enter it sometime. Give three citations. Label it as rare, because it certainly is.
- pillcam
  - pill+cam: a camera in the form of a pill, such as those used for video capsule endoscopy (since 2001)
    - Hypernym: smart pill in its sense of any electronic device in the form of a pill — a field of endeavour with a lot of developments in the pipeline in the 2020s (and some developments in the pipeline are further along in the movement than others, and some movements are smoother than others lol)
- dunkelflaute
  - Naturalized into English (lowercase and nonitalic) from German Dunkelflaute
    - Assemble citations of the naturalized usage and enter it
      - I doubt that I'll get around to doing so, but at least I noted it here as something that anyone could do anytime anyone was willing
        PS: dunkelflaute and global dimming are conceptually separate/independent things that might overlap in the sense that the latter can perhaps influence the former — any climate change can potentially alter the average weather patterns in any region — but dunkelflaute and global dimming have a shared parameter: shading of the sunshine, in one way or another
- common sense | uncommon sense
  - There are various well-trod pathways in human thought that touch on themes such as (1) "it's funny they call it common sense because it ain't really common" or (2) "sometimes we ought to think outside the box, and common sense (being orthodox) doesn't incorporate enough of that dimension."
    - Notwithstanding the fact that various authors have lightly proprialized·^{proprialized·proprialization} the collocation uncommon sense by making it the title of their books or articles, it remains enough of a lexicalized collocation of common noun nature (albeit mildly polysemic) that it ought to be handled by dictionaries. Perhaps Wiktionary will be one of them that handles it, eventually.
      - PS: Some pathways are more hoof-trod than others, and some commons are more heavily grazed than others.
- wrench hyponyms
  - adjustable wrench; monkey wrench; pipe wrench; spoke wrench
  - combination wrench; box wrench; others
    - doy
- basal cognition — cognition in cells and tissues outside neural circuits and indeed not requiring brain tissue — explained by Jacobsen 2024 (https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0224-44), which asserts that the name for the concept was coined by Lyon in 2018
  - in the same article: embodied cognition | xenobots and anthrobots
- food swamp and food desert — coordinate terms
  - Well established usage; RSs are readily available for citations.
    - As some of those RSs explain — and it had already seemed obvious to me (in my own mind) before I ever had seen any writeups about it (recently) — food swamps are probably a larger problem than food deserts in the United States because they are more common/widespread. The usual problem that most Americans face in this regard is not that they cannot obtain affordable vegetables anywhere nearby — rather, it is that they are inundated with foods of the junk food and ultraprocessed food types on top of the basic meats and vegetables and fruits that are also easily enough available. Having so much choice available is not a "problem" except for in one (big/important) respect — it makes it difficult to do the right thing when one is stressed out in daily life and food offers basically a form of substance misuse as a crutch for dealing with stress. It is not a substance use disorder, but in the long term, the cumulative track record of food choices has a huge effect on health (exposure × duration of exposure; exposure × number of exposure instances).
      - PS: The obvious corollary that some job roles are paid to vigorously deny: it is profitable to sell delicious things to people who definitely want that delicious thing (for the businessperson, it's the perfect combination of high product desirability plus high-volume demand potential), and this fact is not an entirely different theme from the drug dealer class of instances. But you cannot prohibition your way out of it when the instance is food, as opposed to hard drugs. This fact makes it a difficult problem for policy design. Just because the challenge/problem exists doesn't mean that any easy answer/solution does. Themes like nudging and nannying and regulatory burden inevitably come up, because outright prohibition and command and control would be untenable (unless you worship or emulate people with names like Kim Something or Other).
- cramful·ᵃᵗᵗᵉˢᵗᵃᵗⁱᵒⁿˢ is crammed full.
  - syn or cot: chockful, chock-full, brimming, stuffed, jam-packed, rammed
- Encountered incidentally, a sense of the term tea bag homologous to the lunch bag of a sack lunch, no doubt the bag in which to carry a snack for the tea break. It seems to be rare, though, as indicated by preliminary search results so far.
  - Maybe I'll enter it later, if I can scare up some more attestations without the main sense of the term drowning them out in my search results.
    - rel: tea caddy, tea cart, tea trolley, tea wagon, teacake
- There is now (here in the age of commercial 3D printing) a sense of the adjective postprint referring to any of the (myriad) postprocessing steps for 3D-printed objects.
  - I will enter it sometime.
- ⊕recalibrable, syn ⊕recalibratable: re- + calibrable, re- + calibratable
- ⊕unrelievably·ᵃᵗᵗᵉˢᵗᵃᵗⁱᵒⁿˢ — syn: unmitigably; rel: unrelievedly; cf: inconsolably; *‡unmeliorably (†)
  - attenuable | *unattenuable | *attenuably | *unattenuably
    - assuageable | unassuageable | unassuageable | ⊕unassuageably
- Regarding Stabilizer aka Stabiliser, a breed of cattle: so far, WT and WP don't enter it yet (but WP has a red link waiting for it, within a list of cattle breeds), and I'm not worried about how soon they add coverage of it, but I wrote it here because I experienced a TOT moment in trying to recall it, and those annoy me, and writing it here will probably save me from reexperiencing the same one later (the only thing worse than TOT items is having the same TOT item repeatedly).
- ⊕radio room: One who reads the news (that is, the digital newspapers, not a Sh1tTok or Fakeb00k or Instacr@p or XTSFKAT feed as an inadequate substitute for them) will encounter a fact of usage in American English: there is a sense of the collocation radio room that is lexicalized as an open compound synonymous with a public safety answering point, that is, a call center of the emergency dispatcher type; semantically related open compounds include emergency medical dispatch (the function/activity), emergency medical dispatcher (the job role), and emergency operations center. Meanwhile it is true that the open compound call center usually means a commercial one (for customer service and/or telemarketing) when not otherwise specified — but not always. Certainly if Wiktionary can enter radio shack (which it already does, and rightfully should), then it can enter radio room as well, on the same (degree of) basis. The thing to do (for one who wants to enter the term) is to assemble an appropriately strong group of citations (attestations) before creating the entry, allowing them to illustrate plainly and unmistakably the lexicalization of the compound.
  - PS: One of the interesting things about this term, radio room, is that it strikes the public as dated and yet it remains in current use anyway (by the people who run such rooms; as the attestations show). This is unsurprising, though, as one can detect that such inertia of established terms is not rare, if one bothers to pay attention when one sees it.
- to ⊕put some English on a curveball is to put some spin on it
  - put some spin on a recounting
    - put some polish on a turd
      - It is likely that the name for political and marketing spin began by metaphor with putting some spin on a thrown ball (e.g., baseballs as curveballs and other tricky pitches, oblong footballs stabilized by rotation in flight). In American English (most especially in its turns of phrase that originated in the 20th century), baseball metaphors (and other sportsball metaphors) are common in spheres such as business and politics (where people play hardball, play inside baseball, throw someone a curve, and so on). Someone who delves into RSs, to find out whether any support is given there for the assertion of political and marketing spin's name having come from that metaphor, might be able to dig some up. I have a few dictionaries of idioms that should be consulted if I ever bother with this particular item. WP s.v. Spin (propaganda) doesn't yet have any assertion of the origin nor any reference citation about it, as far as my hasty skim today found, but that's not at all surprising, simply because it's only WP after all, and all WP is is whatever Randy in Boise happens to have bothered with yet.
        Admittedly the metaphor of spinning X into Y (at the spinning wheel) also suggests itself in connection with political and marketing spin, when it comes to spinning a tale, especially spinning a tall tale. Quite true, but my gut still leans toward the spin on a curveball as the likely origin of the spin that a spin doctor applies to an event, because it is widely said that they "put some spin on it", which is clearly from the sportsball metaphor and not the fiber-spinning metaphor.
        I took a sniff at PDEI 2e (Gulland and Hinds-Howell 2001), but its entry for spin doctor is tied to doctor/Medicine and gives nothing on explaining spin. Its entry for money spinner is tied to Money and gives nothing on explaining the spinning, but I've no doubt that the metaphor is fiber-spinning. This unmistakably Rumpelstiltskinish scent is obliquely but helpfully reinforced by Wiktionary's assertion that a sense of money spinner is (syn) money spider, which is (syn) sheet weaver, and we all know that spiders spin webs from their silk and thus some of them are called weavers. One fact that this thread's (heh) existence demonstrates is that where Devlin cites Fowler in claiming that everyone both should and can figure out such shit (as this) for themselves, he's not wrong about the leg of the elephant that he's touching, even though he's wrong about the wider elephant. The happy medium is that recognizing the original underlying metaphor underpinning any given idiom is in fact something that natural language speakers both should and can do for themselves to a large degree, especially when duly cross-checking their own hypotheses and remaining consciously and humbly on guard against folk etymology misapprehensions. You don't have to not lift, you just have to do it right. Furthermore, as for abdicating the responsibility, it is one thing for a given person to decide that they can't do it because they know (about themselves) that they don't have much of a head for it — OK, that makes sense and is fair, if they're in fact right about that assessment (of themselves) — but it would be another thing to claim that almost no one else has the authority or standing to do it, either, according to some misapprehension that only certain experts are expert enough to have the epistemic authority even to attempt it. Such misapprehensions sometimes crop up at places such as WP and WT (at the interfaces of w:WP:Verify and w:WP:OR and w:WP:Blue), but the appropriate level of clearance is duly cross-checking hypotheses and remaining consciously and humbly on guard against folk etymology misapprehensions — not any appeal to authority per se. Hell, if "the authorities" want to build dictionaries and thesauri and encyclopedias that render WT and WP superfluous, they're more than welcome to get busy making with such output (and have been welcome for 20-plus years now). I don't see any flying cars around, do you? I see a 2001 Toyota Camry, as it were, yes, and it's a perfectly fine car (as far as it goes), but it ain't flyin me to the moon meanwhile.
- ⊕underreliance — per elsewhere herein
- ⊕Q-Day — attestations
- ⊕disinvert, ⊕uninvert, ⊕disinverting, ⊕uninverting, ⊕disinversion, ⊕uninversion, ⊕disinversions, ⊕uninversions
  - They are all well-attested in their senses referring to reversals of yield curve inversions.
- bridge production·ᵃᵗᵗᵉˢᵗᵃᵗⁱᵒⁿˢ|·ʷᵖ, ⊕bridge manufacturing·ᵃᵗᵗᵉˢᵗᵃᵗⁱᵒⁿˢ|·ʷᵖ, ⊕bridge tooling·ᵃᵗᵗᵉˢᵗᵃᵗⁱᵒⁿˢ|·ʷᵖ
  - These concepts in manufacturing are directly analogous to ⊕bridge therapy·ʷᵖ in medicine.
    - I will eventually enter them, but how soon is TBD (tomorrow, tomorrow + N). Probably sometime when I need a break cognitively from other bullshit.
- ⊕blow up the spot, blow up one's spot, blow up someone's spot: handwave etc
- ⊕outrun one's headlights: to driver faster than allows for the stopping sight distance provided by one's headlights.
  - Apparently many people either trollishly or thickheadedly misapprehend that this phrase must have something to do with exceeding the speed of light; they are either trolls yanking someone's chain or dunces a few Xs short of a Y.
    - Speaking of semantic degradation and human thickheadedness and outrunning things, outrunning human thickheadedness was mentioned earlier.
- Quoted from WP s.v. polysemy as follows. Initial cursory checks see attestations. At some point I will run out of steam on, or time for, fucking with them, but they can sit here and stew in redness for a while if that happens:
  - autohyponymy, where the basic sense leads to a specialised sense (from "drinking (anything)" to "drinking (alcohol)")
  - automeronymy, where the basic sense leads to a subpart sense (from "door (whole structure)" to "door (panel)")
  - autohyperonymy or autosuperordination, where the basic sense leads to a wider sense (from "(female) cow" to "cow (of either sex)")
  - autoholonymy, where the basic sense leads to a larger sense (from "leg (thigh and calf)" to "leg (thigh, calf, knee and foot)")
- up stakes (verb), as a well-known variant of pull up stakes and up sticks (well-known in AmE; possibly in other varieties too) (attestations are demonstrated by, for example, www.google.com/search?&q="who+upped+stakes")
- pack a lunch (it's lunchtime mthrfrs)
  - cot: get up early (shared parameter: morning prep to get ready for a long-ass day) (i.e., if you're planning to F with them, then you'd better get up early and pack a lunch)
    - Relatedly: The definition set (sense population) at see you in hell is too close to &lit alone at the moment — needs one bit of augmentation, because in many (albeit not all) uses of this idiom, there is a semantic theme of "you may defeat me but you'll get yours too" — which is the cognitive setup for how the two antagonists will both be in hell when they next meet.
      - PS — the foregoing assumes a parametric environment in which the speaker freely asserts their own stonecold badassery. "Yeah, I'm one bad mthrfr, you got that right. I'm not denying that I'll be in hell — and I'll damn sure see your ass there, too, mthrfr."
- dinner pail, dinner-pail, dinnerpail (cot: lunchpail, lunchbox)
- breakfast time, breakfast-time, breakfasttime (cot: lunchtime, dinnertime, teatime, suppertime)
  - PS: Some nonmachine mthrfrs are more machine than others. I keep trying to color inside the lines of the archetypal notion of what incomparability and notness are, but they keep dragging me back in. Some nots are more not-ish than others.
- A subclass of WT:CFI borderline cases:
  - Theme of this subclass: They are all definitely attested (per ghits), and furthermore I think many of them probably would pass CFI (with the right corpus sifting), but I am not yet well enough versed in the advanced art of quickly confirming that hypothesis for any given term (in cases where mere/trivial googling and Google Ngram-ing is not quite enough), and thus it is not worthwhile to me to pursue them right now; if I improve my skills in that regard (sometime), reassess later; in the meantime, if anyone with those higher skills wants to enter any of them, godspeed:
  - Population of this subclass:
    - diagrammably (diagrammable+-ly) — a lexical gap that has only rarely been filled by nonce inflection — so rarely that meeting WT:CFI is wobbly enough not to bother with entering it
    - anticipably (anticipable+-ly) — a lexical gap that has only rarely been filled by nonce inflection — so rarely that meeting WT:CFI is wobbly enough not to bother with entering it
    - momentwise (moment-to-moment)
    - shorthandable as (able to be nicknamed as, for the sake of having a convenient handle in the present discussion)
    - in the neighborhood of "summarizable as", "can be labeled here as", and similar
- uniunivalent (alt spelling, uni-univalent); bibivalent (alt spelling, bi-bivalent); unibivalent (alt spelling, uni-bivalent);
  - MWU enters each one, although not all of their alt forms
  - Low priority for me at WT, because: I'm not knee-deep in the content that uses these terms; as for the rest of the world, they can't even be arsed to care

Others, done:
- ✓ ~~yardroom~~; ✓ ~~barnroom~~
  - Why am I literally the only lexicographer on Earth who has ever yet given a shit about these?^fta
    - Should I continue to care? If so, why, and if not, why not? What are the mechanisms by which humans continue to care about Sisyphean shit? Discuss.^
    - I have thoughts about this, and maybe someday I'll collect them herein. It's the same set of underlying forces as with oatlage, ryelage, et al. It may not be worth belaboring, because the problem does have bounds: the population of overlooked terms does have its limits. Just more petulance management, lol.
- ✓ ~~chartage~~
  - ✓ ~~uncommon but well attested~~
    - ✓ ~~as usual, among the GBS hits, there is garbage (e.g., OCR artifacts, proper nouns) and then there are various nuggets of true ore~~
      - Someone else, perhaps Eq as IP, charted that one nicely.
      - https://www.google.com/search?lr=lang_en&tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=%22chartage%22&tbs=,cdr:1,cd_min:Jan+1_2+1870,cd_max:Dec+31_2+2003&num=100
- ✓ (archaic) day man, day-man, dayman — a worker paid by the day — which is to say, a day laborer — OED knows (it enters the solid form of the compound noun); MWU too (accessed 2023-06-01); the rest of the lot are clueless. Evans 1971 contains attestations of the hyphenated form in the plural. At the moment this one falls into a subclass of "I won't bother right now, since most of the world hasn't bothered either." Humans run their mouths an awful lot about dictionaries, considering that 99.9999% of them shirk the load of even basic lexicographic recording of their own language. An example I just touched: Is there any dictionary in the world other than Wiktionary that concisely ties together the hyperlinked semantic relations of anagram, antigram, and synanagram? Even Wiktionary didn't until today. At least now one of them does, although evidently no other yet. PS: Note to self: Regarding a day-man, when you're at it, while you're at it, make sure that man-day is listed as rel. You're the only nonmachine mthrfr on earth who'll bother, and the relation is both etymonic and semantic, as well as dirt-obvious, as the cost of a day-man per day is a man-day's worth, and the output that it pays for is a man-day. What it's worth is a fair question, but one that gets answered with an unfair answer whenever the payer can get away with it. Hogs aren't stupid in all ways; just some.
- ✓ Whereas day shift and night shift are a broad dichotomy (sometimes but often not corresponding strictly to 2 × 12 = 24), the trichotomy of first shift, second shift, and third shift (usually corresponding strictly to 3 × 8 = 24) has been and is so durably important in work life that those three terms meet WT:CFI.
  - ✓ ~~Do the needful.~~
- ✓ ~~A few more intestinal segment connections: Meeting WT:CFI for the following is probably a cake walk (confirm that), but regardless, my motivation for bothering to enter them is ebbed at the moment:~~
  - ✓ ~~duodenoileal fistula or bypass; ileoduodenal fistula~~
  - ✓ ~~ileojejunal fistula; jejunoileal junction or fistula~~
- ✓ ~~plastizyme~~
- ✓ ~~mimetic, senseid|en → a substance that mimics the molecular effects of a lifestyle intervention~~
  - ~~hyponyms → caloric restriction mimetic cohyponym exercise mimetic~~
- ✓ ~~hoghouse~~
- ✓ ~~limeburner~~
- ✓ ~~⊕dyshemoglobinemia·ᵃᵗᵗᵉˢᵗᵃᵗⁱᵒⁿˢ — any of the various ones; hypo: hemoglobinopathy~~
- ✓ drayloads of cargo; production by the drayload: This shortlist is a case of shooting fish in a barrel; just about every time I so much as pick up a book or newspaper (the digital ones and otherwise) I encounter another good solid word that should long since be in any good dictionary and yet is in none or hardly any. Which of course brings to mind the word pathetic. The obvious cot items: wagonload, cartload, truckload, LTL, in the first 3 seconds, before I even switch my brain on.
- ✓ ~~Bovie~~
- ✓ specialty crop — this one is an interesting polysemic (broader/narrower) term of art (technical term), and it's one that meets Wiktionary's CFI and is worth having its senses boiled to their essences at a place like Wiktionary. Some herb essences are more essential than others.
- ✓ ~~euparathyroidism~~
- ✓ ~~slap someone's wrist~~
- ✓ let it be and leave it be have synonyms of let it alone and leave it alone, certainly in AmE and possibly in other varieties too. Their degree of formality or informality (e.g., casual, colloquial) can be adjudicated and labeled. At the moment I am placing them in this bucket as red things that I might bluen someday.
- ✓ ~~endophorically~~
  - ✓ ~~Add 3 citations, from among the many available attestations~~
- ✓ ~~exophorically~~
  - ✓ ~~Add 3 citations, from among the many available attestations~~
- PS — In my haste with the following forms, I accidentally entered some adj and adv forms before checking which ones have an attestation level that is marginal or zero; this is a fuckup for the "Shortlisted toward oughta" section, whose main concept is to be a holding pen (queue) for definitely attested forms. Checkmarks below indicate "yup, enough good attestations are seen ". The obvious ones are not reevaluated here.
- ~~Semantic relations: The cardinal -nyms and their -nymy: contrast set:~~
  - ~~synonym, antonym, hypernym, hyponym, autohyponym, cohyponym, coordinate term, holonym, meronym, comeronym, troponym~~
  - ~~synonyms, antonyms, hypernyms, hyponyms, autohyponyms, cohyponyms, coordinate terms, holonyms, meronyms, comeronyms, troponyms~~
  - ~~synonymy, antonymy, hypernymy, hyponymy, autohyponymy, cohyponymy, coordinateness, holonymy, meronymy, ✓comeronymy, troponymy~~
  - ~~synonymic, antonymic, hypernymic, hyponymic, ✓autohyponymic, ✓cohyponymic, coordinate, holonymic, meronymic, comeronymic, troponymic~~
  - ~~synonymous, antonymous, hypernymous, hyponymous, ✓autohyponymous, cohyponymous, coordinate, ✓holonymous, meronymous, ⊕†comeronymous, troponymous~~
  - ~~synonymically, antonymically, hypernymically, hyponymically, ⊗autohyponymically, ⊕†cohyponymically, coordinately, ‡holonymically, ✓meronymically, ⊗comeronymically, ✓troponymically~~
  - ~~synonymously, antonymously, hypernymously, hyponymously, ⊕†autohyponymously, ⊕†cohyponymously, coordinately, ‡holonymously, ✓meronymously, ⊗comeronymously, ‡troponymously~~
  - Those few red links are no loss, even if you're speaking solely in an allowlisted vocabulary, because the general case of adjectives and adverbs is that anything said or done Adj-X-ly is done in an Adj-X way, which gets the job done adequately tersely.
- ~~carvability~~
- ~~cowbarn and horsebarn as solid compound alt forms of cow barn and horse barn open compound nouns — both well-attested~~
- ~~cervonate~~
- ~~derich (AFR in aviation; cot/syn-ish, disenrich, lean)~~
- ~~nonevacuated~~
- ~~arteriodilation cot to venodilation~~
- ~~arterioconstriction ant to arteriodilation~~
- ~~mucopexy~~
- ~~mucopexies~~
- ~~mucosopexy~~
- ~~mucosopexies~~
- ~~mucoplasty~~
- ~~mucoplasties~~
- ~~mucosoplasty~~
- ~~mucosoplasties~~
- ~~hypermorbidity~~
- ~~hypermortality~~
- ~~pipestave~~
- ~~mucolytically~~
- ~~conflatable~~
- ~~misprojection, misprojections; misproject, misprojects, misprojecting, misprojected~~
  - ~~misextrapolation, misextrapolations; misextrapolate, misextrapolates, misextrapolating, misextrapolated~~
- ~~burosumab (INN), MAb~~
- ~~endonymically and exonymically — well-attested adverbial counterparts to the adjectives~~

Loop closers

Orientation

When you're the only nonmachine mthrfr on Earth who'll bother
- The longer this sim runs, SZ handwave etc
  - Lol fta
    - Corollary: you may whine, but we tend not to
      - PS: yes, I know, I'm just a lousy stinkin loopcloser; but: CUNH3LL lol
    - Corollary: an endless list of loops needing closing sets up a potential for an endless loop of loop closing
      - It could make one loopy if one weren't equipped with extraloopular loops that deloop the relooping
        Lol fta
      - This loop loops back to a loop in which interlooped scarcity is contemplated, one of the potholders of which is bottomless venality of a sort. Fortunately though, at least, loop the loop.^↑⟳↓

List population

hopper
- colexification and its hypos; colexify; dislexification; dislexify
- OPV cot
- UASs blue + cite at UAS + point back at that

—

open nodes
- next

—

dunzo
- GRR — the one out of eight billion who can shift their arse·^ — GWR, hypos GAWR, GCWR, GVWR
- content clause
  - content clause : subordinate clause ::
    - hypo : hyper
  - pending
    - subordinate clause syn dependent clause syn embedded clause
      - hypo:
        content clause cohypo relative clause cohypo adverbial clause
  - the only wrinkle is variable opdef of subordinate clause: look into how much buy-in there is for the alternative schema in which it is cohypo to relative clause rather than hyper to it
    - well, yes-but: fuck em, because if they suck so bad at grammarizing anyway, then they most likely can't even articulate (nor think clearly about) the semantic relations within their own grammarizing schema, anyway

At sea with no one at the helm

General notes

These are exemplars of why Wiktionary remains necessary; and, my fellow humans, this is why we can't have nice things.

List population

As late as 2024,·^2024-03-18 almost no dictionaries enter histotype except Wiktionary. I won't list the many that failed to enter it and the single other one that I found that did enter it, except that I will point out that not even the NCI Dictionaries did.
- No one at the helm anymore?·^{histotype+histotypes • histotype+histotyping}

Fun with litotes

This section isn't not redacted.
- See the overpetulance detection circuit, which isn't unrelated.
  - See? I'm not not a good sport, and I ain't doing a half bad job of it — not at all I ain't.

Topics worth a word

These are topics for which English, as of the time of their entry in this list, does not have an established term but for which it probably ought to, considering the socioeconomic importance of the topic. They are thus topics that are worth a word, in more than one sense: worth having a term for, and worth having a word about (i.e., worth discussing).

sustainwashing = sustain + washing = the sustainability analogue of greenwashing (or subset thereof, in ecologic subsenses). The problem can often be real, even though there must always be some practical limit to how close to ideal/perfect any real-world process can get. But the distinction is gross deception (or not), including gross self-deception (or not).
humanewashing = humane + washing = the humaneness (animal welfare) analogue of greenwashing. The problem can often be real, even though there must always be some practical limit to how close to ideal/perfect any real-world process can get. But the distinction is gross deception (or not), including gross self-deception (or not).

Sense mapping

One of the great advantages, and chief pleasures, of a hyperlinked dictionary is that the pervasive polysemy and homonymy (especially acronymic homonymy) of natural language can be bridged to a convenient degree: there is often no good reason (besides haste in editing) not to link to particular word senses rather than to the top of an entry—most especially a long-ass entry, but in fact almost any entry. Thus, cut to the chase with link landing.
Such link targeting precision has two classes of applications, both interesting: (1) as both a substantial pedagogic aid and a substantial convenience to the human users (net: better user experience on Wiktionary), and (2) perhaps as a sort of de facto semantic map for the benefit of machines who are NLPing their asses off, trying to speak human languages (or at least to pull a mechanical duck or idiot savant in specious simulation of that trick). For the human users, one of the components of the aid and convenience is that the hover-popups over the link are much more useful when the link is sufficiently targeted. Under that condition, they are often capable of providing on-hover short glosses of word meanings without the user even leaving the present page view. That's a whole other level of usefulness to a human user beyond the mere implication of "here's a link to what that means, if you feel like packing a lunch for the trek after the landing (as it were, cognitively)." But even without that consideration (as for example on mobile), to click a link and actually land where the semantics should take you, instead of in the lobby at the front desk with a thicc-ass fine-print directory and a long walk down the hall in front of you, as it were, is such an obvious improvement over your basic basic-ass wikilink.
The main tools available to us for this purpose are (1) the anchor-link syntax of wikilinking generally (like ]), which is delicious and which has seamless interwiki operability with Wikipedia (i.e., as a target to send to from there), but which is limited to subheading level of targeting precision (rather than sense-wise level); (2) template:senseid, which is delicious, ~~albeit of limited interwiki integration with Wikipedia~~ and I just learned that it works both intrawiki and interwiki, as long as you use the "English:_" interfix; and (3) template:anchor, which has seamless interwiki operability with Wikipedia and any degree of targeting precision, although one better perhaps explain oneself when invoking it (for example, ""), lest other editors feel some misplaced need to challenge its use. Fortunately, a link to Wiktionary from Wikipedia usually is precise enough just by use of the anchor to a subheading (#), so the latter consideration can be neatly side-stepped.
One acknowledgeable disadvantage of this level of construction of the dictionary's wikitext is that the wikitext is somewhat less inviting to newbie editors (i.e., new to wikitext markup), but (1) that speedbump is clearly solvable if a good Wiktionary:VisualEditor should be made available (as it is for Wikipedia), and (2) besides, aren't we all, by now, quite tired of the argument that content development should be hamstrung by the limitations of any given app or content management system? Did any inventors of the typewriter leave off the "H" key and then say to their clients, "Well, if you were good (and worthy of using my "fine" invention), you would simply internalize the flaw, and decide to just avoid using any words with the letter h in them"? No. That's a bass-ackwards attitude. So link away, with precision targeting. Right down the chimney from 10 klicks away, as it were.
Another acknowledgeable aspect of this level of construction of the dictionary's wikitext is that it represents a vast mountain of potential work to do (or a vast plain of fruit to harvest) and thus will not get done (i.e., become finished) anytime soon. That's fine. I submit that we should nonetheless improve incrementally in this direction (anyway/regardless) and allow the bits that have been achieved so far to serve as exemplars of the goal, role models for emulation in further incremental improvements of the same type. It is conceivable that AI may become good enough to start helping (to harvest the vast orchards), but I'm not holding my breath regarding how soon that might happen. There's a lot of obtuseness and a lot of not-my-problem-ism around to get in the way of that (among both the AIs and the humans who seek to improve and apply them), and those factors don't promise to disperse anytime soon.

Valid insights but sacrificed to terseness

Context

TL;DR: The TL;DR version of this context is that some people think that Wiktionary itself needs to be entirely and exclusively the TL;DR version of metalanguage, whereas others see additional use cases besides that one. The skins idea would solve the discrepancy. In the meantime, this vessel exists for the nonlive content, should it ever be of interest to anyone anywhere later and should it ever become live later.

Explanation

This distinction (i.e., valid insights but sacrificed to terseness), and the question of setting its cutoff threshold, raises the possibility of building a unified Wiktionary with content that is XML tagged for multiple output skins, with XSL/XSLT filtering for each skin:

One skin, a general dictionary for beginners (such as K-12 and ESL/EFL), that is, a learner's dictionary, which could potentially be (dynamically) subdivided into either an advanced learner's dictionary or a monolingual learner's dictionary;
Another skin, a college dictionary;
Another skin, an unabridged dictionary;
Various other skins, various language-for-specific-purposes dictionaries (including those for some rather special purposes);

… with each skin displaying a different filtered subset of the unified content dataset.

A common theme of a college dictionary's use case (i.e., of its chief user persona's needs) is "just give me the CliffsNotes version and spare me from encountering anything else." Wiktionary has never yet been sure whether it aims to be like a college dictionary or like an unabridged. It depends on which Wiktionarian's opinion overrules which other's opinion (and some would pick a third option, an advanced learner's). Most of them agree that a goal in any case is comprehensiveness of entry existence, if not entry development. Thus, in the respect of entering any descriptively valid lexeme—as opposed to avoiding entering countless rare lexemes, which is what print dictionaries were forced by practical necessity to do (for page-count reasons); but in contrast, how much to say about any particular lexeme, that is, how much to write inside any particular entry, is (at Wiktionary) currently subject to each person's personal calibration about what they find to be too much information, which they perhaps assume is too much information for anyone else as well, and that assumption is (as I duly grant it) correct for at least 70% or 80% of instances and persons, which makes it an acceptable heuristic, but it is of course nonetheless still a procrustean bed. The idea of various skins would be the much better solution instead of that procrustean heuristic. But it is unlikely that I myself will ever be the one to make it happen, by cajoling everyone else into building it. In the meantime, I may choose to capture here some of the bits and pieces that the procrustean bed chopped off. Why? Various reasons: (1) because they're cognitively interesting, fun for some minds; (2) because maybe they'll get reexported back to live content someday, if an appropriate vessel is ever built to receive them; (3) in short, for the same reasons why good content management systems provide various ways to save potentially useful (i.e., reuseful, reusable) bits of content from the cutting room floor.

Corollaries

If you need to write in the course of your job and have it seem like you're an informed and careful writer (even if you're not), don't rely on Wiktionary alone, which is not allowed to advise you completely in that respect; see some other excellent resources such as (for example) American Heritage Dictionary (which has many great usage notes). But Wiktionary will especially help you at spellcheck and sense check for technical vocabulary, though, because it is much better at entering valid words that other dictionaries (reference work type and off-the-shelf spellcheck type) fail miserably at covering (the latter unaccountably, except via chronic incompetent blind spots in management at software companies). Wiktionary's coverage of spelling is excellent; its coverage of word senses is less so (still has plenty of gaps), but is continually improving.
The relevance or irrelevance of any of the entries here proceeds from the current state (that is, state of conditions) of which analytical level is operative; none of them are irrelevant on all ontologic channels, and minds that are capable of tuning to multiple ontologic channels simultaneously can see both the relevances and the irrelevances of any entry simultaneously, whereas ones that are not can see only the irrelevances and thus have the experience of perceiving apparent non sequiturs, for the same reason that most of the blind men groping any given elephant would (angrily) think that any mention or discussion of mammalian anatomy was "completely irrelevant" to the heated discussion of tree trunks and ropes that they are currently engaged in. The hysteresis is analogous also to state-dependent memory and context-dependent memory with regard to human cognition's ability to interact with the concepts (but again, people who cannot see how that is true will misapprehend that the mention of those things here constitutes a non sequitur).

Main list population

Duly explaining prescriptions even without endorsing them: Here is a cross-reference to a glancing blow that is quite relevant to this section as well.
- Cross-posted accordingly.
Not at crystal
- Usage notes / Although glass is noncrystalline, there is a long history of natural language calling it crystal, and the short answer as to why is that this natural language usage predates modern materials science: glass and crystals seem similar macroscopically, and thus both prescientifically and nonscientifically they have been, and remain, conflated. This makes the "glass" sense of the word crystal a misnomer, which does not mean that it is "incorrect" — rather, it just means that it is well known to suggest a meaning that is different from its (firmly established) idiomatic meaning.
  - Per my current best understanding of Wiktionarian consensus, Wiktionary is not the place to provide this particular (short, clear) piece of remedial help to laypersons. I disagree, but that's OK; it simply lives here instead of in WT mainspace.
    - Speaking of short and clear, the glass crystals of a crystal chandelier fit the bill; they're crystal clear.
      - Admittedly, the blinder one is, the less crystal clear any little crystal can possibly be or seem to one, no matter how much anyone else polishes it.
        Speaking of the futility of polishing some things, there is an obvious corollary that will go into another bucket for now (bucket 2023-10-03).
        PS: It was slightly amusing that a couple weeks after scribbling the above, I encountered at Vox an explainer about the fascinatingly noncrystalline nature of glass: The surprising scientific weirdness of glass
        PPS: GLASS
At picaresque
- Do not confuse picaresque (concerning adventure or roguishness) with picturesque (beautiful and art-worthy).
At physiochemical
- Do not confuse physiochemical (physiological and chemical, especially in biochemistry) with physicochemical (physical and chemical, especially in physical chemistry).
At allogenic
- Do not confuse allogenic ("of nonself intraspecies origin") with allergenic ("generating allergy"); the two concepts are often related (because allergic reactions can potentially be caused by any antigen and usually/especially by nonself antigens), but the similar sound of the two words is due only to partial cognation of the word roots.
At allergenic
- Do not confuse allogenic ("of nonself intraspecies origin") with allergenic ("generating allergy"); see allogenic § Usage notes.
At idiocratic
- Do not confuse idiocratic ("idiosyncratic") with its historically newer homophonic and homographic homonym, idiocratic ("pertaining to rule by idiots"), nor with its older homophone, ideocratic ("pertaining to rule by ideologues").
At phytoncide
- Do not confuse a phytoncide (a substance made by a plant to discourage insects, animals, or bacteria from eating it) with a phytocide (an herbicide to kill plants).
At diphosphate
- Do not confuse a diphosphate with a diphosphonate, nor a biphosphate with a bisphosphonate.
At causally
- Hasty readers can easily misread causal as casual (or vice versa) and causally as casually (or vice versa). Writers can consider using causative and causatively instead, as they often will work interchangeably and may reduce hasty misreadings.
At exurbanite
- Prescriptively, this homonym best retains the hyphen (ex-urbanite) to avoid confusion or ambiguity versus the other homonym. An added wrinkle is that the two concepts can be coinstantiated, either coincidentally or (in some countries, such as the United States) via white flight. The retention of the hyphen to preserve an orthographic difference to signal the semantic (sense) difference puts this unusual pair into a class whose usual suspects include recreation versus re-creation, retreat versus re-treat, and unionized versus un-ionized.
At mesial
- Compare the adjectives mesial, medial, and median, which overlap in meaning but are usually idiomatically non-interchangeable. Each is used in certain contexts, and shades of differentiable meaning are sometimes ascribed. Most uses of mesial are in dentistry, but not all (for example, as with the mesial aspect of the brain's temporal lobe).
At both malaligned and maligned
- Do not confuse malaligned ("misaligned") with maligned ("reviled").
At both acariasis and ascariasis
- Do not confuse acariasis (a parasitic disease with mites) with ascariasis (a parasitic disease with worms).
At shut down
- Phrasal verbs with the particles down and up tend to connote a process that takes a span of time and contains multiple steps, whereas those with the particles off and on tend to connote an event that happens instantly, in a point of time. This nuance of cognitive schema is merely connotative, not denotative or rigorous, and therefore the phrasal verbs shut down and power down are broadly synonymous with shut off, power off, and turn off, as well as stop and kill. However, the fact that turning a computer on or off requires booting and unwinding, which are multistep processes (albeit black boxes to the user in modern operating systems), influenced the origins of power management commands such as shut down rather than turn off or switch off. Similarly, power plants and ship engines are fired up and shut down, and not so much turned on and switched off, in idiomatic usage. Nonetheless, any process (no matter how complex) can be triggered with a single command, which is why an executive officer or legislature can simply kill a multi-billion-dollar government program, or a laptop user can simply switch off their computer, even if the program takes a while to wind down.
At ostomy
- The conversion of the combining form -ostomy to yield the standalone noun ostomy began in the mid-20th century as medical jargon that was treated as too much a casualism for formal writing, but by the early 21st century it was well established even in formal register, and various respected dictionaries now enter it. Before this transition of acceptability, medical English already had a word for artificial bodily openings created surgically: stoma, directly from the New Latin, based on the ancient Greek. But today such an opening is just as likely to be called an ostomy as a stoma.
At accident
- Risk management and risk mitigation experts (such as actuaries, systems engineers, and others) generally do not approve of calling motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) "accidents", because they advisedly reserve that term for things not directly caused by human recklessness or negligence. Because it is predictably obvious (and directly causal) that distracted driving (e.g., texting, IMing/DMing, videogaming, or intoxication while driving) produces MVCs, those MVCs are not "accidents". Nonetheless, among the general public, MVCs are quite often called "accidents" rather than "crashes" or "collisions", not only by idiomatic inertia but also because connotatively, it steers clear of broaching the topic of blame assignment, whereas a phrase like "he crashed" connotes blame.
At gaslight
- The polysemy of the term in current usage (referring to dishonesty both for malevolent reasons and for misguidedly well-intentioned reasons, as well as even looser use referring merely to biased efforts at persuasion) has contributed to a degradation in its usefulness in counteracting the malevolent behavior denoted by the original (stricter) sense. For more details, see also Wikipedia > Gaslighting > Excessive misuse of the term "gaslighting".
At impenitent
- Someone who is impenitent (unremorseful, not ashamed) may be impertinent about it (rude, insolent).
At psychopathological
- Do not confuse psychopathologic with psychopathic; psychopathy is just one of many types of psychopathology.
At psychopathology
- The word psychopathology in its sense referring to a psychiatric condition (as opposed to its sense for the field of study and its application) is hypernymic to, not synonymous with, the word psychopathy, even though that differentiation is idiomatic rather than etymonic. The derived adjective, psychopathologic, etymonically strongly seems to suggest the meaning of "relating to psychopathy" (psychopathic)—that is, nonexpert readers will predictably sometimes or often mistake it for meaning that—but it does not. The ambiguity here is directly related to the polysemy of the words pathology and pathologic themselves (explained at pathology § Usage notes).
At pathology
- Some house style guides for medical publications avoid the "illness" sense of pathology (“disease, state of ill health”) and replace it with pathosis. The rationale is that the -ology form should be reserved for the "study of disease" sense and for the medical specialty that provides microscopy and other laboratory services (e.g., cytology, histology) to clinicians. This rationale drives similar usage preferences about etiology ("cause" sense versus "study of causes" sense), methodology ("methods" sense versus "study of methods" sense), and other -ology words. ¶ Not all such natural usage can be purged gracefully, but the goal is to reserve the -ology form to its "study" sense when practical. Not all publications bother with this prescription, because most physicians don't do so in their own speech (and the context makes clear the sense intended). ¶ Another limitation is that pathology (“illness”) has an adjectival form (pathologic), but the corresponding adjectival form of pathosis (pathotic) is idiomatically missing from English (defective declension), so pathologic is obligate for both senses ("diseased" and "related to the study of disease"); this likely helps keep the "illness" sense of pathology in natural use (as the readily retrieved noun counterpart to pathologic in the "diseased" sense).
At neuropathy
- Related terms ¶ neurosis ¶ Usage notes ¶ Although the words neuropathy (neuro- + -pathy) and neurosis (neuro- + -osis) are morphologically parallel, the difference between the nerves as physical structures and as the psyche is reflected in the idiomatic differentiation whereby those two words signify quite differentiable concepts, even though the nerves and brain are inevitably somehow related to the mind via the mysteries of the mind–body problem and the neural correlates of consciousness. The great difficulty of fully solving that problem and fully understanding those correlates is reflected by the usage difference, as is the fact that the collocations central neuropathy and CNS neuropathy mean something quite different from psychopathology or neuropsychiatric conditions.
At outhouse
- Like many terms for places where humans urinate and defecate, the sense of the word outhouse referring to an outbuilding housing a cesspit has euphemistic aspects to its origins (just as with privy, toilet, restroom, bathroom, water closet, and indeed most of the synonyms of this sense), as the sense of outhouse meaning any outbuilding predates the cesspit-building (sub)sense; regardless, as that sense is now the dominant sense, writers now tend to say outbuilding when they mean an outbuilding without further specification, to avoid invoking either confusion or (even merely) connotation—which is to say, to avoid even a whiff of the dominant sense.
  - [Regarding beauty being in the eye of the beholder (and scents being in the nose of the be-smeller), see this edit about this usage note.
At cast steel
- There has been some confusion in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries caused by the fact that the term cast steel referred to crucible steel, and other steel poured from vessels while molten, before it later increasingly came to refer to steel castings specifically (that is, net or near-net castings of steel, which were developed many decades after the earlier sense was already established). Eventually the newer sense of the term came to dominate to the extent that the earlier sense is now classifiable as archaic, although even today, the action of a continuous caster retains a connection of steel mills to the action of casting. A 1949 monograph on the history of steel casting in the foundry sense^{cited reference} enforces the distinction in senses, as technical literature often does for terms that have narrower technical senses coexisting with their broader general senses.
At nonfish
- The English word meat in its main modern sense, referring to the flesh of animals used as food, has tended over the centuries to be idiomatically restricted to, and thus to implicitly denote, nonfish animals, such that disjunctive mentions of meat versus fish, or not meat but rather fish, are common (see meat § Usage notes). Nonetheless, natural language is flexible enough in its variable semantic ontology that the word meat can be extended to comprise fish flesh when a collocation specifies it, such as all meats including fish or meats of both fish and nonfish origin. The desire to restrict the word meat to its nonfish-only sense is a factor that sometimes helps to drive the use of a hypernym, such as protein or proteins, instead, and such hypernymous use can be still more useful once all protein-rich foods, even nonanimal foods (such as nuts or dairy foods or plant-based meat substitutes) are included in a discussion. But this natural ontologic flexibility is similar to that seen with the natural coexistence of the schema of finger versus thumb and that of all fingers including the thumb (with the hypernymous option being all digits including the thumb), as well as the natural coexistence of the schema of car versus truck (in which light trucks are not cars) and that of all cars including light trucks (with hypernym options being all automobiles or all light motor vehicles). Such variable ontology, which human minds handle effortlessly, is of interest to natural language processing by machines because it must be modeled and successfully handled if machines are someday to speak and read human languages reliably with human-like fluency.
At not enough room to swing a cat
- By extension from the idea of confined space, the idiom that one can't swing a cat without hitting an X conveys that the relevant context is lousy with X. Thus, the statement that you can't swing a cat without hitting a fool around here conveys that fools are (superfluously) plentiful around here.
At officious
- Readers guessing the meaning of the word officious from context have sometimes guessed that it referred to the excessive bureaucratic formality of officialdom, but its connection to office, official, and the Latin officium (“service”) is with the kindly and solicitous aspect thereof rather than with the bureaucratic chill. Thus officious is not to be confused with punctilious.
At master copy
- Most senses of the terms master copy and mastercopy have the semantic notion of "the copy that is the master version", but the fine arts sense of the terms instead has the semantic notion of "a copy of the master version". This sense difference puts the pair into the class of contranyms, albeit it a little-used example of that class.
  - *
At *pruritis
- The word pruritus does not contain the suffix -itis (which denotes inflammation), but owing to the similar sound (with a reduced vowel in either case), many writers misspell pruritus, even in the medical literature.
At integrous
- In common usage, the noun integrity is much more common than its adjectival form, integrous. Most speakers and writers opt for an etymologically unrelated synonym — such as honest, decent, or virtuous — when trying to express the adjectival complement of integrity in its moral and ethical sense. Even when the structural or analytical sense of integrity is meant, constructions such as "has integrity" or "retaining integrity" are more commonly heard than the adjective integrous, indicating a species of lexical gap in which an apt word is not nonexistent but is rare enough that for most speakers it usually does not arise in the word-finding aspects of cognition during speech or writing. Another adjective related to integrity is integral, but that adjective usually focuses on a part (conveying that the part is built in) rather than applying to the whole (conveying that the whole has integrity). To convey that one is of or marked by integrity, other adjectives may be used including upright and upstanding.
At eulogy
- Because the words eulogy and elegy sound and look similar and both concern speeches or poems associated with someone's death and funeral, they are easily confused. A simple key to remembering the difference is that an elegy is chiefly about lamenting whereas a eulogy is chiefly about praising (and eu- = "good").
At *preclivity (misspelling of proclivity)
- The word proclivity starts with a syllable that is cognate with the English prefix pro-, not with pre-; however, quite possibly by speciously tempting cognitive analogy with both the idea of temporal precedence and (relatedly) the synonym predisposition, sometimes people tend toward starting the word proclivity with pre-.

Population composed by others

Not written by me but rather by other Wiktionarians (who BTW did a nice job); but vulnerable to deletion per the same aversions (so put backup here)

At sensible
- "Sensible" describes the reasonable way in which a person may think about things or do things:
  It wouldn't be sensible to start all over again now.
- It is not comparable to its cognates in certain languages (see below at Translations section).
- "Sensitive" describes an emotional way in which a person may react to things:
  He has always been a sensitive child.
  
  I didn’t realize she was so sensitive about her work.
At finitude
- Finitude is rather formal and used in philosophy, while finiteness is used in mathematics; however, infinitude is used in mathematics more than infiniteness. Less formal is to reword to use limited: “(the fact that) life is limited” rather than “the finitude of life”.

Glancing blows

Orientation

nonorthogonality of vectors

List population

statickiness again
- gettin some static again; perhaps ride that wave or train
  - the magnitude of this flare: not as rare as ball lightning, but rare enough; perhaps ride the lightning
    - a different kind of productivity
      - you don't know the handwave
the putative (microcosm–cosmos)–reconciliation axis
- some chief members
  - otherwise known as cheat codes for serial sceneshifters or their audience
  - nature of statement (P5102)
    - does not always apply (Q90177495)
    - possibly (Q30230067) — "for use with qualifier P1480 or P5102"
    - rarely (Q28962310) — "value for qualifier P5102 indicating that the statement is seldom (but not never) true"
    - often (Q28962312) — "value for qualifier P5102 indicating that the statement is true in many, but not necessarily a majority, of cases"
    - originally (Q53737447) — "should be used with qualifier P5102 to indicate that the statement refers to the subject in its original form or state only"
    - mainly (Q91013007) — "value for qualifier P5102 indicating that the statement is valid in a majority (but not all) cases"
    - official (Q29509043) — "information declared officially by a recognized person or authority (value used with qualifier P5102 and P7452)"
    - unofficial (Q29509080) — "information which is assumed to be well-known, but not declared officially by a recognized person or authority (value used with qualifier P5102 and P2241)"
    - full name (Q1071027) — "set of names by which an individual is known"
    - dubious (Q104378399) — "for use with "nature of statement" (P5102) if the statement is dubious; especially used for media representation tests"
  - said to be the same as (P460)
  - sourcing circumstances (P1480) — "qualification of the truth or accuracy of a source: circa (Q5727902), near (Q21818619), presumably (Q18122778), etc."
- PS: The above are the chef's tools, much like spatulas, whisks, spoons, knives, and so on. The next layer above this is the fact that what the chef creates through the use of such tools is a matter of each chef's job performance (or relative dearth thereof). The same can be said of musical instruments and orchestra seats versus what each conductor does with them. Borges mentioned this layer. The first step toward not being moronic about this layer is at least even duly comprehending (at all) the concept of what can possibly go wrong on this layer. From there, one can work toward still more.
meta-abstraction
- stand back and squint, and a meta-theme recurs:
  - pluripotential: it could be anything
    - you don't know the half of it
      - you don't know the chances
        "In such moments, one can sense that it is all one, even though one cannot lay eyes on all details of the mechanism at once. It is interesting to speculate about plausible evolutionary explanations for the arising of needle simulators, but dharmic ones are more entertaining."^^
Corny just punched out and hit the shower, and he got me going on the following:
- LBJ (with semantically unique referent, thus although always pluralizable morphosyntactically nonetheless not pluralizable semantically except figuratively, for example, daytime LBJ and nighttime LBJ as two LBJs*) was an instance of a president, and basketball (uncountable) is a hyponym of sport (uncountable); but now it is bugging me that my brain also wants to say that basketball (uncountable) is an instance of sport (countable), and it wants to make a connection between uncountability as it applies to the sport called basketball and uncountability as it applies to any (cosmically unique) person called So-and-So. The former you can have a portion or serving or session of, and I suppose that you can have a portion or serving or session of the latter, in a way, too; and does mentalese (or something like mentalese) hold notionally that you do, under the hood? This thought reminds me of another from many moons ago.† Seems to me at the moment (an occasion) that there's something to that, for sure. Even if I'm the only sniffer who is able to sniff it, it's not a phantom stench. You can't piss on my leg and tell me it's handwaving. The thing is, as we have seen, no noun (either common or proper) is morphosyntactically immune from pluralization (as Past Mom and Future Mom can attest; as can daytime David and nighttime David, the two Davids, who inhabit two different New Yorks and who mostly eat various butters and cheeses and breads and meats, and who also grow various wheats and barleys), but some nouns are semantically immune from it in the literal locale: basketball is basketball (not a basketball, although lamb is a lamb , despite Homer's comical misconception), and David is certainly one of a kind, even if daytime David and nighttime David play subtly different basketballs because nighttime David's sport (countable) is bizarro basketball (uncountable), where the nets are woven somewhat differently and the court is a slightly different size.
  - A tangent: The nature of oneiric constructions is often merely parameter value derangement versus phenomena that are normal, but that doesn't make the oneiric things paraphenomenal nor paranormal, because the morphological gap for those two is by blocking from previous semantic commitments. Which is to say: Some ways of being para- are para -er than others.
  - Another tangent: All this talk of daytime LBJ and nighttime LBJ reminded me of daytime RN and nighttime RN and of a story I once read thereon: sometimes nighttime RN would get too far into his cups and people would have to worry about his finger being on the button, which is to say, The Button (whereas some buttons are buttoner than others).
How to Write an Attention Economy "News" Article
- Headline: Click This Headline If You Would Like to Find Out Specific Useful Piece of Information XYZ
- Article:
  - Blah blah blah the topic at hand blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
  - Advertisement blah blah blah! Maybe this picture of a stranger's face would goad you into clicking here for no reason!
  - When I was growing up my Uncle So-and-So would often do blah blah blah blah. Having such a free spirit in the family made me appreciate the value of blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
  - The corner store near my house sells blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
  - Nowadays manufacturers often blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
  - Advertisement blah blah blah! Maybe this picture of a stranger's face would goad you into clicking here for no reason!
  - In fairness, not all companies are slashing their blah blah blah blah. The Blah-Blah Company of New Earwax, South Carolina, recently started stocking blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
  - Advertisement blah blah blah! Maybe this picture of a stranger's face would goad you into clicking here for no reason!
  - By now we hope you are beginning to forget why you even clicked on this story to begin with. No? Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
  - Advertisement blah blah blah! Maybe this picture of a stranger's face would goad you into clicking here for no reason!
  - So, in conclusion, as you can see, we never did get to the point that the headline falsely claimed we would get to. We just hope that next time you're in the market for a cantaloupe, you'll remember what my Uncle So-and-So said: Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
- Observations
  - You know, when I was in short pants, they used to teach us all about the value of the inverted pyramid. It has become painfully obvious to me that in the 2020s the goal of much of the news industry (which is not cognitively synonymous with the journalism profession) is to get a screenload of pixels in front of your eyes and then have your eyes linger over it, the longer the better. I do certainly enjoy reading analyses and explainers, but it is just annoyingly obvious that most of them could (well and easily) have a TLDR section at top but OH MY GOD NO THAT MUST NEVER BE ALLOWED because it would hurt the pixel-lingering thing, which is so painfully obviously the news industry's true reason for existing. But you know what's going to happen next, though: it now seems inevitable to me. As soon as people can merely click or tap for an agentic-AI summary without having to do anything annoying or complicated, and the summary is reliably good enough (accurate, and insightful about what to highlight ), the applecart will topple yet again, regarding the business model crumpling anew. What I realize in retrospect that I didn't appreciate back in the day is that the physical constraints of the media of the day (i.e., the cost of column inches, the minute-counting limit of a broadcast timeslot) were forcing the moneygrubbers to stick closer to honoring the inverted pyramid concept more often; the owners of those media weren't serving the reader properly because they actually believed in the ethical principles of serving the reader, doing excellent journalism, and giving the reader what they want; they were doing it because there were only so many paper pages or TV minutes available to cram crap into. Of course, they could try to make the news hole as small as possible (i.e., more print ads per page and less news; more TV commercials and news radio commercials per hour and less news), but they were up against the constraint that the readers (as buyers) would revolt and tell them to shove their papers or airwaves up their asses if the news hole got any smaller than it already was. What's different today is that the way you tell them to shove their BS is by refusing to read long-winded walls of words. This involves cutting back scrolling time (screen time), and soon it is likely also to involve a single click or tap for an agentic-AI-supplied TLDR that the content producers refused to provide themselves. But what about killing the business though, one might counterargue? I get it. But perhaps the answer is going to be that people will just need to pay for subscriptions a bit more in exchange for not sitting through ads as much (or sifting through walls of windy words while ads are blinking at the sides and interspersions). Related here is the super-annoying habit of the news companies allowing the ads to be presented and sized in such a way that you can barely avoid accidentally tapping them on your smartphone screen when you dare to hold your phone and touch it and scroll it, and you sometimes fail to avoid that accident (because it is like playing a game of Operation to avoid touching them all). That's their antipattern that lets them lie about (i.e., fraudulently inflate) what would be their true (and dismally small) click rates.
    - Perhaps I will start applying a nickname to the explainers and analyses that fail to give a good TLDR properly up front. Say, perhaps, "dogtoe articles", written in the "dogtoe writing style", because you click on a headline about something important (such as, say, environmental impact of XYZ or supply chain difficulties of ABC) and what you get is "So let me tell you a story about how I got my dog's toenails painted last week. By the time you're more than halfway done wading through my umpteen thousand words, I might gradually get to the point about why I'm telling you this stupid mundane anecdote. If the point of the story is about changing a formula to avoid ingredient X, first I'll tell you a story about how the industry I'm covering got its start back in 1852 when a wily old character with bushy eyebrows named So-and-So invented a concoction at his kitchen table, and now let's flash forward to the nail salon last week where my dog's claws were getting a pet-icure … " ENOUGH. GOD. TLDR: SUPPLY CHAIN IS KINKED BECAUSE BLAH AND BLAH. LIKELY FIX WILL COME FROM BLAH AND BLAH. Speaking of supply chains, I'm sick of people claiming that domestic alternatives "can't be created" when all that's really true is that "it would cost more than it does now." This BS about samarium, this BS about dysprosium, this BS about smartphone production. "We could have secured a non-China supply chain for any of these things by now, but someone would have had to spend some money, and end-users would have to pay the real costs of the things that they want to buy. So you can see the bind we're in regarding all of this being ‘physically impossible’". FU.
ways of talking about the collocation strength axis
- a parameter for {{co}} and {{coi}} such as strength=, which measures the strength per the following codifications:
  - at least X corpus attestations of the string (the collocation) with no missense parsing and no OCR error, where the minimum value for X would probably be 3
    - which operationally means: at least X corpus attestations of the string (the collocation) with no detectable or likely missense parsing and no detectable or likely OCR error, where the minimum value for X would probably be 3
ways of talking about the hyponym–instance axis
- Consider that for many a dict def, such as for a vernacular name for a kind of bird, you can structure it in any of several ways.
  - For the (hypothetical) common spotted whateverbird, for example, where that vernacular name corresponds to the taxonomic name (say) Prettybirdus spottilicious, you can say, "A bird, the Prettybirdus spottilicious, which lives in region X and eats mainly insects."
    - You could also say, "A kind of bird, the Prettybirdus spottilicious, which lives in region X and eats mainly insects; an individual of this species." The two units on either side of the semicolon are, respectively, "the common spotted whateverbird" (in general) and "a common spotted whateverbird", which is "the common spotted whateverbird" that is in front of you at the moment, which is to say, "this common spotted whateverbird", "that common spotted whateverbird ", "this here common spotted whateverbird", and so on.
      - Wiktionary contains instances of both methods being used, because it is the work of many hands. I recognize that some people will argue that the first method is preferrable because "it is terser, and any reader will understand it as meaning the same thing as the second method." But I see certain advantages to the second method that are worth having. It preserves (reflects) the underlying parameterization structure in an unobtrusive way, and doing so is worthwhile from some viewpoints (for some purposes).
        Daily wanderings sometimes bring us back to the neighborhood where the Buick dealership is.
odd one out
- It's kind of hilarious, in a vicarious embarrassment kind of way, the sheer hugeness of the category of "mental mediocrities misapprehending that *everyone* else on Earth, rather than merely *most* people, is just as mentally mediocre as they are." One does at times feel the cringe on their behalf.
  - We keep seeing these claims nowadays, along the lines of "no human would do that", and they're recurringly hilariously inept, what with confusing the 95th or 99th percentiles with the 100th.
    - Recent examples have included the notion that no human would ever write with certain punctuation (especially semicolons, en dashes, or em dashes); no actual human would have an active vocabulary that isn't crippled by mental mediocrity (example: they imagine that the word 'ostensibly' is so 'big' and 'hard' a word to most (ostensibly) non–intellectually disabled adult native speakers that it must always be circumvented, lol 💀); and no human would opt out of things like excess essentialization, excess ethnocentrism, excess cruelty, excess melodrama, excess sportsball — what else? (Uh-oh, did an em dash just rear its "alien" head?)
      - There's something uniquely affronting, though, to being accused of unhumanity by such a typical instance of human mental mediocrity. It's so laughably moronic. Here's why. Speaking of the various and sundry ways to be mediocre, I'm a submediocre athlete on a good day, and even worse on a bad. I admit it; I can't help it (even when I try my hardest); and I'm not pleased by it (quite the opposite: I dislike it). But you know what that fact has nothing to do with? Seeing the athletic performance of someone who's an awesome athlete (for example, pro-level athletes on TV) and being so moronic as to imagine that they aren't real humans because most humans are mediocre athletes and, "therefore" (lol), all "real" humans are mediocre athletes.
        Who's going to break it to them, lol? There there, no no, what's actually happening, hon, is that you're just mentally mediocre. It's OK: it's not your fault, and there's nothing you can do to fix it, so the rest of us won't hold it against you, in a personal way; and you can take comfort from how much company you keep, as there're more of y'all than there are of us; so much more, in fact, that the lopsidedness is what confused you into mistaking "most" for "all". That's reasonable, because confusing you isn't too hard, hon, in some ways, after all. But as for accusing me of being unhuman: go fuck your lamentably, embarrassingly, slow-wittedly mediocre self. Go look in the mirror and admit to yourself what you are, just as I've had to do regarding what I am, an odd one out. It's not really that interesting or remarkable or dramatic, in the end: it merely is what it is, no more and no less.
    - Update a week or so later: I saw a weird one today, from someone I wouldn't have expected one of these to come from (because of how smart they clearly are, usually). I am currently chalking it up to exaggeration for effect and (perhaps also) not thinking very hard or carefully in the particular moment when they put the thought into words. The claim, which I know to be counterfactual, is that "no" humans are able to durably maintain agnostic assessment of relative probabilities (about any particular question) and that they instead have days when they feel certain that the truth about a particular question equals yes and other days when they feel certain that the truth of it equals no. But c'mon man: you won't convince me that I'm the only human being on Earth of whom that claim is false. The chances of your being right about that seem like billions to one. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying that there aren't going to be any days when I feel certain that you're correct about it, and there aren't going to be any days when I feel certain that you're wrong about it, but every day I'm going to consider it too far-fetched to be likely.
      - PS: Now that this instance landed in front of me, the theme is bugging me again. There would have to be either psychological or manipulation issues (of one kind or another) going on in the minds that make these claims? Something to the effect that they're lashing out somehow, and pretending to believe something that deep down they know is probably false? Or, otherwise, that they're lying and they know it, for one reason or another. The reason I think so is that some of these claims are so easily falsifiable, sort of a "you can't be serious" thing and a "you can clearly be proven wrong" thing, so then why claim something that can be so easily disproved. C'mon man: the one that claims that "no" "real" humans have nonshitty vocabularies? (Who do you think wrote the books of, say, Nassim Nicholas Taleb? Do you really imagine that it was a robot instead of Nassim Nicholas Taleb himself? Do you really imagine that he isn't in command of the vocabulary that he uses in that text, whereas instead he "really" just threw darts helplessly at an open thesaurus?) The one that claims that "no" "real" humans have competent command of the full suite of punctuation used in formal written English? (Who do you think wrote the Chicago Manual of Style? Do you really think it was a robot instead of the contributors and editors listed in the front matter?) Maybe these people are just trolling because it scores algorithmic engagement with their content. Ding ding ding, speaking of relative likelihoods, I think we're done here: mystery solved. At least some of them are just lying for money ($$$). Phew. At least now the theme won't be bugging me further.
        Another, a week or so later, that I really had to laugh at (not with): another one of these "moronicness-enforcing heuristics" articles that I was skimming. It mentions how genAI bots often maintain semantic accuracy by specifying concepts such as "often" or "usually" and so on (I forget the precise listing of such strings that they gave, but I seem to recall that more often than not was among them — as it well ought to be, as a logically valid and practically useful qualifier). I thought to myself, "Right, so what you're telling me (without telling me) is that (you believe that) most meatbags avoid bothering to be logically and factually accurate when they talk or write or think, so if we see any well-edited and well-punctuated utterances that specify such qualifiers (to uphold high semantic and logical accuracy) rather than overlooking or forgetting to include them, then we're to take it as a sign that we're not hearing from a meatbag, because (1) many meatbags can't be fucked about it and (2) many other ones aren't capable of being fucked about it." Speak for yourself, hon. Don't be coming after me with accusations of being unhuman just because I can manage to keep track of some shit mentally when I speak. Some of these mouthbreathers apparently have a risible P460 error in their brains: they evidently misapprehend that the relation (mouthbreather⊂human) (which is true) is identical to the relation that (mouthbreather=human) (which is false), so they misextrapolate that nonmouthbreather=nonhuman. A joke just occurred to me: we ought to start prompting LLMs to generate their own "moronicness-enforcing heuristics" articles and see what they come up with. "So I've noticed that most of you humans are idiots. Let me dissect and count the ways you are moronic, as follows. Number one, you can't avoid misspeaking by misasserting that things that are often or usually true are always true. Number two, ." But of course part of the joke here is that "I learned it by watching you", as they say: LLMs learned to string language together by reading shit that meatbags wrote. Including those meatbags who are capable of being semantically (logically and factually) accurate, besides the bunch of others who aren't. The LLMs wouldn't be doing it if the meatbags hadn't sometimes (not never) been doing it first.
        
        Another, some days later: someone who told ChatGPT or another of its ilk to write a vignette about someone (an adult offspring) finding out that their father had recently died. The indignant prompter railed that "no" human would write the vignette that the bot returned upon the first iteration (from the first prompt) because it was "terrible" writing that didn't portray the adult offspring as a basketcase of chaotic spasms of emotion, which "any" or "every" "real" human would be. The indignant prompter obviously failed to imagine such humans as are estranged from their fathers because their fathers are assholes (con men, deadbeat dads, wifebeaters, child molesters, whatever), such humans as have never met their fathers, and others easily imagined by people with imaginations who actually try. Perhaps we should rail that the indignant prompter themselves can't possibly be a "real" human, because they're obviously really bad at envisioning any person's circumstances and disposition and personality other than their own? No, that would obviously be moronic: it is obvious that many "real" humans are really bad at any number of mental activities. You can't be unhuman solely by being stupid, moronic, thick-skulled, dull-witted, etc. Then, on the other end of the spectrum, you also can't be unhuman solely by being smart: having a decent vocabulary, comprehending how punctuation works, etc (despite what some humans misapprehend). One thing that possibly does mark you as quite typically human, albeit not guaranteeing that you are such (as opposed to a machine aping typical humans), is having a near-complete failure of imagination about, and laughably weak power of conception for, comprehending and appreciating the scope and range of human neurodiversity.
        
        Another, some weeks later. More on the em dash instance of this theme, which has become cliché. A writer points out that most humans don't bother to use em dashes not so much because almost none of them comprehend the uses of the em dash (not true) but rather merely because there's no key on the keyboard for it, which means that instead one must use some other keystroke, or paste; and what this writer is telling you without telling you is that almost all humans are either too lazy or too stupid to copy and paste, or to learn a keystroke, or to use any app for hotkeys. Well. Here's the thing: she's not wrong. Touché. At least she has brought the argument to the true root causes instead of the moronicness-enforcing notion that almost all humans are too stupid even to comprehend em dashes.
cosmic uniqueness
- A reminder for when I forget again:
  - Regarding the distinctions among semantic dimension in literal locale, semantic dimension in figurative locale, and morphosyntactic dimension:
    - Even names for cosmically unique entities (putatively cosmically unique, emically cosmically unique, etc) can always manage to have a plural form, morphosyntactically, for (the instance-specific homologue of) the following reason:
      - David was certainly one of a kind, but sometimes it seemed like there were two Davids: daytime David and nighttime David.
        This fact is what kills any possible smartass challenge about "things that are countable but there's only one of them in existence." Every such candidate can be forced to yield such a corner case: the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, God, Heaven, the Universe, the World, the Internet — even Mom, that is, yər mom.
        The point is that there is never a lack of a plural form, morphosyntactically, even though there can be a lack of any plural in the semantic dimension in the literal locale. Past Mom and Future Mom can attest to this fact, as can the Universe and its arch nemesis, the bizarro Universe.
near-hypernyms and near-hyponyms
- There can be said to be such things. The instance that made me think more consciously about it again, after being of course vaguely aware of it at the mere-truism level for a long time, is FOODMO, which is a hyponym of FOMO and can be said to be at least (i.e., never less than) a near-hyponym of both anxiety and worry.
  - A simple equivalence (a refactored formula) is that whenever you identify a hypernym, you can say that that hypernym's near-synonyms are the near-hypernyms of its hyponyms, and this formula will very often perform well. (Perhaps it rarely will fail. To be investigated more later.)
    - I don't expect Wiktionary to deal with this phenomenon at any formal level. And that's fine, because anyone who wants to be told the near-hypernyms of any given term can simply click through to its hypernyms and then, from there, click through to their near-synonyms. The homologous two-step is true of discovering any near-hyponyms. Nonetheless:
      - Imagine a Wiktionarylike thing that had achieved a comprehensive level of entering not only syn, ant, hyper, hypo, hol, mer, comer, cot, and near-syn but also near-hyper and near-hypo. It would be interesting. Of course the default value for the show/hide state (i.e., the expand/collapse state) would be hide (i.e., collapse). No duh. But it would be interesting to unhide that list at will.
        Of course all of this is pie in the sky anyway, because most humans don't even bother to fully build humanity's existing dictionaries, let alone anything else with interesting additional features. Nonetheless, a nonidiot can have fun dreaming, even when that person is sitting alone doing so.
        Update some weeks later: Last night when I was well towards bed, it started to occur to me, in half-formed glimpses, that I can sense the parametric structure whereby just as hypernyms bear a certain well-familiar relation to synonyms, and a cohyponym has a well-trod relation to that parent, so there must be a sort of antimatter-hypernym that has the homologous relation but in the flipped polarity — the antonymous polarity. A parent-antonym, or an antonym-parent. The weird thing, though, is that I'm having trouble fleshing out the corollaries, which is to say, uncovering the whole buried treasure of which these glimpses were just the tip. Why is that? It's strange that the structure is teasing me before I even dredge an example. How does that work? It goes to show what eyelessness is truly about, under the hood; it's not just hype. Let's dredge one now. Hmmm … to manage to do so we have to start with something easy on the positive-polarity side. How about an easy favorite such as trees. No, that won't work (will it?), for what even is antonymy among trees? Hmmm … emotions? No … what about light and dark? Bring in a color parameter: declare red and green to be opposite enough for the purpose, for the moment. And shut down the coal mine, and shut down the SOPs. Now: the hypernym of light red is red, and the antimatter-hypernym is green; the hypernym of dark green is green, and the antimatter-hypernym is red. Very well. All well and good. Now: what does this get us? How does this benefit us? We don't yet know. We will put these things on the shelf, and they will sit there while the elevator car goes whizzing past, for some unknown span of time. Sometimes while we are in the elevator, busy going about our day, we will think of this shelf, and the shelf will coexist with these thoughts. This circuit of inductance is fascinating but also dangerous. You don't know the chances. I didn't either when I first innocently toyed with it, nor for many years afterward. The century-old headstone of a total stranger gives off more of this glow than most other objects do, which is not entirely a coincidence. No need to worry, though, as it is like gravity: we are all surrounded by it daily, we all comport ourselves in accord with its defaults, and all of this is the norm, so nothing about it is strange, except perhaps its contemplation.
a mode of calibration
- Bothering to duly maintain the mental distinction between a shitlist and a mediocrities list is a healthy example of duly applying the Bierceness scale in one's daily life.
List of clipped compounds in English
- That is, a list of the subclass of clippings in English that are clipped compounds specifically
  - Orientation:
    - Where: This curation focus/locus/entity could be moved elsewhere later.
    - Why: I bothered to put it here now for reasons of PKM.
    - How:
      - Its incarnation here will never be exhaustive nor even comprehensive; the inclusion criterion for this incarnation is usefulness to my PKM needs du jour.
      - Its syntactic conventions are easily both deducible and propagable by nonidiots. I find instances of that theme unduly (unhealthily) interesting because of how often I encounter user error of this error type in the business world.
  - List population:
    - comp sci • comp-sci • compsci ^
    - elhi • el-hi
    - exam prep
    - info tech
    - lap appy
    - lap chole
    - lab tech
    - mat sci • mat-sci • matsci ^
    - mil-spec • mil spec • milspec
    - sci-fi • sci fi • scifi
    - surg tech
Goodhart valves
- Valves built into systems for of the that Goodhart's law predictably and reliably makes inevitable
  - The first layer of such valves and piping would be a simple statement along the lines that "we realize that subversion per Goodhart's law is predictably and reliably inevitable, and therefore, we will withhold the reward from subverters according to the following formula: the administrators have authority to test for and detect likely subversions, and they have authority to withhold the reward while (being required also to be) explaining publicly and cogently the fact that the withholding instance happened and a cogent exposition explaining the likely scam that the withholding instance thus disrupted."
    - No doubt many such valves already exist, in countless systems or subsystems. But the reason it bears labeling and defining is that there seems to be a genre of pointing out risibly egregious instances of cobra effects (for clicks and attention) that fails to address the obvious follow-on questions, as follows: what are the Goodhart valves that were already in place (if any); if they existed, please analyze and explain why this risibly egregious instance slipped through those cracks; what are the Goodhart valves that should (obviously) have been in place earlier; what are the Goodhart valves that should (obviously) be implemented in this particular system from now on?
      - Put another way: For every easy and obvious way to game the system, what is the move for rendering that scam unprofitable? And then how do you keep evolving the systems periodically after that, kind of like, "you have to keep giving the person a haricut periodically because there is no such a thing as a pill to stop his hair from growing without significant side effects, and the other obvious solution to not having to give any haircuts (kill the person) is not acceptable either." It seems like the aforementioned genre enjoys implying that "the ultimate lesson is to never build any system," but that seems like a childish and useless conclusion. In a world where systems must exist, what are the Goodhart valves that will be devised, and if periodic new systems and valves are required, well, so be it, if it is indeed inevitable. The never-ending arms-versus-armour arms race is relevant here: the lesson from the (risibly egregious) fact that such an arms race has always and will always exist^ is not "don't bother with defense technology because it is all ultimately pointless." The proper lesson is proper egregiousness management.
instances of types
- a zero morph marking (which is to say, not marking) the hyponym–instance distinction
  - single wordform (within each lexemic family) instantiating a hyponym or an instance (either and both)
    - This is one of the reasons why people sometimes have a hard time keeping the concepts of hyponym and instance straight. The zero morph status makes it harder to talk about clearly.
      - Many examples. There is a large class of them that ought properly to be captured lexicographically with two POSs, the proper noun POS and the common noun POS; but dictionaries have a long way to go on carrying out that idea.
        A typical example out of many: Buick·^{Buick#Proper noun} is the make; a Buick·^Buick#Noun is an instance thereof; any Buick·^Buick#Noun is an instance thereof. The LaCrosse·^{LaCrosse#Proper noun} is a model of Buick; a LaCrosse·^{LaCrosse#Noun} is an instance thereof; any LaCrosse·^{LaCrosse#Noun} is an instance thereof.
        Two things: (1) you could make a language that uses affixes to mark the difference; (2) even within English as she is spoke, you could build out a dictionary to mark the difference clearly with POSs and senseids. Something that those things have in common: no one cares, you can't make them care, they won't care, they won't help (essentially because they can't help), you're a dork, and please pass the gravy and the TikTok and the porn and the murder, cousin. You sure do have a funny way of talkin. Must be pointless.
degree as troponymy
- Degree can be a type of troponymy.
  - No shit, my dear Captain Obvious (hey, do you know Sherlock? No? Oh; I thought all you celebrities knew each other personally). Thus, of course this is old news, but what made me reappreciate it earlier today was bumping once again into^{hey, there's another one (an instance exemplifying another class)} my old friend (my old, old friend), the downward spiral that can result when dumbing it down takes a long, long, scary sled ride with no brakes into dumbing it way, way, way down, which we would label as a troponym or hyponym (take your pick) except that by an accident of our birth (namely, which particular natural language we're hanging around in here), there is no separate non-SoP term for that troponymic type (only an SoP composite, a VP containing an AdvP). But my brain decides (without asking me) to spin up some tentative classes, just to see what happens:
  - The over- and hyper- class
    - overdoing is a kind of doing; overthinking is a kind of thinking (ask me how I know lol)
  - The under- and hypo- class, the antonymic complement of the class above
    - underdoing is a kind of doing; underthinking is a kind of thinking (ask most humans how they know lol)
  - The way too long class, which my grammarization here avoids discretizing further; which is to say, this classification will not make a categorical distinction between a way too long class and a way, way too long class, because the eye of the beholder is (a bit? way?) too strong in this one (and possibly, more precisely, by my lights,^^^{(hey, why is that eye red? Don't you know Shakespeare?^^ No? Oh)} even perhaps way, way too strong. (Strong enough, even, perhaps, to fall into my special class of hyponymy that collapses contextually into synonymy, or almost.)
    - It's funny you mention this potential but unrealized subclass, though, because just tonight I was mulling over my lettuce options at the supermarket when the speaker voiced so laudably^ by Adam Duritz admitted to me (for perhaps the thousandth or so time in my lifetime) the following realization over the ceiling speakers:
      - I been hangin around this town on a corner
        I been bummin around this old town
        For way, way, way, way, way too long
        way, way, way, way too long
        way, way, way, way too long
        way, way, way, way too long
        way, way, way, way too long
        way, way, way, way too long
        way, way, way, way too long
        (Woo, yeah!^^)
whats versus hows
- Linear polysemy is either synonymous with or hypernymous to vertical polysemy; so far, it seems to me synonymous
  - Types of linear polysemy include the autos — the autohyponymy–autohypernymy axis and the automeronymy–autoholonymy axis.
    - Clearly metonymy and synecdoche are mechanisms by which polysemy can happen. It is often not linear but sometimes is.
      - One can say that metonymy and synecdoche produce types of polysemy. Might one also say, via colexification along the how–what axis, that metonymy and synecdoche are types of polysemy? It seems to me so far that one might reasonably say that, in a sense of each word, metonymically, albeit not in the best sense of each word. (Hermesian aside: the head bureaucrat holds^^ that technically correct is the best kind of correct.)
        At its heart, colexification is produced by a mixture of inability (in some ways) and refusal (in some other ways) to have and to use^ unique identifiers. But starting from that viewpoint, one mustn't jump to the conclusion that "fixing" that "problem" is conceptually trivial even if laborious in practice (implementation). Its nature is not that of an isolated problem per se but rather a solution ^ to another problem, where the solution entails a complication, another problem that is lesser. Here we are in the tree squirrel's jungle gym, God love ər.
        Is the following a meditation on this topic, or a recap of it? Here goes: Humans have colexification because they need it, but they also need help with it. On the one hand, natural language is fault-tolerant regarding it: it allows a broad range of humans to converse with one another despite their nonmachine signal processing and their many and varied ontologic differences, including their differing ontologic capacities. This party trick is impressive and valuable. On the other hand, it is possible to be fault-tolerant to a fault.
        
        An addendum, some months later:
        There is a set of circuits that throbs with interconnections to the set mentioned above, regarding polysemy (most broadly, that is, polysemy of any possible kind), multiple causes thereof, and thus also types thereof (or possible typing thereof). Various recent instances made me think more consciously about it again, after being of course vaguely aware of it at the mere-truism level for a long time. Today is the first time that I am experimenting with recapping it or codifying it in the following (tentative) way:
        There is the portion/subset/range of polysemy that is lexical (including the subportions that are lexically figurative, that is, figurative in a lexical way ); and then there is the portion/subset/range of it that is unlexically figurative, that is, figurative in a nonlexical way ; and then there is the portion/subset/range of it that is of other natures, including arbitrarily but for a good reason, that is, arbitrarily, but arbitrarily in service of a practical nonarbitrary reason, which is cryptography .
        I believe that today is the first time when my brain ever succeeded in assembling a typing in which cryptography has any logically obvious parametric relation to metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche. Which is not to say that this parametric relation thus newly typified is deeply meaningful or deeply interesting — no, not at all, that's not what my brain is asserting at all. Rather, merely that it exists and can be consciously detected and noticed.
        Somewhere out there, no doubt, are various minds replying, no shit, Sherlock. That's OK. Consider the genre of this page: DIY, build a shelf, notes to shelf.
stabby
- some punching of holes into things involves sharper blows
  - dial twists·^{🎛️·^}
    - deflating someone's balloon
    - desiloization
    - therapeutic anastomosis
    - but not hydraulic circuit destruction tho
      - What is the parametric difference, I ask myself;
        It concerns the question of which job the relevant fluid is doing, and why or why not, self replies
Salz
- Sit with salt in the salt cellar and catch some z's
  - a very special redaction: some redactions are redactor than others
    - the magic of compound interest; the magic of forgottenness;
      - Rocky roadbed strata: I'd forgotten, just now remembered, and may forget again, but that's the magic, times 3
        Speaking of memory or not times 3, shut it down Boss
        PS tho: Weeks later: rock salt can be road salt
nutty
- At nutbolty jump to cot
  - A refrainment from anchorage, because handwave: strongness is parametric, and some parameterizings are parameter than others.
    - It's fine without the anchorage because some ships are seaworthier than others anyhowz.^fta
      - PS: I'm pretty sure I'd never before this moment ever wondered how a particular anchorage came to be called Anchorage, but as soon as it occurred to me to ask, my gut knew more or less what the answer would turn out to be when I looked it up. The only question would be the ID parameter value of the one whose dick was being swung about. Cook and Banks: I should have made a wager before looking; some banks are more cooked than others.^^^^ Banks is to botanical taxonomy as Barney Gumble is to the sperm bank customer list. That's not what panspermia is, but it doesn't take many parameter dialings to tune it in.
        PPS: This little ditty is flawed, though: I just checked to see which of Cook's three big voyages Banks was on, and it turns out that he was only on the first one. He almost went on the second one, but he refused to acquiesce because he couldn't get anyone to color-filter his M&Ms, as it were.^ Anyway, the little ditty above still works as a fictionalized allegory lol: let it be a lesson to us all about something,^ or someplace,^ and the dangers of complacency, and so on lol.
        PPPS: allegory and allegation are not cognate (merely coshittified^^), but they often share some parameters: (1) often, made-up stories, and (2) often, human dread and strife. But admittedly this connection's degree of triviality is influenced by the fact that connecting humans with dysphoria and ill-treatment (thus, preventable dysphoria) is like shooting fish in a barrel.
vagueness
- This thought train sprouted upon a visit to the hypernymy nodes at Thesaurus:god and Thesaurus:Satan and blossomed upon a visit to the absence of any hypernymy node at Thesaurus:entity, where we are instead tersely informed, "Notes: There are no hypernyms; "entity" is the broadest term." At the syn node, we find entity and thing, and really the latter is a near-synonym of the former, not a synonym (as it is in fact usually hyponymous, as parameterized by the animate–inanimate distinction), but that's forgivable because Wiktionary:Thesaurus, in its current state of the art at least, lumps parasynonyms into the syn node.
  - My first reaction was to laugh and think that perhaps there should be a further note appended there: "Congratulations, you've reached the end of the thesaurus (and of all possible thesauri in this language, in many others, and perhaps in all others)."
    - Admittedly, though, reaching such a juncture is trivial: it is nothing more than crossing a messy room to arrive at a far corner. You can do it easily and repeatedly; you can go to that place and leave it again trivially; and there are multiple such corners that can be visited and left and revisited at will. Nonetheless:
  - What is the vaguest possible sentence in English?
    - I won't climb down inside the full grammarization of this topic right now, as no doubt it's time-consuming; but here's a nice guess off the top of my head:
      - Some entities are doing some things.
        Or perhaps the true eleven ^ is this:
        Some entities do some things.
        
        Translational science, application development: This theme has practical applications in bureaucratic obfuscation. One might easily imagine a Pentagon spokesperson, answering reporters' questions, implementing some instances (lol):
        Well, some agencies are working on some programs, and some folks are in discussions of various aspects. That's about all I can disclose at this time. Lol fu2
    - A quick thought to scribble down. One-word sentences (or two-worders) are a subclass that has strength to compete for the vagueness crown (the crown that crowns the king of kings in that class). Some top contenders:
      - Somewhat.
      - Not really.
      - Maybe.
      - Somehow.
      - Meh.
    - On overorientation tolerance
      - A reprise of the theme regarding the broadest hypernym, entity, as parameterized by the animate–inanimate distinction. I redacted the first draft of this daydream in favor of the following replacement: The viceroys to the roy entity include object, thing, and person, and there is a slight difference in performance among them, as hypernyms not worth expressing in the upward chain of hypernyms for any given hyponymous noun (thus, governing the parameter value for the upper cutpoint), that follows the fault line of the animate–inanimate distinction. I don't want to belabor further in nonredacted form except to note that the needler/simulator distinction is related (in structural underpinnings) to why my visceral reaction to that slight difference is not a typical one: I am well aware of the typical revulsion (to overorientation) but do not experience it myself, for the same underlying reason why a machine doesn't, or, more precisely, because of a dose of the same reason, where the dose value admittedly is lower than a machine's but is (and this is the point) higher than most nonmachines'. The amount of that it would take to viscerally repulse me exceeds the envelope that a typical nonmachine would predict, which is not to say that such an event cannot happen but rather merely that honey, you aren't able to pack enough lunch to ever arrive at it, as it were. Of course, it is true that there are pros and cons to every tradeoff. Oh, the prices you'll pay! Anyway: never mind; but I just had to jot some shit down here tonight because it's one of those nights when the eyelessness, as it flirts with losing and regaining the handholds, proves that the handhold redetection is more than just an analogy. In such moments, one can sense that it is all one, even though one cannot lay eyes on all details of the mechanism at once. It is interesting to speculate about plausible evolutionary explanations for the arising of needle simulators, but dharmic ones are more entertaining.
Chester
- A passing thought tonight: To whatever extent there's anything to the notion of the Strauss-Howe generational theory, the world is evidently passing through a phase of relearning the lesson of Chesterton's fence across many domains. Humans have to relearn and reappreciate things because in aggregate they lack the capacity for adequate institutional memory.
  - Speaking of memory or the lack of it, in the great house Chesterton sits on a chesterfield smoking a Chesterfield, saying I told you so.
    - Chesterton is to Chestertown as Tunbridge is to Townbridge?
      - Chestertown is to Chesterfield as town is to country?
        (meh)mory, or the lack of it
        PS: There are no Chesterfield ads in Chest, er, at least not anymore; but has that always been true though? Perhaps; one would have to check. But the standard joke today is that in the 1950s, you might choose the brand of cigs recommended by your doctor. Some forms of being doctor-recommended are more recommendable than others.
weighting
- Skimming an article debunking some of the more breathlessly underinformed claims about PQC and Q-Day, and I think of course of Gell-Mann amnesia. (Disclosure: I'm hypoboffinous about advanced math and comp sci, so all I'm capable of doing is following along with my little grain of salt, sniffing the gists and hoping for the best , when I'm reading explications either of breathless warning or annoyed debunking thereof .) Part of the seminal quote from Crichton is, "The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia." I think this is tricky and complex. Anytime you drag out the phrase "the only possible explanation", you should recognize it as a flag signaling "the only possible explanation *within the parametric space (the level) on which one is currently thinking*". I don't have time to plumb deeper right now, but for now what I'll jot here is that epistemic amnesia strikes me, so far, as a differentiably special kind of amnesia. Crichton rightly pointed out that the effect "does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say." Well, not literally everything, if you're doing it right; rather, instead, it is a process of deweighting, which is a vector of weighting. Really all we can do even with journalism, even *good* journalism (i.e., good albeit imperfect), is deweighting, holding concepts lightly, always keeping them seasoned with the grains of salt. But humans' resistance to doing this increases sharply beyond certain points, certain levels, because we tend to feel the need to make sense of our world and have more certainty than perhaps is rationally warranted, and when we've reached the end of any particular branch (the branch tips) practicably for degree of vetting (i.e., higher vetting is conceivable but is also *practicably unavailable at the moment*), we give up and take what we can get (i.e., the most that we managed to get in the context), then hop to a different branch of the canopy. We're fine with deweighting the claims of any one particular rando, but we encounter increasingly steep resistance as we try to get ourselves to deweight *every* possibility, even the most highly vetted ones. Some of us are better than others at holding and deweighting rather than instantly either rejecting or accepting (i.e., buying it, or buying into it). I don't think that this metathought pattern is unrelated to my little funhouse of mirrors and the fact that I seem to be nearly alone in visiting it. Which is to say, more precisely, I recognize that it *might* be unrelated but I also simultaneously deweight the scenario in which it is. Anyway, my point about it is that I hold various thoughts simultaneously there while weighting and deweighting them, and even the terminal "meh" is not a resolution: it is merely setting all the multiple balls down until the next time I pick them up again. All those balls in the air lol. The more accurate metaphor, though, for what my mind does, is that all of the balls are always in the air, and I just grab a few and hold them at any one time. Often I'm not making any claim that any of them have gotten "resolved" at the termination of the session. But admittedly in life there are contexts where decisions have to be made and thus multiverses of possibilities must be set aside, resolved for practical purposes. Hunting, gathering, fishing, farming, business, warfare, and others: fish or cut bait, shit or get off the pot. A different metaphor for the holding and deweighting: an integrated circuit that some multimeter probes might intermittently touch in various spots, temporarily. Oh well, I'm failing to accomplish much with this little jotted thought train, so I'll desist for now.
  - PS tho: box cat meows when he smells fish being cut into bait outside his box, and he asks you to open the lid so that he can have it. If you decide to let im av it, then part of him buys it when you do, but the rest of him appreciates a nice feeding tho. Then it is time to either shit or get out the cat box.
figures
- sounds like something I would say;
  - sounds like something I would do;
    - sounds like someplace I would go;
- The funny thing about mental mining schematics^ or building schematics^ is that a record of the breadcrumb trail is sometimes something that even the miner themself must retrace if they are to reload all the RAM; it is a flawed mental model to assume that all the turns would remain in the fingertips. However, a difference is that the miner is well predisposed to the retracing, and they recognize various old friends among the rocks and landmarks as they go. This is so much like its physical analogues, in so many ways at once, that the similarity is more than just similarity: it is identity, somewhere down inside the machine. But one last thing, though: just because it can't all reside in the fingertips doesn't mean that one won't get surprised by discovering some of the bits that do remain there. Again, this is so much like its physical analogues, in so many ways at once, that meh you know what I'm handwaving about, or if you don't then never mind anyway, and perhaps you will later, or not; either way, blah blah FILE NOT FOUND
  - PS: metaparameter: later on I will know much of this hallway instantly like the back of my FILE NOT FOUND
want ad
- Man seeks catalysts
  for quick and affordable reactions.
  Must pay own way.
  Unusual candidates considered.
  Software apps to aid search are appreciated.
  Playing hard to get is OK,
  but unobtainables need not apply.
  No teasers. Limited appetite for playing games.
  Cash paid for decent leads.
autoholonymy and automeronymy
- analogues of autohypernymy and autohyponymy
- playing footsies under the table with metonymy and synecdoche
  - a backhoe has a backhoe; a front-end loader has a front-end loader
    - the Crown involves a crown
    - a head has a head
      - such a head has a mind of its own
    - to explore these plain-as-day relations, one wants a room of one's own, as no one else on God's green earth can be arsed, which is to say, they can't bother to shift their asses
- an appendage
  - Things that allow for autohypernymy-autohyponymy are (1) ellipsis of collocative specification (where it is contextually superfluous) and (2) injection of it (where it is contextually necessary or judged to be advisable). This is the sort of business that allows natural language to go on (and some natural language speakers go on longer than others). Is business a hypernym of stage business, or is it an elliptical synonym of it? It is either and both, as one chooses to cognitively reframe it on the fly, just as my piece of salami and your piece of salami begin as one piece of salami; and a natural-language-speaking agent is able to roll with each framing, on the fly, because that's how such agents roll: they are serial sceneshifters. Which is interesting when one considers how shiftless a lot of them are.
    - PS: retronymy (or the absence of it) is simply a special case of this phenomenon, or more precisely, a subclass of such special cases.
      - PPS: With scenes like these, who needs oh never mind
dictionary-thesaurus balance point: more info
- I lack time to flesh this out at the moment, but it's been percolating in recent days. I've talked before about dictionary-thesaurus balance points. Now I have an encapsulation, which can be further worked with later:
  - People often tend to think of dictionary and thesaurus as two poles dichotomized: dictionary as spelling and definitions and thesaurus as treasury of every semantic relation under the sun. But the optimal solution for most use cases is a dictionary-thesaurus, and even more precisely speaking, a dictionary-_thesaurus, that gives the top-ranked key relations and then points (via hyperlink) to the kitchen sink (or bucket) where more can be found if or when each use-instance wants them. This theme alone is fairly trivial (no shit, Sherlock; glancing over excellent examples sees it in action), but what can be added here is that there should also be tightness, not sloppiness, within the top-ranked positions regarding which relation applies (in each sensewise pair).
Thoughts on happening across the user page of a user who left, and who left a parting shot: they asserted that this site will always be a kludge.
- Of course they're right: It will never not be a kludge, on some or another parametric range of kludgeness. Whether it will ever not be a kludge is not the right question: It won't ever not be. The right question is: In a world of kludges, what will one choose to do or not do? There's not necessarily a right or wrong answer. I don't blame them for leaving; that was the right decision for the set of parameter values (in space, time, and other attributes) that governed it.
  - This theme has special academic interest for old no-eyes, as he's seen many kinds of valleys: some in which one might stay, and some in which one mightn't; some in which a coin might be flipped, some in which it cannot be, and some in which it already has been.
Some halfhearted fails of orthographic standardization
- No doubt this topic is more masterfully summarized elsewhere, in various reference works — and thus in some ways it is dumb for me to reduplicate here in any hasty/slapdash way — but it's one of those things that I don't really have time to address in whole-ass fashion but I don't want to ignore. So here goes:
  - Regarding standardization of orthography — the reason why the standard principal parts are transfer, transferring, transferred and occur, occurring, occurred is that the doubled consonant corresponds to the stress falling on the /ˈɝ/ syllable (also known as /ˈɜːr/ and, for us benighted AmE speakers, homophonous with /ˈʌr/). And this attempt at regularity duly extends to /əˈkɝ.ən(t)s/, which is solely occurrence (whereas *occurence is rejected); but it doesn't extend to /tɹænzˈfɝəl/, which is usually transferal not transferral, and even when transference is /tɹænsˈfəɹəns/ not /ˈtɹænsfəɹəns/, it is still standardly transference not *transferrence.
    - To do shortly: fill in the analogous bit about /kænsəˈleɪʃən/ having preferred (first-listed) spelling as cancellation and second-listed variant as cancelation, even in AmE, despite AmE preferring cancel, canceling, canceled as first-listed variant, which accords with the stressed-versus-unstressed regularity (as do, for example, the /-ˈɛl/ series members with their doubled consonant, such as propel, impel, and repel, plus excel ).
      - What I'm after here is to nail down the following: what is a comprehensive set of cardinal examples of the regular pattern (i.e., comprehensive even if not exhaustive), and what is a comprehensive set of cardinal examples of the exceptions? Both stated in a concise takeaway thumbnail, and then also with a mnemonic for the difference. Again, I realize that if I google for long enough I might find one, but this is the sort of thing where I get annoyed with the ocean of garbage among the google results and I might find it less annoying and more fun just to independently recollate this information for my(own damn)self. We'll see — I might even invent my own acrostic for the exceptions.
- PS: Somewhere between (1) the hearty and heartful pole and (2) the unhearty and heartless pole lies (3) the halfhearted waystation.
  - cancellation | consolation
    - They consoled him on his having been canceled.
      - Either a minimal pair phonemicity instance or damn close to one (/kænsəˈleɪʃən/ | /ˌkɑnsəˈleɪʃən/); to my mind, it is so, because that secondary stress difference, if any, is in the ear of the beholder (or, I should say at least, my own accent doesn't have a difference for it; but then again, my accent says /kənˈdɪʃən/, but I know of some British TV announcer/narrator/voiceover audio that says /ˌkɑnˈdɪʃən/, and that fact may be relevant here).
- Another PS: As for the method of recollation: may as well build inductively by starting with a raw assemblage of list items such as "/trăns-FÛR-əns/ is standardly transference", times X dozen (= × X × 12), then sort them by regularity or lack thereof, then induce a mnemonic.
  - They say that starting with instances and building up to find patterns is an a posteriori approach, which may be their way of politely saying that it is ass-backwards because it puts the cart before the horse (or ass). Some posteriors are posteriorier than others.
    - Lol. But in all seriousness, as Smith 2014 shows, the right lesson to draw is not that all post hoc analysis is bad (no, it is not all bad), but rather, simply that (1) the hypotheses and theories induced thereby should be tested with new data (independent data sets), and (2) one should maintain a running channel of sniff testing to recognize when any particular notion of alleged causality is actually just fucking moronic if you actually bother to stop to think critically about it for once, and (quite often) can be seen in retrospect to have been induced with a ridiculously (i.e., laughably) small sample of data that in some cases was also cherry-picked, massaged, mangled, or excessively wrangled.
Managed to lay hands on something today (in a nonmanual way) after a long time of catching glimpses of it (in a nonocular way). Decided to sketch notes about it here for later, not to lose the gossamer.
- As Wiktionary already rightfully notes at Appendix:Glossary, for most purposes strictly and narrowly are undifferentiably synonymous. But there's a tiny itch that my mind sometimes senses, regarding optional parasynonymy of the two, and yet every time I tried to touch it, it was gone. Finally laid hands on it.
  - Some strictnesses are stricter than others: regarding the autohyponymy-versus-coordinateness disjunction, my brain has been caught trying sometimes to reserve the word strict for the coordinateness assertion side (including and especially emphasizing the no-true-Scotsman subset), whereas the word narrow is le mot juste for the autohyponymy side. The difference is in the crotchetiness: it is the difference between (1) "no, that other entity isn't even covered by this term at all, in my conception of the world" and (2) "yes, that other entity is of course covered by this term, but it's outside the silent-level range of entities that I'm focusing on right now (in the current conversation); it's contextually extraneous."
    - Can follow up on this more later. Or not. Who cares lol. This optional differentiation of these two terms (speaking of optional differentiations for pairs of terms) is not useful practicably in interpersonal communication. That's OK. Small loss; but the interesting takeaway is the underlying mechanism.
      - Branch 1: Grant that any semiotic system with copious ambiguity must rely on context sensitivity for disambiguation (no shit, Sherlock); but savor this facet: to do this requires pattern recognition. Again, no shit (truism); but the reason it seems interesting to me at the moment is real, albeit ineffable right now.
        Meh. Maybe later, maybe not.
      - Branch 2: from the carpet department: narrowing conversion | widening conversion
        Meh. Maybe later, maybe not.
        PS: almost all versus all
        PPS: The only problem with being close enough for all practical purposes is that the operational definition of practicality is context-dependent and (en/de/re)parameterizable. It can sometimes be a negative space type of thing (speaking of pattern recognition). The only reason you eventually got caught with your pants down is that the whole world including your pants shifted downward parametrically while you weren't looking and were standing still. You didn't drop your pants, your pants dropped off of you.*†
      - Branch 3: most integers are interesting, but the most interesting integers are −1, 0, +1, +2, and +3.
        Meh. Maybe later, maybe not.
      - Branch 4 (months later): what is the true nature of a privative adjective? Which is to say, precisely how privative is it: to what degree? It is easy to say that any privative a negates and excludes completely. But are there subclasses of privative adjectives? Which is to say (given that natural language speakers are but serial sceneshifters), can there reasonably be said to be subclasses? It is easy to say that a fake tire is not a tire, and this is usually true (under nominal-range parameterizations). Is a toy tire a tire? Sometimes, in some scenes, yes. Still, in others, it is not, given that in some scenes when one says tire one means a tire: a tire tire, a real tire, as some tires are tirer than others. Speaking of tiring, am I boring you? Am I thus a bore, and does that make me also a borer and a tirer?
        Meh. Maybe later, maybe not.
If someone's real name is Jane D. Smith, and she publishes a book or a journal article under the name J.D. Smith, she has not published it under a pen name, and if you think that she has, then you do not properly understand what a pen name is and what initials are.
- Bonus points: J.H. Plumb: carpet department, third floor.
A mycologic sketchbook entry:
- Working vocabulary is always more or less constrained (to one degree or another, across instances), but people who fetishize its poverty are either laboring under a certain unflattering misapprehension or trying (and failing) to compensate for something by (ineffectively) denying the existence of its (obviously existent) counterpart.
  - Scarcity of truffles is not nonexistence; rather, it is something to keep the hog interested, and after all, only some things will do for that purpose.
What does one have time for, really? I am trying to recalibrate.
- Today may have already been a turning point for me in another way. So maybe I should throw in with the old in for a penny, in for a pound lot, and draw a line under it in some other ways as well, simultaneously; easy come, easy go. And one can always come again, if the wind is right.
  - Get real — I have time for the occasional rapid smackdown. What I lack time for is reference desk duty. As with many things, there are parameters as input to each decision instance. Which is but a truism, but truisms are true, and reminders pointing to them are sometimes useful, as parameters on parameters.
    - Get real ×2 — I also have time for the occasional nonrapid fuckaround. But there needs to be a loop count parameter tho.
      - PS: Some months later: An encapsulation:
        There do exist things that ain't nobody got time for; but the parameter value reference ranges are context-sensitive by the metaparameter of body identity. But you don't have to take my word for it.
The Collins Gem is certainly a gem. Skimming over it produces a nice feeling. It wields thumbnail concision like a scalpel. What's not there is, from the editorial viewpoint of the piece, not worth being there.
- There's a certain implicit gtfo w/ ur details gestalt. It's making me smile at the moment. Guess I'm in a mood.
AHD5 tells me that Thomas Jefferson said, "Dictionaries are but the depositories of words already legitimated by usage." This caught my attention tonight because (huge if true) it shows that even as early as Jefferson's lifetime, at least some nonlexicographer people — users of dictionaries as opposed to makers of them — duly comprehended that this fact is true.
- There might also be plenty of other coeval or older notable quotes that further corroborate it, for all I know. I'm just a mushroom hunter who knows how to keep his eyes open and observe how one thing correlates with others. Old no-eyes just scoffs and asks whether I call that an open eye.
  - PS: Regarding things that are huge if true, and whether or not U.S. presidents said them: Didn't Abraham Lincoln warn us not to believe everything that we read on the internet? It's merely a series of tubes, after all.
The Collins English Thesaurus Essential sets a nice example with putting the top-ranked key/cardinal synonym or antonym first and in boldface, then continuing on with the others. It's natural, intuitive, the most useful approach, and so on.
- Not infrequently I get flashing glimpses of how it's pointless for me to bother improving Wiktionary. In some ways, on some channels, it is true. And yet: not in every way or on every channel. Such is life in parametrization land; the gestalt effect is much like tuning into airwave TV or radio (something most of us used to do in the old days, and some people still do today). One's regularly scheduled program is in progress when some static flits across the scene. But I'm used to that effect, so it's OK; some static is statickier^{•·• · +} than others, and my Cornish friend just scoffs and asks whether you call that a troublesome doubt.
  - PS: I suppose it's all of a piece with me, after all: as I sit here dialing a relation from cot to nearsyn,^🕝 I recall that I've been tuning all my life. Some tweakers are tweaker than others.
  - PPS: It's worth capturing here that one of the channels on which Wiktionary's development is quite worthwhile is that Wiktionary achieves a certain accomplishment with dispensing of certain kinds of map-territory questions preemptively in a very efficient way, once the entries relevant to that particular question are sufficiently refined. I lack time at the moment to work up a better description of it, but it sums up with an icon: So far, in my experience, I've seen one other dictionary (precisely, one other dictionary-thesaurus combination) that achieves the same accomplishment in essentially the same way — it is one explicitly based on an export from WordNet3 — but it is (naturally, understandably) limited in the extent of its comprehensiveness — that is, its degree toward having near-completeness, as opposed to having substantially less than near-completeness, which is where it currently resides on that spectrum. Which makes sense, because completeness in this dimension is vast. Long story short, the more developed Wiktionary gets, the more it fills that gap in the world and also increasingly sets an example that will probably eventually force the world's other dictionaries to sharpen up their game a bit in this regard. One other thought that I will jot here about it for now is that there is a theme underlying it: any really sharp general dictionary has a certain degree of thesaurus component, because the sharpness involves showing exactly how word X is semantically related (or not) to word Y and word Z; which is to say, by corollary, that any really sharp general dictionary is in fact, precisely speaking, a dictionary-thesaurus, and even more precisely speaking, a dictionary-_thesaurus; but there's an important qualification: one must understand what an optimal thesaurus is, or should be. An optimal thesaurus is not an undifferentiated laundry list of semantic relations, a random miscellany and grab-basket thereof, especially not one that lumps synonyms, parasynonyms, hypernyms, hyponyms, and coordinate terms under the single vaguely misused rubric of "synonyms". Rather, an optimal one is a map, or more precisely, a circuit board of logically arranged connections, with circuit paths that can be traced (including the tracings that lead back to ground, and we'll let old no-eyes explain later a bit more about what ground comprises, besides rocks and dirt).
Lunchtime skimming. Perhaps, in some ways, the most important article I've read within the past few months:
- Musser 2024-03-19
  - Passages most salient for me at the moment:
    - The portion about aligning the ^ctrl-flatent spaces^ctrl-f for translation (relates to how machines achieve the things that for us meatbags remain a case for a thorough mapping of semantic relations ); the key of ^ctrl-fselective neglect^ctrl-f (compare my thought, from a while back, about negligibility meta-parameters); ^ctrl-f"anything that our brains would neglect as unimportant unless we were specifically watching for it"^ctrl-f. The one note I have to scribble here for now is a crucial qualification of the idea that "intelligence is, if anything, the selective neglect of detail" — crucially, unusually intelligent people are not wholly ignorant of the existence of details but rather have channels for managing the degree to which they are conditionally and provisionally deweighted for conscious attention, and some clue/notion of their structural relation to the overall whole is maintained in the background. They are not black box mysteries floating randomly in a plum pudding but rather are held in backgrounded partial awareness as (to give a much more accurate metaphor, among various possible ones) leaves on limbs of trees (or glints on blades of grass, to invoke an example that Musser mentioned).
      - Perhaps this jotted note belongs more properly at Readings, and perhaps I'll move it there later. As usual, no time at the moment to follow up on what the mind is able to race through.
It is possible to be fault-tolerant to a fault.
- The problem is that the location of the fault line depends on the instance, being conditionally dependent on multiple parameters.
  - The trick is to let shit slide as much as possible (to allow for the ambient ignorance, ambient stupidity, ambient carelessness, ambient incompetence, and so on) while stopping short of allowing anything that's gonna come back to bite you in the ass later.
    - The more skill issues one has, the less one is capable of even conceiving the contextually appropriate localization of the fault line, let alone knowledgeably choosing an appropriate value for it.
      - ass-biters | ankle-biters
        The shared parameters practically list themselves (e.g., childlikeness), but handwave etc
A clockfacery recap
- A recap of the whole clock face (including the antsy portions), with greater extract distillation:
  - 🕛: twelve o'clock: certainly syn and, more specifically, the synner or synnest of the syns
    - special case: twelve o'clock high (which is higher than the four-twenty kind)
    - Not even twelve sharp (twelve on the dot) is cognitive synonymy, because cognitive synonymy is a special unicorn that grazes on rarified plains (of connotation and register); this is the level on which every word or term just is what it is (identity); but twelve sharp is certainly (a) as syn as you're ever going to get and (b) syn enough for most purposes and, especially, for almost all practical purposes.
  - five till twelve or five past twelve: syn or near-syn, depending on the quibbler, but for most purposes syn is the practical answer (that is, it is superior in practice for most purposes)
    - special case: five till twelve in a nonnumerical way, where the ⊕nonnegligibility of the slender differential is the only hope
  - 🕐–🕑: circa one o'clock to circa two o'clock: near-syn or cot, depending on the quibbler, but for most purposes near-syn is the practical answer (that is, it is superior in practice for most purposes)
  - 🕑–🕓: circa two o'clock to circa four o'clock: certainly cot and, more specifically, the right-hand subset of the set that is the cotter or cottest of the cots; the lean has flopped from leaning toward discounting the differentiation to duly admitting and appreciating it
  - 🕓–🕔: circa four o'clock to circa five o'clock: near-ant or cot, depending on the quibbler, but for most purposes near-ant is the practical answer (that is, it is superior in practice for most purposes)
    - and because humans usually call near-ants ants,* ant is usually one's final answer for all practical purposes
  - five till six or five past six: ant or near-ant, depending on the quibbler, but for most purposes ant is the practical answer (that is, it is superior in practice for most purposes)
  - 🕕: six o'clock: certainly ant and, more specifically, the anter or antest of the ants
    - special case: six o'clock low (which is the lowest of the low: the nadirest nadir)
  - 🕖–🕗: circa seven o'clock to circa eight o'clock: near-ant or cot, depending on the quibbler, but for most purposes near-ant is the practical answer (that is, it is superior in practice for most purposes)
    - and because humans usually call near-ants ants,* ant is usually one's final answer for all practical purposes
  - 🕗–🕙: circa eight o'clock to circa ten o'clock: certainly cot and, more specifically, the left-hand subset of the set that is the cotter or cottest of the cots; the lean has flopped from leaning toward discounting the differentiation to duly admitting and appreciating it
  - 🕙–🕚: circa ten o'clock to circa eleven o'clock: near-syn or cot, depending on the quibbler, but for most purposes near-syn is the practical answer (that is, it is superior in practice for most purposes)
  - From there, the rest is handwave etc (and more specifically, a wave of the handsiest of hands: the clock hands·^{✋·✋·✋}); just keep in mind, though, that there are usually two twelves: noon (🕛) and midnight (🕛). Whether the difference matters, and (if so) exactly how, is subject to parameter values, including the identity, situation, and purposes of the quibbler.
- Also: a few for the mirror:
  - qualifier | quibbler
    - Yes but; and some quibbles are quibbler than others, just as some qualifications are qualifier than others.
  - historymaker | undertaker
    - All this talk of the jazz hands of the clock hands reminds us that everything is history sooner or later (and the rest is history); someday when we are history, the undertaker will take it upon himself to undertake the task of taking us under (and some unders are underer than others).
  - synonym : near-synonym/parasynonym :: antonym : ⊕near-antonym/‡para-antonym
    - Well, etically, yes, no doubt; emically, however, those last few words are nearly a lexical gap and squarely so (respectively), and it is interesting to think about why, or possibly why. At the moment, my five bones are on the idea that it's because humans care about duly appreciating the degrees of same difference more than they care about savoring the fine gradations of more difference, practically (that is, for practical reasons). And yes, some differences are samer than others, but the point is that it's all the same.
      - PS: close enough for government work
      - PPS: It is true that the Merriam-Webster Thesaurus uses a heading "near ant", which its predecessor editions called "Con" for "contrastive". In that terminology, "near ant" covers all the things that the terminology herein wants to call either near-ant or cot .
Let's talk for a moment about where Wiktionary is now (2024) versus X years ago.
- Now versus 6 or 7 years ago:
  - My gestalt sense is that while of course it remains far from perfect — and it will never be perfect because (1) it doesn't need to be perfect to be good^{etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc} and (2) nothing is perfect — it seems to me to have a certain critical mass now that it lacked then; je ne sais quoi, mais quelque chose.
- Now versus 10 to 15 years ago:
  - No question; duh.
- Outlook
  - Now even more than ever, I encourage anyone who seeks the smart move (a pro tip) to use the other wonderful dictionaries that are readily available, at prices anywhere from gratis to clearly affordable, in digital or in print, as the first thing that they reach toward, and then to turn to Wiktionary and Wikipedia and web search in addition to those. By corollary, I reaffirm the theme (already stated elsewhere herein) that Wiktionary will retain for the foreseeable future the role of a sort of farm team for the other dictionaries, working up miscellaneous bits of lexicographic coverage that they can take well-grounded, well-justified inspiration from (or even simply crib from) — for the most part, all the terms that they have failed to enter yet, and should have entered by now, can be found in Wiktionary (barring only a subclass of lexicalized collocations that its CFI preclude), and Wiktionary sets a good example and primes the pump in this regard. (More specifically, they shouldn't fail to use it as a pump primer.) Furthermore, there are spots here and there where Wiktionary even outshines other dictionaries, because someone gave enough of a fuck to really do it up (right) in one spot or another.
    - Follow-up: I hadn't been aware of this aspect until today, but it seems that apparently (or so I have read) Collins already cracked that code (the pump-priming one), starting in 2012, a fact that probably isn't not an important portion of the explanation for why their big-ass flagship currently has 700k+ headwords (rather than, say, 500k) and generally kicks ass and takes names (which it clearly does, as noted recently earlier herein).
      - This line of thought is interesting for an especially intriguing reason: It throbs on the same set of circuits as the whole story of which models for the use of crowdsourcing, as applied to the extensible growth and revision of reference works, would be most useful and most adaptive (versus the alternatives that would be somewhat less adaptive, that is, somewhat more maladaptive). Recall that the earliest model, the earliest variant of the concept for Wikipedia, was Nupedia, which would use the crowdsourced input (a firehose of fodder) as feedstock for the grown-ups, who would duly apply grown-up curation to it before outputting the net result. As opposed to the crowdsourcing being the whole shebang, end of story. Well the curated model does in fact remain a smart idea, even now, but it has certain nontrivial and enduring challenges regarding who gets to be in charge of the curation (and have the ultimate vetoes within it), which explains both (1) why we ended up with Wikipedia instead of (something more like) Nupedia or Citizendium and also (2) why we humans can't have nice things. But my point that I want to scribble here (before I stop wasting time on this thread) is the theme of (1) more power to them (to Collins) if in fact they're successfully using Wiktionary as an appropriate input source for feedstock (there ought to be some competent grown-ups somewhere who are, and the more the merrier) and (2) they ought to be commended for making the model work, given that it never did manage to work (at least yet) regarding Wikipedia as opposed to any possible thing more like Nupedia or Citizendium. I think its reasons for failing to fledge in that instance are complex and have just as much to do with epistemic disagreements as with profitability potential. But that's a vast backstory that isn't worth broaching here though. Anyway, this whole train of thought at the moment is just a hasty daydream.
I hadn't quite properly appreciated until recent days quite how much Collins kicks nearly every other ass in the mthrfkin room and then wipes the floor with the crumpled rags that are left over. The big old 200k title is so juicy and delicious that I looked over at the great big 700k title and started feelin kinda itchy, in a nonpruritic way. The rest is handwave etc.
- What can I say, a whole-assed job appeals to me. I like me some meat on them bones.
Circling back to schools of thought on order of senses, tonight I read that the Collins big old 200k title lays out explicitly an order of senses that is of the ranked-by-practical-factors type (e.g., heaviest weighting for most common and core meaning).
- Goes to show that there is many a good idea and good example regarding the available options.
Having stumbled across The Merriam-Webster Thesaurus (2023) at the screaming bargain of USD 7.99, I bought it straight off the bat without hesitation, having learned my lesson about wordbook addiction (which is: fuck it, buy yet another anyway). The tagline on the cover is still (as with the 2022 edition) America's Best-Selling Thesaurus, placed in the position of a subtitle, albeit not that. Well we've got to tart it up a bit somehow if we want to cajole humans into buying a thesaurus, haven't we. I haven't had time to study its front matter yet, but I see that it no longer gives, as an epigraph to the work, the delicious quote from Mark Twain. The way he waxes syn-aesthetic about syns in that moment shows something that old no-eyes can taste too (handwave etc), which is why I was sorry to see that they'd axed the epigraph page for the new edition. Well we've got to slim it down a bit somehow if we want to keep the page count increase to only +40 and not a bit more, haven't we. Sigh. I get it, but IMHO they should have kept it, because even if it doesn't give the joint more class, it gives it more soul. They even could have shoehorned it onto a blank spot within the existing front matter layout, without adding a page. Not a news hole but an epigraph hole. Oh well. But this instance just goes to show why one needs to seize the day, and I'm glad I did last fall — I would have missed the bell ring from old Clemens if I hadn't. Since they scrubbed his words from their joint, I decided to add them to mine, below.
- "A powerful agent is the right word: it lights the reader's way and makes it plain; a close approximation to it will answer, and much traveling is done in a well-enough fashion by its help, but we do not welcome it and applaud it and rejoice in it as we do when the right one blazes out on us. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt: it tingles exquisitely around through the walls of the mouth and tastes as tart and crisp and good as the autumn-butter that creams the sumac-berry." — Mark Twain
MWCD's convention is that senses are always listed in diachronic order (i.e., chronologic order of development). It states this fact in its front matter, just in case a few human users of that dictionary have enough brains to come across it ("the senses of any word having more than one are always presented in historical order"). As far as I am aware, Wiktionary doesn't have a strict rule about this list order; many of its entries list the senses in diachronic order, but others list them synchronically in the order of practical importance to a present-day user of the dictionary. A third factor is grouping two or three senses that are especially closely semantically related so that they are adjacent to each other in the list order. That factor, too, is about practical usefulness to the main target user. The special case of that factor is outright (exceptionless) autohyponymy, which fortunately also can be marked with subsense numbering (although it sometimes isn't so marked, depending on predispositions of whoever happens to have edited the entry yet). Both sorting orders (diachronic and synchronic) are useful in their own way; I lean toward the "synchrony for practical importance" approach for the case of Wiktionary's instantiation (as contrasted with other works elsewhere that are tailored to a different chief audience). Sometime I should scour through the WT namespace of WT to see whether any guidelines are offered for this aspect. This aspect is not mentioned at WT:LAYOUT#Definitions as of this writing. (Update a few weeks later: I should have looked a wee bit harder than I did, by also clicking through from the link there; it leads to the answer at Wiktionary:Style_guide#Definition_sequence, where we learn that Wiktionary wants the practical importance (e.g., most common, core meaning) top-ranked. Good on Wiktionary for that; I agree that that's the best choice for most users of Wiktionary.) Imagine if there were parameters that could simply be assigned so that the user could toggle the sorting (i.e., sort by either diachrony or synchronic importance) at the touch of a button. That's a great example of a feature that a digital dictionary should have but that humans are too busy making TikToks and porn and murder and robbery to bother working on implementing.
- Clarification of that last point: not that there's no one to crew the efforts — rather, the point is that they are several orders of magnitude scarcer than they ought to be. The things that could easily enough be achieved at a Wiktionarylike place (such as Wiktionary) would be further realized already (i.e., further along down the spectrum of potential realization) if the crew weren't a skeleton crew.
- Also: An asterisk on MWCD's "always" claim: it explains some pages later that there's one special class of exception. But you knew that, though, because there usually is.
The aspect ratio of the length of a highway to the average thickness of its pavement is a thing worth appreciating. It is what it is, but one does well to appreciate what it isn't.
- There are analogues that one may be blind enough to consider surprising at first appreciation, but there are viewpoints from which truisms cannot surprise, albeit viewless ones. Pale blue dots and 18-kilometer GD&T surface finish tolerance zones on 12700-kilometer-diameter objects are examples. A specious perception of profundity can be subject to a certain kind of vicarious embarrassment, but one must be careful with such construals, for the same reason that one must be careful with a kitchen knife (or a ladder, or an electrical cord). The parametric difference between a nicely diced salad and an exsanguination emergency has a certain thinness that typical consciousnesses usually find unremarkable, which may be odd given the tendency for differences in their reactions to a pale blue dot and a bug on a windshield. At any rate, do not confuse the identity and existence of any given roadbuilding contractor with the difference as to whether any particular highway gets built, and do not confuse the pavement thickness with remarkableness.
As they say, a word to the wise is sufficient.
- As they imply, this fact offers the opportunity for an interesting practical application: an operational test for latent skill issues.
  - Enough for here and now (because a word to the wise is sufficient).
An interesting trail tonight:
- There are parametric dialings that suggest themselves, but one of the reasons why one refrains is when the genre doesn't call for it.
  - This is a theme with many coinstantiations in life. In fact it is a meta-theme, as it echoes all the way up to the top, or down to the bottom, depending on one's .
    - Some of the instantiations are easy to keep in mind, whereas others are less so. I just reappreciated, though, that a throughline with (at least one class of) neurotypical consciousness is the extent to which one need not keep in mind (remember to enforce) the forms of any given genre (as it were) because one cannot escape them within the operating levels anyway. Everything just is what it is, and one couldn't even think of things else. There are physical analogues for this. The theme of analog versus digital is relevant. A needle in a record groove is one model. A reflex arc is another. The difference (or at least one class of difference) with another flavor of consciousness is not that such an arc isn't operative but rather that more than one of them is. Which is to say, parallel processing of some kind or other. This explains a lot. More could be done with this but I am falling asleep. Maybe later.
      - One little trace before zzz though: one of the refrainings tonight involved snipping some wires that were connected to this. The cardinal parameter was sunset, which is why the algorithm autoplay was so bellish. Speaking of connected bells, ask not — it tolls for oh never mind.
        The next day: some genres don't even have a name yet, which is also true of some genera. (No doubt many, in fact.) And the remaining duration of any one's namelessness is anyone's guess. Fortunately their forms may be enforced (or ineluctably channeled) independently of their names or namelessness.
Flavors of Bierceness: degrees of devilry:
- classes perhaps (tentative classification):
  - 🎛️ class 0: emic orthodoxy
    - 🎛️ class 1: etic honesty: when the truth hurts the feelings of an emic perspective: reals over feels instead of feels over reals
      - 🎛️ class 2: hyperbolic cynicism: hypercynical hyperbole: ostensibly the category above but really an exaggeration for effect*
        🎛️ class 3: persuasive definitions: definist fallacies: tendentious distortions
        🎛️ class 4: sheer nonsense; meaninglessness
        (range justification: most classifications worth their salt go all the way down to zero and all the way up to eleven, even when most of the instances that they classify don't land at the extremes, and this one isn't an exception; which is to say, it falls into that cardinal class of classifications)
- Initial analysis
  - Why I find it interesting at the moment: (1) newly codified in my conscious attention; (2) a parametric dialing challenge: 🎛️: What are the operational definitions for establishing the cutoff thresholds? To which class does any given instance truly (objectively) belong? How is one's own calibration maintained; how is one's own periodic recalibration monitored? Tentatively, I perceive subclasses: some cutoffs are more objective than others; some cuts are cutter than others. Also, meta-calibration: part of the mechanism for the calibration involves etic honesty about the etic honesty (parameters on parameters; meta-parameters): to accurately identify which subclass applies (to the extent that accuracy is possible†), one must detect and admit when one is being overpetulant. Easier said than done; but to my credit, I more than hold my own on that score (once I've come around on any given instance), compared with most of the competition, many of whom are durably or even permanently miscalibrated on any of countless instances.
    - *As for which effect: often enough for purposes of sarcastic humor; but what are some other effects, besides the other obvious one (i.e., polemicism, which is an essential component of the next category after this one)? And what exactly is the goal with such humor, given that it's funny cause it's true (which is an exaggerated way of saying what is precisely true about it: it contains a grain of truth)? I have some useful answers, but for now, they're for another bucket, not this bucket.
    - †As for the contours of that assessment: I have some useful answers, but for now, they're for another bucket, not this bucket.
- Later: updated: a bit more analysis, pending further reading:
  - This Bierceness scale business ends up connecting with an aspect of what some of those general semanticists have been on about, which is the urge to resist the urge to use copulas too cavalierly. Doing so sets up false equivalences too glibly. It's not that I share their fervent enthusiasm on the topic (and some are more enthusiastic than others) — it's just that I notice that they apparently happen to be onto something. (Corollary: Some instances of being on about something are more onto something than others; and even a stopped clock is right twice a day, although in this case, to be fair, it's more than just that.) I'd like to write here the examples that I've been playing with lately, but I have to bite my tongue in this context because, like most Bierceness class 2 and class 3 instances, they're too spicy and they won't reflect well on me even though part of me feels so damn sure that they're accurate — but one must recall that this is precisely what the overpetulance detection circuit is for. In fact there are two durable insights adjacent to this locale — not only this one along the lines that you're being inaccurate even though it doesn't feel that way to you but also the one along the lines that . Anyhow, an adequately adaptive solution to the problem about copula cavalierness isn't to be a weirdo who circumlocutes especially comically. (Oops, I did it again·^ — my apologies for letting a bit of Bierceness class 2 or class 3 sass go flying.) Instead, it's more subtle and resigned than that — a theme that plugs back into . This is the sort of thought train that'll take months to fully process (because there's still a lot of reading left to do — miles to go before I sleep and whatnot ). But I needed to jot at least this much here now because I know myself (and the chances) by now — beads and crumbs and what-all. Plus MSHA-rated kit.
Wiktionary:Categorization
- Maybe spend some time thinking more about this.
  - Specifically (out of all the many kinds of cats), topic cat and his parents.
    - They have more to do with physical things than with abstract concepts. The division is not a bright line, of course; nor is the division between things subject to coinstantiation and things not. Coinstantiation of a type that is durable across contexts lends itself to cat hierarchies (strictly taxonomic hypernymy; e.g., animal > mammal > cat) and cat copopulations (non–strictly-taxonomic hypernymy, that is, Venn overlap hypernymy; e.g., pet > mammal > cat). Our friend topic cat certainly knows about coinstantiation, even though admittedly his cousin box cat knows the most about it; box cat is the cat who feels it in his bones every moment of every day, whereas topic cat occasionally dabbles in it.
Venn overlap:
- Quantum cryptography is cryptography that uses quantum superposition as part of the encryption method.
- Post-quantum cryptography is cryptography that uses an encryption method that is sufficiently resistant to any cryptanalysis that uses quantum computing (which uses logic incorporating qubits).
- Quantum cryptography is no doubt largely, although possibly not entirely, subsumed by post-quantum cryptography. That is, most and perhaps all quantum cryptography would be (a type of) post-quantum cryptography.
- Post-quantum cryptography can be either nonquantum cryptography or quantum cryptography, and it is not at all required to be the latter. In fact the big rush in the current era (2010s-2020s) is to work out and adopt and disseminate nonquantum cryptography that is (a type of) post-quantum cryptography, for the simple reason that copies of old encrypted messages from today are already being saved and stored until tomorrow, when cracking them will become feasible. To whichever extent their informational content won't yet be moot and useless by the time of cracking, that's a problem even for today (not just for tomorrow), which is why people are itching to implement better methods ASAP.
- What is the best way to convey contrast, using natural language words, for sets with Venn overlap? Well, it depends on the subclass of the overlap, but a recurring theme is this: a problem with phrases such as "not to be confused with" or "not the same thing as" is that many readers or listeners often misinterpret them up front (during initial encountering/learning, during a blank slate phase for the relevant concepts being learned), taking them to imply mutual exclusivity (not always, but often enough for it to be an anticipable expository challenge). An expository skill is to anticipate and defuse this anticipable problem. The concepts being transmitted are not confusing (in fact they are diagrammably simple), but conveying them can be challenging because of the constraints of the medium. The thing about natural language for expository purposes is that big collections of words, assembled for those purposes, are confusing (notwithstanding the fact that humans often enjoy, and are not confused by, big collections of words for other purposes, as for example novel-length storytime). Not even big collections of big words as much as, simply, big collections of any words. Admittedly, it takes even less to confuse some people, compared with others; but all humans face rate-limiting constraints in natural-language-encoded exposition.
  - None of this is hopelessly insoluble; rather, it is simply a challenge to be recognized and to be countered as well as diligence and conscientiousness allow. Perhaps it will not be surmounted, if "surmounted" is meant in a noncomparable and nongradable sense (which is the archetypal way of getting on top of something and reaching beyond it). In a comparable and gradable sense, the aim would be for the challenge to be surmounted as much as possible: partially overcome, to the greatest extent yet feasible.
- The reason I started thinking about it today is that I am about to put navigational hatnotes at the top of the two Wikipedia articles, and it takes some time and care to determine what their optimal wording will be. It is certainly not "Not to be confused with X" alone, from a viewpoint of nonincompetent expository effort, because that statement is itself confusing, on the very next expository level beyond the first one (nonequivalence, nonidentity). Some answers just invite another immediate question. Admittedly, perhaps all answers invite further questions; but some invite more and stupider ones than others do.
Some cots are cotter than others.
- Which is different from the fact that some cots are anter than others.
- No, what this focus is about is the theme, touched on elsewhere herein, that one can have various contrasting contrast sets (coordinate ones), and which one is the one that one would like to focus on, in the given moment and for the given purposes, is subject to parametric ranking (by those parameters).
  - This is not only the answer, but also the stone coldest of answers, to the question of whether a comprehensive set of cots will be given for any given word sense. The answer is usually no, for the simple reason that the reader doesn't need so much distraction (as that), in the given moment and for the given purposes, and that what the reader can better use (more fruitfully use) is the cottest of the cots — the one or several that their attention should be directed to first (and foremost·^). From there, there can be time and opportunity for more, especially upon click-through, if it occurs.
    - This is a useful truism because it expedites certain circuit closures: goto give-up at 400% speed.
      - PS: A corollary to "usually no, for the simple reason that ": Another reason (on another level) is that a truly comprehensive set of cots can never be given anyway, circumspectly speaking; but that's a digression. When I said comprehensive, I meant comprehensive*, much like when humans say just about anything, they usually mean some things more than others.*
      - *⏚.
An interesting instance of holonymy–meronymy relation:
- In one pair of senses (physical), the meronymic complement of subconstituency is subconstituent, but in another pair of senses (political), the meronymic complement of subconstituency is constituent, and that is the only correct answer as far as idiomaticness allows. It is obvious why: in the political sense, every constituent is fully a constituent, not halfway so; the property of constituentness (i.e., constituent status: being a constituent) is irreducible in this context (that is, atomic in this application, in the "unatomizable" sense of that adjective). In shorthand: say that there is a large and profitable corporation headquartered in my congressional district. Its C-suite's executives are constituents of my district's state and federal legislators, and relative to those executives you might call the shop-floor employees, or any other local average Joe (such as me), a mere subconstituent, if you were being mean. Etically it is interesting to note that because some subconstituencies are constituenter than others (whereas the parameters that determine the degree are money and social power-slash-influence), it is logically possible to have a sense of the word subconstituent denoting a "lesser" (i.e., less politically powerful) constituent, but it is ethically unacceptable to do so within an ethical framework that rejects the concept of second-class citizens. Thus within that framework, you are left with a de jure–versus–de facto difference that remains shielded behind a single term, which (instances) are not uncommon in human life. The reason why so many people hate instances of corporate personhood run amok, such as (in their assessment) Citizens United, is that those things threaten to enshrine the de facto power advantages of moneyed subconstituencies as de jure advantages. Within any subsystem where one wishes to reduce the de jure–versus–de facto gradient (i.e., lower the absolute value of the difference), it is antithetically unhelpful to have anyone putting their thumb on the scale in favor of the other direction. The whole point in any such subsystem is that there are already various thumbs on the scale that are pressing in the direction of the existing bias. The only legal remedy to lessen that existing imbalance is a vector pointing in the direction that countervails it. From that viewpoint, duh, it seems stupid to push in the opposite direction. Why do those who do so not agree? To claim that it is because they are stupid, in the "intellectually impaired" sense, is misguided. It has more to do with a cognitive bias by which they are convinced that underdogs are underdogs for a valid reason — that underdog status is well earned. The problem with this bias is a grain-of-truth fallacy: just because examples might be found where it is true or partly true (for example, most criminals deserve to be in jail — they truly put themselves into that position by choice, having chosen a pathway that obviously leads to that outcome) doesn't mean that one should overblow it into some overgeneralized principle, as if every instance of underdog status were earned and deserved. This line of thought is admittedly underdeveloped and logically must remain so because to unravel this sweater down to the last yarn (that is, to get to the bottom of this mud puddle) one would have to solve the open problem of how smart-and-ethical conservatism can be logically reconciled with smart-and-ethical progressivism in a way that obviates discord and nogginbashing. Humans have been playing at that one for a long time.
At stanch#Usage_notes (accessed 2023-10-18) — a nice example of how a descriptive dictionary can neutrally (and succinctly, and usefully) inform its readers about a prescriptive notion that they should be aware of (for their own good, regarding how readers or listeners are likely to react to their usage), even without advocating the prescriptive viewpoint. Various other examples can be seen at #Valid insights but sacrificed to terseness — for example, a class of them is that it is OK to tell people, concisely and in an NPOV way, not to confuse two words catachrestically. For those words that have been substituted for each other so often that it is not even accurate to call the usage wrong, it is OK (and not biased) to explain that fact concisely as well; see an example at straight-laced#Etymology (accessed 2023-10-18).
- Other cases in point for the theme of explaining briefly and clearly while also not judging (NPOV):
  - till § Usage notes
  - faze § Usage notes
  - neurosthenia § Usage notes
  - Bowie knife § Usage notes
  - The superfluous-affix class:
    - orientate § Usage notes • compromisation § Usage notes • developmentation § Usage notes
Whereas cot is sometimes syn (for example, in broad usage), and hyper or hypo is sometimes syn (for example, in broad usage), nearby regions of a salami are not being sliced apart for current purposes (that is, for the purposes in such an instance).
- What about mer versus often-mer (for example, mer in many instances), and hol versus often-hol (for example, hol in many instances)?
  - What these themes have in common is coinstantiation. What two or more themes have in common is a meta-theme, if you will (and some will more than others).
    - The thing about "sometimes" versus "in some instances" is that instances can coexist, which is to say, they "often" coexist (as we often say), but what we really mean by that "often" is that they coexist in many instances . The reason I'm on about it is that it has to do with timelines: yours, mine, ours, and everyone's. If we say that a pickup truck is "sometimes" a car (in a broader sense of the latter word), we are not truly saying that it "sometimes" is that; rather, what we are saying is that in some instances of usage it is that. There is a continuous timeline on which any pickup truck both is and isn't a car (the whole time), as various persons' various occasions of usage come and go (but reality meanwhile keeps on truckin). (Box cat replies, now you're speakin my language.) Natural language is so thoroughly built on the mental model of individual experience (in which instances are coinstantiated with different/separate times ) that frankly it is often challenging (in many instances, on many occasions) to see past it and focus on the communal timeline. But my mind keeps nagging me to focus on the latter because it is the true salami of reality, notwithstanding individuals' diverse plans for slice line locations. Box cat is mostly just bored by this line of thought (it's old hat in his hatbox), but he's meowing for some salami, telling me that as long as I'm slicing some anyway, he'll take some please. I can hear him meowing in there; I can hear him from here. Does that saying anything about our shared timeline?
      - Old no-eyes isn't the one who will grumble about the fact that I just momentarily (on this occasion, in this instance) turned box cat's box into a hatbox, although of all the people who can see a problem with doing so, he'd lead the way (with his farseeing eyelessness). Later (on another occasion) the box will have reverted. Of all the people who can live with that sort of continuity error·ʷᵖ, box cat would lead the way (with his circumspect disposition). He's used to things being two things at once (and yes, cats are people too, at least sometimes or often, although perhaps some cats more than others).
        PS: As long as (that is, while) his catbox is a hatbox, shall we consider him a hat? Well, he's comfortable being more than one thing at once, and we're comfortable having him be so (cozily comfortable in fact, as he's a quite comfortable hat). Surely there's no warmer fur hat than a live warmblooded one, as long as (that is, provided that) you can persuade it to stay on your head. Normally we don't negotiate with garments because they're not the sort of thing that has a mind of its own. They say that everything in life is negotiable, by which they mean that every transaction between humans can be haggled, but they hadn't figured on the notion that every phenomenon and event in every moment must be haggled. Everything in life is parametrizable. When and if he deigns to consent — when and if our cajoling succeeds — we'll toggle the values accordingly. Parameters on parameters.
Having stumbled across The Merriam-Webster Thesaurus (2022 ) at the screaming bargain of USD 6.50, I bought it straight off the bat without hesitation, having learned my lesson about wordbook addiction (which is: fuck it, buy yet another anyway). The tagline on the cover is America's Best-Selling Thesaurus, placed in the position of a subtitle, albeit not that. Well we've got to tart it up a bit somehow if we want to cajole humans into buying a thesaurus, haven't we. I haven't had time to study its front matter yet, but I see that it gives, as an epigraph to the work, a delicious quote from Mark Twain. The way he waxes syn-aesthetic about syns in that moment shows something that old no-eyes can taste too (handwave etc). Anyway, one thing that's clear upon initial cursory inspection is that the structural bones of this thesaurus have the same DNA as the 1984 work, but they've dumbed down a few things, no doubt for salability's sake. Apparently they decided to switch the name by which they call "Ana", making it "rel" instead (that is, related, as in semantically related, not to be confused with Wiktionary's definition of related, which is etymonically related), and apparently they decided to switch the name by which they call "Con", making it "near ant" instead. Some ants are nearer and dearer than others, after all. Anyway, the book smells great, as does its cousin that I threw into the same shopping basket, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary and Thesaurus (2020), which is thicker but is slightly less of a thesaurus (because half dictionary too). Some thesauruses are thesauruser than others. Certainly at USD 8.99 it qualifies as lumping into my nascent eight-fuckin-bucks category of human folly. I'll look forward to gnawing on these two. No doubt some unforgettable luncheons await.
In the department of blows that could easily have been less glancing, I recently stumbled across Devlin's Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms and, in a moment of silliness, decided not to buy it because I already have a shelfful of wordbooks and the first step to treatment is admitting that you have a problem; as they say, if you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. Old no-eyes snickers: you call that a hole? He eats mineshafts for breakfast. I hadn't thought of him as Cornish, but don't they say something about a hole in the ground with a Cornishman at the bottom of it? He's corny all right, I'll give him that. Anyway, when I got home I realized, let's get real, this is User:Quercus solaris we're talking about — of all the people who won't bother to own Devlin's dictionary (or the Devil's), User:Quercus solaris wouldn't be one of them. So I unglanced that blow accordingly. I just read its short preface (because of course User:Quercus solaris would), and I encountered there his justification for being among those who don't bother with explicating shades of meaning: not only does it take up too many column inches for busy and tight-fisted businesspeople, but moreover, he shits on the very notion, and quotes Fowler to back him up on that point. Their point is that everyone needs to figure that shit out for themselves, and not use any word unless they have a proper handle on what it means. I agree wholeheartedly on the latter point, and I take the rest of their point, too, up to a point, but his remedy for "those readers who have no word sense" is to turn to dictionaries for the needed remedial help , and I'm here to tell him from experience that even people who fancy themselves to have word sense (especially the ones who don't so much, really) can barely be persuaded to crack any/other dictionaries even on a good day (although even if they didn't, they'll often lie and say that they did) — and when it comes to any that they have to pay anything for (even a mere pittance), well, care to lay a wager? I'll take your money. Anyway, the rest of his front matter is interesting too, and I see that his "Latin Roots and Derivatives" list includes video and gives vision, although it misses view. So then between Devlin and Wiktionary you can get both, as two-stop shopping. I don't consider that to be the super-efficient help for busy tight-fisted businesspeople that his preface brags about. Sigh. Anyway, I'm glad I added him to the shelfful.
Earlier a bug had prompted me to ponder ant as a special case of cot, the diametric case among all parametric cases. Tonight I read Rose F. Egan and colleagues' front matter to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms (1984 ) and was suitably impressed. If you want to sample the various flavors of ant (whereas some ants are more ant than others), it's worthwhile. Among various themes of coordinateness, "not-*" is more interesting than it may seem on the surface, as Egan et al showed. Some nots are more not-ish than others, but all are contrastive. The "Ana" and "Con" of Egan et al are themes of coordinateness. In turn they are coordinate with "Syn" and "Ant", as echoes: the same but fuzzier/dirtier and more diffuse.
- Speaking of those, Egan et al explain that some synonymizers were more preoccupied by discriminations than others, whereas others (famously, Roget) explicitly couldn't be arsed with those. Regarding the ones who could: You know what they were on about? It was "as opposed to what?"
  - Speaking of those, I just read C.J. Smith's 1867 preface to his seminal dictionary of syn and ant. I find it interesting — concise, cogent, and impressive for its day. The Google Books scan of the 1868 version is cut off on one edge, but Open Library offers an unobstructed view of the 1895 reprint.
    - Chuck said (of himself, in the third person, which was the style at the time), "Principles or Degrees of Similarity, and Principles or Degrees of Opposition, have not been laid down, though they have been recognized in his own mind. He has rather endeavoured to place himself in the position, alternately, of two opposed thinkers, or debaters, so furnishing each with a short catena of Synonyms to express or aid the current of his thoughts, tendering at the same time to each such negatives as might be employed in the opposite argument." Oh Chuck, how right you are, and bless you. In a land of rampant sui-generis-ness, one starts merely by imagining — at least by asking — "as opposed to what?", if one knows enough to bother doing so.
      - A thought bubbling in recent hours (24-48): although it is true that the 180° opposite sort of way is, for being antonymous, the best way, my favorite way at the moment — the way that is currently most buttering my eggroll — may be another: the "not not ant" way, which is different from the other "not not ant" thing (not ant, jocularly, fixing a Donny Don't move). The thing about ants that are ants because they're not not ants is that they aren't monogamous: they have that relationship with others, too: Nonexclusive. Dirty cheaters, lol. Speaking of cons, Egan et al say that not just any candidate qualifies as an Ant, as some ants are anter than others; the rest are merely Cons. And Egan of all would know, as I've never met anyone who has savored the flavors of ants more than she has. (Which isn't saying too much, given who I've not met, but still, anyone would have to get up pretty early, no doubt.) Wiktionary doesn't use that same formal schema (Ants/Cons), and that's OK. In Wiktionary, ants that aren't quite antsy enough can live at also instead, and do quite well enough there (perhaps even run a dairy).
        The night's nightly ring from Bell: it's funny that I had just mentioned things that aren't not the opposite of others (such as not doing what Donny Don't does), because Bell said, "Mr. Colville walked over while we were at it, and stood looking thoughtful. But in the end he said, 'You ain't making a bad job of that, not at all you ain't.' We sorted out his negatives and were highly pleased." The other bell rings for tonight are some feelings I get when reading this work by Egan and the rest (i.e., Gove, Goepp, Kay, Foss, Gilman, Egan, and Kelsey). It's an amazing achievement and a stupendous value. I can't believe I bought my used copy for eight fucking bucks. It's fucking stupid when one thinks about it. I think about what my own education told us about thesauruses, even all the way through to a university degree: essentially, "any of various dusty books of synonyms in the library that you and everyone else are welcome not to crack or fuck with, and who cares, the end." There's a disjunct somewhere in this. It's hard to put into adequate words off the top of one's head, and I just checked and there's no entry for disjunct in the MW Syn-Ant to help with that challenge, so I'll have to dig further later elsewhere for those (that is, adequate words). The other thing that strikes me is how with every line, one (as the reader) is typically like, yes, exactly, I agree (regarding the discriminations and the Syn-Ant-Ana-Con, barring a few that are more obscure than others). It reminds me of the giant knot of mystery that ideas about the poverty of the stimulus as regards semantics try to untangle (regardless of whether their conceptions of the untangling are right or not), speaking of education per se struggling to equal, and yet falling short of, what this book distills, recaps, and conveys (and can be bought for eight fucking bucks). I've had a thought or two about what that answer might entail (triangulation etc). The full title of the work is A Dictionary of Discriminated Synonyms With Antonyms and Analogous and Contrasted Words. It's exactly what it says on the fucking tin, and what it says on the tin is as densely packed as the tin itself is. What a treasure of canned fish. Now I'm hungry. Anyway, as usual I am supposed to be in bed by now — midnight oil and the candle at both ends, handwave etc.
caribou | snow shoveler
Tunick 2014 relays an observation that googling tells me is conventional wisdom among cattle people: Brown Swiss are docile but stubborn. Thus: They may resist your direction, but you might want to kiss their big dumb sweet stupid cute faces anyway. That reminds me to go watch as peewee mcnugget tries things for the first time in his little dumb baby goat life.
Reprise a train of thought: " comeronyms are part of a whole and so is the tip of an iceberg, and a succession of progressively smaller versions of that tip (by successive salami slices as conic sections) are progressively meronymous. In a figurative way, kinds of things behave the same way, as they are progressively hyponymous by the same salami technique owing to the transitivity of hyponymy." Now bring in another felloe: In a figurative way, metonymic things behave the same way, as they are progressively metonymous by the same salami technique owing to the transitivity of metonymy.
- No shit, one might reply. And yes, I am well aware: the value of the parameter for the amount of shit is low. But why does anyone fuck around with scrap metal and torches? Don't they know that metal things (buildings, vehicles, sculptures) have already been built? Very well. But for all that, I don't see any flying cars around, do you? And is the desirable number of sculptures maxed out yet? Garages are like arseholes: you've got yours, and I've got mine.
  - Usually in metonymy there are no more than one or two steps along the progression, archetypally. The numerical neighborhood of this particular parameter value reference range may suggest something about human cognition; which is to say, it might possibly say more about human cognition than about the reality that human cognition models. Some exceptions to it might be found — as is true with most reference ranges — and they would be interesting to sniff at for their own shared parameters (subparameters). I'll start dirtspading to see if any can be unearthed.
    - PS: More precisely, the felloes being brought in by the lines above are both metonymy and synecdoche. But I'll allow metonymy to stand in for both of them conceptually, which after all is the very parlor trick that metonymy does best.
      - PPS: Regarding going clamdigging for recursiveness of metonymy: look what the cat dragged in: metalepsis
        PPPS: I had to let the cat out of the bag so that he could drag something in. He warned me not to let box cat out of the cat box because some boxes are boxier than others. Perhaps box cat would consider that admonition hypocritical coming from a freshly debagged cousin, but I'm not sure whether he can hear us from in there. If I open his box and there's no one else there to hear it, does he reach a disposition that anyone else could hear from next door? Perhaps only if it's an especially loud distemper.
        P⁴S: While I'm here clowning around, old no-eyes is busy getting some real work done and grumbling about my levity. He crawled back out of a mineshaft to report that the White House as the Executive Branch is differentiable from boots on the ground as the U.S. Army: house-president-branch is not the same flavor of salami as boot-foot-person-brigade-army is. The latter salami is much more literal than the other (and it has more of a sock-sweat note to its aftertaste). No-eyes is also grumpy because while he was down there he tripped over the tip of the spear, and that fucker was sharp.
Which are your favorite flavors of the fallacy fallacy? Tentatively I will declare that my favorites are the straw man flavor (not the straw berry, although that one is a close second) and the true Scotsman (not the butter kind, although that kind is next best), because I've sampled those flavors a lot in other people's kitchen batches. Most precisely, there is also something else that goes on that is in fact different from the fallacy fallacy itself. Rather, people pride themselves on mistaking any analytically exploratory disabusal of any hypothesis (even the most reasonable, plausible, or likely hypothesis) for the burning of a straw man, and they pride themselves on mistaking any attempt at analytical assaying of the essence of any concept for the assertion of a true Scotsman. Perhaps by the same logic taken to its natural conclusion, there's no point in ever doing any GC-MS because no one can ever say what the minimal set is for differentiation of one thing from anything else, anyway. That analogy may not stand up to a true hiding, but at least (so far) I tried tripping it and it didn't topple yet. Anyway, in asking why these proud mistakes happen, one must remember what the true goal of pedants and smartasses is (speaking of the true nature of things): to find fault, even when there isn't any or there isn't enough. Some way must be found, and when no true way is apparent, a speciously plausible way is the next best kind of way.
Regarding known surface analysis versus assumed chronology/history: Is it enough to assume that an adverb is derived from the adjective "by default", in terms of historical development? Admittedly the answer is, "Close enough to say yes for practical purposes without going on a philologic odyssey for each one." Related corollary thought: For -ly adverbs (which is the most famous kind of adverbs, Englishly speaking), the adverb will show up in the suffix cat automatically. If one wants to ensure that the adverb shows up in the prefix cat too, then just use the manually added cat for that. This (categorizing) is an independent variable from the other (known surface analysis versus assumed chronology/history), but it's correlated via mediation and it bears a reminder.
I rang up Bell a bit tonight. It's funny (or perhaps odd) that he mentioned of Kett that "He was a bell-ringer, and understood the complicated art of bobs and grandsires" (1961:110-111), because I had just been thinking on the previous page spread (108-109) that Bell himself is a bell-ringer, ringing multiple bells in the belfry (e.g., Bell on mud, Bell on boots). Somehow I suspected that once we got to Suffolk this would be so. Math teachers can disabuse synchronicity till the cows come home, and I know they're right, but nonetheless, it doesn't feel like a coincidence that I'm ringing up Bell 1961 at this point in my life. We'll see what rings next.
The ant is back in my ear (or his agent, a subservient bug), bugging me about the fact that comeronyms are part of a whole and so is the tip of an iceberg, and a succession of progressively smaller versions of that tip (by successive salami slices as conic sections) are progressively meronymous. In a figurative way, kinds of things behave the same way, as they are progressively hyponymous by the same salami technique owing to the transitivity of hyponymy. If one wants to sandbox an example, a handy abstract noun to use as fodder might be shittiness, simply because humans have done such a phenomenal job of inventing so many different readily named kinds of it. (It's one of their many talents.) First slice off for us a list of various kinds of shittiness (which we could list in a hyponyms section at shittiness, but we won't , because the inclusion criteria and potential population seem somewhat up in the air and unbounded). Our sample list for now (a fair stab at a candidate for a consensus contrast set) will be the seven deadly sins: thus, vanity, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, sloth, and anger. If you touch any one of them, you are touching their hypernym too, via the transitivity of coinstantiation. This is like how if you touch any of the conjoined felloes, you are touching the rim, and you are also touching the wheel. But I need to work on a still-better abstract salami, one whose major subsections are in turn divisible into smaller (thematically subsumable) slices. Perhaps flavors of dishonesty ranked by how criminal they are (from not at all down to very)? Hmm, I'll ponder it later, or at least let the bug crawl around on it for a while in the meantime. One query that old no-eyes keeps asking the bug is, "Yes, fine, but why won't you shut up about it, given that it keeps seeming trivial at the end of every time that I palpate it?" The kind of bug that is famous for being subservient to ants is that sort of aphid that serves as the dairy cattle (of a sort) to a certain kind of ant, but this little agent seems more like a cricket to me in that he won't shut up. Does that make him the cousin of an earworm? (In a nontaxonomic way?) Earworms are mysterious: of all the potential worms, how does any particular one become the one that won't leave for days on end? (And dim the light of an already faded prima donna?) They're trying to tell us something, sometimes, apparently, but they can't spit it straight out (so they have to keep on regurgitating and remasticating it, or at least reloading it). This little bug seems to be fiddling a tune as if to say that if you hold a torch up to this iceberg long enough you might melt a hole in it — it might drip some runoff that you weren't expecting but that checks out upon retrospective inspection, like I'll be damned, that facet was there that whole time and I never saw or felt it until now. Old no-eyes knows how that theme feels in his chest and sinuses. And why wouldn't he get help from a fiddling bug? Just because we tend to talk of groping handholds doesn't mean that he doesn't lead a rich multisensory life, in a syn-aesthetic way. There is a strange paradox at the heart of his partnership with beneficial insects (lol). (He just groaned and slapped me.) And can't the band play on? / Just listen, they play my song / Ash to ash, dust to dust, fade to black
- A transitive set: da da da da, da da da, da da da da
  - No-eyes came back from a smoke break and smacked me regarding the theme that the memory remains: as his heavy rings held cigarettes up to his lips that time forgets (boy does it), he pointed out the persistence of memory among his prayer beads. (It's the tie that binds.) Is that all that the bug was fiddling about? Maybe the answer will end up being determined by how soon he shuts up.
    - Well, he STFUd eventually, so I guess that means what it seems to mean? Speaking of ties that bind, the words colligate and colligation: don't mind if I do, said the hoover.
      - Speaking of ties that bind, are we sure that colligate and ligate are nothing but birdshit partners all the way down to their PIE bones? Wiktionary seems to suggest so, unless I am misreading something, although admittedly I can't be too arsed at the moment. The twining seems more aligned than rando. But then that's the nature of birdshit (guanolessly speaking). F it, I have a parameter bucket for them either way (one bucket or other, some buckets more than others): either way, there's a bucket for that.
        Hoovering things into buckets gets easier the more buckets one has and the more horsepower the hoover has. One parameter leads to another; some hoovers are hooverer than others; one reads about some of the bucketiest buckets that ever bucketed. Things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could.
It is conceivable that I will increase the degree to which I help move syn-and-ant laundry lists into the Thesaurus namespace, leaving behind (in their place) a (clean little) link to a Thesaurus entry or two (as syn-and-ant hubs). I have done some of that already, and it is a good thing. (Regarding hubs and spokes, as well as felloes, I'm a bit of a fancier perhaps.) Becoming someone who specializes in doing so (hub-and-spoking the syn-and-ant links) is not necessarily a goal or aspiration of mine, but what I can say even now is that to whatever degree I end up going down that road without especially trying to take myself down it (so much as strolling down it for fun), doing so will be acceptable. And it probably won't attract any complaints from Wiktionarian minimalists, who would generally approve of it. I, too, approve of it, because (1) I'm not aware, so far, of any big downsides to building on that model, and (2) it aligns with an interest of mine: maximizing the hyperlinked connections between semantic relations while also avoiding overwhelming or annoying human minds. The powerfulness will be there, waiting latently, and it is merely up to each person how much they choose to partake of it or not on any given day. Those who choose to stomp on it for kicks can crack a smile.
Another detail of A. BELL's schooldaze was a maths teacher whose glass eye would misbehave when he got angry. (Side note: bell tone: dated orthography: maths. teacher; prep. school; of a time.) A.B. himself caused such an angry episode when the stress of a new boarding school life started to break him one day. The straw that broke the camel's back was the word hypotenuse, which sent him into hysterically uncontrollable laughter, but one can see that it was not in a laughworthy way. In a glassy-eyed way, one can see that some glazed eyes may be glazier than others. (And some glaziers, too, especially on payday; but we haven't got to Suffolk yet.) The fever passed, but humorless old glass-eye had no vitreous humor to spare — at least on the contralateral side.
I'd meant to get to bed by now, but an ant put a bug in my ear. He pointed out, regarding things that are more ant than cot from some viewpoints, that to be ant is a special case of being cot: the diametric case, among all parametric cases. The hours of the clock face (contained within the clock case) are certainly coordinate to one another; and six o'clock high is truly antonymous to twelve o'clock low — in the 180° opposite sort of way, which (for being antonymous) is the best way — but six o'clock in the evening is not the opposite of twelve o'clock noon, any more than cheese fries are the opposite of chili fries; it's not even equidistant (in a temporal way) from one noon to the next. It is equidistant from one twelve to the next, but those two twelves are dissimilar: they are homonymous as 12 or 12:00 on a 12-hour clock face (dial or otherwise), but one is midday and the other is midnight: homonymy is not synonymy, and it's not even a guarantee against diametric antonymy, although even a stopped clock is right twice a day. (Is homonymy ever autohomonymy, as a different beast from polysemy? Does it sometimes exist as a special case of doubletness, collapsed to morphologic zero like a black hole is collapsed to event zero? Some holes are blacker than others, as with ants.) The two sixes in a 24-hour day are more antonymous to each other than six is to twelve (despite being more homonymous), because life's not fair and thus neither are 12-hour clock faces. Which might be to say (if you will, and some will more than others), +6 is to −6 more than +6 is to +12. Something about the notion of ant being a special position on the clock face of cot reminds one of syn being a subsumed portion of hyper, on the common thread of holonymous unity (which is to say, comeronymous community) — the 12 hours of the classic clock dial (cousins aside) are felloes holding hands, and holism makes the wheels go round (just as teamwork makes the dream work, and speaking of which, I'm now overdue to get busy sawing logs). But I'd like to close out this timekeeping exercise (which has kept me from my bedtime) by pointing out that perhaps as shapes and surfaces and strings are useful ways to embody mathematics, things like syn as the subsumed portion of hyper, and ant as the diametric case of cot, are useful embodiments for semantic relations: language talking about "the same thing" or asking "as opposed to what?" (the ontology of everyday life). No doubt some KRR stiff already wrote a dissertation about it, but meanwhile what do any of the rest of us know about that? (Dude, where's my flying car?)
- Update, various months later: Regarding "Is homonymy ever autohomonymy, as a different beast from polysemy? Does it sometimes exist as a special case of doubletness, collapsed to morphologic zero like a black hole is collapsed to event zero?": Yes, I think the concept here is valid; moreover, I think it's not even mysterious, although it can easily seem so when one's mind is spinning its mill rolls fruitlessly on the surface of it, struggling to crack the grain. Once inside, it's straightforward, and there are some leverage points for seeing it (that is, for moving between the levels successfully). The leverage point that resurfaced for my attention today is the clue given by an occasional Wiktionary entry that has more than one (H3 or H4) "Noun" section for any given single etymology. What it is telling you (in a rather taciturn way) is that present-day English has two nouns that developed at different times from that same ancestor (an example: feels and feels). From there, I would argue — moreover, I feel quite certain, speaking of feels — that sometimes when you read a single list of many polysemic senses for a given word at a given POS heading (you know the ones: the ones with 8 or 10 or 12 or more senses), what you are seeing there may in fact easily contain some of those same underlying divisions (i.e., the diachronic ones that drove the formal distinction of two "Noun" sections in other cases) but simply also meanwhile contain a venial deficiency in teasing out which senses most properly would belong under another "Noun" heading instead of being under that same "Noun" heading. And when I say it's venial, I mean it's dead venial (some venialities are venialer than others): it represents full throttle on humans' ability to chase them retrospectively; that is, it represents the current state of the art for our ability to recognize, analyze, document, and codify them. We might improve on some of them later, but as of today, they represent the best that we have been able to do so far, and the best that we could be expected to do (by anyone; by ourselves). Moreover, it may not even be feasible to really improve on them as much as they deserve, for an interesting reason: let's say (for sake of argument) one of them is technically divisible into four or more divisions, by some logically valid operational definition of where a division is warranted. Imagine the net result: four or more "Noun" sections in the Wiktionary entry for the headword. There's an obvious problem with it: many a user would not understand it and would not profit by it (that is, derive value from it). It would seem counterproductive to their use cases and needs. This is the juncture where one must ask oneself: what is the precise nature of a zero? It is like a factor of 1, in fact: it represents the collapse of difference to equal a collapse of differentiability, except by exceptional means. This reminds me of spectroscopic methods that can detect the ppt order of magnitude for levels of contaminants: they can differentiate samples that cannot be differentiated in any other way, which is fascinating and enviable at the same time that it is also, in many ways albeit not all, useless.
  - Addendum, a week or two later: This is relevant: Wiktionary:Tea_room/2024/January#Three_etymologies_for_EN_relegate.2C_but_all_come_from_the_same_Latin_word
    - Addendum, many months later: This is relevant: teletherapy
      - PS: month_count + n: colexification is like a box of chocolates: you can wrap it up in black ribbon and not worry about the map of the assortment for package delivery purposes. Some black boxes of dark chocolates are darker than others; that's life.^
It's funny how eyelets lead to buttonholes and buttonholes lead to lapels. A. BELL (¼) was telling me just last night about how some headmaster or other (or some headmasters more than others, lol) grabbed him by the buttonholes (on some flimsy pretense or other). I'm giving A. BELL a chance to ring the bell if he pleases. So far not much, but then we haven't got to Suffolk yet. Before I pack it up for the night I'll go ring him up for a bit.
The ramifications of autohyponymy are fascinating, not only on the level of dynamic ramification (i.e., the potentialities for the shape of any given hierarchical tree or canopy of several thereof (with tree squirrels hopping between interlaced branches), its branching-points' instantiations , their locations, the degree of negligibility that human sentience assigns to each one conditionally) but also regarding their implications for the degree to which humans in aggregate are capable of refraining from bashing in one another's skulls with big sticks (segments of ramas grandes). One of the underlying (root/trunk) factors is that etically complete (exhaustive) differentiation schemas — taxonomies (both biologic and otherwise) and ontologies — are of course beyond human cognitive limits in one way although not another (i.e., not beyond comprehension, in the sense of doing scientific analysis and building any given giant taxonomy that no one person can memorize but some can write down (e.g., here is a typical example), but often beyond conscious/sentient integration in each moment), so of course humans must always continue to identify (1) things that not everyone considers worth differentiating in a given context (thus, within that context, for that purpose, fair argument for synonym versus coordinate term/cohyponym , or synonym versus hypernym , or synonym versus parasynonym , or coordinate term/cohyponym versus hypernym , or parasynonym versus meronym (or more nearsyn than mer), or parasynonym versus holonym (or more nearsyn than hol), or coordinate term in a way judged insufficiently relevant in this context and thus shall not be named here ) and also (2) things that some people struggle (more than others) to be capable of differentiating (i.e., struggle cognitively), which has to do with things such as conceptual models, conceptual metaphors, conceptual analysis, mental models (mental schemas), abstract thinking, analytic reasoning, and the rest of a laundry list of similar fabrics. A better list of those (one closer to whole) is something that old no-eyes can dutifully go off and retrieve with his prayerbead strings and breadcrumb trails, but (1) you get the point ("and so on") and (2) we don't always bother him every time because he gets annoyed that so few others are competent at that task, and each retrieval is a schlep that can take a while, depending on which hills and dales must be visited. But he does know of hollers where specific tree trunks have hollows where squirrels stash their choicest nuts. He also duly respects the critters (squirrels and bees) by not taking all their nuts and honey at once. (No sense giving them any due reason to holler.) I've been wrenching on some engines in the garage recently, but not every holophonor tune is worth releasing. Also, I am a reasonable person, and so there are some things where as one is wrenching on them, one admits to oneself that they are a bit silly; relatedly, the engine that develops the output is itself worth parameterizing (tuning), and regarding its horsepower, perhaps don't go to the corner store for beer and cigs while driving a barely contained explosion, lol. I should stay out of the garage more often than I do, but wrenching on shit is fun. Please at least keep the gas bottles (nitrous or otherwise) at the far end of the garage and with a safety chain in place. One of the thickest branches among the ramifications of autohyponymy is that at heart it is a way for our mere little human minds to build and modify practically useful ontologic branchings even despite the (inevitable) fact that we can't pay attention simultaneously to every single etically identifiable differentiating factor (i.e., every such factor that allows potential differentiability). How would you build a sentient agent (a meatbag one or otherwise) that handles the binding problem with efficient practical shortcuts? Well, evidently enough, it would be one that places a parameter value on the degree of negligibility (or lack thereof) for each differentiating parameter. Which is to say, the parlor trick is to have parameters for controlling which parameters are activated (i.e., get meta). (A funny thing about having just formulated that thought consciously is that as soon as I did so, an eyeless alert instantly went off for analogy detection regarding epigenetics. I'll have to palpate that one more later.) Anyway, cut humans a break (including you) — no one can see the whole elephant, so we're all (each of us) just a member with a parameter value assigned for how much of any given elephant we can see at once in any particular ambient lighting, although sometimes some can do more with the available blue than others. Admittedly, old no-eyes has an unfair advantage on that playing field, but he's nice enough to stick mainly to the garage so he doesn't inadvertently scare the townsfolk; and besides, speaking of parameterizations, he himself is but a rank amateur compared to other things that could exist, and perhaps soon will? I don't know — if you want an "expert" opinion, ask some asshole in Palo Alto who is begging someone to regulate him. Speaking of parameterization, tuning, regulating, and getting to normal.
- PS: Relatedly: Old no-eyes informs me that his fingers can feel that the difference between vertical polysemy and the regular old normal kind is not as stark a forking as it may seem to regular old normal eyes. Thus under hypernym polysemy how much do we value the differentiation that parameterizes autohyponymy formally versus messier canopy-blending, and also versus regular old normal hyponymy-branching, which sticks a modifier on (vertical polysemy )? This is the same problem as wrenched upon recently regarding digger: the excavation contractor will smack you if you use extra words in the context of his job site; the northwoods lumberjack will smack you if you use extra words in his evergreen forest. The practical distinction is the one between senseid and hyponym list member, and relatedly, (1) the degree to which that difference matters (which is a parameter value that varies across instances ) and (2) the degree to which often neither answer is wrong but sometimes one is preferable (which is a parameter value for degree of preferability). (Snapshot: senseid "any of several types of such things" contextually/conditionally mapping to one of the hyponym list members.) All he is pointing out (sharply) is that it is OK to value differentiability but just keep in mind that when one is hopping around a canopy, one usually does not pay stark attention to which tree any particular perch-hold belongs to; to do so is usually counterproductive (a fact that is a tie that binds). This is the nature of interwovenness of threads in fabrics. Different thread but same shirt. Anyway, Wiktionary's practical answer is "just do what any other respectable dictionary would normally do" (e.g., OED, MW, AHD), and that's fine. Wiktionary is good to go, just being pruned as any regular old normal human mind would prune any regular old normal dictionary. It is interesting to ponder, though, what other projects are being tuned elsewhere (in other garages); but just to inject a degree of cynical realism about the timeline on such things, once again I will ask, Dude, where's my flying car?
Indirect fire — this bucket got moved and promoted.
Templates l and m fall out of Popups, which I had long noticed but had decided to ignore because (1) I can't control it and (2) someone will probably fix it sometime anyway. However, I've come around to thinking — as prompted by a recent discussion at Wiktionary's Beer parlour — that wikilinking with brackets is what I'll do from now on in definitions and on this page, instead of using l and m. Even id parameters can be linked to in this way, as all one needs to do is add "English:_" after the # (hash). I'll still use the templates at semantic relations links because it is considered a desirable and widely upheld standard to use them there, per recent discussion.
Rx: conceptual metaphor; ideasthesia; KRR OK but some utterances are fuzzier cats than others.
- Sub-cat: A basis for semantic tagging of punnery? Word-X-sense-A-here-now is-pun-on word-Y-sense-B (because blah)? Then there is the tag for the theme of "Cannot link to a single sense because the box contains a cat with a pending disposition." (Some cats just have nasty dispositions.) Explaining a joke kills it. Nevertheless, inquiring machines want to know. No doubt some KRR stiff already wrote a dissertation about it, but meanwhile what do any of the rest of us know about that? (Dude, where's my flying car?)
The tie between the boardroom and the boarding house is the tie between the board member and the boarder: a seat at the table. One is more at table than the other, as when the boarder boards, they get room and board; meanwhile, the board may often get no board, but at least it gets a chair who chairs its affairs, or tables them.
Learning to work the bin lids, god bless me. Postprocessing my way to what might-could've been unprocessed (whole foods, lol). I don't carve the statue, I carve away everything that's not the statue. All this does is get me to normal. In recent days, some simulator runs in the neighborhood of dark green and all its siblings and niblings being just as blue as dark red (no redder), as an etic parameterization at the end of the THub rainbow (all induction fallacies aside, whether in the barnyard, in the auto-parts bin, or at sea). It was more daydream than blowglance, but the pan washed out these specks at least, so I'm taking them to town to see what they'll buy. It's a world in which autoparts, car parts, and automotive components are all nodes with is-syn-of edges and the mere accident of SoPness isn't allowed to poop the party of that etic integrity. (No shitting the bed; no tainting the powder bed ; no party-stroopers.) Some prism flashes: Simultaneously comeronyms and cohyponyms, simply "who am I to you" (they say to either mum or auntie, who are sisters, as the cat asks, I can haz-partz? ) Shut it down, boss. (But PS, though (lest we forget): Dude, where's my flying car? If you that baby's daddy, where you been at? Behind that curtain: cheap talk but not enough investment. A margarita party for twenty but there's only enough money for one straw, so they spend half their time maintaining elaborate straw-timeshare plans.) GPT is to KRR as word salad is to wordsmithing, but the pursestring people don't necessarily understand the difference. It doesn't make GPT garbage, as a world with both layers may be OK, but salad alone is dicey. That'll do, Bessy.
- PS: Just a scratch here of the meta-binlid type. I can hear a boss saying, why'd you take them light yellow flecks to town so soon? But old no-eyes braids prayer beads and drops breadcrumbs because his hands are his eyes (speaking of comeronymy-autohyponymy cousins and of syn-aesthetics). He curates handholds for the same reason why you snap vacation pics. A slide projector bore perhaps, but each buddy is free to leave this livingroom or stay, as he likes. Snacks and refreshments, though.
  - PPS: Regarding SoPness, parts constitute subassemblies after all, and holism makes the wheels go round; the fellow parts (e.g., felloes) are but cou-sins. Regarding one-straw parties, this is your KRR on KKR (any questions?). Regarding scifi as business development, weirder things have happened. Regarding prayer beads, just emptying the magazine. Regarding breadcrumbs, just polishing off some chicken scratch (nutrients for pretty feathers).
    - PPPS: Speaking of burnt /paɪ/, I promised that I won't mention the antihero again, and that's fine. But in the course of exploring a potential space via all induction fallacies, I found my way to another pyro, this time Pyrrho of Elis, via pyrrhonism and the problem of induction. Heartburny. And one breadcrumb for the grue-bleen new riddle of induction. The rest of the thought train (a burning coal vein) can be snuffed.
      - P^n+1(S): I'm being a bore on this coal train now, but I have to scratch the following itch, for prayerbead purposes (no mere catch and release for this one): you can't have eticness without the theme that pyrrhonism identified. That's it; it's that simple. And in its absence you have only dogma, which is an eyeless analogue of all the spatial neglects (such as these and these). Speaking of something that needs an etic supercategory. Super-cat cares not for catch and release; he wants to have his fish and eat it too, as well as to teach rather than give.
In the feedroom, just a chicken scratch on this scratchpad before I forget this little nugget. Dr S brought still more on the theme of "almost couldn't be a surgeon at all, and yet he ends up among the five or six". He tells about his teammate from Greece. That guy was an even more miraculous example of that theme. Different mechanism for why and how, though. Which underscores my point about the underlying strata, where various currents intermix. As do feeds.
It's funny you mentioned unnaming, because tonight Dr S was telling me about the drug with no name (as his chapter title has it). It was another of the important advances, about a decade after the epoch-making one that he was telling about earlier. Speaking of inflamm(y), they expected it to have autoimmune indications as well, and they were right, although it didn't remake the world in that category (but it helped).
To be teflon is, or could be said to be, to be unencumberable: no one can drag them down; people throw shit to see what sticks, but nothing does. But this semantic relation is one that Wiktionary does not need to contemplate. I like to write such instances here (on this page) because it reminds me to stay calibrated. The Most Interesting Man in the World often told us, "Stay thirsty, my friends," but I like this advice still better: "Stay calibrated, my friends." A blessing of parameterization is having interim buckets to set things in without either losing them (catch and release) or taking them across some particular line. It creates a space in which a third option can exist. Or rather, reveals that space. Spatial neglect reduction.
A Pyrrhic victory is named for Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose name reflects connection with flaming/red shit, so the idea that a pyrrhic victory involves burning it all down (like a pyro) is not out of line, although it is birdshitty. The victors thus win fame, or infamy, which they may get through flame, or inflamm(y). A herostratic fame through flame: not a shining example; antiheroic. Which is why unnaming was advised. Very well, I won't mention the bastard again.
Getting near the end of Dr S's sharings. Lots of interesting thoughts in response. Not all for here or for now. One note (here, for now) is the mismatch between the epoch-making nature of some drugs' advents and the fact that most people have no clue that that nature exists in that instance. Most (educated or semieducated) people today know about Before Fleming and After Fleming, and Dr Duncan would be glad to know that they also tend to know about Before Banting and Best and After Banting and Best, but there are others (much more others), and Dr S imparted one of them. Another bell ring was when he asked rhetorically, what's the good of developing a new procedure if there are only five or six people in the world who can perform it? Amen brother. Less extreme instances of that theme crop up a lot in life. I add, what makes those five or six different? One replies, talent, and yes, of course one is not wrong. But there is more beneath that floor: a subfloor, a foundation. Dr S explains that he almost couldn't be a surgeon at all, and yet he ends up among the five or six. How did he get there, if that duality is true? It is mysterious, yes, but it is not a perfectly opaque black box. It's a blackness to explore over time, and there are waters that flow and blend there, some less murky than, but not more voluminous than, various cross-currents. Dr S knows about heartaches. Speaking of those, a certain American farmer joined the line recently. His reputation preceded him; a river bum told me about him years ago. He hasn't always been American, and he might even know some paysans from up Canby's crick. We'll see.
- PS: Canby himself is a river bum, or at least fancies himself one; but I've met better-met ones.
Canby was being rude and disparaging so I sent him to the back of the line. It probably won't stop me from finishing his little tale sometime, but he can park himself and cool his heels, and sit in time-out and think about what he did, and I'll tell him when it's OK to stop. Dr Duncan at least has the right attitude, even if the times don't entirely wash off. Some people at least root for the right bend in the arc, if nothing else. On some level I have no business taking a meeting with Dr K anytime soon, but to paraphrase another Mr K, he drove a dump truck full of synchronicity up to my house and I'm not made of stone. Or at least the stone I'm made of is subject to ringing when struck deftly, and there's a line to take a whack. (I just sent Canby to the back of it.) Speaking of Canby and of what is or may be made of stone, Canby's house was made of stone, but someone drove a wagon full of the local specialty up to it, and even stone couldn't resist. He promised he'd tell the rest of it later, but I may not humor him for a while. Enough talking for tonight; it's time to listen.
I beg Dr Duncan, don't leave me hangin bro, but he probably will. He smells like a likely teetotaler to me, but I surely can't blame him, given his calling. God bless him, he's doing the Lord's work with his Pilgrim's Progress. I thought it mildly interesting how urine-focused the paraclinicals are in his day, but one must remember the times, to stay oriented (times three; aay-oh! amirite? Don't leave me hangin bro.) Which nips from the bottle won't help with, by the way, I admit. No shots, then? Or how many? 1+, 2+, 3+, more? Some are plussier than others; how easily 1½ becomes 2. But some kinds of shots are to be avoided if possible. Which is one of the themes of his book, after all. Onward with more progress.
Paging Dr Duncan tonight. So far, mg%, plus vicinity. It's bad luck to go on too much about that, so I won't. See what rings first. In line for a burrito, or for a fogbank, or with a handtruck, cursing the "cleverness" of the pursestring retcons (those who put the con in retcon), while Dr Duncan sits by a window upstairs and dominoes fall in the basement. I hear the report of them falling, which like thunder takes some time. Not far away, on another day, I too sit by a window; one that doesn't open, though, but one that likewise can't be sat by anymore, at least not in the old way. And with other company (much more other), on a different per diem scale, and out of pocket to boot. Cons. But for people smart enough to pull this con, they sure are flashlightless in other ways, though. I sit there on a break from teaching low-light backside-detection. They find it rocket-sciency and bimanual. But then they would though.

semantic nadir
- 2023 June 7, Erik Hoel, “Stop trying to make a "good" social media site. You want what cannot be had”, in Intrinsic Perspective‎, retrieved 2023-06-07:
  At first things go great, because no one is using the new blockchain and transactions confirm fast. But then, eventually, the new chain starts getting actually used, and transactions begin to slow to a crawl, and everyone realizes that they can’t outrun the problem that decentralized currencies are inevitably very slow, and that Bitcoin might be close to as good as it gets anyways. This is because there is an irreducible flaw—that decentralization is slow—that no design can fully get around. You're limited by your materials. ¶ Spinning up new social media websites mimics this, except what you are trying to outrun is human nature. No design of social media can get rid of what I like to call the "semantic nadir," which is what you'll inevitably experience if your tweet ever goes viral, wherein eventually someone will take your tweet in literally the worst possible way (there's some classic examples of this, as generally if you say "I love cheesecake" it won't be long before someone reaches to "Oh, so you hate regular cake"—that's the semantic nadir).
  - Update, a day or two later: What Hoel identified and labeled (the semantic nadir) is clearly connected ontologically with Bernstein's Second Law, although it is differentiable regarding the difference between (1) polysemically coexistent senses of a single term (= either one word or a collocation that syntactically equals the same kind of unit/segment as a semantic node (an ontologic node), such as a compound noun or other shortish noun phrase, notwithstanding the degree of arbitrariness of how word boundaries are emically defined) versus (2) the complete bundle or baggage of meaning carried by a sentence. However, at the moment I provisionally believe that it is "the same thing" in the sense that two leaves on the same branch of a tree are "the same thing" at the level of the whole branch. Anyone who might want to get a gut feel for why they seem so related should read Bernstein at the various points that touch these leaves.
    - Update, a day or three later: semantic bleaching: Discuss.
      - Update, D+n: All this talk of bleaching and fading (discoloring) puts one in mind of semantic interference. Now if you wouldn't mind, I would like it blew, and if you wouldn't mind, I would like to lose. Is there another reason for your stain?
Finished Evans 1971 last night. Overall a great visit, almost surprisingly so. I'll catch him again elsewhere. Nothing else worth recording here for 1971 at the moment except one more thought from one more passing traveler. Will Gosling said, "the biggest godsend that ever came to Bass's in the maltings was the endless belt." His point was the relieving of the degree of backbreakingness of the maltsters' labor, which he described so well as to twinge the degree of heartachingness in any reader who knows enough. I thought I'd just jot Will's sentence here since it mentions endless belts, which I had too, earlier herein. He was talking about the conveyor kind, which is a different parametrical flavor from the V kind, but the endlessness of the conveyor kind loops back around to the adjacent Caterpillar track animation: in both instances, new ways for loads to be carried, and boy were people (who knew enough) glad to see them come. I don't think it's important except as another bell ring, but then such a ring is all the more we can ask of our spirits, so I jotted it in case it might end up being important later. It may not, as the only things that can end up somehow are things that reach some end, or at least a juncture, and endlessness may not lend itself to that; but then the juncture of an endless belt is precisely what makes it so. Maybe part of what comes out of it will be that I'll end up paying some attention to junctures in the weeks coming up, and what goes around will come around. Smooth-running V-belts in the grooves; such quiet operation. Speaking of smoothness, grooves, and spirits from maltings, now for some. Cheers, felloes, my fellow back'us boys as odd as Job. We've never cared for so much running, but we know how to wait.
A PS about a recent belated feedbin diversion. (From the same batch: a reminder: do keep in mind that hogs are stupid.) It mentioned the theme of kids getting revenge on the old soaping-out-the-mouth punishment by either enjoying it or pretending to (out of spite). So then the same f-cking day I'm breezing through Callahan 1989 and he mentions that theme. The nun got pissed off because the kid (his classmate) liked that punishment, or pretended to. WTF? Never before that day, and probably never again, but twice in that day. F--- this shit — if I bought a lottery ticket it'd come up pure random nonmatching bullshit. But the books I visit are all like, "Mr Coincidence Ghost will see you now; Mr Coincidence Ghost can't wait to ring that bell and piss on the carpet." Also the thing with the highway diner near the bridge. The strangest thing about that one is how uninteresting it is; a f----n conversational dead-end. F----n ghosts. No respect. I'm waiting for the shoe to drop with Canby. Dollars to donuts that mthrfkng Canby can't get done running his mouth without lighting a match. He already casually dropped some shit about a house that blew up, something about wagonloads of the local specialty. Didn't bother to explain how or why that managed to happen. Maybe later? "More on that later"–ass mthrfr. So of course Evans too just now is all like, "perhaps best just to wait and see whether we find out later", in effect. All you clowns owe me some lottery tickets.
In recent days, I'm continuing on my tour through East Anglia with Evans, among other things here and there. Earlier (in his book and in the calendar) I'd worked out, with a bit of help from others, that a back'us is a backhouse. I'd tried to do the same regarding a trav'us and come up short; so I figured I'd just let that one go. Turns out not only that Evans explains it later in his book but also that even he had needed some help from others to unpack it (let alone me). Turns out that a trav'us is a travehouse, that is, a trave house. Which makes perfect sense, but the reason I couldn't guess it on my own is that, like most English speakers, I'd not known what a trave is, because the word trave is now as rare as the object that it names, which reflects the decline in the ubiquitousness of the task that that object facilitates (that is, it hardly ever gets done anymore, and what little of it gets done happens among only a few people, in a few subcultures). But past that hurdle, though, once acquainted, I found the instance apt and unsurprising — a nice illustration of the theme that among people for whom any particular concepts and differentiations are important and quotidian, concise terms will naturally develop. Both of those thoughts together lead into the general case of such things, and Evans himself then went into it, which almost surprised me. He gave overall a great discussion of it, including the theme that the language of the common people is not at all impoverished in its power for concepts, differentiations, and their succinct expression (in fact, quite the opposite, despite misapprehensions among many people who "talk like an essay" ). Evans pointed out, and gave a nice illustration of how and why, dialectal varieties are not inferior to standard varieties and in fact are even superior to them in some ways. I agree, and I add that they are not impoverished for communicative power even though their lexicon has been accused of poverty of speech in certain other ways. Humans in general — even the commoner or poorer ones no less than the others — are quite good at being sharply (even subtly and eloquently) discerning, within emic limits; it is only the etic extension that most humans have trouble with (basically because they aren't sufficiently aware of the existence of the space in which such extension can exist, which is not unlike hemispatial neglect; it is an analogue of it, eyelessly speaking, a fact that broaches the spaces in which these and these exist). Speaking of which, Evans even then broached the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which almost surprised me. He made a bit too much of it — almost reaching the neighborhood adjacent to folkishness-fetishization; I was getting wary, like, "OK, right, where is this line of thought going; I hate to guess, because it'll probably turn out that I'm right" — but in fairness, it was of the times not to know yet where that line of thought would lead, even scientifically (let alone pseudoscientifically). He says something at one point along the lines of "depending on whether or not it turns out that they are correct" , which made me smile because I had to reply, across the half-century gap, "well, it will turn out that they are half-right, but some people will make too much of the grain of truth that they found before our culture overall eventually course-corrects on that excess." But Evans rightfully makes a lot of good points about language and about the rightful place that the salt of the earth have in it, the pastoral connection that Chaucer's and Shakespeare's writing reflected and that people later lost much of their understanding of, as what he calls a millennial shift (in material culture) took place. Evans mentions the insight that Adrian Bell gained when he went to the fields as an apprentice farmhand , almost an epiphany, but it's one that's quite similar to one that I myself got a chance to have, round about half a century later, albeit in modified form, but largely for the same reasons — crossing paths with the last of the old ontologies, and in register-crossing ways, class-crossing ways. Anyhow, I could go on all day, exploring the hills and dales that today's reading encountered, but for now I'll just leave off by recording my amusement that, speaking of bards and farmers and how their words and thoughts interconnect, I asked Bard last night to help me remember in which book it was that I'd explored some other landscapes. I asked Bard (in effect), "what was the name of that book that talks about so-and-so farmers who were farming under such-and-such conditions, having been misled into it by shysters," and Bard successfully resolved that bit of TOTishness for me, which I got a kick out of; I had to chuckle, and I gave Bard a thumbs-up for that one. The spacetime of that particular blackness was the worst hard time.
- PS: Thanks, George, for turning me on to Adrian. The flux capacitor of the written word strikes again, a lightning flash in the blackness, encabulating my path.
The verb carve is a troponym of cut (which is a verb that probably ranks pretty high for the number of troponyms that a verb can have, I would guess/bet), and things that are carved are usually curved at least a bit, and their carving usually didn't involve razor-straight cuts — rather, usually at least some curving ones. Granted that carving a joint, or a Christmas goose, entails some fairly straight slicing, but even then, not exclusively so (especially nearer the bones), and straightedges are certainly not involved (the knife's straightness down its spine's axis notwithstanding, because in carving meat or skinning game, a good belly is appreciated). Unlike with the sedateness of sedans, the curving of carving is mere birdshit (speaking of geese), but like with those sedans, a speaker typically wouldn't know for sure without checking into it.
It turns out that the metalling of the roads is a worthy old well-established collocation, although an AmE speaker like me wouldn't know it from personal experience in growing up as an E1L speaker in postwar times. It's a Commonwealth thing, as is metal as in metal. One might think that some metal band or other might have named a tour along the lines of the collocation by now. As for metal, it all started out as rock and gravel, but eventually bitumen got more and more involved as the ages went by. But we already know, as a gravelly voice has told us, that blackened is the end.
- PS: Anyhow, my thanks to Mrs Meek, who was telling me yesterday about how things were when she was young. Wiktionary and I both benefited. I'll go put the kettle on.
A rolling boil, in which the currents roll hard, is a type of boil that roils the liquid. Strictly speaking, any boiling does at least some roiling, but a rolling boil is the archetypal class of roiling boil. Googling the collocations rolling boil and roiling boil finds that many people consider them synonymous compound nouns. As they rightfully should, I would add. As of this writing, Wiktionary doesn't yet cover this viewpoint, but perhaps later it will.
While bolting some Chicago screws into Wiktionary recently, I explored the vein of Chicago things, including Chicago typewriters, Chicago overcoats, and Chicago lightning. And while I was in the vicinity of Chicagoland, of course a Chicago sunroof leapt to mind, thanks to Slippin Jimmy; but one of the funny things about that term (besides the shitting from above) is the question of when a coinage that backfills a lexical gap within canon crosses the line into being a real word as opposed to a widely known but fictional one. (Speaking of crossing a line by backfilling a gap with something.) Is Pinocchio a real boy? Even if he eventually became a real boy within canon, he remains a fictional boy in our world (at most), or a fictional near-boy (at least). Is Chicago sunroof a novel word, or is it a novelty word? Perhaps its status changes the first time anyone really takes such a dump in real life and calls it by that name. Is that a bit like a Von Neumann–Wigner cut? Perhaps there are just many worlds in which an infinite number of rooftop-oriented dumps are taken, and Jimmy's canon is but one of them. In any case, though, I won't be depositing a Chicago sunroof into Wiktionary's mainspace anytime soon, because whether doing so is appropriate is a matter for the courts, and unlike Jimmy, I am not a lawyer.
- PS: This is the same problem as with encabulation, and with flux capacitors. Some peoples' encabulators even have turbos surmounted, but even they can't make a pseudo-boy real. However, a lot can be done lexicographically with an epistemologic framing that specifies fictionality. Thus it is that some fake places, such as Narnia, may have blueness in real dictionaries. I think what this line of thought shows is that although I have been hesitating to bother delving into WT:CFI because I am not a lawyer and lawyering is not something that I enjoy doing, I need to take at least a layperson stab at a layperson-level familiarity with the upshots of CFI, because maybe some sufficiently encabulated fictional words warrant blueness.
  - An update a month or three later: I took a glance and found out that WT:CFI has a section all about this particular subset of criteria: the section on fictional universes. I'm still not interested in adjudicating most individual instances, though, as the longer I am at Wiktionary, the more clarity I attain in my own mind about which aspects of life I am here for versus which other aspects of life I could be here for but am not, given that the properly calibrated answer cannot be that I'm simply down for whatever (because time scarcity and prioritization). My goals are to escape reproach where easily enough avoided while pursuing the whys that I already enumerated elsewhere herein.
Talk of evidence is always more or less in the neighborhood of talk of epistemology. And thus talk of evidentiary categories, or of evidence levels, is never far from talk of epistemological categories, even though not everyone who treads a forest trail knows anything about the geologic strata that lie mere meters beneath their feet. When I jotted this note here it seemed to me that this line of thought is not too interesting beyond its opening, especially because most humans are evidently a little weak in the epistemology department. However, my brain later reminded me of what had subconsciously prompted the daydream. Why do evidential, epistemic, and empirical all begin with some variation on /ˈɛ😘i/, and why are experiential and experimental nearby, and why is it that you can't say EBM without /ibi/? It's not that I seriously suspect any hint of some kind of sound symbolism, a sort of bouba/kiki effect at the cognitive level of abstractions as opposed to physical characteristics, because I realize that birdshit is merely birdshit — there are only so many phonemes in our language and there are only 26 letters in our alphabet, dingus; you're gonna hear and see them recur. Nonetheless, what I can't help finding slightly interesting about it is its possible relevance to word-finding in fluency, because independently of any deeper causation (a specious mirage), I swear it nonetheless reminds me of a database index somehow, which at the core of its essence is an arbitrary, accidentally instance-specific way of expediting lookup while running queries. Granted that it's got nothing to do with prospective processes, like "what word will we coin for concept X or Y?" Nonetheless, unrelated to that red herring, it could possibly have something to do with retrospective processes, like a machine saying, "I have no clue whether or not file X is semantically relevant to file Y, and I don't give a shit either way, but I can tell you that they are both written to segment Z of the disk." Then the agents that care about semantic relevance (such as the query itself and the human who is running it) say, "Thanks Mr Index — it's OK that you have no clue and couldn't care less — you just go ahead and serve us up that quick-finding trick that you do so well, and let us worry about treating the query result like a table for further relevance."
- Daydream corollary: the eventual applications of IT as assistive technology even for anomic aphasia? Can you throw some generative AI and a BCI into that juice blender? Where is the line between scifi and business development? Maybe this is just another daydream like Doc Brown throwing banana peels into his Mr Fusion, but tech bros and VCs can dream, right?
Speaking of valence, I found it surprising that a chemical sense of ambivalent would be truly unattested, although it is wholly unsurprising that such a sense is yet unknown to any dictionary, even the OED, the Merriam-Webster Allegedly Unabridged, and both of the dictionaries of chemistry that I have ready access to at the moment. Experience has shown that that's how all dictionaries except Wiktionary roll—with Swiss-cheesy, flaky softness. I did the most cursory of googling to detect the sense's existence, and it came echoing back to me immediately out of the woodwork. I'll enter it, one of these nights, when I choose to spend some free time combing through and selecting and assembling the citations. That's how the moonman climbed down into Wiktionary recently. I acted as valet, guiding him in and taking his coat. Speaking of valet and valence; but not speaking of them, though, because they're not cognate, just some more pigeons for the pigeonhole. And not speaking of unveiling the moonman when I took his coat, albeit seeming to. Granted that the ones who usually unveil him are the clouds who part. But anyway, speaking of pigeons, I'm glad to see from the blueness of what I'm typing here that bird fancier's lung is already duly entered in Wiktionary. I'll warn the moonman not to breathe too deeply. But I needn't bother, as it's not his first rodeo—he didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday, and he's not afraid of barking dogs, either.
There's no cognation with veil in valence levels even though those levels are outer shells cloaking the inner ones, and there's no cognation with veil in valance curtains or valance panels even though those coverings are outer veils hanging low to cover a gap that needs covering. Speaking of noteworthy absence of cognation among terms that sound like they ought to be cognate with veil but aren't. The pigeonhole principle strikes again. But then again, it has to, doesn't it, by its nature? Once again, as elsewhere, the lesson is that life ain't fair.
abrogating in mbio and obliterating in macroscopic biology and surgery — a common theme of negating function, structure, or both, either reversibly or irreversibly (depending on the instance); but Wiktionary probably is the wrong place to acknowledge the connection, owing to (both) who is here and who isn't here. The latter sometimes annoy me — they don't bother running their own dictionaries and knowledge bases well enough (the Swiss cheese theory?), but they leave the gaps to be filled by someone else (largely by someones much more else).
The context tonight made it clear that in East Anglian English, and possibly other dialects, a back'us boy or backus boy was an apprentice farmhand. I lack time to pursue this further tonight, but upon initial googling, I found this recitation of a Suffolk poem, which was interesting, and I found a Suffolk dictionary that says, "Backus – A wash-house or scullery at the back of a farm house; a place for odd-jobs." / "Backus boy – An odd-job boy." So it seems apparent that "back'us" is backhouse, then. Enough for now.
- Many months later: Here's a better glossary of words used (now or formerly) in East Anglia: Rye 1895.
Both a strake and a shake can be like a scale or a shingle, which is to say, a segment of an outer protective covering. I say "can be" because the words have variations in senses, but the underlying theme is visible (that is, eyelessly visible). Something that felloes and strakes (in certain senses of those words) have in common is that they are segments of a round whole when such a whole is composite rather than unitary (that is, of one piece). The felloes make up the rim, and the strakes make up what is effectively a composite tyre, or, that is to say more properly, a set of scales that serve in place of a tyre. Again with parameterization as it relates to wheelwrighting, and yet I wasn't even trying to return to that theme. Which is why I found it so surprising when Percy Wilson said to me the other night (from beyond the grave, via the sorcery of the written word), "The wheels are the wright's distinguishing mark of his trade. It is the wheels that separate him off from the craft of carpenter: a wheelwright is equal to any job in the carpenter's craft but a carpenter cannot make a wheel." Jesus, Percy, the book that brought you to me was something I picked up by utter serendipity in a way that had nothing to do with the inputs that had me pondering parameterization's relationship to wheelwrighting not long ago. But it's just the mundane sort of coincidence, not the meaningful kind. Nonetheless, Percy gave me a chuckle. But anyway, speaking of what's either eyed or eyeless, Mrs Rumsby said, "I often used to hear about square eyes, but it was years before I knew exactly what they were!" It were her husband's shop talk, you see. He was known especially for making eyes; but no, not that kind—rather, the square ones.
When I was growing up, the archetype of a sedate car was a sedately colored sedan. You would occasionally read about, or see on TV, references to nondescript cars, usually in the context of witness reports of crimes or suspicious activity, or in Cold War spycraft. Nowadays, the rise of the crossover SUV category blurs or fades this archetype somewhat, I suppose, but I think it's idly interesting that my young mind (and presumably countless others) was branded early with a pigeonhole connection between sedateness and sedans. One can rightfully point out that because these words are cognate, their pigeonhole connection is not random (that is, on some underlying level it is not a mere coincidence), which raises the objection that perhaps (more precisely) they should not be labeled with (or, perhaps, metaphorically, accused of) pigeonholeness at all. But I have to disagree with that approach. Their connection via cognation is not the selfsame thing as their other connection via connotative echo based on a nexus of auditory and visual similarity overlapping with semantic relevance; rather, the latter is an additional layer that operates independently, a fact that is demonstrated by the fact that I didn't even know whether they were cognate until I looked them up today to confirm whether they are (yes). That aspect surely must extend across speakers generally: if most speakers don't even know whether or not a certain two words are cognate, then one cannot assert that the flavor of connection that I'm on about here is the selfsame phenomenon as (known or transparently obvious) cognation. Which is not to say that it is not related to it; just that it is differentiable from a valid viewpoint. It seems to be something like two leaves on the same branch of a tree: the "same object"? Well, yes, at one scale, but not at the scale of two leaves. This line of thought is challenging (for its abstractness), but I feel that it is a valid informal attempt at pondering to explore the complexity of the overlapping relationships among cognation, doubletness, polysemy, homonymy, and the pigeonhole principle as applied to morphemes, the last of which has plenty of instances that have nothing to do with cognation, although one can't always tell the difference between the instances without finding out about the presence or absence of cognation in each case. Which is of course the very nature of the pigeonhole principle: signal ambiguity and differentiating-signal-from-noise ambiguity. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and even a funny noise sounds like a signal sometimes.
alloglyph for allograph: one might, but one doesn't. Granted that a few have (done), but not so many that Wiktionary should (do).
to see back (vt), that is, to see (someone) back, exists in idiomatic informal-register speech, referring to seeing patients again by getting them to come back (seeing patients back frequently), and it is clearly cognitively adjacent to having (someone) back (e.g., "we had the finalist back to our headquarters for another meeting") in parallel with having (someone) over ("we had him over for dinner") and bringing (someone) back (e.g., "we brought the finalist back to our headquarters for another meeting"), but I have decided not to try to enter it in Wiktionary anytime soon, because it doesn't seem worth the bother right now (i.e., the bother with getting the method of entry exactly right).
∅; /ˈeʒos/ (en algunos lugares)
/ˈeɪʒə/: Asia, Aja; /ˈeʒa/: ella (en algunos lugares)
It's bad enough for a cad to be callow, let alone callow, shallow, and sallow.
- Corollary: Something about childish douchebags being pasty creeps. Also possibly lads with a taste for tallow? Or maybe wan waifs and their pallor.
Sit with recalibration. Not so much a swivel as a scanner. Sit with it. In the dark, or through it, albeit darkly. An emulator.
There is an interesting comparison between the trade of the cooper and the trade of the wheelwright as practiced in preindustrial centuries: Both of these trades carved wood skillfully into components that could be arranged radially into a round assembly and then bound (fastened) into a round composite that furthermore could be capped off with tight-fitting iron rings to hold it together (that is, either iron hoops or iron tyres), and both of these composites required carefully accurate fitting to allow sufficient function (the one liquid-tight, the other rollworthy and loadworthy). In this respect, these trades were two complementary instantiations of the selfsame theme.
- Corollary: Rereading the above later, I just realized that it puts me in mind of parameterization of designs in CAD/CAM; and although these (particular) instantiations of this (particular) theme aren't homologous enough to say that coopering could be viewed as parameterized wheelwrighting or vice versa, they are nonetheless not so far off from that degree (of homology) that one's mind cannot imagine digital-twin solid models morphing seamlessly in an animation and assembling themselves into each form. In this daydream, the barrelheads grow hubs, and the staves shorten; or, alternatively, the staves stay long, and then the hoops snap and unwind themselves (taking the staves with them), and the barrel, instead of growing into a dandy carriage wheel, grows first into a "swamp-wagon wheel" and then into old-time Holt Caterpillar tracks, just as smoothly as a pumpkin grows into a carriage when parameterized by imaginative cartooning. I must point out here too that the development of the early Holt Caterpillar tracks was itself driven by envisioning parameterization (although not by that name), as the people who did it basically realized that the wheels of the machine could lay their own plank road as they progressed and that the selfsame plank road could be rolled up and then rotated back into position (rolled out) cyclically. The fact that even today many V-belts are still described in conventional terminology (of cataloguing and sales) as "endless" belts reflects a hint of conscious acknowledgment of the same parametricality.
emolument and thirlage: MWU and AHD both assert that emolument comes originally from millers' work (e- + molere), and the general (and neutral) sense of the word in English today is compensation for employment or an office held, but another important sense of the word is a natural (humanly inevitable) extension from that, either bordering on or stepping into abuses thereof, that is, corruption of the office. That is, for example, what results if an executive officeholder does not place their interests in a trust during the term of office. This line of thought caught my attention because not too long ago I had been reading in another context about how the work of the miller had been twisted into an abusive monopoly/oligopoly, and the engine sparked. But what was the name of that instance of the theme, I had to ask myself. Tip of the tongue. Once again googling spared me the annoyance of lingering TOTishness by leading to the answer, bridging the gap: thirlage. The only problem with this funny little circuit connection is that another dictionary (this one) disagrees about the etymology: molior and not molere, it asserts, and those ultimately from different PIE roots (so it says). I liked the connection though, because in both cases one sees an economic station that began at its heart as legitimate then sliding down the slope into a racket, and there is a duality zone in which an allegedly "legitimate racket" is uncovered for what it is, which is to say that that collocation is an oxymoron. Which is why the book that I was reading tonight contained the word—yet another instance of that theme. An ancient theme among humans, and semantically largely overlapping with rent seeking.
contradiction in terms : oxymoron :: catachresis : malapropism; as follows: in strict usage, only the juiciest forms qualify as the narrower type (whether absurd or poignant or ironic); and this raises the relation of misfortune : irony itself, which is another instance of the same theme.
A summary about relevance: The topic and comment (theme and rheme) are not always the subject and predicate, nor always the subject and object, nor always the agent and patient; nonetheless, by the nature of things, these things are often coinstantiated.
- Speaking of such coinstantiation, it puts me in mind of the general case in which (annoyingly? venially? depends on one's mood) people often assert that "X is not the same thing as Y" but they thereby obscure an important distinction: mutual exclusivity versus nonobligate coinstantiation. So many times they mean the latter but their choice of words implies the former to the parsing of some confused listeners, who (naturally enough) misapprehend some aspect of (might we say) pseudo-ness (specious resemblance, mistaken identity) rather than mere variability of coinstantiation (as was intended but not successfully communicated); the remedy (or preemption) would be to speak a bit more carefully (thus: "never" versus "not always"; "never" versus "usually not"; "never" versus "not necessarily"; take one's pick; each can feel most juste, depending on the particular instance). I lack time for exemplifications at the moment—which is funny in a way; the paths from concrete to abstract can often feel dim and tenuous (in human cognition, the first time out), and yet there is also an inverse, whereby encountered instantiations keep on provoking the feel of the theme (the familiar old theme) so predictably that (depending on one's mood), for an agent who moves largely by feel in the dark (as it were), it is an annoyance to have to go groping off into the dark for more handholds, just to dredge up and bring back a few baubles for dimwits to fondle: we knows where we sits quite fine, and we knows where we sits without retracing the paths leading hither or the pillars that underlie. We knows them by feel, so we sees them in the mind's eye. It is a groove-worn landscape, beest thou naive there or not. Thou might know not (with those vision-hungry eyes of thine); thou may need a little model to hold (a microcosm, or a lantern to find thy ass, perhaps, as it were); but we knows (speaking of people not bothering to explain things).

Indirect fire

My glancing blows have inadvertently grown a parameter, causing some to fork off to a parameterized subset (which checks out):

some blows are less glancing than others

- So-and-so's third law of homoglyphy
  - Anyone who designs a font in which |, I, and/or l are visually indistinguishable, or even just very nearly so, is a moron masquerading as a competent font designer. But no doubt they throw good parties and invite the right people, which is why they've been allowed to commit grade D travesties and nonetheless have them selected as widespread defaults.
    - I've got nothing against sans serif fonts; I just can see obviously that even within that constraint there can be noticeable differentiation or there can be moronic failures of differentiation.
- There are missals, there are hymnals, and there are missal-hymnal combinations. These are the little books posted in the pews.
  - They could be called pewbooks, but they're not.
    - Little books: booklets, notebooks, pocketbooks.
      - cot: pamphlets; brochures.
    - Also: psalter | breviary | portass | portal | prayer book
- A Friesian is a Holstein, but a Friesian isn't a Holstein, because life ain't fair.
- Mr windowmaker will tell you what you need for that buttonhole of yours: you just get yourself a buttonhook.
  - Yes please.
    - He explains that buttonhooks were common articles in a day when people wore button shoes as a matter of course. Buttoning stiff leather is no fucking joke. Snaps don't count, you whippersnapper: they were Johnny-come-latelies back in the day under discussion, and you were perhaps lucky if you had ever seen one yet. Your shoe buttons were the shank type, and you just get your hook in there, then wrap your hook around that shank and give er a yank. This appeals to me. (Most especially, to the Yankee in me — everyone's got some, more or less; and one can get more.) Why do barehanded sweatily what you could do with a tool slickly?
      - PS: Some yours are yourser than others.
        It's not that interesting, but it is a bit, in a certain way, because I can retroactively detect the database index's presence underlying the speech generation: I didn't entirely know why I phrased the sentence that way when it first came springing forth from my mind, but I could feel the resonance (in a nonsonic way), and I consciously reappreciated the full mechanism afterward (pulling in different neural circuits in addition to the earlier ones).
      - PS: get one's hooks into | sink one's teeth into
        Yes but.
- This one came and went tonight and I had even forgotten it, but a windowmaker uttered a parametric echo to remind me:
  - half crown | half sovereign
    - The one was an eighth pound, the other a half pound: it took four crowns to make a sovereign, but it takes only one crown to make a sovereign, and some crowns and sovereigns are more thoroughly capitalised than others, when they're the Crown and the Sovereign.
      - The windowmaker on the same night also spoke of the penny post and the formerly formidable value of a cent. It took a lot of sense to make a buck in those days; it still does, but the buck doesn't go as far though. Sometimes it even stops here, overnight. He didn't mention splitting the cent in half, as they didn't do so in his neck of the woods (although they could get blood from a stone, as they had the stones to do so; and he did mention some interesting stones in the woods as well).
        PS: A windowmaker is not a widowmaker (speaking of a walk in the woods), unless he has a big one, in which case (God forbid) he leaves a widow in his wake; that's the sometime difference between synonymy and coinstantiation for you.
- on a certain basis | in a certain manner
  - meh
- the state or degree of | the condition or extent of
  - nodeworthy | noteworthy
- unsheath | uncover | unconceal | unholster
  - uncover | discover | disclose | reveal
    - Yes but
- My poor brain is bugging me again regarding insurance that is underinsurance, reliance that is overreliance, confidence that is overconfidence, and so on.
  - It wants to know other members of this class. Right off the bat, it knows that flipping the hyper-/hypo- parameter is valid in a generally adequate way, where some generals are generaler than others. Thus: insurance that is overinsurance, reliance that is underreliance, confidence that is underconfidence, and so on. The first interesting thing that one can immediately sense, though, is that the misanthropic polarity is apparently juicier; but etically, that scent may be artifactual.
    - Perhaps I will just start dumping items here when they occur to me. Will a sufficiently comprehensive set emerge, revealing itself to be both too trivial and too voluminous to continue? I remember witnessing another instance of that theme a while back, and I remember what the instance was specifically, although I don't care to link to it here right now. And I remember the mixture of feelings that it evoked. A complex little knot.
      - It is fun to think of the first examples of each pair that one can think of. For insurance that is overinsurance, the first one that I think of involves rental cars; but damned if they don't get me anyway, because Murphy lives rent-free in my head, or I should say, at least frequently drops by without paying. He makes me pay, or else. For reliance that is underreliance, I think of what Jesus freaks would say: something like, "you might think you're relying on Him, but you could — nay, must — rely harder still." Lol.
        As of the moment when I was typing these thoughts, underreliance remains a red link not only at Wiktionary but everywhere else too, as far as OneLook can tell. Humans overall strike me as either moronic or cavalierly dismissive when it comes to lexicography. However, despite whatever it is that drives those possible appearances, at least a few of them are doing something right, as it is getting ever harder for me not to love Wiktionary, not least because the damnedest links can turn out to be already blue.
  - List population:
  - insurance that is underinsurance; insurance that is overinsurance
    - underinsurance whose only status as known or recognized by the humans directly involved in the instance is insurance; overinsurance whose only status as known or recognized by the humans directly involved in the instance is insurance
  - reliance that is overreliance; reliance that is ⊕underreliance
    - overreliance whose only status as known or recognized by the humans directly involved in the instance is reliance; underreliance whose only status as known or recognized by the humans directly involved in the instance is reliance
  - confidence that is overconfidence; confidence that is underconfidence
    - overconfidence whose only status as known or recognized by the humans directly involved in the instance is confidence; underconfidence whose only status as known or recognized by the humans directly involved in the instance is confidence
  - honesty that is overhonesty; honesty that is *underhonesty†
    - And so on
  - —
  - Notes:
  - †lexical gap; humans have different words (not this one) for the relevant concept(s), or any of several logical contrast sets of such words, where the optimal choice may vary depending on the salient parameters of each instance (flavors, subflavors; classes, subclasses).
    - Some "honest" people are less honest than others.
- at bank | at grade | at-grade
  - Yes but
    - on the surface
      - Yes butter
        level crossing | grade crossing | underground | undergrade | underpass | aboveground | overground | overgrade | overpass
        handwave etc
    - the underground railroad was not an underground (subway)
      - True enough
        That one almost makes the grade, but it's undergrade. Some things are slightly more needless to say than others.
        I sorted it out myself and then discovered Wiktionary's entries for an underground railway and an Underground Railway. Meh.
        
        If a mine car makes the grade, to arrive at bank, has it made bank? Well, I suppose it depends: some mines are miner than others.
- to hand | at hand | on hand | handy
  - Some synonyms are more to hand than others: they leap to mind, or sometimes are at top of mind.
    - Don't take it to heart, though, if not every mot is perfectly juste; some mots are juster than others.
- hourglass figure | petiole
  - wasp-waisted
    - Some fashions are waspier than others
  - tightlacing·ʷᵖ | straitjacketing | corset controversy
  - health before fashion | function before form
  - straitness as (or as if) straightness
- telephone box | phone box | police box | squawk box
  - boxes with audio telecoms
    - boom box
      - audio-output-only outlier
        talk box | voice box
        other boxy audio equipment or "equipment"
- overcast | downcast
  - An overcast day might aggravate a downcast affect (ˈæ.fɛkt).
    - That one is more mirror than fire.
      - PS: If one can forecast the overcast, one might recast the downcast. Lol handwave etc throw aside
        PPS: A thing about the overcast | downcast juncture is that usually (and archetypally) it is a low cloud ceiling that constitutes the overcast. And for the clouds to get into a low ceiling configuration, they must move down, and be down (relatively). This overlap is part of what flavors the juncture. (Some junctures are flavorer than others.)
- cast aside | cast away | cast down
  - throw aside | throw away | throw down
  - toss aside | toss away | toss down
    - ✓ syn and rel added where appropriate;
    - ✓ There is an SoP threshold that rightfully precludes total bluening of them all;
      - Pursuing that thought a bit further, we might ask, well, what makes the blue ones blueworthy, then? Answer: when the literal sense (ejecting downward) is augmented with an idiomatic sense that is more abstract, that is, it can be divorced from the literal downward ejection in at least some uses.
        That thought leads to the conclusion that the entry for toss down (which was created by someone else, not me) should be RFDd for SoP. That's fine, but today is not the day for me to be the one who chases it. TBD.
        PS: Such downward ejections are more specifically downward rejections, as the ejection is being done because of rejection of one kind or another. In fact there is hardly any ejection (of any kind) that isn't, or isn't prompted by, rejection (of one kind or another): if the bouncer ejects you from the club, he is rejecting you, and if a fighter pilot ejects (v.i.) from his plane (which is to say, if he ejects himself (v.r.) from his plane), he is noping out, that is, he is rejecting his current situation and its impending development. To eject a tape cassette or other cartridge is to reject further use of it at this time; to eject a molded or stamped part from a mold or die is to reject its continued presence there. All ejectors are disposing of something in one way or another (giving it a kicked-out disposition), often to discard it, that is, to refuse it. For example, we refuse refuse (n).
        PPS: Ejector pins (e-pins) are a type of ejector, which is to say that ejector pin and e-pin are hyponyms of ejector, but Wiktionary may never be the place to enter those (well-established) terms, as discussed elsewhere herein. What an ejector pin is saying (as it were) to each stamped or molded part is that "I don't care where you go, but you can't stay here." It is making way for the next one, which involves rejecting the current status/situation.
        reject | throw back | eject | throw out ——— and compare the (Germanic→Romance) displacement history given at reject#Etymology. When a fisherman rejects a catch, he throws it back, which is to say, he throws it out of the boat, that is, ejects it therefrom.
- An instance of rebucketing in transit, regarding which or whose head and whether or not there is one. An instantiation of the theme, prompting a lesson about habit formation: view the existing coverage of the polysemy first before making the bucket cutoff determination, because being once bitten, twice shy, it is possible to be too cautious by running a probability simulation that doesn't need to be run anyway (and produces an overshy result) because a reality check is readily available instead (the cost of a new tab is effectively zero, even in terms of attentional bandwidth).
- I can't remember whether or not I've already said it anywhere in my WP or WT userspace before, but it bears noting: it's a regrettably missed opportunity to treat w:Wikipedia:Short description as merely and solely a disambiguation cue for human users of the search field, as it has an order of magnitude more overall value to humanity if it successfully serves both that purpose and also the purpose of a short but accurate (succinct) ontologic statement of what anything is (and thus mostly also showing the contours of what it is not). Humans and their machines both tend to need a (surprisingly? big) lot of help with that info. Some examples are that any shortdesc for a person is better as " (-)" or " (born )" than as only " ", and " best known for ()" is better still whenever usefully applicable to the instance. In fact if one really wanted to be dead serious about the whole affair, and avoid quibbling about pros and cons (for example, "slightly shorter is best" versus "no, slightly more explanatory is best', handwave etc), then to me it is dead obvious that one could simply have fields shortdesc1 (disambig-optimized tuning) and shortdesc2 (ontology-spoonfeeding-optimized tuning), and provide optimal interfaces for the use of both simultaneously as separate facets of the same gem (which one can easily envision). That's what seeing and seizing the whole opportunity, in an obvious and efficient way, would look like, and there'd be nothing difficult or eccentric about choosing such an option and doing it. Alas, this here is some good water but it's not my fate to force any particular horse to drink it. And perhaps it is moot anyway because if NLP or GPT or WTF can digest a lede-opener sentence well enough then it can get the functional equivalent of the shortdesc2 value from that. But you know, when I was young, people used to care about structured data though. Nowadays I guess the big idea is to get some black-box monstrosity to confabulate a mysterious approximation thereof, and even then also get it to apply the structuring itself retroactively (by pestering the chained beast enough), and then sit around talking about how the result is not trustworthy and it's fundamentally opaque and also dirty and fuzzy around the edges but at least it beats doing any real curation work though, God forbid. Kids these days, FFS.
- Do not confuse habituation with habitation, even though hasty non-t-crossing science reporters and scientists sometimes have.
- steely-eyed | flint-hearted | flint-eyed | hard-hearted | hard-nosed | hard-headed | steely-nerved | stonehearted
  - All are coordinate beneath certain hypernymous semantic nodes: hard materials resist wear, in a non-mat-sci way. ~~The red one is well attested. I can't be arsed to enter it at present because handwave etc.~~
    - PS: Someone who is flint-eyed will look daggers at you (the lousy flintknappers).
- Here's some hog slop that I almost forgot to hoover into any bucket. I don't have time to do it full justice, so I'll just capture a glimpse of it.
  - An interesting case of autohyponymy exists regarding insurance, although admittedly one can see it only if one is willing to view the real-world state of the insurance industry with etic honesty (and some will more than others); I say that with love, being someone who duly buys insurance even despite the openness of my eyes (in an eyeless way). Old no-eyes keeps an eye on such things for me; he has one to spare. The crux of the autohyponymy is that most insurance is in fact underinsurance, in a quiet way muffled by the fine print (whereby the muffling is skillful to avoid leaving any fingerprints). After all, that's how they get you; or, more precisely, that's one of the hows by which they get you. Many of us have heard what some wag or other has said about that topic, which is that the true business model of all successful insurance is to collect premiums and stonewall claims. (As for which wag, we may not know, although some try harder to find out than others do.) Still, when the pantsings come along in life, the only thing worse than underinsurance is uninsurance, which is the hard place against which the rock must be compared. One buys belts and braces because one understands that some pantsings are pantsier than others; some fates are more fateful than others, and one need not ask for whom the bone bones, as one already knows. Anyway, furthermore, the odd thing about the narrower of the autohyponymous senses of insurance is that it is hyponymous to underinsurance, which makes underinsurance itself also an autohyponym, in a way that clear eyes can see (if they squint, in an eyeless way), and the whole caboodle together is holding my interest at the moment because the first thing that my brain is asking is whether this funny little thread-knot is a unique animal or whether it is but an instance of a latent theme that has at least one or two other instances. And you know who's good at stumbling off into the dark to answer a question like that. He's already groaning and slapping me, but he'll do it though. He's as curious to find out as I am, and as much as he likes to bitch and moan about scarcity of competence, he knows what he is.
    - PS: He snuffed out his cig and got going. On his way out, he asked me to jot here the following. I can barely see it, so I'll try to be quick before it disappears. As for which bucket to put such slop in, and who all does or doesn't feed from it, it's fine either way, because some hollows are hollower than others (in a nonconcave way), and this set of buckets (herein) is a hollow too. Some wallowers are wallower than others, and some hereins are here-inner than others. There are thoracic ceptors for that.
    - Update: He hasn't had time yet for more, but so far he detects that the theme is too generalizable not to have other instances. So others will turn up. It has to do with Venn overlap and its relationship with (i.e., how it maps to) autohyponymy, and thus also with the theme of "synonymous in certain senses", which is another segment of the same object as the theme of "synonymous or hyponymous depending on whose definition is used," which is the overlap part of the Venn diagram (the almond). A drawing can be made showing the mapping from the Venn diagram portions to the senseid link for each sense-specific semantic relation link. A way to unearth other instances is to give parameter weighting to shittiness and incompetence, then go groping from there. For example, the first other instance that cropped up is when any reliance on something (or someone) is overreliance.
      - His fingers don't lie: some dimensions fold in on themselves more than sevenfold, and even if you can get down inside there, perhaps you'd better not, as some horizons are less eventful than others, but the journey seems contiguous in prospect (and retrospect may be too late). Which is to say, one must know better than to outrun one's headlights. Which is an interesting fact regarding how it relates to the fact that if your vision is piercing enough (or Bierce-ing enough), you have to be careful where you aim it, as the veil isn't necessarily all that thick. And after all, some torches aren't for sheet metal anyway (so what would you expect?); only kids and clowns accidentally burn clean through the sheet (fuckin jokers). But speaking of vales, he's going to take a nap in a corn field now, and come home later, just to rub it in regarding the fact that he can. Lucky bastard, he lacks the gene that would allow him to be affected by the stimulus. (Speaking of not being affected by the stimulus, I happened to see tonight that The Gray Area has an episode on that topic, and I should remember to check that out.) A lesson tonight is that if things are feeling a little suspiciously contiguous, one might keep cool (lol), channel his vibe, pay out some asbestos cordage, lower that visor, and reflect the burn. Some may thank you, others may curse you (especially those who find out too late), and God may sort them out.
- optical telegraph·ʷᵖ | *aural telegraph (*audial telegraph)
  - nichtelektrische Fernseher oder Fernsprecher (🔥, 🔔)
    - For the eyeholes — flag towers | light towers | lamp towers | lighthouses·ʷᵖ
    - For the earholes — bell towers·ʷᵖ | church bells·ʷᵖ | yodeling·ʷᵖ
    - multisensory — flare gun·ʷᵖ | signal flare
- self-discipline | self-criticism | self-awareness | self-compassion | self-kindness | — all are compared and contrasted in works recently seen
  - self-doubt | self-pity — some things not far away parametrically, but the key is to navigate the slippery slope appropriately
- kick (vt) | ruck (vt) — installers of wall-to-wall carpet will tell you that one must kick a carpet well so that it can't be rucked as easily
- out of place | out of time
  - out of spirits | out of fuel
- Englishly | Welshly | Scottishly | Britishly | Irishly
  - Yes
    - But
- distorting mirror | passenger side mirror (objects are closer than they appear)
- trash | duff — field vegetation detritus | forest floor vegetation detritus — shared parameter: vegetable matter detritus on farm and forest landscapes (e.g., field and woodlot) as a hypernymic semantic node
  - ground cover, organic matter, humus
    - Q: Who cares, dork? A: Those who know enough to.
- time clock | clock: certain hyponyms invite prescriptive scrutiny because they exemplify the theme of, "oh yeah, as opposed to what other kind, dufus?" (lol). In other words, they threaten etymonically to be redundant because they don't etymonically express a modified concept versus their hypernym (under any condition of general background parameter values ); which furthermore means that their hypernym should be (that is, should have been) autohyponymous in a way that makes them superfluous and thus (per usual in natural language) uninstantiated. But of course there are valid reasons why they exist, descriptively speaking, and thus they are not "wrong" (that is, there is nothing wrong with them, as is clear to anyone with nondeficient understanding of how natural language works in reality). Why this is true is newly reinteresting to me, lately, because I am now clearer in my own mind about why (even though expressing it in words remains a gamble versus what anyone else would get out of it): they make logical sense (which is the best kind of sense) when seen from a sufficiently parameterized space: for example, archetypally speaking, all clocks measure time, but one's time in the context of one's work (and inside the paymaster's office most particularly) is a certain kind of time (that is, the billable kind) that natural language can't be arsed to have an explicitly morphologized hyponym for, in most contexts (the most lawyery ones excepted, which is the best kind of excepted). And that's why you need a certain kind of clock for measuring that certain kind of time, and what else would you call it but a time clock (which is to say, you'd better not even try to coin any more arsed word for it, or else ). Not only is this outcome etically predictable (given sufficient absence of spatial neglect, in a spaceless way), but also (moreover), O wow: Very human. Much natural language.
  - What is a contrast set of the cardinal examples of such hyponyms? Here are the ones that I could come up with off the top of my head quickly:
    - time clock/timeclock (parameter value: strongly silly), streetcar (parameter value: weakly silly), space heater (parameter value: moderately silly)
      - No doubt there are more — perhaps even many more; but I can't come up with them unprompted at the moment. I gave some parameter weighting to time, space, room, food, water, and air; but clearwater fails (because turbidity is often enough important in human conscious attention), as do kinds of food for cooking or eating (such as table grapes, wine grapes, table wine, or cooking wine) because the use case parameter for those is not immaterial to human conscious attention. And thinking man fails too, for obvious ironic reasons (he falls hard on his face, in fact). For now there is nothing else interesting to say about this ore vein. If I think of other examples, I'll revisit it.
        PS: parameter weighting for area: area rug (parameter value: weakly silly; yes, wall-to-wall is an area too, but again, archetypally speaking (speaking of archetypes), "Dork, if you can't be cool then someone will cool your ass down.")
- What is the contrast set of the cardinal times of day? As with any contrast set defined by human sentience, (1) it depends on who you ask, strictly speaking, but also (2) some answers are better than others, broadly speaking (shared parameter: some consensuses are more consensusy than others ). Not long ago I had noticed that Wiktionary still needs breakfasttime as the (red-headed) sibling of lunchtime, teatime, dinnertime, and suppertime, but my recent talk of bedtime made me realize that bedtime and quitting time are fellow members of that clock face, as well (which is no less). What else? Well, morningtime is nonstandard but well-attested (rise and shine, mthrfrs); eveningtime is already blue (and some evenings are bluer than others); breaktime and playtime are good times (and breaking things when one plays with them is long since known to be overrated); and last but not least, daytime and nighttime are archetypally the two halves, although in practice your results may vary (depending).
- halo effect | damning by association: shared parameter: for diametricizing antonymy: adjacency-based tinting, or painting versus tainting
- occhiolism | parochialism (shared parameters: (1) blinkered viewpoint; (2) rhyme or near-rhyme )
- Coordinate terms: eyehole, earhole, nosehole, mouthhole — all of these have book-attested polysemy parameterization of "the hole for that organ" and "the hole for that organ"
  - A mouthhole is thus either one's piehole (which one is ever welcome to shut) or a flute mouthhole (which one is typically welcome to strip of its adjectival hyponymizing parameter given that such a hole is usually a woodwind instrument's hole when not otherwise specified)
  - Treats for each one, respectively, are (via a coordinating parameter about which one is welcome to shut one's hole, or else) eye candy, ear candy, nose candy, and mouth candy, the last of which is just candy whenever not otherwise specified (which is a parameter value that makes the specification humorous)
    - Update: the relationship of candy to nose candy is like the relationship of gaiter to neck gaiter: one generally doesn't call gaiters leg gaiters any more than one calls candy mouth candy, but one must call a neck gaiter a neck gaiter, not a gaiter, because a gaiter not otherwise specified is a gaiter.
- dark earth | black earth | scorched earth (some worlds are more coinstantiated than others)
- soul-searching | navel-gazing (shared parameter: whether or not others consider the introspection to be self-indulgent)
- ancient grains, ancient aliens: shared parameter: worth considering but haunted by varying degrees of pseudoscience-adjacency (pseudocereal pseudoprofessionalism?) Speaking of haunting, the boosters of ancient grains want humanity to come back to biting them because humans' overreliance on monoculture may come back to bite them (or perhaps long since has). Which is why it is slightly chiasmic that a slogan for corn flakes used to encourage us to taste them again for the first time.
- dining hall, dining room, dining facility, dining car;
  - supper club
  - dining room, feedroom
- boxcar, box truck
- food cart, chuck wagon (another great example where you'd tend to get smacked for pointing out the etic parametricity: burly boys have their burliness to defend; be cool, dork, or else)
  - This theme has special academic interest for old no-eyes, as he's been to entire valleys where a parametric space for coolness doesn't even exist, which if one has ever experienced it one may recognize as an atmospheric condition that can literally kill, albeit in some people more than others. Somehow that venom isn't toxic to him, although when he first gets back he is a bit glassy-eyed, in an eyeless way.
    - Relatedly: Speaking of amateurs, he reports that the aphorism portraying royalty is but an exaggeration for aphoristic effect, although one can see that some hollers are hollerer than others when one views them through the welding goggles that cover his eyeholes there. (Corollary: he could ask, Dude, where's my crown? — but there is a strange paradox at the heart of his inflammability: he's more mantle than fuel, even though others are the ones who need light, not him).
      - valley of death | uncanny valley (shared parameter: a gauntlet that one must run to get from one hilltop to the next )
        PS: I am well aware how chiasmic it is that in one moment I am blithely portraying old no-eyes as eyeless and in the next moment I'm acknowledging that his parameter value for number of eyes equals one in a world where the default value is zero (eyelessly speaking, that is, if one will, and some will more than others). If anyone would take me to task for my reckless cavalierness in that regard (and some would more than others), it would be him, given that he can palpate each metaphor, bite it to see whether it's counterfeit, and so on. But there is a strange paradox at the heart of his eyelessness: the one who can see the mixing just as well or better than others is also the one who is jaded enough to have given up on the misguided prohibition against the mixing. All metaphors have limits (some more than others), and where they meet at midstream is sometimes just the very place where changing from horse to giraffe (shared parameter: neck length) is most useful — and picking up one refreshed where the other left off exhausted is precisely the nature of a relay, after all. I don't expect purists to like it; but within the sandbox of this page, the stakes are small and the limits can be tested (or perhaps the stakes are located approximately and the boundaries are provisional).
- callable, nameable; uncallable, unnameable: emic monolingual viewpoint, shy of caring (despite called, named); translingual viewpoint, OK; llamar, heißen.

The standard amount of polysemic flexibility in natural language

General notes

These are garden-variety facts about usage differences underpinned by the standard amount of polysemic flexibility in natural language regarding slight variations between mental models of ontology — how each concept is defined (any of several word senses or subsenses) and thus which semantic relation exists between any two given terms, whether (sometimes) invariably, or (sometimes) in each of several cardinal classes of instances.
The members of the latter class (not-invariable ones) tend to be trivial and, in most respects, unremarkable; nonetheless, they must be understood and recorded in lexicography, just by the nature of what lexicography is. Often dictionary users merely need a quick lookup in such a reference work to confirm any given notion that they already know or already suspect, or to settle a quibble with someone whose mind is using the mildly different ontologic mapping.
Some examples of the help provided on that point can be pasted here. The answer to the predictable objection "yeah they could, but why would they be" is, at its essence, museology, in more than one way.
As for both (1) catching and (2) curating, there is the casting of nets, where some nets are wider than others, and then there is the throwing back. Notions on saved searches·ʷᵖ are available in bucket 2023-10-28, jotted for reuse. They aren't here because jotting leads to blotting and some blots are blotter than others. Living well is the sweetest handwave etc.
These examples are part of the same larger objects as palpated elsewhere herein, such as "mostly hyper but sometimes cot" ("you've got to slice that salami in this context"), "mostly hypo but sometimes syn" ("I don't slice that salami, at least not in this context"), and so on, because of the recurring theme in natural language that "when I say , I mean (implicitly) the cardinal/principal/largest/classic/orthodox/traditional hyponymous subset unless otherwise specified, or the hyponymous subset that is clearly/obviously relevant to the given context." Analysis:
- The given speaker (1) is advisedly glossing over the other subsets (for communicative practicality) (e.g., e.g., e.g.), (2) is momentarily forgetting the other subsets (e.g.), (3) fails to conceive of the other subsets (e.g.), or (4) refuses to acknowledge that any other subsets exist (e.g.).
  - There are several layers to it, but the layer on which literal-senses ontology happens is the most important one, practically, and it is the one laid out above. The layer on which figurative usages contain a telescoping collapse of ontologic distinctions is worth seeing and exploring, although there is more to be done with it later. A typical example is the telescoping collapse whereby grind down is literally hyponymous to wear down but is figuratively usually synonymous with it (because the literal distinction collapses to unity for metaphorical use). Another good example is sensewise coordinateness that collapses to sensewise synonymy with halfpennyworth, pennyworth, and tuppence worth. The same theme was also instantiated recently in a discussion where it is acknowledged that eat like a bird is antonymous to eat like an animal even though bird is hyponymous to animal. Some animals are animaler than others, as tagged by the senseid values at polysemous headword animal. Later, another example, fructive-fruitful-fertile, came to attention; the further along from literal to figurative each occurrence gets, the more it collapses from hyponymy into synonymy. Later, during another mining session (some ores are more friable than others), another tasty "cot: syn-ish" instance came to light: as you move into figurativeness (→), the distinction between crumble and crumple starts to crumble or crumple (take your pick, six versus a half dozen); perhaps a bit of voice as the sole distinction was not enough to hold up the edifice. Other instances encountered: the price of peacockery is not immune to inflation (25¢, $2, $5, $10); the peacock–turkeycock axis (coordinateness collapsing to synonymy upon literal to figurative shift); the hogwash–hogshit axis (near-antonymy collapsing to synonymy upon literal to figurative shift); quite a few terms having to do with assholes (coordinateness collapsing to synonymy upon literal to figurative shift) and, relatedly, shitgibbons and shitgibbonlike words; others.

List population

Parent bullets are flowing chronologically, newest first.

The class of "especially, when without a qualifier"
- At New York and at New York City
  - Regarding the phenomenon that in the metropolitan area of a big, multipart city, the name of that city often or usually means a more specific part of it (a meronymous synecdochal core) when not otherwise specified, in context, among initiates (this core's name is a synecdochally synonymous meronym)
    - The theme is instantiated in many major metros, although the idiomatic details of each instance are subject to instance-specific quirks, just as the sundry discontinuities of its street grid are. (You can't get there from here; and speaking of which, the circuit activity at Kanigel 2022:26 is adjacent, although it makes me savor both classes: the instances that matter substantially and the ones that matter less. Regarding which, 1 and 0 are not 0.9 and 0.1, but the latter pair can be clamped as approximating the former pair.)
      - Are you going into the city today?
        There's the city of London, and then there's the City of London, if you know what I mean, and in some circumstances, you'd better — you're expected to. The most especially type of such circumstances is what they call the Knowledge; there's knowledge, and then there's the Knowledge, if you know what I mean, and handwave etc.
        Kanigel 2022:137 invokes the NYC instance. I won't bother right now, and perhaps ever, to make Wiktionary cover it. It may be just slightly too something-something-handwave for me to bother doing that. (That is, it's perceptibly true, and it can be draft-encoded easily enough, which are the aspects that my brain cares about, but then you have to craft its encoding well enough to fend off something-something-handwave, which is the aspect that is subject to further-handwave. Bucketization herein is the first layer of vessel bypass in that regard. And in that regard, it's funny you mentioned clamping just now, you hemostatic handwave you.) So maybe never. Or, what might happen instead (as has happened before with other things) is that I'll take notice of it at one time and take care of it at another, X months apart. Then again there is always the chance that at some point my brain will suddenly and incidentally crack the code on no longer giving a fuck about further improvement of the Wiktionary instance among parawiktionaries, or at least the bottom 90% of it. It is impossible to predict, really.
        Speaking of which, some carings are more predictable than others; now is the time of night when my brain most cares about certain layers of handwave etc. But circadianly, one must be the dog that wags the tail, which is why this handwave is now handwaved.
        PS: Added some days later: There's a line in "Go Flip Yourself" that trades on the NYC instance. I might not have thought twice upon hearing it except for the fact that the instances mentioned above had just recently been on my mind.
- At capsicum
  - Some capsicums are capsaicinoider than others.
- At squirrel
  - Some squirrels are squirrellier than others.
    - Thus: "no, I mean a squirrel, not a chipmunk and not a groundhog."
- At bread
  - Some breads are breadier than others.
    - Thus: "no, I mean bread, not tack and not biscuit."
- At redact
  - Some redaction is redactor^;-) than other redaction;
    - … and in fact when people say redact they most often (in the 21st century) mean the redactor^;-) of the two kinds of redaction. Even to a degree that one had best not use the word redact if one doesn't mean that kind.
      - To my mind an interesting thing about this pair, redact and redact, is that the redactor^;-) of the two meanings came about by extension from the first, but it then eclipsed the first, so the question now is: how can you accuse the redactor^;-) sense of being autohyponymous when it is now the primary sense, when "primary" means "most important", and how can you accuse the older sense of being autohypernymous when it's the older one? But honestly I think the question is academic and unuseful anyway, because it has meaning only diachronically; synchronically, the autohyponymy-autohypernymy axis is functionally bidirectional, as is the automeronymy-autoholonymy axis too. I think it's more useful and less pointless to use the terms synchronically and admit that the diachronic unidirectionality is just an academic curiosity, a piece of trivia, which is trivial.
- At shovel
  - Sometimes some folks fail to call a spade a spade;
    - … and this prompts some other folks to admonish them to call a spade a spade and a shovel a shovel.
- At haploid
  - (½) half of the relevant whole, whether it is an archetypical or nonarchetypical whole, versus (½) the archetypical half
- At insulin
  - What's a few AARs between friends? All one.
- At allergy
  - Some allergies are more allergic than others.
    - Handwave
- At enzyme
  - Some enzymes are enzymer than others. That's simply how humans talk; no big.
- shampoo : liquid soap :: hot dog : sandwich, as follows:
  - Often cast as coordinate rather than hyponymous, but the alternative is also visible. One of the Necker cubes of quotidian ontology: you see it this way, you see it that way, you see it the other way again. If admitting the alternative view makes you angry or indignant, that says some things about you. In recent years the general public has "discovered" the hot dog instance as a "novelty" for discussion and goatgetting. Which is kind of threadbare, as it really oughtn't come across as new, nor emotionally gripping, to mature adults. And yet: there you go. This is the sort of threadbare thinking that the general semanticists have tried to write books to disabuse, but the books haven't been quite great enough, pedagogically, so they haven't made enough of a dent. (Ooh, now who's getting anyone's goat with an emotion-stirring razzing?) Anyway, the upshot in my view is, duck or rabbit, rightward or leftward, no shit, Sherlock either way — but the reason I wrote the shampoo and hot dog instances here was only that I plan to collect examples here when they happen to occur to me, so that when I want to lay hands on them quickly again later, I don't have to go hunting. Thus also the following:
    - soap | cleaner (goatgetting index score: moderate)
    - detergent | cleaner (goatgetting index score: mild)
    - paint | coating (goatgetting index score: mild)
- See also: some general-case thoughts about referential indeterminacy
  - More than one way to map a territory, depending on the use cases for each map.
- At sugar substitute
  - Some Ersätze are ersatzer than others. That's simply how humans talk; no big.
- At scrapper and at scrap dealer
  - The guy who's a rag-and-bone man is not necessarily the junkman who owns and runs the junkyard. In fact, usually not. The former sells to the latter.
    - This coordinateness can be captured regarding scrappers, scrappies, and such.
      - The guy who collects stuff to sell to the junkyard owner has lower capitalization than the latter.
  - An interesting question is: In which such cases will I not even bother to try to close the loop at Wiktionary? The answer is (en-/de-/re-)parametrizable.
    - Fortunately I can go ahead and do so when there's a way that's terse enough. As turned out to be true in this case (q=sometimes synonymous).
- At chancel
  - At the moment, WT asserts synonymy of apse whereas WP asserts variability of either hyponymy or coordinateness (because some chancels are chanceller than others), but I can't be arsed at the moment (or apsed), because I have no chancel repair liability in the jurisdiction. Maybe later.
- At barrel
  - Some barrels are barreler than others
- At fizzy drink § Hypernyms
  - soft drink (synonymous in its narrower sense)
- At club soda
  - Sometimes some sodas are clubbier than others.
Members of other subclasses
- At meal
  - Some meals are mealier than others.
    - A meal doesn't so much make a nice meal as make for a nice meal.
- deltas
  - The Nile Delta is the Nile River Delta, and
    - the Amazon Delta is the Amazon River Delta, but
      - the Mississippi Delta is not the Mississippi River Delta, although
        dollars to doughnuts most people think it is.

Parameterization funhouse mirrors

General notes

For what this list is on about cognitively, see Orientation below.
Parent bullets are flowing chronologically, newest first.

List population

no new clothes
- when new contextually equals no
  - an emperor's-new-clothes situation is an emperor–no-clothes situation
    - I had never thought of it from that particular angle of detail-contrast until my brain, grumbling rapidly, fired off the latter when it meant the former. I realized at the speed of human reaction time (i.e., ~0.5 seconds) that something wasn't quite right about it, but then I had to think about it for at least 3 seconds more before I realized the full picture of what-I-meant-versus-what-I-said.
      - adjacently there is also the new–nude axis (what a difference a d makes)
some /ˈɛɹɪtiz/
- asperity·^📅 • austerity
  - evoked theme: ugh
    - how much ugh depends on the severity
holes let shit slide through
- diachronically, loopholes are more about embrasures than otherwise, but synchronically, consider:
  - buttonhole • belt loop • loophole
    - every garment-fastening method has its undoing^^
      - legislators gon legislate, sometimes cinching down the belt,^ but lobbyists gon lobby, ensuring that every law has its loophole
        inside the Beltway, some belts are tighter than others;^ it starts with loosening one's belt to accommodate the fine dining and fine wining that the lobbyist is officially certainly not paying for,^ and it progresses to loosening one's tongue; it ends in heartbreak and headlines: Legislator Gets Caught With Pants Down
the putative merlon–mullion axis
- uprights between openings; and: oh-so-much human activity within the space that those openings provide
  - the putative Merlin–minion axis
    - in this telling, Merlin employs apprentices
      - the sorceror's apprentice tries to create an army of semimindless agents to expedite his work, but nightmarish hijinx ensue
        let there be a lesson in it somewhere, perhaps a lesson to us all (lol)
ppq • BBQ
- evoked theme: the proper concentration of ghost pepper in my barbecue
  - ppt • PPT
    - we'll prep a deck to show what happens if the concentration gets up into the ppt range
      - meh: weak sauce
refection reflections
- At the priory there's a prior: the one who holds priorship.
  - Prior denies prior knowledge of priors from prior to today.
    - At the rectory there's a rector: the one who holds rectorship; at the refectory there's no refector by that name in English, although everyone who dines there is a refector of a certain sort.
      - In your prefecture there's a prefect, but he's not a prefector by that name in English, although he easily could be.
        Your preceptor holds preceptorship, but he doesn't live in a preceptory by that name in English.
        It would be perfect if the perfector lived in a perfectory, but he doesn't.
the putative buc–boc axis^^^^^^^^^^^
- osso buco is neither saltimbocca, nor osso bue, nor hollow bones
  - the long bone axis of the marrow bone yields the midollo^^^^^
    - meh, dull tho; but:
      - a bonesucker can suck the marrow out of a soup bone, yielding extraosseous results (not extramedullary ones)
        cattle, cattle bones, bone marrow, mouth; cut the bone, see the hollow, see the marrow; make a soup with the soup bone, put the bone in your mouth, suck out the marrow, swallow the marrow, eat the marrow; thank the ox, thank the chef, value the cattle, value the bovine bones, value the bone of those bones;^^^^^^ we all gon end up a big ol pile'ə them bones
        a bonesucker with bulging and concave alternation of buccal curves^ might put the ox bones in their mouth^{ɒs ɒs ɒs, bos bone bocca bouche} and suck the marrow out
        speaking of abstracting, some vacuum pumps suck harder than others; my brain doggedly insisted on chewing the fat with this one, like a dog with a bone; my say in the matter was constrained, as usual
hobgoblins
- nobble • hobble
  - what a difference a lone ascender can make; or, in this case, really, not make
    - You can hobble an adversary or opponent, which is to nobble them; you can hobble a horse veterinarily, which impedes its movement (in a certain way, for a certain reason), and you can nobble a horse underhandedly, which impedes its movement (in another way, for another reason)
      - to shut someone up might be said to be to nobble their gob; this is not the same as to gobble their knob
        to shut someone up is, in a way, to shut someone down
        in a way, perhaps the vaguest adverbial in English is in a way in the adverbial way
        to hobble or nobble can be the same as to embarrass, when to embarrass is to embarrass, but to be embarrassed is not the same as to be embarazada, which is to be in the family way
snuff
- What is Mr Snuffleupagus?
  - A. A brown furry creature
  - B. A brown furry costume that an actor inhabits and animates and thus one that simulates a brown furry creature
  - C. The spokesmammoth for a major trade association of tobacco product manufacturers
  - D. A tobaccophobe with a prodigious proboscis that probes your pockets for tobacco products
  - E. The title of your next snuff film
- PS: Please do not attempt to snuggle up with Mr Snuffleupagus
  - Please do not attempt to cosy up to to such a snuffer; such behavior is not up to snuff
    - Are you up to snuff enough to be down to clown with Mr Snuffleupagus? Will you snuggle down into his brown furry fur?
      - meh: He sighed, snuffed out this blursed parametric exercise, and went back to work.^^^^^^^
mechanisticness
- A venial catachresis was encountered in passing, and I thought it was cute. When referring to a pattern of how things happen, you can call it this dynamic, or this mechanism, but you wouldn't call it this mechanic — not that we couldn't (as in could never possibly), just that you wouldn't (except catachrestically). I ought to go scour the OED to see whether it enters any obsolete sense of mechanic that is indeed synonymous with mechanism. But I lack time for that right now, and it's not worth much, because the fact that you could doesn't always mean that you would or should.
dicey
- You dreamt of an old-time backstreet dice game, in which the rag-and-bone man and the ragamuffin were rollin them bones; quoth the bonemən, I feel so alone / gon end up a big ol pile'ə them bones
  - toll due: bad dream come true
    - PS: the rag-bagger'll take ə bag'ə muffins to go; no bone meal nor bone ash in his muffin, thank you
      - PPS: The next day: It's funny that yesterday I'd proscribed fillers (above), because tonight at the supermarket I was comparing a grated cheese that promises an absence of fillers (no cellulose!) against a competitor next to it that makes no such promises but also makes sure not to draw any attention to such promises' absence. Given this ensuring's existence (and yes, it is very much a given), how would one know to duly appreciate the promises' absence if the comparator offering the presence hadn't been present? If you know what I mean. My brother in Christ (even if you're a nonfraternal and non-Christian one), you already know the answer to that question: that's how they git yə; but a funny thing is that most humans want to be gotten in that way. It's much like the egg cartons and meat packaging that don't say that humane animal husbandry was ensured. There is an avid market, a strong demand, for the inexpensive package that makes sure not to bring up the point at all (one way or the other), you'd better believe it. You could make a law that the package must specify the status either way, but then the inexpensive one would have to explicitly admit that humane husbandry was not ensured, and the pitchfork mob would tar and feather the legislator for making them face their own hypocrisy, and the law would be repealed. Anyway, I came here tonight to record another synchronicitous bell ring that happened over the past 24 hours. Somehow the War of Jenkins' Ear came up twice in the same day, whereas normally for me it comes up zero times per year. Perhaps the carpet department requests my attention to some detail thereof, but I can't be fucked at the moment.
Ima correlate some vocabularies
- ISA • ISV
  - 2025 March 25, Jason Kehe, “Angelina Jolie Was Right About Computers. “RISC architecture is gonna change everything.” Those absurdly geeky, incredibly prophetic words were spoken 30 years ago. Today, they’re somehow truer than ever”, in Wired‎:
    Everyone has their own way of explaining it. The ISA is the bridge, or the interface, between the hardware and the software. Or it’s the blueprint. Or it’s the computer’s DNA. These are helpful enough, as is the common comparison of an ISA to a language. “You and I are using English,” as said to me at the conference. “That’s our ISA.” But it gets confusing. Software speaks in languages too—programming languages. That’s why prefers dictionary or vocabulary. The ISA is less a specific language, more a set of generally available words.
  - The quote, yes, but the connection, yes but: recall the aggressively uncurious default.
a leaf of cure-what-ailsyə
- you can't get curettage at the curatage
  - Yes but
    - PS: el cura no-care-o: Durkin 2011 dijo: "in spite of the resemblance in form, English care and Latin cūra ‘care’ are definitely not related to one another"
      - pero no le importa a nadie
        PPS: al cura en su cottage no le importa el cottagecore
        PPS: al cura en su curtilage del curatage quizás le importa los cottagecurds
hx
- historiography • hagiography
  - the latter concerns the former, and the former concerns the latter
    - evoked theme: coming up with a record or a story (or both) of people and events of the past, and evaluating whether or not it is biased and, if so, how
      - hagiography is one kind of historiography, out of many: it is a historiographic choice
        Being hagiographic, in the sense in which we usually mean that word today, is historiographically poor; it is a poor historiographic choice. It is a kind of history-writing: a flavor of historiography
        In that sense one might assert hypernymy–hyponymy (a hypernymy–hyponymy axis) (↕), and one could enter the {{hyper}} value at the hyponymous one, even if refraining from cross-posting in the way that such refraining is often done — for example, Wikidata does subclass-of but doesn't do superclass-of, because you can query for that via subclass-of data; this is a form of normalization and of SSOT, and it is also a form of avoiding storing a huge population as base-table data, because a hypernym can (and often will) have lots of hyponyms whereas each hyponym has only one hypernym leading in each proximal direction on a tree (e.g., contractor can have hypernym of person or company or seller or otherwise in the serial-sceneshifting panorama , but each of those is manageably small]). I note here too, though, that humans naturally like to list the principal or cardinal {{hypo}} values when the N of that population is small enough to be handy; and one thing interesting about that fact is that it is in the neighborhood (i.e., within scent range) of the database-index thing. It is also often a limbier-limb–versus–leafier-leaves-and-twiggier-twigs thing: after all, no one cares about all of the many Quercuses (of which there are too many to bother with or be arsed about) but anyone is able to care about oak-versus-maple-ash-walnut-pine-whatnot-whosit-whatsit, at least if they try and especially if you pay them for the trouble
        As with a recent thread below, this one was a toss-up: the needler-emulator is tingling, but so is the moronicness-deprecator tho
        I'm gonna call this a yes-but, because it is just another instance of the kind of thing that most humans can't be arsed about, and it may set off some anti⁠arsed⁠ness alerts (guarding against brain engagement). Spare others the trouble and perhaps something-something we've done the thinking so you don't have to! (Aside: we X'd Y so you don't have to as fodder to Appendix:English snowclones: maybe someday)
kidz
- problem child • poster child
  - evoked theme: a problem child is the poster child for problem-causing·^{troublemaking}
    - Yes and: this one was a toss-up: the needler-emulator is tingling, but so is the moronicness-deprecator tho
      - PS: the alleged troublemaker allegedly made some trouble; the instigator–agitator axis is a supraputative one: more than merely alleged
        PPS: The moronicness-deprecator is not a voltage regulator, except in a nonelectrical way
everlasting·^📅
- the heavens are everlasting; the firmament is permanent
  - everlasting, neverending > long-lasting, long-standing, long-lived > short-lived, ephemeral
    - meh
Blackadder·^📅
- Blackadder • black snake
  - Yes but.
    - Is Blackadder a backwater? Does it have blackwater?
      - Is Blackpool a backwater? Does it have blackwater?
        Watch out for black snakes and water snakes.
        One way to get backwater to be blackwater is by making it slackwater: still waters run deep and grow black. Still waters are neither still waters^ nor still water.^^^^ To blacken is to wax black. Mr Black might be a slacker from a backwater with slackwater who waxes his back. His slackwater blackwater backwater is full of black snakes and water snakes.
        I want you to treat Mr Black with the same respect you would give me. Now here's Mr Black.
        PS: Mr Black is here imagined as Florida Man, a bit of a snake and a rake; he listens to Whitesnake, and his ancestors rooted out white snakeroot.
        PPS: regarding the putative snake–rake axis and the putative snake–rat axis: while you're raking the grass and the trash, and grubbing ^ and rooting out stuff, watch out for snakes and rats; also, a rat snake ^ might cancel things out a bit, and (after all) you've got to set one to catch one.
cutting
- One would expect that the etymological connection between cut and cutlery would be direct, but apparently it is so indirect as to perhaps not even exist at all? I don't know, that's what I'm getting out of following the etymological breadcrumb trails that Wiktionary currently gives, but I'm not interested enough at the moment to go digging in other dictionaries to try to puzzle it out better.
graveplay
- just because your elocution is electrifying doesn't make it electrocution; you may elocute but you don't electrocute
  - diction, articulation, elocution: vaults and somersaults of the tongue
    - saltimbocca: pardon my saltiness; it's just that some things make me salty and leave a salty taste in my mouth
      - your saltimbocca had me doing somersaults and vaults ^ (it was electrifying and stimulating), but your mortadella was mortifying tho (it made my mouth pucker up and my knees buckle under, and I almost buckled over); as for my guanciale, if you'll pardon my cheekiness,^ it is electrifying and you'd better buckle up
  - pardon my cynicism about syndicalism; it's hard not to be cynical about being syndical, what with all the disunion and malunion; it's just that syndicates tend to lead to syndicates and soviets
aproposness
- I was toying with a track listing for a Wedding Ring album. If you wanted to be too on the nose and monothematic about it, the first iteration could look something like this:
  - Betrothed (3:16)
    Ball and Chain (4:54)
    Til Death Do Us Part (6:36)
    In Shackles (3:42)
    - Lmao
  - Recently I happened to be giving a moment's thought to how the Lamb of God makes the Body of Christ available (for the purpose of saving you from your sins) (hey, someone's gotta do it), and I think that this one fits neatly within this line of thought. If I were Lamb of God, I would have a track titled "Body of Christ". Perhaps they already do; I haven't scoured their discography enough to be sure.
  - Lol, but perhaps I must admit that this game may be too easy. Themes abound, each to be given the on-the-nose monothematic treatment. In 2025 perhaps the most eschatologic theme of all is Agentic Advent. Here is a proposed track listing:
    - Autonomous Creation (3:16)
      Foundational Model (4:54)
      Iterative Degradation (6:36)
      Model Collapse (3:42)
      Meat Expiration Date (Interlude) (0:42)
      - Lmao
dirtwater
- The only difference between a worldhouse and a greenhouse is the scope and scale, which is to say, the former is a special case of the latter with special parameter values, but whether humans emically conceive of it as either hyponymous or coordinate is governed by the extent to which they hold that when I say greenhouse, I mean a normal greenhouse; some greenhouses are greenhouser than others.
  - Along that same line, is your terraqueous globe·^📅 merely a set of terraria and aquaria for you and your (cute little) co-earthlings to live in (albeit a glorified one)?
    - The diminutiveness is in the eye of the beholder.^ That's a theme that recurs in human affairs.
salvage systems
- sozology·^📅 • salvationism
  - who else will save your ass, if you yourself won't save it? • who will save your soul / if you won't save your own?
    - PS: Selling Your Soul in a Buyer's Market
      - Yes but.
an adventitious fellow
- it takes one to know one
  - Today the dartboard as supplied by a rope puller involved Hackh and Grant, and I learned that Grant wrote books on paper, which is odd because also I was today years old when I found out that Kurlansky (too) has a book on paper. I added that one, in its paperless form, to the list. As for salt and cod, I already beat this salty old cod(ger) of a rope puller to those punches. Guess the fishwrapper was next tho. Somebody with ties to both the chemical (para)library and the carpet department (shared parameter: midcentury chemicaliciousness) decided that these chroniclers of paper would adventitiously coincide today. Speaking of such ties, they also offered me food and fiber from such (para)libraries, but although it is true that today I was spending money made of paper, I am not made of money, so "alas, the food and fiber are staying here, I'm afraid," sed I, feeling deprived and parched. (Speaking of parchment, no fiber and no paper, no problem.) Perhaps the likes of me can't have their cake flavorings and eat them too, nor have the poly blends and wear them too. Maybe someday. In the meantime we are parametrically insulated (insulation makes for a degree of difference), and that's why we do so much reading from paralibraries made from paralibraries made from paralibraries. But speaking of insulation for a degree of difference, I see that midcentury chemicaliciousness is what puts the CI in ICI, the IC in FRIC, and the iciness in the fridge; but all this talk of ICI and putting iciness into fridges is just additional paralibrarianship.
    - Speaking of staying there or not, this time Sullivan came with me. The third time was the charm. (PS: I suppose that this makes Sullivan more of a paracompanion than a companion, but such parametric insulation is par for the course for an adventitious fellow; an underlying theme can often be detected by which your attendance is mandatory, but don't kid yourself that you're a main character though. Box cat purrs at this thought because it seems almost adjacent to a cat state between whether the bell ring is for you or is for someone else. It then occurs to me to ask whether there can be a cat state between FPV and NPC; he says nothing, probably playing it cool, but I notice a whisker twitch and a drop of drool.)
      - As for the plumbing department, I didn't miss an opportunity to inspect the plumbing in at least one paraparalibrary today. All this dartboarding makes one thirsty and leads to an invitation to hit the target. It made me think of an absolute legend who doesn't miss. A fellow can carry things too far, though (turning them adventitious), and thus must learn not only when to hold əm but also when to fold əm. And that's why I've arrived at never mind
throwing balls around
- For the first few centuries of firearms and artillery, the projectile was usually a ball of one kind or another: more often than not.
  - But that's not why the study and control of the ball's path is called ballistics, tho.
    - Nonetheless, interestingly, the word ballistics does come from a root with a referent of throwing shit, tho; and nothing throws around like a ball throws around.
      - PS: The bigger the balls, the more crucial the ballistics. You've gotta have balls to throw really big things really far, especially if they explode when they land.
Bosses
- Bison bison bison • Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
  - Yes but.
    - PS: elaboration: there was nothing for me to add, in either direction, at Wiktionary, but I did make one see-also connection at Wikipedia. My current prediction for how likely it is that any misguided souls will insist on purging it from there is: less than 20%.
self-demonarchization
- Museologically, the opposite of accession is deaccession, but royally, the opposite of accession is not deaccession but rather abdication.
  - Idiomatically, dethroning is transitive but not intransitive and not reflexive. The same is true of unseating as applied to humans, although not always as applied to gaskets and valves.
    - The putative throne–see axis is one of big-ass chairs.
      - Somehow "uneasy lies the head that wears a crown" became, in common parlance, heavy is the head that wears the crown, but what they don't tell you is that heavy is the ass that sits on the seat. It makes for a royal pain in the ass.
        To seek the throne is to seek the crown, which makes for a putative ass–head axis, which is to say a craniocaudal one. To dethrone is to decrown; to unseat in this sense is to uncrown. Its opposite is accession, which is seating of a sort. It also seats a consort if one there be.
        PS: royal insignia are accessories of accession; also, enthroning is coronation, by homosemy of situational upshot albeit not by cognitive synonymy: there is no difference except for the one between the ass and the noggin, whose importance, or contextually determined lack thereof, is in the eye of the beholder or the nose of the besmeller.
        PPS: Borman 2021:13, 26, 36 — telling about crown wearings (crown-wearing occasions) — emphasizing the accessories of accession so as to enforce the situational upshot (the underpinning of the homosemy), which is a kind of link, a linking equivalence, so as to keep others from weakening and breaking it. The chair and the hat are made not only to be linked firmly to each other but also to be linked obligately to the power, if you can (manage to) keep them tied so (through tryhard maintenance activities of this sort). The homosemy in examples 1a and 1b from St-Germain 1997:76 gets its obligate linking from a firmer mechanism further rooted in physical obligateness. But they share the same abstracted theme: same difference within a context — within a scope of context. How hard it is to escape that scope is a parametric difference (whose importance, or contextually determined lack thereof, is a parameter).
        PPPS: Oh the places you'll go! O Lord, the places Corny sends me. At least he ties a rope around my waist first, God love im, to pull me the hell back out of there again. Lives depend on such safety gear. Physics boffins speak of high dimensionality in terms of things folded over repeatedly, like crumpled-up papers perhaps. I'm too hypoboffinous to wholly comprehend all that they say about such things, but my gut figures that they're right about the crumply aspect, because of the places Corny sends me.
        PPPPS: His still just keeps cookin. Why does any RDB query put any given PK into any given query-result record along with any given FK? Answer: Per the relation that matters under the circumstances. The relation's durability is governed by how hard it would be to escape it, which is a question whose asking's perversity parameter is governed by certain metaparameters. Jesus, Corny, are we to drink such stuff? There's essentially nothing left in it except pure EtOH; what are we supposed to do with such stuff: drink it? Who would do such a thing? He laughs as his fingertips palpate: that book of Taleb's about shit that especially perversely resists being kicked over (weebles wobble but they perversely refuse to fall the fuck down) is an exploration of high values for such parameters. I couldn't finish it, at least while wearing the respirator that I was wearing at the time I was last there, but I was left with a memory in my fingertips that tugs at the seams.
        P^n+1·S: Escapability exists on multiple layers. To invoke the clichéd exemplar from RDBMS exposition, consider a customer UID's relation to an order UID. It is quite escapable on one layer but quite inescapable on another layer, and the only question is which layer you currently give a shit about. I as customer XYZ have more or less no relation to widget model ZZZ on a forward-looking basis, although I could be paired with it at any moment if a useful reason might arise, but the fact that I as customer XYZ have previously ordered one instance of widget model ZZZ on date ABC is an indelible fact. This we cannot doubt. The only question is the indelibility's relevance, or lack thereof, but not its existence.
shipping news
- A lord can be his lordship, and a lady can be her ladyship, whereas a king is not *his kingship but rather His Majesty, and a queen is not *her queenship but rather Her Majesty. In parallel, a prince is not his princeship but rather his royal highness,^{His Royal Highness} and a princess is not her princessship but rather her royal highness.^{Her Royal Highness}
  - I beg leave of your boredship; this recitation really puts the dumb in kingdom.
    - PS tho: A high king is not hiking, even when he is hiking.
headedness reprised
- red-headed·^{red-headed woodpecker} • red-capped·^{red-capped parrot} • red-crowned·^{red-crowned crane}
  - - black-headed·^{black-headed gull et al} • black-capped·^{black-capped chickadee} • black-crowned·^{black-crowned night heron et al}
      - erythrocephalus • Purpureicephalus • redcap • redpoll • redhead
        blackcap • blackpoll • blackhead
        They know a blackpoll from Blackpool named Blackie. I want you to treat Mr Black with the same respect you would give me. Now here's Mr Black.
fess up: cop to it
- A confessor is so called because they were willing to admit their beliefs under duress; this theme takes its antonymy at the positions of denier or renouncer.
  - Before the cockcrow, you will have denied me three times.
    - Meh. I had thought that there was more to this one, but apparently not. I've already spoken of the confessor–intercessor axis. I don't profess to know which rope-puller pulled the rope that brought up confessors again. Patient denies knowledge of causative factors.
T-ray·^📅
- T-ray • T-rey • T-rex
  - It's the putative radiation–lizard–royalty axis. Will you shoot a T-ray at a lizard and turn him into the terrible tyrant?
    - Lol, nonsense like this makes you appreciate that pareidolia is your brain's way of data dredging: inducing inductions from tiny data sets, yielding inductions that are often useless and specious albeit sometimes revelatory.
      - TX-rex • Rex pecks at his Tex-Mex while a handwave produces specious effects
        The putative pick–peck axis includes the fact that picking at one's food and pecking at one's food are synonymous. It also includes the exploits of one Peter Piper with regard to pickled peppers.
illuminators
- ways to light up the Bosphorus
  - Phosphorus • phosphorus
    - meh: this illumination is not prosperous; and:
      - It leads to no *phosphorosity and it leads to no *prosperosity·^{prosperosità·prosperousness·prosperity}
Mr Seward will see you seaward
- Thank you Lord for this fruit of the sea and for the Star of the Sea who interceded so that we might receive it.
  - May this chicken of the sea, this chickpea of the sea, this cockroach of the sea, and these potato chips of the sea nourish whichever of Your creatures might eat them; may the termite of the sea be kept from our hull, and may the law of the sea be upheld, and may we yet again see the Little Grey Lady of the Sea.
    - Coda: my deareſt Brethren, in this Year of our Lord MDCCIV: the Reverend Stephen L. Winwood hath admoniſh't us:
      - O pray ye that the Morning Star will lead ye to the Morning Side; You play every midnight gambler before you ſee the light / On the morning ſide, the morning ſide / When you finally climb the mountain, you ſee the other side / It's the morning ſide, the morning ſide / Now my life has changed and now my eyes can ſee / Now I'm living on the morning ſide / Now I'm letting all the ſunlight into me / Now I'm free / And I know I'll never pass that way again / That dark journey to the morning ſide / On the morning ſide I feel my life begin / Let's begin; Amen.
put on your investigative gear
- gumshoe • shoe-leather
  - A gumshoe may expend a lot of shoe-leather when getting to the bottom of a hard case.
    - It takes a certain kind of marginal competence to whine a lot about mixed metaphors in such a sentence. When figures of speech are baked into idiom, it is merely more of the same old ubiquitous serial sceneshifting. Tell it to the serial sceneshifters.
      - The same can be said about people who whine a lot about business jargon buzzword bingo. They are the kind of people who imagine themselves to be clever for complaining about others talking about putting a pin in X and circling back later to take another swing at it. Again, merely serial sceneshifting, which serial sceneshifters are inveterate about anyway. Therefore: whining a lot about it is, at bottom (i.e., when you get to the bottom of it), misguided prescription: the sort of prescription that fails to recognize core descriptive realities. In my experience, people who claim that the businessperson said absolutely nothing when they slung business jargon too hard have in some cases been mediocrities who should have been listening for the intended meaning instead of trying to play bingo; the intended meaning was nonzero and was obvious to competent ears, although the whiner missed it.
        Ha. This train of thought reminded me of an experience many years ago when a mediocrity complained that they couldn't make heads or tails out of an article about war because it was mentioning hawks and doves and they couldn't see what birds had to do with anything. That's the sort of mind that will complain that you used too much business jargon. All the circling back made them dizzy, and taking another swing made them wonder why you were talking about swingsets. They wish you weren't so stupid — so stupid as to speak in distracting and puzzling riddles.
        PS: As with most thoughts that serial sceneshifters have, of course a grain of truth is present — the problem is not a lack of any such grain. Rather, the problem is in how that grain gets contextualized and acted upon. For example, in the instance above, we can admit that yes, concerns about readability level are valid concerns, but we also then add that context matters, too. Thus, when we are engaged in things such as primary education, or remedial education for minds still at the level of needing primary education despite later age, then we would of course do some (time-consuming but contextually appropriate and necessary) translation and revision work to remove some metaphors, simplify others, and so on. But in the business world, within the subcontext of managerial meetings, you are not in a place where all communication must be laboriously translated into remedial education; there's supposed to be a filter for prerequisites such that once you're in that context, the only people present are ones with sufficient competence to be there. This theme has plenty of instantiations: the cooks in a commercial kitchen, the military officers in an officer-level logistics meeting, the players in countless other vignettes.
buffiness plus
- The yellow-bellied sapsucker is not the only woodpecker who is yellow-bellied; his cousin the flicker also has buffy underparts that wax resplendent on the yellowness gradient. The underwings and undertail are often quite yellow, and the belly is sometimes yellowish.
  - Thus, there is more than one kind of yellow-bellied woodpecker, although admittedly if you say the collocation yellow-bellied woodpecker, people will rightfully assign high probability to the hypothesis that your intended referent is the yellow-bellied sapsucker. This is natural.
    - Speaking of natural things, many people like to whine about the fact that a red-bellied woodpecker's·^wp rosy belly is much less red than his rubylike pate, and that his cousin the red-headed woodpecker·^wp has a name that is not specific enough to his own coloration pattern. This is not hard to keep straight once you've paid close, specific attention to the matter; but it is natural that many people haven't yet done so, in this case or any of countless other cases analogous to this one that natural language presents to us. She is cruel, this one. If you wish to rage against the machine of her cruelty, you can hammer away at such cases, breaking them apart with your mighty pointy beak and sending the crumbs and splinters flying. Your cousins the woodpeckers love a good hammerin and might cheer you on; a flicker loves flicking and flinging woodchips away as he whales away at gettin those tasty grubs and bugs.^
      - Many such birds flock to the feeders at the great house. The caretaker cheers them on.
whine of nopium
- ˈsɪdənəm • ˈlɔːdənəm
  - ˈsɪɾənəmz ˈlɔːɾənəm
    - ˈsɪɾəzənz are ˈlɔːɾəbəl for recognizing the dangers of ˈsɪɾənəmz ˈlɔːɾənəm
      - meh: jɪˈɡɑɾəbi ˈkɪɾɪnmi
take care
- caretaker • undertaker
  - At the cemetery on a weekday morning, the caretaker meets up with the undertaker. Amid these verdant acres they take their time over the arrangements. The cemetery manager promises that the good folks at the cemetery will definitely take good care of their clients indefinitely. Perpetuity is outside the scope of conception of a corporation, but the clients will have to be dice-rollers nonetheless: there's nothing for it. They don't so much take the company's word for it as throw in their lot with its. You can't take it with you, and I won't be here to find out, they say with a smile.
    - The caretaker moonlights on the grounds of the great house. Not literally: he isn't a night gardener. No, just some weekend landscaping here and there.
bikeriding
- the bike is chainless and made of stainless
- the ride is painless as long as the rider isn't brainless
full service
- If you're a freighter in either the historical present or the actual one, then a coaler or an oiler will bring you more fuel, a lighter will carry off various shit (and shitheads) that you don't need, and a handwave will etc. You needn't even leave the comfort of the high seas.
-us·^{which is not -us} vs -ous
- list population
  - mucus vs mucous
    - mucosity
  - fungus vs fungous
    - fungosity
  - phosphorus vs phosphorous
    - you cannot get smoking stool syndrome from sitting in a smoker's chair
      - smouldering poop is not mouldering poop (and it does not have *phosphorosity); moldering poop is usually moldy poop
        porous scat has porosity;^porousness it was pooped by a ferocious cat who has ferocity,^{ferociousness} who may (or may not) be a feral cat who has ferality.^feralness
        From her hollow viscus came a viscous gloop which has high viscosity;^viscousness if you gag easily, you may have a visceral reflex that exhibits viscerality.^visceralness
- strolls
  - humongousness can be humongosity, at least facetiously, but fungosity cannot be *fungousness, at least idiomatically
    - sometimes lexicalgappedness does a criss-cross when it hopscotches
      - hop a skosh closer hon
reality checks
- pub test • beer goggles
  - There is disjuncture in this pairing: both are about the question of whether the person in the pub is in a position to provide an accurate assessment of phenomena, but the second suggests that they will misjudge (i.e., produce inaccurate results by being inferior to the alternative), whereas the first suggests that their evaluative capacity is superior to its alternatives.
    - But how can the selfsame average Joe sitting on the selfsame barstool drinking the selfsame brewsky be both the wiser sage and the miscalibrated fool? Is this the (putative) barroom paradox?
      - Not so fast, Einstein. You must incorporate (at least) two more parameters into this analysis before you can conclude that it has produced a paradox:
        (1) Degree of inebriation: The pub test implicitly involves the low side of this spectrum: just lubed up enough to get the old gears turning smoothly, but not so overlubricated as to be counterproductively so, whereas the beer goggles involve the intermediate to high ranges of the spectrum. As for operational indicators that can measure this parameter, one George Thorogood has proposed a rapid and low-cost field test: you know when your mouth is gettin dry, you plenty high
        
        (2) You must remember that sentiences, at least in their regular flavor among meatbag flavors (so meaty, O mami umami), are serial sceneshifters; thus, by corollary, regarding figurativeness, you're in the wrong figure, honey — we're over here in this one now. One might ask how they (the gaggle) stay in tune so easily when the shifts are so sudden, fast, and frequent? But that is the wrong question to ask of a record player needle: it is only in one valley at a time, and each valley just is what it is. In fact the more interesting question is its inverse: What sort of machine would provide any alternative to that default? But don't ask me the nature of its nature or how it occasionally comes about: I'm not the machinebuilder.
    - A coda: some phenomena are phenomemami than others (get a load of those phenomena, will yə), and the man in the pub^ who is wearing the beer goggles may be three sheets to the wind, but there are some things that he does fully appreciate, such as jugs.^^^^^^^
      - PS: Another coda:
        involves • invokes
        brings into play + near-homography under skimming and squinting conditions
        
        field-test • field strip • field trip
        field rat • field ration
        The one might eat the other (boo), but it also might be the other (yay?); the differentiating parameter is how hungry you are: how bad do you want it? You gotta want it!
perverse incentives
- every man for himself • God helps those who help themselves
  - evoked theme: God will reward you for being a selfish dick?
    - Yes but: perversion of theology
      - God help you if I catch you being a selfish dick exhibiting dereliction of duty, you derelict
        God has dropped a duty upon you; it is an enormous duty
        every man for himself • every man is the architect of his own fortune
        Yes but
        every man Jack seeks a fortune
        Man seeks fortune for man-on-fortune action. Unfortunateness need not apply. Cash paid for handwaves etc. Leave message.
        
        PS: every man Jack • jack of all trades
        Everyone thinks they can do your occupation. Or, that is, assumes so; or, if not "can do", then "could do if they wanted to bother learning and trying". After all, how hard could it be? Right?
        Yes but, and yes but.
        PPS: Wiktionary currently asserts that the etymology of assume is "from Latin assūmō (“accept, take”), from ad- (“to, towards, at”) + sūmō (“take up, assume”)", which is all very well as far as it goes, diachronically; but what it fails to add, synchronically, is this: by surface analysis, ass +‎ u +‎ me.
        Yes butt.
shrinky
- heat shrink • head-shrinker
  - what a difference a d makes
    - Don't get all shrinky on me. Get your mind out of the gutter.
      - OK never mind back to the gutter again: shrinkage leads to a shrinky and dinky state
        meh
- get one's wires crossed • crossed wires • twisted pair • short circuit • wiring harness • rat's nest • wiring diagram
  - the wire-crossing metaphor comes from telephony (of the old-timey sort, made with real copper wires), so it's a yes-but regarding wiring harnesses, but hey, a rat's nest is a rat's nest
    - If you're going to pass your conductors so damn close to each other, you'd just better have some damn good insulation.
      - If you're aiming to be insular then being peninsular won't do; if you're aiming to be the ultimate then being penultimate won't do; there are various ways to be semi-islandic ^^^^^^
wire we here?
- wire wheel • wire wool
  - evoked theme: more than one way to skin a handwave etc
    - all these wires could wear one down, if one let them
      - speaking of bastards that aren't allowed to wear me down: are you wearing a wire?
        wire wall? wire well? wire whale? wire while?
        wall of wire? well of wire? whale of wire? a whale of a wire? while we're wiring: why're we wirin?
        y r u no handwave?
/ˈɡɔɹd͡ʒ/
- a male hummingbird's gorget is gorgeous
  - the male ruby-throated hummingbird is ruby-throated
    - he gorges on nectar until his gorge rises at the thought of more
the putative nickel–dime paradigm
- gross minus tare equaled suttle, and suttle minus tret equaled net.
  - Tret's how they got you, when you were the sutler; but it was only because you, or at least your ilk, had tried to get them first, what with your (or your ilk's) cutting and filling and passing off and such.
    - what a world
      - PS: the putative ilk–bilk axis
        PPS: Speaking of paradigms, a pair of dimes makes twenty cents, which makes for a nickel and dime after tret and taxes. What a ten-cent world. Speaking of how they get you, tret and taxes or death and taxes? Along the putative ilk–bilk–milk money axis, there was a time when fifteen cents was the absolute death.
        PPPS: When you're in the money, but it turns out that it's not as much as you'd thought, you may be incensed.
rug
- The opposite of carpetless is carpeted, and the opposite of rugless is rugged but is not rugged.
  - We don't write ruggèd^ when we mean rugged^, even though we could do and perhaps should do.
    - touché? Or toupee? It makes you think, deep down in that rugless noggin beneath those rugged good looks of yours.
      - We don't write toupée when we mean toupee, even though we could do, because there's no need to.
        That's enough ruggery for today, which is not toudée.
GOOS·^📅
- Just some more birdshit:
  - GOOS paper • newspaper
    - newspaper is not GOOS paper (because it is not blank on the verso), but it might be good goose paper, or at least acceptable goose paper, if you need bedding for your geese.
      - Would the newspaper then be the chief loo paper for the chief goose pooper?
        The framing precept of the five-second rule is that it's still good. GOOS paper is still good, on one side, but the goosehouse is not the place for proper application of the five-second rule.
        We see what sort of loops the goose's loo roll can take us through. It could make us loopy, or loosey-goosey. But we hope that the goose isn't loose (with soupy poopy), and if he is, then we hope that the goose isn't loose (on the loose). Keep im in the goosehouse until he's better, and give him some newspaper in lieu of loo paper.
son of a handwave
- he's the son of something alright: the son of a bitch
  - Why Fitzgerald·^Fitzgerald but not Geraldson·^Geraldson?
    - Mr MacGerald·^MacGerald and Mr McGerald·^McGerald would like to know.
  - Why Donaldson·^Donaldson but not Fitzdonald·^Fitzdonald?
    - Mr MacDonald·^MacDonald and Mr McDonald·^McDonald would like to know.
  - Donny's boy and Gerry's boy walk into a bar, and each orders a whisky neat. The bartender looks up from his want ads
    - Fitzroy is Prince: he's Roy's boy, the fitz of a king who's fit for a king
      - If the glove fitz then you must acquit; if the shoe fitz then you must wear it; when something's going wrong, you must whip it
        And now let's have a word with Mr FitzDoneWithThis
correspondence
- apostle : apostolic :: epistle : epistolic
  - yes but
    - disciples become apostles, and apostles go forth to attract more disciples
      - students become emissaries, and emissaries go forth to attract more students
        disciple • *discipolic, *discipolary, ≠disciplinary
        epistle • epistolic
        the student writes a letter
        to write a strongly worded letter is a proverbial way of having an underwhelming effect: of being ineffectual
        ineffectuality is folly; would folly be folic tho?
        systolic pressure comes from systole; diastolic pressure comes from diastole; hyperbolic force comes from hyperbole; symbolic force comes from symbəls
        does carbolic acid come from carbles? phenolic acid comes from phenəls; does hydraulic fluid come from hydrəls?
        meh: there is nothing to write home about going on here; just shambles being shambolic
        PS tho: how much Lifebuoy did they make from each carboy of carbolic acid? A carboy could be a buoy if you cap it well. You can keep a boy out of a well if you cap it well. Then Lassie won't have to go fetch a lasso with which to help rescue him.
half-cocked
- snowcock·^📅 • watercock • sand cock • woodcock
  - Something these birds have in common is that both the male and the female go by this name. The same is sometimes also true of peacocks, whose name is subject to variable usage, but not of turkeycocks; and there are no *chickencocks at all, because a cock among chickens is just a cock.
    - Mr snowcock is cock of the snow. Mr sand cock is cock of the sand.
      - Mr woodcock is cock of the woods; tho his wife be hen of the woods, she is not hen of the woods, nor a *woodhen.
        Mr watercock may be cock of the waters, but this does not make him chicken of the sea; and Ms waterhen is not his wife, nor is Ms water hen.
        Ms moorhen is Ms marsh hen, but she is not Marsha; she is, tho, more hen than you'll ever be.
        Homer Simpson may fancy himself cock of the walk, but Mr Burns will have you know that Homer Simpson is cock of nothing.
        PS: Some days later: Perhaps Cockwood was long ago named for its woodcocks; perhaps it was a woody area with many such birds of the woods. Why, what were you thinking?
brigantines
- brigands • firebrands
  - shared parameters: a shitty predisposition to wrongfully burn shit down; hot coals
    - sooty arsonist blackguards
      - Thesaurus:villain, Thesaurus:jerk
kerplunk
- think tank (n) • talk shop (n)
  - shared parameter: windiness
    - Yes and.
      - think tank • brain in a vat
        shared parameter: neural soup-slop
        Yes but.
      - bonus round
        shop talk • shopvac
        It's hard to talk shop when the shopvac is running.
        Loose lips sink ships; time to vacuum up all the loose dirt.
Al-Jeezlouise
- Algeria • algesia
  - One letter away from a world of pain
- Algerian delirium
  - The title of your next album
    - PS: A week or two later: never mind, because someday it will be a song by Wedding Ring. But your band can cover it, tho
      - PPS: A month or two later: Carioca karaoke
        Volumes I, II, and III, plus deluxe extras. In this telling, Wedding Ring enjoys the tributes sung by its substantial Brazilian fanbase.
- analgesia
  - as prescribed by Doctor Feelgood
- rattailed Jimmy
  - He's the one they call Doctor Feelgood
    - He's the one who is said to be the same as one Doctor Feelgood
      - He is putatively known for feelgoodery but not dogoodery
- El jimjam
  - no puede ser; no lo creo
- El jam jar
  - quizás
- Al-Jeezum Crow
  - tal vez
- El Al-lo mein
  - no más
two tickets to the gunshow·^{via Quaker gun as 📅}
- A Quaker gun might be made to imitate a Parrott gun (at least in the historical present, albeit not the actual one), but in imitating one it is not parroting one, because it remains silent. And yet as true as this truism is, it is not what explains why a Quaker gun is not a Quaker parrot.
  - What is the sound of one Quaker gun firing? If fallen trees in a forest are made to be Quaker guns but no one is around to hear them, do they not not not make a sound? If the trees fell unheard, did they fall silent?^ It makes you think, doesn't it? Or does it not not not make you think? Have you thus been made to think? Or not? Think about it.
    - Lmao. I have been having some fun with goofing on earnestly sententious pieties lately; I don't even know why. Almost like parroting platitudes. Let it be a lesson to us all, lol.
      - Coda: my deareſt Brethren, in this Year of our Lord MDCCIV: the Reverend Stephen L. Winwood hath admoniſh't us:
        Think about it: there muſt be higher Love,
        down in the Heart or hidden in the Stars above;
        without it, Life is waſted Time; look inſide your Heart, I'll look inſide mine.
        Things look ſo bad everywhere; in this whole World, what is fair?
        We walk blind, and we try to ſee
        Falling behind in what could be
        
        I could light the Night up with my Soul on Fire
        I could make the Sun ſhine from pure Deſire
        Let me feel that Love come o'er me
        Let me feel how ſtrong it could be
        Oh bring me a higher Love
        Brang me a higher Love, oh oh (bring me)
        Bring me a higher Love;
        Where's that higher Love, I keep thinking of?
the weekday–EtOH axis
- blue Monday • Blursday·^📅
  - Thirsty Thursday • blursed Blursday
    - DUI Fridays + Saturday-night special ≈ nonrecommendable
      - The party trick with saying that it's five o'clock somewhere is that it is literally true (i.e., at least five o'clock: five or later). But there is no corresponding (homologous) trick for the days of the week. It is not always Saturday night somewhere.
        (meh)rcredi
        PS tho: It is not always Saturday night somewhere — except in one's mind. (Hey-oh! amirite? can I get an amen? can I get a high five, or at least a handwave?) On some Blursdays, there is only a Saturday night of the heart.
bars
- the putative beat–bait axis·^{via bearleader as 📅}
  - To bearbait is not zu bearbeiten, even though it may take some working on and be more difficult than you'd expected.
    - Bearbaiting is cruel, not least because there is usually some bearbeating involved.
      - Please do not browbeat the brown bears.
        The thing about the exhortation "please do not feed the bears" is that it is exophoric: the public should not feed the bears, but the bearbaiter definitely should . Moreover, he should do it twice over, then release the bears. He should feed them more, and even overfeed them, as recompense for their troubles, and then set them free.
        bə-but bə-arbeiten es nicht! When it comes to (bə-)belaboring stuff, I can't always help myself, especially herein, which sometimes might seem like I am (bə-)baiting my readers, bə-but I just like getting to the (bə-)bottom of stuff, then codifying it for future rapid reentry and reexit.
        PS: Please do not bait the master in public, nor (bə-)berate the master in public. The master must save face and must never be beaten, at least not in public. Thus, save your dressing down for in private.
        
        work on • belabour — Yes but: this would be worth a link in some parawiktionaries, but not in Wiktionary, where it is a narrow miss; it would make some needlers itchy, which I can detect via simulation with 90%+ certainty.
stones
- stonecrop • stonefruit
  - crops as if from a stone • crops as if with a stone
    - Yes but.
      - You usually can't get crops from a stone, just as you usually can't get blood from a stone. But some crops will give you a stone,^ and that stone may give you a crop, and some crops might give you a stone,^ and some crops will get you stoned, which is to say that they will stone you. (In context A₁, you cook plants. In context A₂, plants cook you!^^)
        Yes but. Which is kind of a shame, because there is a rich panoply ^ of stoniness to savor among these various stones. And speaking of gleaning and savoring amid stoniness, stonecrops know how to utilize every available trace of soil as they flourish,^ which is a lesson to us all.^ But of course the very nature of a yes-but is that the uncurious refuse lessons. Their loss.
        PS: A case in point (regarding what one can learn when chewing on such things): I had been chewing and sucking on peach pits and cherrystones for several days, and had repondered the pit–pit axis (which is known rather than putative) as well as the New Amsterdam–NY-NJ-PA-Delmarva axis, before it occurred to me to wonder whether there was anything to one putative pit-pith axis and thus to actually bother to read the etyms that Wiktionary already helpfully supplies. This taught me that the pit–pith axis is indeed known rather than putative. Thus is the putative nonuncuriousness–aliveness axis putatively putated lol fu2.
the Devil's handwave
- The Devil is Old Scratch, and something can be (said to be) the work of the Devil, and yet that something may not be scratch‑made. Furthermore, the Devil is Old Nick, and something can be (said to be) the work of the Devil, and yet that something may not be nicked. Perhaps these paradoxes present a theological puzzle for you and for the ages, or perhaps instead they are just the work of the Devil and thus only a dirty trick. You could ask him, but he's busy trying to convince the world that he doesn't exist, and thus he can't answer you without breaking character.
  - PS: A few days later: Here in this forest, we like to make jokes (that is, engage in jokery) about the putative X–Y axis. Today it occurred to me that property P460 can be (said to be) the putative putative-X=Y-identity axis. Only putatively, of course.
sæks
- sædli
  - a sadsack wearing feedsack, carrying a feedsack: which is most rumpled?
    - some sacks are rumplier than others
  - a crackerjack with a Cracker Jack box for a feedbag: he prised off the lid and found some jacks at the bottom as his prize*
    - *Some prizes are prizier than others. Some restrictions apply. Not available in all areas. See store for details. Not responsible for typographical errors. In the event of handwave etc, go fuck yourself.
      - Time for some cracker meal to stretch the meatloaf.
        Is Rumpelstiltskin a rumply old sad sack on stilts? Well, apparently more a rumbly one, but I think in the end he is whatever you need him to be, like any true bogey.
  - This is not a beanbag.
- sæks II
  - Does Goldman Sachs put the gold in sacks?
- sæks III-IV
  - Do any Goldsacks work for Goldman Sachs?
    - If so, do these Goldsacks put gold bricks in the sacks? Perhaps some are too much the goldbricks for that.
- sæks V
  - sæks V.
cropjuices
- wheat paste is kinda like mucilage but not so much like wheatlage, although wheat paste and wheatlage both involve wheaty juiciness or sauciness of a sort
  - wheat starch + juiciness = wheat paste
- oatlage is holonymous to oatstraw in one way but coordinate with it in another way; the difference is end result emphasis: a speaker could whine, no, when I say X, I mean X as an end result.
- wheat gives you wheatlage and oats give you oatlage; millet may give you silage but it won't give you mileage, unless you're a bird who eats it as flightfuel.
  - mares eat oats and does eat oats, but little lambs eat ivy
    - maybe-don'ts ain't dos and don'ts,^📅 but modal verbs be dicey
- better fill your crop with a crop
  - it'll give you crop juice from that crop juice
- a coda: mealiness
  - my cornflour is not cornflower, and my peasemeal is not piecemeal
    - a corn borer likes a corn meal^ better than he likes cornmeal^
      - no sort of borer bores more than yours truly; but don't let⁠me bore⁠yə
barncatcatswingin
- It doesn't borrow much barnroom to set up a barroom in your barn.
  - It doesn't take much barnroom to set up a tackroom (or a taproom) in your barn.
    - It doesn't borrow much barnroom to set up a bar in your barn.
      - It doesn't borrow much barnroom to set up a bar in the barroom of your barn or a bar in your bar. You can call the bar in your barn a barnbar, and you can call your barn a barbarn.
        bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar
        PS: belatedly: people who are barnless·^{bairnless·barnless} can still have a barnbarn or a barnbarnsbarn if they borrow one honorarily·^{^·^·^}
stɪft
- Your family members went to Sandwich and all you got was this lousy T-shirt.
  - The ɝləv ˈsænˌdwɪt͡ʃ rented your ancestors a ˈmɛswɪd͡ʒ, but all you've got is a ˈmɛsi ˈsænˌdwɪt͡ʃ.
    - May⁠be somebədi should've herioted when the time was ripe. Now we all live in a ʃɛd out back of the great house.
      - (meh)swɪd͡ʒ.
FOODme
- FOODMO is not FODMAP; but:
  - shared parameter: acronyms concerning especial selectiveness about food choices
    - FODMAP involves fodder mapping: mapping out one's fodder choices
      - FOODMO is food FOMO·^{(hyponym = qualifier + hypernym) class = (hyponym = modifier + hypernym) class}
        fear of missing out • fear of mapping out • fear of a mapped planet • cartophobia
        There is FOODMO, and then there is MO FOOD; I prefer the latter
driving advice for youee
- hang a Louie • bang a uey • refrain from dewey and other such hooey • don't do anything screwy that might make others sue-y
  - meh: phooey
    - Bonus round tho: Huey, Dewey, and Louie walk into a bar, and hijinks ensue-y
      - Huey flew a Huey because he was too dewey to walk, which is to say, Huey flew a Huey in lieu-y of walking
half-baked
- The root principle of gestational health is the following:
  - IF bun in the oven for < gestational term of the species THEN need more time in the oven.
    - All else follows by corollary: what to do when going back into the oven is not an option, how to continue baking in such cases (extraoven⁠al baking improvisations), handwave etc.
      - PS: Incubator space in the NICU is at a preemie⁠um, all in the service of graduating pretermers from PROM to pram. (It's the putative PROM–pram axis.)
lowly
- If you dupe someone and they fall for it (↓), you make a dupe of them. I should hope you won't stoop to such dupery (↓).
  - Perhaps I might fall for it (↓), but even so, I won't take it lying down (≠↓). And even if playing the dupe causes my morale to droop (↓), I won't stoop to your level (↓) by getting down into the mud with you and staying there (⟱).
    - PS: Apparently duping someone is named for the hoopoe, and when I get more time I might try to look into why so (e.g., does the bird lead people astray? probably, given how it is archetypally a bad birdie, per hoopoe § In folklore, myth and religion). WTF did I ever know about hoopoes before now? Many such birds fly past the great house. Some even perch on the stoop and drop drooping poops.
    - PS_v2: A fall guy will fall for it all (↓), thus taking a pratfall (↓), and a patsy will take the fall for it all (↓), because they'll throw him under the bus (↓).
    - PS_v3: One way in which a hoopoe might lead someone astray is to lead them down to the underworld (↓). And the birdie would have to dupe the dupe into going down there (↓).
mouthy
- trench foot and trench mouth are foot and mouth diseases (respectively), but they are not foot and mouth disease; and foot and mouth disease is not hand, foot and mouth disease
  - I've gone and put my foot in my mouth by belaboring the point; and putting one's hands and feet into one's mouth is not ideal — don't want to end up with hand, foot and mouth disease
    - Herein we clown around sometimes, playing the clown from head to toe; clownery goes hand in glove with the other aspects of overlearning.
      - Out back of the great house, they're learning broommaking this week. I tried my hand at it, but my first broom came out pretty rustic tho.
stems
- bundles of stalks or sticks of cellulose
  - yelm,^📅 helm, thatch • bavin • bavin • faggot • fascicle
    - matchsticks in a matchbox • tinder in a tinderbox
      - use your bavins of broom to make a new broom • a new broom sweeps clean
        stook • shock • cock
        PS: I dredged up some more vegetable matter^:
        Will there be a hedge of sedge on the edge of your field? Or perhaps a hedge of sedge on its edge? Another way of being on the edge is to be on a ledge. The things I do herein probably put some people on edge. I need to go sit on a ledge with a fair wedge of veg, and think about what I've alledged; perhaps get a view from the edgeland of a sweeping ^ expanse of sedgeland.
        
        PPS: All broom sedge is sedge, in one way or another, and thus broom sedge is sedge, in its way, but broom sedge is neither broom nor sedge, and no broom sedge is broom, although it might be broom, if you make it so, and thus might be broom once you've made it so. Fuck you, kid. I should hope you've packed a lunch ^ for this world we're in.
        Afterword: Sometimes marchlands are marshlands, and sometimes marches are marshes. I should hope you'll reed about it sometime. Marches through marches that are marshes can have marshy/mushy consequences.
taɪm
- time makes fools of us all
  - ⏰ • 🤡
    - time flies • time is short • time is ticking • clock is ticking
      - meh: time is up on this one
        PS tho: Taine, why you punish me?
        PPS: Tayne, y u no 4d3d3d3?
fɹɛt
- eat fresh^^
  - To be fretted is not to be fretful, so even the most fretted objects — whether fretted^ or fretted^ — cannot be said to be fretful, which is to say, more precisely, that one can say that but one shouldn't, and they don't.·^≠🗣️
    - the fɹɛt–fɛt axis·^eat–fat
      - To be fretted — whether fretted ^ or fretted ^ — is not to be feted, and to be fretted is not to be fetful,^ but I'd much rather be feted, and eating something fetful (rather than eating fresh) might make one's breath fetid.
        To be fretted — whether fretted ^ or fretted ^ — is not to be fretful, but a fretful person has often fretted, and they might be fretting over their fretting.^ Fretting really takes it out of you; fretting is a lot of work.
        PS: A fretful person has often fretted, and they might be fretting, but perhaps in many such cases they shouldn't have sweated it^ and oughtn't be sweating.^ But sweating over one's fretwork can be sweaty work.
raisin stuff^
- The reason why *raise cane is so eggcorny is the plausibility of the misconstruals combined with the fact that there are more than one of them; this composite^ theme is true of all members of the class of eggcorniest eggcorns.
  - raise cane • raise one's fist • raise one's cane • cane someone • give someone a caning • give someone a hiding on the hide of their backside • give someone hell • raise hell • raise Cain • raise the dead • wake the dead
    - A look at the corpus shows that it is true that the collocation raising cane is well attested in its sum-of-parts form, referring to growing sugarcane. Thus, when people hear the collocation /ˌɹeɪzɪn ˈkeɪn/, the juicy canebrake is sometimes somewhere not too far away in the distance; and what goes better with delicious sugary cane juice (from the breaking of the cane of the canebrake) than raisins?
      - Still though — even so — it takes certain kinds of ignorance, subliteracy, and cognitive disconnects to misapprehend that /ˌɹeɪzɪn ˈkeɪn/ has anything to do with dried grapes or sugarcane. It is true that you can make an awfully nice plum pudding or fruitcake of such stuff, but only some of us are fruitcake enough to mistake the referents of such words even when they are uttered within context. To misconstrue them even in the face of an obvious flood of contextual cues seems like the tip of an iceberg (or a pudding), cognitively. And perhaps it even might almost make you want to break your cane over the backside of someone being so fruity, which might break the hide of their backside, what with all the caning. Some backsides, like some other seats as well, are practically caning themselves, or at least beggin for a canin, in which case your cane is beggin for a raisin. But you can't threaten me with a raisin bagel, tho, because you shouldn't threaten me with a good time. I just might see you in hell if you try to raise so much cane on my back.
        PS: I like nutmeg in my eggnog and raisins in my plum pudding, but not peppercorns in my eggnog nor eggcorns in our discourse. I'm raisin some concerns here.
vɛks
- vexation·^📅 • vexillology
  - No one gets vexed·^vexated like a vexillologist gets vexed
    - YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!
      - his red face is a red flag, and so is his checkered past
        Q: rex vex? A: vexillum regis ^^
        it'll vex Rex if we serve Tex-Mex, but it will serve him right ^
        Tex-Mex wrecks Rex by clearing his decks ^
        Rex pecks at his Tex-Mex while yər mom finishes^ sex
        meh: I'm already waiving the white flag here
7
- Siebensachen·^📅 • seven-layer INSERT_PARAMETER_VALUE
  - seven-layer salad • seven-layer cake • seven-layer dip • seven-layer burrito
    - don't mind if I do
      - Mr four-eyes takes his seventhings and his sixgun on his trip and gets a twofer; have digits, will travel
        You can't count his shots on one hand, nor his gizmos, but you can hand-count his meal fixins; he, however, doesn't give a twopence
♥°
- you can get the heartworm out of the critter with wormer (as dewormer), and some people call that a heartwormer·^{google:"heartwormer"}
- you can put some heartwarmth into the critter with a warmer of the heart-warmer type, but you shall not close this circuit tho
  - "Heartcooler" antonymizes here. For those ones in which they pack donated hearts on ice for transit, see handwave etc. For other cardiac dewarmth⁠ənators, see handwave etc.^
    - "Heartwarmers" handwave here. For handwarmers, wave hands by the fire. For throatclearers, drink firewater. For firestopping, wave firewater at the fire. For heartstopping, drink from a firehose.
      - A coughdrop is a coughstop, but you mustn't call it that tho.^
        A coughdrop is a coughstop, if you're lucky, but a backdrop is not a backstop tho.
- you can break a circuit with a switch and call it a circuit breaker, but you cannot close a circuit with a switch and call it a circuit closer tho^
- life ain't fair and you cannot wholly enfair⁠ənate it
  - To end this call, press handwave.
    - You have selected etc. Goodbye.
brakes
- self-restraint • self-limiting
  - Yes but: not at Wiktionary tho
C
- ascorbic acid tastes acerbic because it is acidic
  - still though, it is lip-smackingly tasty compared with its alternative
    - ask your doctor about ascorbic acid
Rosie Lee·^📅
- Rosie Lee·^{Rosy Lee • Rosalie} • Red Rose Tea • rose tea • rose petal tea
  - tea rose • rosie tea • rosy tea • red tea • T·^{red link T}
    - meh
jacks·^{via quockerwodger as 📅}
- jumping jack • crackerjack
  - One could make a jumping jack wearing a crackerjack and have him be a crackerjack, which is to say, represent one.
    - One could, but you won't.
  - One could make a jumping jack imitate the rhythmic reciprocating motion of a pumpjack; and one could call a pumpjack a pumping jack.
    - One could, but you won't.
  - A crackerjack is, in his way, a cracking jack: he's a crackerjack jack, that is, a crackerjack of a jack. But he is not a crackjack.
    - He could be, but he won't .
      - He do be crackerjack tho.
reesening
- Might the Leonese be leonine?^^^
- Might the Aragonese be arrogant?^^^
- Might the Caprese be capricious?^
- Might the Maltese be malty?^^^
- Might the Bolognese be full of bologna?^
- They might but they aren't, so they don't, and one shouldn't.
- (meh)ght.
leggings
- blackleg • bootleg
  - A blackleg miner is a scab one; a bootleg miner is a freelance one, especially an illegally freelancing one.
    - Something they have in common is the theme that someone looks down on them for doing something that either is or is alleged to be crooked, dirty, filthy, low-down, and so on (in the nonbent, nondirt, nonsoil, and nonsubterranean senses of those words, respectively, but by punnery also in the bent, dirt, soil, and subterranean senses as well).
      - Speaking mainly in the historical present (describing bootlegging that probably rarely happens anymore), we can say that a bootlegger digs a doghole, and a blacklegger digs a scabhole; some bootleggers toe the line or cross the line into blacklegging because they are selling coal, feeding the market, at a time when a strike action is supposed to be halting the market thoroughly enough to give the miners as much negotiating leverage as they can muster. Thus, there can be a sense among the miners that both are sabotaging class solidarity. The bootlegger can get it from both sides: he may sometimes have a scent of class treason to the miners' noses, and he's anything from a cheating competitor to a thief by the big mineowners' lights.
        Other boot- or black-related terms for objectionable or allegedly objectionable people include bootlicker and blackguard. What then of a bootblack? Well, he too is^ scorned by more than a few, because egotist jerks like to disparage him for being poor and being low in the alleged pecking order.
        But climbing down into a line of thought like this one, and staying down in there for a while, fucking around down there, puts me down into a dark, dank, cramped, dirty hole, though, in a nondark, nondank, noncramped, nondirty way. Good thing I borrowed Corny's gear. I give a set of tugs on the rope to let him know I'm^ ready to come back up now. One last scraping down here before I leave: I scratch a mark to leave behind: Old yes-but was here.
        PS: A frustrating theme about ones like this: It is not that needlers' minds are not affected by them (they are), but rather only that the needler is not conscious of that fact. Putting it in this light makes me appreciate that a needle groove is also like a wind-up player mechanism in a way (music box, player piano, etc): the thing is on autopilot, albeit animated to a degree. Ouch. That poker is hot^ and is not to be misused. Even nonmachines that are more machine than others are still non-, and they are thus not to be pots calling the kettles black.^
leo leop leon lep
- the leporine (pl) wish a pox upon the leopardine (pl)
  - this is something that the duck and the rabbit are aligned upon
    - the leonine (pl) respect the leopardine (pl); they're fellow pantherines
- the leprous don't wish their pox upon anyone
  - some Leonardeschi have busied themselves with things leonardiani
    - Leo^{(^(^))} lept above Leon^{(^(^(^)))} while Leonard slept and Jesus wept
      - Levon ^ likes his money, but Jesus wants to go to Venus; the Rocket Man can't take him there, as he doesn't understand all the science — it's just his job five days a week
        lol fu2
−$·^💸
- debank • demonetize • defund
  - Is this a yes-but, or not?
    - There is a gradient from "merely" gumming up the flow (but not especially interfering with the supply), to doing both at once, to just mainly starving the supply.
      - I'm going to lean toward yes-but for now. Maybe change my mind later. A heuristic to keep in mind is that if I have to ask, then it will likely turn out that other people think that the answer is no. And why is that? Well, as discussed elsewhere herein, it has to do with the difference between a needle groove and an emulation of one.
        PS: Some weeks or months later: It's funny what the dredge turns up sometimes. I had to come back and find this one because the following occurred to me just now:
        "If you have to ask, then the answer is probably no."
        It forces me to at least idly sniff at whether there's a third variable here somewhere, but some third variables are thirder than others tho. Wikipedia tells me that spurious relationship is redirect target from Third Variable Problem but correlation does not imply causation is redirect target from third-variable fallacy. That's fine tho, because six is a half-dozen and all roads lead to Rome. Maybe sometime (perhaps months from now, out of nowhere), my brain will suddenly detect more understructure. Raven-ass writing-desk mthrfr.
- debank • unbanked
  - Yes and: in fact, yes of course; even a needler is capable of seeing that one (despite dearth of eyelessness).
    - PS: Being underbanked is a form of being underserved, and being underserved is undeserved; but as for the latter pair, yes but.
corn^ aplenty^
- horn of plenty • cornucopia·^{cornu d'capra & copiousness} • copious cornage • horn of copium • cape of good cope • Cape Horn • caper horn • caper cornu • Capricorn
  - Dream of Capricornication
    Dream of Capricornication
    Dream of Capricornication
    Dream of Capricornication
    - quoth fishgoat^
      - kerato cornu mental • ornamental cornu mental
        barleycorn and onion ≠ gnarly corn and bunion
        ramshorn • hartshorn • goatshorn
        a goat shorn is not a goatshorn; if you bought it then you got fleeced. A ramshorn is a sheepshorn but is not a ram shorn nor a sheep shorn; if you bought it then you got the wool pulled over your eyes
        a goatseye is known for its sidewise pupil; a goatseye will give you the side eye
        
        a sheep is a goat's kin, and a goat is a sheep's kin, but a sheepskin is not a goatskin, nor a goatskin a sheepskin
        
        What sort of corn is a goat's corn, and what sort of corn does a goat scorn, if any? oat corn, wheat corn, barleycorn, rye corn, acorn? Get real: goats love all corn; your typical goat has never met a corn she doesn't love. Thus oat corn is goat corn, which is to say, it can be so.
- You can't charge any cornage for pollards; they're polled, because they've been polled.
  - A pol's polled poll is his bald pate; he wants to charge you a poll tax: a head tax per head, which is per capita, as a capitation. How many head of game will you harvest, and can he harvest a per-head tax on them? Perhaps per antler, or per antler point, or per horn. Pols deal in head games; perhaps polled pols' piebald polls reckon such games best, what with their spotty character.
    - Is a polled pol a pollard? With his round, shiny poll and his short, stocky frame, might he pass as a bollard? Perhaps his costume idea for next Halloween. The likeliest way to pass is at a distance. Passing at a distance, he polishes his poll, or mops his brow.
F
- press F to pay respects • put an F in the chat·^📅 • give an F
  - shared parameter: supply an F (of some type) for some reason involving caring (versus the opposite)
    - one might elaborate further, if the number of Fs given were more than zero
      - provide an F already FFS
        meh: no
/kroʊ/
- No one crows over something quite like a crone does: so croakily so.
  - I know you're groan⁠ing over that one. It doesn't faze me, tho — but don't taze me, bro
    - No one is so Cro-Magnon as Cro-Magnon Man, man
      - cro-moly: by golly, don't tease me so, bro: Cr⁠o-Mo gon give me fomo, or (lo) make me go to MO (God no)
        meh: no
s
- timelines • timeliness
  - yesss
    - butt
      - yesss
HFCS
- waffles and syrup
  - I wrote a rant here about it, but I'll redact it. Upshot: know when to hold em, know when to fold em. Relatedly:
    - egocentric versus allocentric, and why humans typically have strict limits on the latter
      - dollars to doughnuts (in a noncash, nonconfectionery way) they think the breakfast menu is in play
        PS tho: HBOS is not RBS, and both are not HSBC. Also, lest we forget the referents later, at least this: not everyone gets to be an avant-garde chef, as some of us have to do the spoonfeeding and diaperchanging all day, or make the donuts (for dollars). But a lesson is about mindfulness: instead of letting the everyday day residue drag us down to its level, we should instead calmly observe it for what it is and maintain an ability to hold it at a remove, so as to preserve our sanity. It can be hard because the bib-and-diaper-wearers in this metaphor deny being such, which is part of the nonallocentric nature of some portions of evolutionary logic. They didn't get where they are, motivation-wise and egocentrism-wise, through accurate self-assessment. Ask me how I know lol 💀.
nomina: names
- kinds of names
  - nameworthy names: names worth naming, that is, names worth mentioning
    - well-known names
      - including name brands, which have brand names
  - aptonyms: apt names, that is, aptly chosen names for things that have been aptly named
    - aptronyms, euonyms
      - bien porter son nom
        nomen est omen
        Will one live up to one's name? Will something live up to its name?
  - anglicized names of names: kinds of names whose names have been naturalized into English
    - subclass 1:º^·¹ those from Latin, especially New Latin
      - nomen acti
        nomen actionis
        nomen abstractum
        nomen agentis
        nomen ambiguum
        nomen appellativum
        nomen concretum
        nomen confusum
        nomen conservandum
        nomen correctum
        nomen deminutivum
        nomen dubium
        nomen gentile
        nomen gentilicium
        nomen illegitimum
        nomen instrumenti
        nomen invalidum
        nomen loci
        nomen nescio
        nomen novum
        nomen nudum
        nomen oblitum
        nomen omen
        nomen patientis
        nomen periculosum
        nomen proprium
        nomen protectum
        nomen rectum
        nomen regens
        nomen relativum
        nomen rejiciendum
        nomen sacrum
        nomen translatum
        nomen unitatis
        nomen vasis
        nomen verbi
        nomen vicis
        Fodder for further fettling; fuck it: fine, forthcoming
        PS: first fix:
        The autopilot-instantaneousness portions of my brain rendered ordinal indicator as ordinator in rapid speech production, and I like that one: its username checks out, as they say, speaking of names. One's brain sometimes seems to act the part of an ordinateur, fər shər
blowing up the spot
- a hip joint is not a hip joint
  - However, something they have in common is that you can blow them up.
    - Why blow up my spot cause we both got hot? Now check it
      - Would Big Poppa's homologue be one Abu Takin?
abbot • Abbott • abba • Abu
- bless me father for I have handwaved
  - baba papa, Abu Poppy, Abbot Pappy, Pappy Abbott
    - Is Daddy Al-Baddy one Abu Sirrir?
      - thank you sir may I have another
        baba black sheep, have you any wool?
        dear Sir might I have a word?
  - abbacy • papacy
    - fatherness; paternity
performance
- performance enhancement • intelligence amplification
  - shared parameters: people hoping that technology (of various kinds) will enhance their performance (in one way or another)
    - Yes but: the aggressively uncurious perspective is that "doing drugs has nothing to do with robotics"; thus, I didn't bother adding see-also links between those articles, expecting that someone uncurious will insist on removing them. In other words, I realized the likely hopelessness of giving them a link that might enhance their performance in their consumption of exposition and their synthesis of thoughts during that activity. (TLDR translation: it's extremely hard to undumb a dummy or to pearl a swine)
      - PS tho: I did add a see-also link from neuroenhancement to performance enhancement, and the counterpart 180° backlink was already there, which is nice to see because it shows that not everyone is asleep.
incisiveness
- cut the Gordian knot^{·cut the Gordian knot} • split the baby
  - shared parameters: circumvention of a composite's unity, and of the thorny challenge that that unity presents, by a slicing action that others find novel and surprising
    - in one case the surprise is of the no duh, why didn't anyone think of that earlier flavor, whereas in the other case the surprise is of the oh my God no, don't do that variety (but it is only a ruse to uncover a latent parameter value that will become the real deciding factor^{·Solomonically})
      - Yes but: meh
        PS tho: cut the cord and tie a knot in it, thus forming a novel navel
sun dog·^📅
- big dog : Canis Major :: sun dog : Canis Solaris?
  - The answer to the question is no, but only by accident.
    - PS: Some Canidae are more solaris than others.
- sun dog • Dog Star^
  - One would think — if one be one who does. Alas: One is usually not. (Most ones aren't.)
- Alas: When will I get ˈsɪɚ.i.əs,^ one asks me. Well: herein, perhaps never; elsewhere, when necessary, as necessary, to keep the bastards at bay.
  - In post-Soviet Russia, the bastards keep you at bay!
    - It's funny you mention the bay, though, because just today my brain wouldn't stop thinking about distant lights from across the bay. (It didn't ask me my opinion on the matter.^ Some dogs are harder to keep at bay than others.)
      - Speaking of dogs and the bay, the old bay is flavorful, and Mr Soup-Hunt was ringing my bell tonight. The thing that would have piqued my interest 20 years ago would have been to wonder and investigate how far we've come since he wrote the colloquy. The thing that's piqued my interest tonight, in this era, contrastively, is to recognize how many of us never did learn a thing from him, 80-some years on. It's not that I'm surprised; I already know the deal about that. I just need to kvetch about it sometimes because it's so annoyingly inadequate.
        PS: Speaking of inadequacy, I almost forgot to note a part of what brought me here tonight: I thought about capturing some of his colloquy at wantlessness, but Murphy waved a revolver in my direction and looked at me knowingly. While I was there, though, I was speaking of inadequacy, so I entered the black ant of wantlessness.^ I yelled down the stairs to the basement to ask how many had heard of it, and a gaggle of voices clamored back. Alright, alright, pipe down assholes, I've heard more than enough about it.
earthiness
- earthbombing, earthmoving, earthdigging
  - overburden; country; mullock; gangue; tailings; gob; goaf; slimes; spoils; culm
    - This exercise has culm⁠inated in further collation (maybe not a mountain of it, but a fair bit of a hill tho); it piles up out back of the great house. One of these rope pullers might have some earthy words for me if they knew that after all our postmidnight soporificness together, culm was the one that I had to unearth today. I'll give you a damn mountain of it for forgetting the nightmare with the cable drums at the culm dump, he grumbles, as I imagine it. (That's spools on spoils lol.) I tried to resurrect that nightmare just now, but now I can't find it. Which carpet pisser was it even? Somewhat like the bigots say, sometimes they all look alike to me, in a way. It's funny what my mind's eye doesn't bother with, and then again, it's funny what it does bother with that arguably it might shouldn't. (You call that a mind's eye? Lol, yes, I know, Corny; stfu, brother. Don't you have some culm to comb through?)
buckshot
- This one goes out to some certain gang of racoons in a trench coat, upon the reading of their official pronouncements.
  - colateral aka collateral position (collaterality), collocated position (co-located position), adjacency, interspersion
    - Yeah, OK, you sound official all right, but don't forget to mention peppered, scattered, and scattershot phenomena while you're at it, mthrfrs
      - Just come out with it: you're talking about the cleanliness, maintenance, and safeguarding of your hole, which is not different from a newshole proper, although you're apparently careful to avoid saying so (you'd faint at being so common, eh?)
        Speaking of safeguarding your hole, here's your new motto: Safeguarding our backsides (and feathering our nests) since
        bush-league talent, handwave etc
bar bar bar
- Is there any old joke about the judge, or the lawyers, or all of them, being at the bar instead of at bar?
  - I have never heard that one, if it indeed exists; but then again, I have never been a collector or connoisseur of lawyer jokes, so I wouldn't know offhand.
- Likewise, is there one about the judge not being able to pass the bar when he's driving to the courthouse?
  - I have never heard that one, if it indeed exists, but handwave etc
- A collector, a connoisseur, and a THIRD_ASSHOLE_NOT_FOUND walk into a bar, and handwaves ensue
  - A judge, a lawyer, and a THIRD_ASSHOLE_NOT_FOUND walk into a bar, and handwaves ensue
    - A judge, a prosecutor, and a defense attorney walk into a bar, and handwaves ensue
      - A judge, a jury, and an executioner walk into a bar, and handwaves ensue
        A bar, a bar, and a bar bar bar bar, and bar bar bar; lol fu2
cloop·^📅 • gloop
- Yes but: unlike dialing for the hearing impaired, this is more like not-hearing for the dialing impaired
outie • innie
- tension • compression
  - tensile • compressive
- explosion • implosion
  - exploding • imploding
  - explosive • implosive
  - explodable • implodable^{·google:"implodable"}
- expansion • collapse
  - expanding • collapsing
  - expandable • collapsible
    - expandability • collapsibility
  - expansive • collapsive^{·google:"collapsive"}
conveyance removal
- pull the ladder up behind oneself • burn bridges
  - screw others over by removing a pathway that others might use, which one has already used • screw oneself over by removing a pathway that one might use, which one has already used
    - Yes but: the aggressively uncurious can't see any value in it
economy of signal
- The North of England is not north of England.
  - This truism lies somewhere near the region of the humble mehstuary.
- An evergreen is a nevernotgreen, but no one cares, which is to say, everyone is a nevercarer.
  - I almost care, but then I don't.
- God help those who help themselves,^{^^} but
  - God helps those who help themselves
    - And sometimes folks have second helpings^{^^^^}
▽
- a very special instance of coinstances
  - They say that the Trinity is a very special instance of coinstantiation, composition,^ constitution, and colexification.^↑↑
    - And this very special composite▽ in turn comprises another very special composite:
      - God the Son^{·God the Son·✞} is (by some) said to be the same as one Jesus,^·Jesus who is by all accounts the historical Jesus and is also by some accounts one Jesus Christ, who puts the Christ^·Christ in Jesus Christ. (And He^↑ puts it in there good — so good that you'll never get it out.^^)
a nakjulər–nɪkjulər axis, just f⁠ər f⁠ʌn
- That architect had a knack fər the vərnaculər. The result is spectaculər.
  - Those miners slapped together a vernacular funicular.
contexts
- Sometimes a term is not so much a technical term, nor a jargon term, nor a slang term, as a contextual term. X is the contextual term for action or circumstance blah blah blah.
  - A funny thing is that for creatures who (especially when neurotypical) just about live for contextuality, people might (in some contexts) tend to be reluctant to admit that that label (contextual) is apt.
coinstantiation reinstantiated
- a very special episode
  - the elevator car takes us to the same places many times repeatedly; some revisits are trivialer than others
    - colexification • pigeonhole principle
      - Yes of bloody well course, and yet but
        As for why:
        today's formulation: at a most proximal level, only one of the types is directly about coincidence, in a way that blurry-eyed colorblind vision can see even without looking very closely (you call that looking?)
        Of course what eyeless eyes can see, just as clearly, is that the next few levels after that, too, are not not driven by the underlying spine of the pigeonhole principle, either, in the end; but for now, it's just one of those things that are true but you're not allowed to say that they're true, so as to spare the feelings of various subsets of onlookers and nononlookers.
        That's OK; tomorrow is another day.
        PS: Enough for today: The parameter structures governing the degree of limitation on the number of available stations (Fächer) exist on several layers; one layer is this, but the next layer is this.
opening up
- breach • broach
  - shared parameter: the advent of penetration (in one way or another); that is, whether hyponymously or figuratively synonymously, the cracking open of a cold one (although some cold ones are colder than others)
    - don't mind if I do
      - Recently I mentioned, elsewhere herein,^ crossing a messy room, so as to go to the far corner and back (in a nonmessy, nonfar, nonroom way); and here we can add, by corollary, that crossing a messy room to grab a cold one from the fridge is a special case of easy repeatability.
↓
- To go down can be to happen, and to lay (something) down can be to make (it) happen.
  - Moreover, here's the lowdown: some things happen on the down-low, and I can get down with that, and be down with it, if you're down for that and there's nothing too lowdown about it.
    - Are you picking up what I'm putting down?
      - I been down so long, it seem like up to me
        ↓ ≈ ↑
big of bigs
- recursive superlativeness = super-superlativeness
  - sanctum santorum • holy of holies • king of kings • Lord of Lords
    - mother of all
      - the hottest of hot shits ^^
        shared parameter: a runaway condition in the human predisposition toward one-upmanship
erks
- driving Mercs^ • popping Percs
  - hopefully not simultaneously
    - wearing Birks • brandishing dirks • relish⁠ing gherks
      - lol, don't make me hurk
        don't be a jerk • stay out me kirk, I'll not let ye lurk
        stay clear of murk • don't be a nerk • don't make me perk • don't share your quirk • don't sim a Turk ^ • don't shirk yer work • don't yerk yer jerk • don't clog yer zerk • don't go berzerk
windy
- a very special episode
  - Some redactions are redactor than others.
    - In recent days I worked out some things, which is to say more precisely, I may not have lysed them all completely but I lysed them to a newly enlarged degree. (Note to shelf: bucket handle: windy.)
      - An interesting upshot is that it doesn't change the upshot: some nonmachines remain more machine than others. A difference is greater comfort regarding why and how.
win-win
- Did you ever stop to think about the fact that there's a second i in Winnipeg but there's no second i in Winnebago? I never had, until now; but I like to keep an eye on such things. You can keep an eye out for them and still have a second one to spare, wink-wink. Vigilance can be exhausting, but if you keep an eye out, it might save you from putting one out, someday.
  - PS: Note to shelf: I had redacted half of this one but am putting back certain pieces (after putting them out earlier): shellers are not shillers, and not even shills are shillers under normal conditions (only rarely), but shillers are sellers in a certain way (they help sell things); and some Winnipeggers are pegger than others, and shoepegs and shoepeg corn are in the mix (the corn stands before the sheller, just as a writer stands before the cornshucker). This one also went down into the cellar and encompassed basement-dwellers and Michigan basements (whereas some cellars are Michiganer than others), but things were getting too damp and some damps are damper than others,^ so my Cornish friend shut it down.
passé composé
- the compere has whipped up, or has hosted the whipping up of, a compote
  - the compère has whipped up, or has hosted the whipping up of, a compôte
    - shared parameter: the old man has composed, or overseen the composition of, some fruit salad
      - additional modification parameter: the nature and duration of the fruit salad holding pattern (time, temperature, location), which governs the distinction; thus:
        has one's gʊmˈbaː ɾ whipped up any homemade table wine?
        The additional modification parameter also governs the dividing line between such output and compost; and this fact factors out to: did one's goombah do it right, or not?
        mmm meh
        PS: hosted the whipping up of: Hostess whipped
        The Hostess brand (of the various Hostess Brands) has been hosted within various corporate shells over the years, much like cream (or creamlike creme, as crème) is hosted within a pastry shell, but M&A supreme (M&A suprême) reflects its amalgamated ingredients, continental ^ and interstate ^ in nature
        This pastry bag (piping bag) isn't even empty yet (the creme flows all the way to where such jokes usually end, at such junctures as Jocular-dyne or Handwave-dyne or UTC or RTX or the Integrated Synergy Division of Halliburton), but I think I got enough of the piping out of my system for the moment. PPS tho: regarding fruit wine uncles: Shall I compare thy compere to a sommelier? Also: one can fill a pastry shell with cream or creamlike creme, and one might fill it with cheese or cheeselike cheeze; all of these are delicious, but one cannot call them ersatz, nor substitutes, without throwing shade upon them, because humans neurotypically have a thing about para-ness.
        piping bag • bagpipe
        shared parameter: piping comes out. Sometimes one has to get the piping out of one's system, and sometimes the system is a series of pipes. Some systems are piper than others.
busrides
- motorcoach • roach coach
  - shared parameters: omnibus motordom for numerous sleazy riders; either dubious cleanliness or at least the threat of it; at worst, hell on wheels
    - Yes but
      - PS: motorcoach • motormouth: not to be taken in combination
        motorcoach • motorboat: one if by land, two if by sea
        Why are *busboat and *boatbus lexical gaps? Is it because ferries already have a name and thus don't need another? A water taxi also moors at this dock, mentally
        
        motorcoach • motorcar: GVWR parameter value
        motorcoach : autobus :: motorcar : autocar
        autocar • Autocar: GVWR parameter value
fingery
- Why did *digiform (as digi- +‎ -form = dig(i)- +‎ -iform) remain a lexical gap as a predictable alternative form of digitiform? It might've formed but it didn't, which is to say, it might've been formed but it wasn't.
  - Then, by the late 20th century, Digiform and DigiForm (with a big D with or without a big F) had been coined as proprietary names for digital form creation technology, and then perhaps it was too late for *digiform to form (or be formed), as receptor blocking (as it were) was now (i.e., from that time onward) in play.
    - Did you ever think consciously about the fact that now has a sense referring to a timespan that fits within the tense and aspect of the surrounding syntax? The game was now afoot." "The game was then afoot." "The game was, from that time onward, afoot." "The game was, since the start of that newly demarcated timespan, continuously afoot."
      - Meh, which is to say, in the ironic way, big F'n D.
conjunctive confections; modal foodals
- if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we'd all have a merry handwave
  - if mayn'ts and shan'ts were mayos and shandies, we'd all have a creamy handwave
    - if mayn'ts and shan'ts were chickens and plants, we'd all have a hearty handwave
      - if mayn'ts and shan'ts were trousers and pants, we'd all have a fuzzy handwave
        if mayn'ts and shan'ts were mustn'ts and can'ts, we'd all have a modal handwave
  - possibility, permission, necessity, obligation
    - possibility (including capability), permission, necessity, obligation (mandate, mandatoriness)
      - (meh)n't
geez
- a schmear is a spread for a bagel, and one of its chief types is cream cheese, but smearcase is not cream cheese, so smearcase is not a schmear, even though both are cheeses that are named for smearing.
  - Also: cheeze is not cheese — geez; please!
ment‧al‧ese • ment‧al ease • ment‧al dis‧ease
- Shared parameter: humans develop models to explain them, and the models are even rather good (from many viewpoints), but it remains true that the models are not the phenomena and that we still (even to this day) do not know for sure what may remain missing from the models, but the informed among us know that it's something, not nothing.
  - PS: MW's and AHD's syllabication of men‧tal terms differs from WT's syllabication at ment‧al‧ese, but I am at ease about it, because I'm informed enough to know that syllabication is only semistandardized, not fully so.
    - PPS: Skimming WP on Tunbridge Wells in passing, tonight, I'm informed that they decided to build a "chapel of ease" there, and I'm not informed enough to know offhand what they meant by the at ease part in that case, except to deduce^ that it wasn't a house of ease, given the answer as to what they built.
      - PPPS: " we still (even to this day) do not know for sure what may remain missing from the models, but the informed among us know that it's something, not nothing." Not being sure about the hole in what's known but being smart enough to know that the hole exists and to take guesses about its approximate size and nature. I'm informed tonight by Bertsch McGrayne 2011 that Bayes could do well at Tunbridge Wells as a Dissenter because, effectively, the spas were a place where intermingling could happen without drawing complaints. Was that to say that what happens at Tunbridge Wells stays in Tunbridge Wells? Perhaps back then at least, although eventually they upped their game for complaining, apparently (as I'm informed).
        PPPPS: Bayes was on about (what others would call) his mental billiard table, and I wonder: was there baize on his billiard table?
/bɔɹ/-ial
- Here's something to /bɔɹ/ yə:
  - a boreal forest is arboreal, but only because of the forest, not on account of the borealness
    - Some boreal places are arctoboreal, but arboreal stuff doesn't happen in arctoboreal places tho
      - are you /sɪɚ/-ial with this right now, you may ask me — with this /bɔɹ/-ial line of thought?
        /bɔɹ/-ial lines: the arctic circle, otherwise known as the Arctic Circle, is a /bɔɹ/-ial line that you can cross, which is odd in the respect that a circle isn't properly a line, but it is not at all odd in the respect that any sufficiently large circle approximates a line for most local practical purposes, at human scale, just as any sufficiently large sphere approximates a plane for most local practical purposes, at human scale. What happens at scale may seem different from what happens at human scale, as some scales are scaler than others.
        But surely I'm either toeing the line or crossing a line regarding how much /bɔɹ/-ial -ness I can get away with subjecting you to. Even if crossing the line sometimes does rightfully refer to a latitudinal shift. But not at the same degree as arctoboreally, tho. And if one is going to be a linecrosser, one ought at least not be a /sɪɚ/-ial linecrosser.
        latitudinal shift • attitudinal shift
        so ends this /bɔɹd/ meeting
doublement • doublemint
- cardinality parameter value: this one (the piecemeal redoubling below) has been with me for ages; it is durably salient among the class members. Often when I've happened to brush up against one of its branches, a twig has snagged in my clothes briefly, and I've thought to myself (albeit in an unthinking way), I really ought to trim and comb that bramble someday.
  - to solve a problem is to dissolve it: to find a solution, to achieve a solution; to find a resolution, to achieve a resolution
    - something that is soluble is dissoluble because what a country
      - something that is insoluble is indissoluble because what a country
        PS: doubletness is neither *doubletry nor doubletree; discuss
        PPS: It's done (solved) enough for now; is it fully resolved? I'll sit in its branches later and evaluate. What we already know for sure is that this is why natural language can't have nice things.
        PPPS: Some dissolubles are more readily lysable than others.
        Although lysability is often judged dichotomously — either the lysing works or it doesn't — gradability is sometimes at hand: in one sense, something cannot be more lysable than something else (each either succumbs or successfully resists), but on the level of readiness, there is not generally comparable, comparative more readily lysable, superlative most readily lysable.
        Some solvents cling more tenaciously than others; rinseability is a parameter. Some things wash out while others pan out.

a cardinal instance of piecewise doubletness
+/−	intens./ negat.	-solv-/-solu-	-able/-ible/-ed	= what	syn	ant	realm(s)
—	—	solv	able	= solvable	soluble, resolvable, resoluble	unsolvable, insoluble; irresoluble, irresolvable	problems
—	—	solv	ible	= *solvible	—	—	—
—	—	solv	ed	= solved	resolved	unsolved, unresolved	problems
in	—	solv	able	= insolvable	unsolvable, insoluble; irresoluble, irresolvable	solvable, soluble, resolvable, resoluble	problems
in	—	solv	ible	= *insolvible	—	—	—
in	—	solv	ed	= *insolved	—	—	—
un	—	solv	able	= unsolvable	insolvable, insoluble; irresoluble, irresolvable	solvable, soluble, resolvable, resoluble	problems
un	—	solv	ible	= *unsolvible	—	—	—
un	—	solv	ed	= unsolved	unresolved	solved, resolved	problems
—	—	solu	able	= *soluable	—	—	—
—	—	solu	ible	≈ soluble	dissoluble, dissolvable; solvable, resolvable, resoluble	indissoluble, undissolvable, insoluble; unsolvable, irresoluble, irresolvable	solutes; problems
—	—	solu	ed	= *solued	—	—	—
in	—	solu	able	= *insoluable	—	—	—
in	—	solu	ible	≈ insoluble	unsoluble; unsolvable; indissoluble, undissolvable; irresoluble, irresolvable	solvable, soluble, resolvable, resoluble; dissolvable; dissoluble	solutes; problems
in	—	solu	ed	= *insolued	—	—	—
un	—	solu	able	= *unsoluable	—	—	—
un	—	solu	ible	≈ unsoluble	insoluble; unsolvable; indissoluble, undissolvable; irresoluble, irresolvable	solvable, soluble, resolvable, resoluble; dissolvable; dissoluble	solutes; problems
un	—	solu	ed	= *unsolued	—	—	—
—	dis	solv	able	= dissolvable	soluble	undissolvable, insoluble	solutes
—	dis	solv	ible	= *dissolvible	—	—	—
—	dis	solv	ed	= dissolved	—	undissolved	solutes
in	dis	solv	able	= indissolvable	undissolvable, insoluble	soluble	solutes
in	dis	solv	ible	= *indissolvible	—	—	—
in	dis	solv	ed	= *indissolved	—	—	—
un	dis	solv	able	= undissolvable	indissolvable, insoluble	soluble	solutes
un	dis	solv	ible	= *undissolvible	—	—	—
un	dis	solv	ed	= undissolved	—	dissolved	solutes
—	dis	solu	able	= *dissoluable	—	—	—
—	dis	solu	ible	≈ dissoluble	dissolvable, soluble	indissoluble, undissolvable, indissolvable, insoluble	solutes
—	dis	solu	ed	= *dissolued	—	—	—
in	dis	solu	able	= *indissoluable	—	—	—
in	dis	solu	ible	≈ indissoluble	unsolvable; indissoluble, undissolvable; irresoluble, irresolvable	soluble, dissolvable; solvable, soluble, resolvable, resoluble	solutes; problems
in	dis	solu	ed	= *indissolued	—	—	—
un	dis	solu	able	= *undissoluable	—	—	—
un	dis	solu	ible	≈ undissoluble	insoluble; unsolvable; indissoluble; irresoluble, irresolvable	soluble, dissolvable; solvable, soluble, resolvable, resoluble	solutes; problems
un	dis	solu	ed	= *undissolued	—	—	—
—	re	solv	able	= resolvable	solvable, soluble, resolvable, resoluble	unsolvable, insoluble, irresoluble, irresolvable	problems
—	re	solv	ible	= *resolvible	—	—	—
—	re	solv	ed	= resolved	solved	unsolved, unresolved	problems
in	re	solv	able	= *inresolvable	—	—	—
in	re	solv	ible	= *inresolvible	—	—	—
in	re	solv	ed	= *inresolved	—	—	—
un	re	solv	able	= unresolvable	insolvable, insoluble, irresoluble, irresolvable	solvable, soluble, resolvable, resoluble	problems
un	re	solv	ible	= *unresolvible	—	—	—
un	re	solv	ed	= unresolved	unsolved	solved, resolved	problems
—	re	solu	able	= *resoluable	—	—	—
—	re	solu	ible	≈ resoluble	soluble, solvable, resolvable	indissoluble, unsolvable, insoluble, irresoluble, irresolvable	problems
—	re	solu	ed	= *resolued	—	—	—
in	re	solu	able	= *inresoluable	—	—	—
in	re	solu	ible	≈ *inresoluble	—	—	—
in	re	solu	ed	= *inresolued	—	—	—
ir	re	solu	able	= *irresoluable	—	—	—
ir	re	solu	ible	≈ irresoluble	irresolvable, unresolvable, indissoluble, insoluble, unsolvable	resolvable, resoluble, soluble, solvable	problems
ir	re	solu	ed	= *irresolued	—	—	—
un	re	solu	able	= *unresoluable	—	—	—
un	re	solu	ible	≈ *unresoluble	—	—	—
un	re	solu	ed	= *unresolued	—	—	—

—

the Skt–Sgt axis
- saint : sanctus :: sarnt : sergeant?
  - shared parameter: lazy tongues elide things
    - But isn't laziness a sin, or a demerit?
      - Surely your saint will pray for you if he catches you being lazy (unless he smites you, or calls down a smiting from God, instead?); surely your sarnt will rip you a new one if he catches you being lazy?
        if your saint catches you doing something: he knows when you are sleeping / he knows when you're awake / he knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness' sake
        you better watch out
        metalinguistics and metalanguage are related (tongue-on-tongue action); this thought is in the neighborhood of antonymy with regard to lazy tongues
        PS: when you're awake (a timespan) is aspectually differentiable from when you awake (a timepoint). Jolly Old Saint Nick sees both; he sees all. (you better watch out)
        Old Saint Nick redirects here. He is not to be confused with Old Nick. (you better watch out)
        speaking of laziness: meh
        PPS: You aren't sartain who sawr you misbehavin, but you've larnt that it warnt yer sarnt.^
the dib–dob axis
- dibber • dobber
  - shared parameter: shaping the soil to receive a seed, a seed potato cutting, or a transplant
    - A dibber is also a dibbler or a dibble (as well as a dib), and it is something that dibbles, that is, dibs; and presumably a dobber is something that dobs, but I haven't probed fully to the bottom of that verb sense yet. Apparently it may be dialectal, and whereas any farming vocabulary tends to be at risk of being inadequately covered lexicographically, dialectal farming vocabulary is often the most inadequately covered. While in this locale, I ask myself why dobble is apparently a lexical gap in English, because it strikes me as the sort of form that English wouldn't fail to have already. English loves its dibbles, dabbles, dabblers, babbles, babblers, bobbles, bobbers, bobblers, wobbles, and wobblers so much that I'm surprised it left any of them on the table.
      - PS: Regarding dobbing: evidently the dib-dab-dip-dap-dob-tap axis is real, whereas at least one homonymic form of each of those is related to pressing on the soil or to the dimple/depression thus made. One learns these things by dribs and drabs in some cases; one picks up various bits and bobs along the way. A shelf full of knick-knacks: things you've nicked and things you've knackered. Don't knock your knick-knacks off the shelf, as you might knacker them; some objects are further off the shelf than others.
        PPS: Although I of course knew that something that is knackered is in shambles (at least hyberbolically or figuratively), I had not known that the slaughterhouse was nextdoor, cognitively, to both of those notions rather than only the latter; knacker#Etymology and its defs plus shambles#Etymology and its defs showed me how to put it together.
        PPPS: When it comes to horses, the knacker and the breaker are breaking different things, whereas with shipbreakers and car breakers, it's all one. The differentiating parameter is the living-versus-inanimate difference. Although it is true that your horse can be knackered if you work it hard all day, when it comes to horses, some knackering is knacker than other knackering. There's tiring and then there's tiring to death and disassembling; and speaking of tiring to death, boring you to death is a specialty herein.
        PPPPS: Dave and Charlie stopped by the house today.
        PPPPPS: undisassemblable is indissoluble,^ handwave etc
the kak–cake axis
- caco- • caco • cack • κακός • caca
  - bad + shit ≈ bad shit
    - cacophony • kakistocracy
      - caked shit ≈ shitcake
        strawberry shortcake ≠ dingleberry shitcake
        icing on a shitcake is not a shit sandwich with a cherry on top·^🍒 literally, but it is figuratively; some shitty cakes collapse when you open the oven door
        icing on the cake • stick a fork in it • shitfork
        shitcake • sheet cake
        chocolate-frosted • mudcaked
pervious·^📅
- pervious • pervy
  - the one is good, the other is shitty
    - pervious comes ultimately from notions of passing through, whereas pervy comes ultimately from notions of twisting and turning thoroughly: twisting things, being twisted, overturning things, overthrowing things, corrupting them, turning them thoroughly to shit, making them go to shit
      - perviousness is not perviness
        meh, speaking of shitty, this particular birdshit is not interesting
        PS tho: perverting things is twisting them tortuously, causing them to become contorted
premium • proemium
- shared parameter: coming first, in one way or another
  - rank • position
    - e • œ
ball + sac ≈ ballsack
- Did you realize that one reason why bulla sounds and looks like bull is that they're cognate? I had no idea and would never have guessed!
  - The shared parameter is the sac,^^^ apparently, believe it or not.
    - This means that bulls get their name from their business end, if you will: the parts that define what might from some teleological viewpoints be considered their specialty in life.
      - That by itself is not surprising, I realize, as that reflects how humans tend to talk — but one surprising thing about it, to me, is that apparently it's not only the balls but also the cock that's mixed into the etymology, as apparently phallus goes way back to the same primordial ooze that balls do, if I'm reading this right. Well, that would seem both embryologically and etymologically appropriate, now wouldn't it?
        bollocks • bullocks
        Bollocks. Human language seems kinda dumb, from some angles. In fairness, it's a reasonable approach to semiotics within the constraints of the mental capacity of meatbags.^^ But still tho. Lol. PS: deez nuts
ˌkumˈlaʊdə • ˈkʌmˌloʊd
- watch your enunciation • watch your profanity
-ar
- an exemplar, a Templar, a registrar, a bursar
  - a bursar at a bazaar
    - a Knight Templar walks into a bar, looking to spar^
      - arr, you'll not be oh never mind
→
- dextrous • dextrose
  - shared parameter: right-handedness
    - meh
the nose–money axis
- the nosebleed seats are cheap because their location is undesirable, but at least you don't have to pay through the nose for them
  - some people pride themselves on their ability to sniff out a good deal
    - sometimes one's nose might be running like a faucet, and horrendously wasteful spending is a money spigot; shared parameter: a tap pouring out something that isn't supposed to gush from one
      - meh; these aren't very interesting, as even a stopped-up nose may run once in a while, just as even a stopped clock is right twice a day
meals
- Being a bean eater may involve eating beanmeal, but not a bean meal^.
  - Being a bloodsucker does not involve eating bloodmeal, but it does involve eating a blood meal.
    - Eating meals (of any type, countable or otherwise) is a lovely way to have a good time.
      - Eating seeds is a pasttime activity, but watch out for toxicity;
        don't make me choose^ between the sacred silence and sleep
antiheroes
- a straight shooter with a six-shooter who drives a straight-six
  - Laughing will only betray your ignorance. A straight-six was pretty damn hot in 1930, and so was a wheelgun
    - The unity of these parameters lies in a character who is a no-nonsense problem-solver, thrifty, practical, and hard-boiled: perhaps a G-man, perhaps a P.I.; his aim is true, as long as he hasn't been hitting the whiskey too hard that day
>1:1
- over-unity • overdrive
  - shared parameter: getting out more than you put in > getting out what one puts in
    - meh
/bɔɹd/
- I'm reprising a visit to a certain room in the great house,^ as it were,^ tacking on one detail
  - board member • trencher-man
    - shared parameter: their role is defined by its presence and activity at the table/at table
      - Are you /bɔɹd/ yet?
under the weather • under the gun • under the microscope
- shared parameter: feeling shitty down here, like an underdog
  - under the weather • under the stars
    - shared parameter: exposure^^ as medical history finding^
      - A: What are you eating under there? B: Under where?^
        underwear • underpants
        shared parameter: preventing exposure
        underexposure • overexposure
        underwhelmed, that is, meh
/pɛn-/ — /-(ɨ)(t)-/ — /-ɨn(t)(s)/
- Under normal parametric conditions, stole is stole, and if you stole something then you'll be sorry, in one way or another.
  - But sometimes a stole can be a penance pennant (of a sort).
    - Must a dad joke culprit pay the price?^^^
      - Perhaps he shall pen an epistle from the pen, in a style deemed jailhouse epistolary. If he gets round to it.
        A roundhouse is round, and a rubber room is padded ^ with rounded corners, and a rubber ball is round and padded, and the last two can involve bouncing off the walls. A ballroom, a ball pit, and a bounce house are all places for energetic movement of essentially playful nature. Much of life is a game of not touching the sides, but under some parametric conditions, that prohibition may fly out the window.
        That said, allow me to bounce this off yə:
        I'm rubber, you're glue: whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.
ɪs_əl
- so an epistle is epistolary but a thistle isn't thistolary?
  - What a pain in the ass·^→ISBN
    - If I blow the whistle on this injustice, am I not being whistolary?
      - If I pistol-whip the unjust, am I not being pistolary?
        If I pestle-whip the not-yet-crushed, am I not being pestolary?
        mortar and pestle yields paste for pessary?
        mehstolary; messery
comfort
- ease • comfort • convenience
  - relieve • relax
    - make oneself comfortable • make oneself at home
      - unburden • disburden
        unload • offload • drop a load • blow a load
        meh
roughness
- the workhouse and the poorhouse were rough places
  - one step above living rough, if you're lucky, but still roughing it
    - workhouse • roughhouse • roundhouse • roundhouse
      - meh
skrf·^{sk(f)·skr(pf)}
- scarf • scarf • scurf • scuff • scruff • scrape • scarify • scar
  - shared parameters: surface abrasion, degradation, or disintegration
    - Bouba, Kiki, and Scruffy walk into a bar^-bar-bar — and Scruffy scratches his head
      - (s)ker-? carve? kerf?
knock knock
- knocker-upper • kneecapper • knock-kneed
  - knocking someone up is sometimes an instance of kneecapping them, in a figurative way
    - in a figurative way • in a familiar way (being too familiar) • in a family way
      - knock-kneed is antonymous to spread-legged
        knockers • colostrum
        what a load of shit
        (meh)conium
woodsy·^📅
- out of the woods • halloo before one is out of the wood • don't count your chickens before they're hatched
  - hen of the woods
    - Back to hunting my wild mushrooms again
      - some mushrooms have a woodsier flavor than others do; some have a smokier flavor than others do;
        woodsmoke
        only you can prevent oh never mind
        PS: firewood • woodfire • woodburning ••• Yes and
        woodfire • forest fire ••• Yes but
        I like that one especially; its smoky butteriness is chef's kiss: old no-eyes can see all sides of it at once. His equanimity in such things is admirable; I have notes about that secret buttery sauce's recipe, but they're not for here, for now.
lyzability
- can it be lyzed?
  - It seems to me at the moment that the only reason why (the eminently logical hypernym) ⊕†lyzable is nearly a lexical gap to date (being vanishly rare in attestation·^e.g.) is that humans are generally more interested in talking about the specific way in which something is lyzable (or unlyzable/nonlyzable): is it analyzable (or unanalyzable)? is it catabolyzable (or uncatabolyzable)? is it hydrolyzable (or unhydrolyzable)? is it electrolyzable (or unelectrolyzable)?
    - Which is to say: when it comes to lysis, humans generally want to know whether we're talking about analysis, or catabolysis, or hydrolysis, or electrolysis, or dialysis, and so on
      - unitariness; unitedness; singularity
        unbreakable is a widely used word (they alive, dammit!), and the word unbreakdownable is sufficiently attested, although I don't feel the need, at this moment, to shortlist it toward oughta; is that wrong of me? If so, go ahead and give it to me; 'salright (↑); 'salright (↓)
  - A big PS tho: I just realized that I had failed to tweak my corpus search by a single letter before jotting the info above: the form lysable is sufficiently attested,·^e.g. albeit uncommon; that one I will shortlist.
gut primers
- colostrum • meconium
  - one's first meal is special • one's first dump is special
    - priming the pump of the newborn intestines
      - special consistency, special color, special contents
        (meh)conium
tongues
- translingual • transglossal • panlingual • panglossian
  - I wonder idly whether Dr Pangloss's (/ˈpænɡlɑsɨz/) name was chosen to connote a pollyannaish hope for one universal world language, but I hardly know shit about Voltaire, so I'll just go back to my wild mushrooms now
    - If you muster up enough volts, you can get an arc across air
autocentrism·^{^}
- our sea • the main sea • our thing • the main thing
  - me(h)
    - … by which I mean: the assholery of the assholocene, including the hyperendemicity of troglodytic neuropsychology, is old hat to those who competently study the general case (i.e., cultural anthropologists). Relatedly, it is old news in linguistics that natural languages' ur-endonyms for peoples and languages mostly originated semantically (in the dim past) with such shit as the *real* people and *proper* speech (ingroup aspects) as contrasted with the *weirdo* people/fake people/pseudo-people/subhumans and *barbaric* speech/pseudo-speech (bar-bar-bar).
doing it to oneself
- diaëresis is close to autological, or is autological in a way, although not categorically so: it has (contains) a diaeresis,·^📅 but we can't say that it is a diaeresis. But diaëretic is wholly autological, though, because it is dieretic.
  - PS: While in the neighborhood of autology this morning, I was reminded of a conclusion that I reached a while ago. To my mind, paradoxes such as the heterological heterological are not as mind-bending as people tend to claim, because wondering over them turns out (after a long spell) to be just as useless as wondering over any other Achilles heel: there is nothing surprising about a singular weak aspect of an otherwise strong whole (a singularity), because it is a mere truism: it is what it is, no more nor less, and it is of the nature of reality that there often must be one, somewhere; after all, that's how they get you, generally speaking. (Moreover: At the very highest level of generalization, it is the only way in which extropy can escape, or can have escaped (as each case may be), entropy; and: so you like generalization, eh? Well, have all the generalization in the world, muahahaha! But the joke's on you, because I'm into that shit.) There's usually a man behind a curtain somewhere, who can be found if one looks hard enough. However, this fact does not imply that the Oz of the moment or situation (whatever it may be) doesn't exist; it merely implies that some blemish can always be found. Trying to climb inside the heterological heterological is a fun game, in small doses, but you won't find the bottom of that mudpuddle any more than you'll get to the bottom of what really happens inside a black hole, at or beyond the singularity. And the answer doesn't matter to your life or lifestyle, practically. There is usually value in holding a singularity to be duly unanalyzable (which, after all, is merely to duly acknowledge the unitary nature that is precisely the reason for its having been given that name in the first place). One may profit by holding it as a shiny little object, or an unusually matte black one, whichever the case might be. And a hollowed egg will have its tiny hole, and an amniotic sac will have its hilum, and a globe will have its papilla (a blind spot), and they are special but, in some ways, not remarkable: you'd better hope that you have one, and that it be competent, but before you try getting down inside it, be warned that it contains no user-serviceable parts. But perhaps this whole discussion is merely an instance of talking shop about egg-hollowing technique, depending on who you are. (Who are you?)
    - PS: some days later: the word pheretic would be autological if it were attested (as a synonym of apheretic), but it's not so it's not, although pheresis involves pheresis.
      - PPS: A week or three later: I hadn't realized it earlier: I found out yesterday that people have been intermittently dismissing indissolubles since fuckteen-hundred and who-gives-a-fuck. Sounds about right. I make no apologies for reinventing any wheels in my own backyard shed. I'm out here on my own in the woods, just tryna find a mushroom here or there, and I was given this world, I didn't make it.
fragilities
- glass ceiling • glass closet • pink ceiling
  - put X-ty million cracks in the PARAMETER_VALUE ceiling
    - you've got to crack the glass closet to come out of it^{·obligatory breakage}
      - somehow we're back to eggs, eggshells, and pushing hard again; do I smell a rope-puller?
        There's more than one way to push insistently while breaking an eggshell: hatching (↑), predation (↓), carelessness (↔), and perhaps others.
eggs with gold^{·eggs of gold}
- overegg·^📅 | gild the lily
  - egg on | goad
    - shared parameter: pushing too far, into excess
      - who will stop the madness? a good egg?
        gild | gold | goad | good
        good God, don't goad God with a gold god, a golden calf
        don't go and overegg this golden pudding; don't go and cook the goose that laid this golden egg
        good golly what a scramble
chilly
- We're told that Thule was Thile, that is, Tile, in (various eras of) Latin
  - We find ourselves in the neighborhood of Thule → Thüle → T(j)üle → T(j)ɪle → Tʃɪle, which is funny because …
    - It would seem that we're approaching the neighborhood of Chile, which leads to the following:
      - The apparent connection is mere semihomophonous birdshit, but it's funny because we're told that Chile's name probably comes from a Quechua word for cold (chiri), and Thule was nothing if not cold. A bit chilly.
        PS: Speaking of birdshit and of outlandish islands, some of the best guano in the world comes from Chile and its outlying islands. Speaking of cold places and their inhabitants, as well as incidental wanderings, I was also in the neighborhood of Inuk, Canuck, and Kanaka, today. But this latest trek through the chilly wilds, from Thule to Chile (and back again), meeting people who speak PIE-descendant languages and others who speak non–PIE-descendant ones, makes me think about bouba and kiki while my teeth chatter.
counters
- A countertop is part of a counter, but it is not a counterpart.
  - A kitchen counter involves a countertop and a sink, but not a countersink, except that its penetrations may be lightly countersunk.
    - Everything ends up in the funhouse mirror, even the kitchen sink.
      - Both a soup pot and a kitchen sink are often a bowl-like stainless steel vessel into which everything is put, including vegetables and water.
        Meh.
homography avoidance collation
- re-cite is best not recite
- re-coil is best not recoil
- re-cover is best not recover
- re-create is best not recreate
  - re-creation is best not recreation
- re-form is best not reform
  - re-formation is best not reformation
- re-lease is best not release
- re-move is best not remove
- re-present is best not represent
- re-press is best not repress
- re-sent is best not resent
- re-serve is best not reserve
- re-sign is best not resign
- re-sort is best not resort
- re-strain is best not restrain
- re-treat is best not retreat
- re-treatment is OK as retreatment because it cannot be confused with retreat (n) by any fluent speaker
- —
- un-ionized is best not unionized
- —
- an ex-urbanite is sometimes but not always an exurbanite, and vice versa
- —
- Also: relevant to this thread is much of the list population found at the following place: Wiktionary:Hall of Fame § Literal senses of words that usually mean something else (unrelated)
life
- aspects or attributes
- commentary
  - If you're near the end of life (circling the drain) then you may punch the buttons to summon the Star of Life folks;
  - If you're old enough to remember TV commercials for Time-Life books then you may be of a certain age and thus time of life;
  - Playing games that go in circles is a specialty herein;
shades of darkness
- grimdark | grimoire | film noir
  - shared parameters: art, fiction; dark fictions; dark arts; the gris–noir axis; the gris–grim axis
not sauced^^
- false-positive pseudo-saucing
  - auto-brewery syndrome | homebrew | self-saucing
    - shared parameter: brewing of, by, or for oneself·^
      - weren't we recently mentioning self-basting?
sauced
- secret Santa | secret sauce
  - mall Santa·^ | hip flask
    - shared parameter: no refunds
      - PS: Will the milk and cookies for Santa be Irished up? Those cheeks don't rosy themselves you know, nor those eyes twinkle.
bottlewasher
- Do not confuse a /ˈlævətɔɹi/ with a /ˈlæbɹəˌtɔɹi/, even though (1) both have sinks for washing up and (2) washing shit up can be laborious.
  - PS: shared parameter: sinking feeling
    - been washed down so far it looks like up to me
      - PPS: un lavorio è laborioso
/hæm/
- ham-fisted·^📅 | ham-handed | ham sandwich·^{finger food}
  - hand me a sandwich; hand me some ham
    - ham-fisted·^📅 | heavy-handed | iron-fisted
      - iron griddle, iron skillet, grilled ham, flatiron steak
        a ham-handed ham-and-egger got grilled; they egged him on, but now he has egg on his face
        griddle | skillet | skittles | beer and skittles | grilled fare and beer | bar and grill
        hæm → | ← meh
        PS: just my brain going ham again as per usual
        bonus points: go ham | ham it up
        shared parameter: trytoohard
        Yes but.
some old hats of idiomaticness
- Prefatory notes
  - How big would this list be if it were built out to exhaustiveness?
  - Such a list of tuples could be tabulated so as to sort on or filter on animal, animal class (i.e., animal type hypernymy-hyponymy, which equals taxonomic rank holonymy-meronymy), body part, or body part holonymy-meronymy
- List population
  - an adder's mouth is not always an adder's mouth, nor always a snakemouth
  - an adder's tongue is not always an adder's tongue, nor always a snake's tongue, nor always a serpent's tongue
  - a bat's wing is not always a bat's wing
  - a bear's claw is not always a bear claw
  - a bull's eye is not always a bull's eye
  - a bull's shit is not always bullshit
  - a cat's claw is not always a cat's claw nor always a cat-claw or catclaw
  - a cat's ear is not always a cat's ear
  - a cat's eye is not always a cat's eye
  - a cat's head is not always a cathead
  - a cat's meow is not always the cat's meow
  - a cat's paw is not always a cat's paw
  - a cat's tail is not always a catstail nor always a cattail
  - a cat's pyjamas, when they exist at all (which is seldom), are (even then) usually not the cat's pyjamas
  - a cat's whiskers are not always cat's whiskers
  - a cock's comb is not always a cockscomb
  - a cow's tail is not always a cowtail
  - a crab's claw is not always a crab claw
  - a crow's feet are not always crow's feet
  - a crow's nest is not always a crow's nest
  - a dog's bone is not always a dogbone
  - a dog's head is not always a doghead
  - a dog's tooth is not always a dogtooth, nor always a houndstooth
  - a dragon's blood is not always a dragon's blood
  - a dragon's head is not always a dragon's head
  - a dragon's tail is not always a dragon's tail
  - a dragon's teeth are not always dragon's teeth
  - a duck's bill is not always a duckbill
  - a fish's bones are not always fishbones
  - a fox's tail is not always a foxtail
  - a goat's beard is not always a goat's-beard nor always a goatsbeard
  - a hare's foot is not always a hare's foot
  - a hare's lip is not always a harelip
  - a hawk's bill is not always a hawksbill nor always a hawkbill
  - a herring's bones are not always herringbones
  - a hog's head is not always a hogshead
  - a hog's shit is not always hogshit
  - a hornet's nest is not always a hornet's nest
  - a horse's face is not always a horseface
  - a horse's shit is not always horseshit
  - a horse's tail is not always a horsetail
  - a hound's tooth is not always a houndstooth, nor always a dogtooth
  - a lobster's claw is not always a lobster claw
  - a mouse's tail is not always a mousetail
  - a mare's nest is not always a mare's nest; and whether it exists at all depends on one's definition of a nest, which is an underpinning of the joke
  - a pig's tail is not always a pigtail
    - a hog's tail is never a pigtail, nor a pigtail ever a *hogtail, because idiom is a cruel master wearing the mask of a casual one
  - a rabbit's trail is not always a rabbit trail, nor his hole always a rabbit hole, nor his ears always rabbit ears, nor his foot always a rabbit's foot; discuss (talk amongst yəselves)
    - bonus points: a cottontail's tail is not cotton, but he is quick as a flash with a jackrabbit start plus a rapid follow-through; he'll get down the rabbit trail and into his rabbit hole in two shakes of a rabbit's ass
  - a rat's nest is not always a rat's nest
  - a rat's tail is not always a rattail
  - a ram's horn is not always a ramshorn
  - a serpent's tongue is not always a serpent's tongue, nor always a snake's tongue, nor always an adder's tongue
  - a sheep's head is not always a sheepshead
  - a snake's eyes are not always snake eyes
  - a snake's head is not always a snakeshead nor always a snakehead
  - a snake's mouth is not always a snakemouth, nor always an adder's mouth
  - a snake's tongue is not always a snake's tongue, nor always an adder's tongue, nor always a serpent's tongue
  - a tiger's claw is not always a tiger's claw
  - a wolf's claw is not always a wolf's claw
  - a wolf's fist is not always a wolf's-fist, nor even much of a fist at all
  - a wolf's head is not always a wolf's head
  - a wolf's milk is not always a wolf's milk
  - a wolf's tooth is not always a wolf tooth
- Also-rans
  - Does a bee have knees? Well, it certainly has joints in its legs, which after all is what puts the arthro- in arthropod. Whether you're allowed to call them knees is a matter for the disguised master aforementioned. But are a bee's knees the bee's knees? Well, the bee certainly thinks so, or at least ought to, to whatever extent she does think, which is certainly some extent albeit also certainly not in entirely the same way as you or I do.
  - the devil's subclass
    - the devil's subclass's prefatory notes
      - as we know, the devil doesn't play fair
      - the devil has many things, including things up his sleeve, but this subclass includes only his bodily concerns
      - to-do: check this usual suspect also under his chief aliases, and run in also his chief-associate usual suspects
    - the devil's subclass's list population
      - the devil's claw is not always the devil's claw
      - the devil's dandruff is not always the devil's dandruff
      - the devil's dung is not always the devil's dung
      - the devil's finger is not always the devil's finger, nor his fingers always the devil's fingers
      - the devil's grip is not always the devil's grip ^
      - the devil's hand is not always the devil's hand ^
      - the devil's tattoo is not always the devil's tattoo
      - the devil's toenail is not always the devil's toenail
      - the devil's tongue is not always the devil's tongue
    - the devil's gaps
      - the devil's bladder
      - the devil's paunch
      - the devil's love handles
      - the devil's flatulence
      - the devil's sciatica
      - the devil's presbyopia
      - the devil's spectacles
      - the devil's incontinence
      - the devil's impotence
      - if you're a devil over 60, ask your doctor if once-daily Luciferimax is right for you
    - other otherworldly subclasses, to be populated when the spirit moves me:
      - angel's FILE NOT FOUND
        angels' FILE NOT FOUND
      - God's FILE NOT FOUND
        gods' FILE NOT FOUND
        FILE NOT FOUND of the gods
      - heaven's FILE NOT FOUND
        FILE NOT FOUND of heaven
      - hell's FILE NOT FOUND
      - witch's FILE NOT FOUND
        witches' FILE NOT FOUND
  - things that aren't their body parts nor their bodily wastes, but still interesting in light of this list's themes
    - list population
      - a raven's wood is not always a Ravenswood
      - the bishop's subclass
        a bishop might have, or at least direct the disposition of, a lot of things, but the following points are true:
        a bishop's bridge is not always a Bishop's Bridge
        
        a bishop's bourne is not always a Bishopsbourne
        
        a bishop's gate is not always a Bishopsgate
        
        a bishop's gaiters are not always a Bishop's Gaiters
        
        a bishop's wood is not always a Bishops Wood
    - footnote
      - the devil wants in on this subclass too,·^e.g. but I'm inclined to tell him to go to the devil, which I suppose in his (special) case factors out to go fuck yourself — he seems to fail to appreciate that if you rig the game too much, then other gameplayers are no longer interested in your gameplay
/andl/
- chandler | handler
  - handling | Handlung
    - Am I to accept that a handler can handle but a chandler cannot chandle? They might candle but they cannot chandle; they might be a chandler and a candler, but they cannot chandle, which might be a scandal, but not one foisted by a scandaler;
      - handling | chandling
    - ship chandler | Handlung | handling | candles | and | sundries
      - handle candles || hold a candle
        a ship chandler was named for handling candles (being a candle handlung), but they may barely handle candles at all anymore
        they can barely hold a candle to the volume and breadth of candle handling that they once handled
        chandler | chandling | handler | handling ^^ | sandler ^ | sandling | sandaler | sandaling
        PS: I almost forgot to include this here but some carpet pisser tossed it back in front of me just to remind me to stay grounded and handwave etc. The candle handlung was a chandlery.
        Many months later: Some rope puller took pains to point out to me that some candle handlers are ˈsʌndɹiəɹ sundrymen·^ than others.
d.o.
- verb + notionally uncountable d.o.
  - drive truck | drive stick | suck cock | suck dick
    - eat cunt | eat pussy | serve cunt | sell ass^^^^
      - All this clownery aside, in all seriousness, what would an exhaustive list of the members of this class look like? How big would it be? (save face, lose face, suck ass, ) Or is it something to which I should pay no mind?
- verb + normally uncountable d.o.
  - deal coke | drink Coke
    - smoke weed | dip snuff | drink beer | sip wine | do stuff
- verb d.o. | have b.o.
  - say meh
/leɪn/
- Lois drives a Lexus, living life in the fast lane, and she plays the Lois to your Clark: a Lois Lane in the Lexus lane.
  - That line of thought is a stretch, even if her Lexus isn't one.^
    - PS: There's something ironic (as in human folly) about stretch#English:_stretch limousine: you spent all that money building (or having someone build) a needless monstrosity, but you also need an elliptical name for the thing because you can't be arsed to say its full name. First you stretch out something that didn't need stretching out, and then you shorten something that didn't need shortening. Between all the needless pulling and pushing (stretching and crunching, straining and crumpling, insult to injury), there's something of the dysphoric accordion-playing to the whole obscenity, in a nonmusical way.
      - P—s: The non-musician in this case reminds me of the non-innkeeper who will offer you a bed, whether you want it or not, and will alter you to suit it.
/mɪd/
- middle-end | middle earth
  - middling | earthling
    - middling | meddling
      - I could have avoided midness if it weren't for you meddling kids!
        (meh)d
/ɪn/
- invaluable | inflammable || nonvaluable | nonflammable
  - shared parameter: what a country
    - If your is invaluable and inflammable, you'd better look into some things: security, vigilance, insurance, handwave etc
      - PS: parameter value: POSSESSION NOT FOUND
        priceless | valueless | worthless
        the price of everything and the value of nothing, handwave etc
        invaluable | unpriceable
        Yes and.
/mɪs/
- misswear is not misses wear
  - manswear is not menswear
    - misses is not Mrs
      - plus sign is not plus size
        (meh)nswear
re-
- re-sort : resort :: re-cite : recite :: re-create : recreate
  - If you recreate via thespianism but forget your lines, you can resort to reciting from a cribsheet.
    - If you re-create your bibliography, you can re-sort and re-cite accordingly.
      - If you can't be arsed, you can forget about it.
addresses
- Enmity Mutual Co, 123 Fake Street, Anytown, ST 98765
  - Acme Reciprocating Pulverizers Inc, 456 Shared Parameter Lane, Fuckerville, FU 26969
    - If you send a SASE, you might expect a reply; if you send any sass, I got yer reply right here.
      - Blah blah blah dead letter office blah, yada yada yada 0FFS YU812?
        PS: Shared Parameter Lane will exist someday, and Wedding Ring will play a sold-out gig there.
getting
- get with it | get down on it
  - get your back up off the wall | get one's back up
    - back that ass up, wallflower
  - get with the times | get with the program
    - keep up with the times | keep up with the Joneses
      - meh, guess now I'll get the fuck out with it
ITK
- metro region acronyms
  - DMV | DFW | RTP
    - shared parameter: people in other regions are less likely to know (being less likely to be exposed), which does not at all mean that the meaning is "little known" nor "secret" outside each region, but rather simply means that the people elsewhere who know are the ones who don't have their heads up their ass as much; thus, for example, businesspeople, newspaper readers, others.
taste
- taster | nontaster
  - Yes and.
- taste test
  - taster | tester
    - In a store, a tester of perfume lets you have just a taste, so that you can see whether you'd like to buy an (unopened) bottle (which is to say, so that you can smell whether so).
      - Yes but.
        PS: Letting someone have a taste of something is often differentiable from giving someone a taste of something.
        A goal is that ideally not all one's taste is in one's mouth.
        A sheep might smell whether he'd like to head in a certain direction, and if he's a bellwether, others might follow.
        Sometimes some people can smell weather coming, sometimes some others can feel it in their bones, and sometimes some others stand elsewhere detecting these themes.
tasteable
- tastelessness | nontaster
  - ‎ blah blah blah the eye of the beholder, the tongue of the betonguer, handwave etc
    - Yes and.
      - Don't they have a song about that?
        eye has not seen / ear has not heard / what INSERT_DEITY has ready / for those who handwave
cannery
- head for the hills | Busch
  - If you get it, you may be a hillbilly and may be of a certain age. If not, don't worry about it: it's pretty buttery.
cornery
- corn roaster | popcorn machine
  - shared parameter: machine tailored to even heating for desired corn kernel transformation
    - Yes buttery.
      - PS: bonus points of who-cares-ness: grain dryer
self-basting
- boiling frog | stew in one's juices
  - shared parameter: soupmaking in a dysphoric and nonculinary way
    - Yes but
      - PS: the bonus points for dysphoric asterisked soupmaking were already awarded; they go to soupers and souperism.
watches
- watchkeeping | watch repair | timekeeping | timepieces
  - meh
George
- Saint George is famous for slaying the dragon, and his red cross is famously cherished by England, but the Red Dragon is not the dragon that he slayed, and a Walian will thank you to know the difference.^^
cohypernyms
- There can be said to be such things. The instance that made me think more consciously about it again, after being of course vaguely aware of it at the mere-truism level for a long time, is Wiktionarian, which is a hyponym both of lexicographer and Wikimedian, each in a different way. The latter pair, which aren't much of a "pair" at all except in this one way, can be said to be a pair of cohypernyms. Not too much should be made of it, though, as its structural underpinnings are largely meaningless. The shared parameter is (every sort of) multiparameter correlation through coinstantiation (including the meaningless sorts). It is thus fairly trivial to generate some more (more or less meaningless) examples. For example, a car in many cases (in any of many countries) is both a machine and an import. So fucking what, amirite? Ikr.
  - Nevertheless, I won't dismiss this line of thought as useless until I crawl through plenty of examples to see whether I might sniff out any latent threads of interestingness. The first obvious question is going to be whether there are any classes of cohypernyms whose relation is nonmeaningless, as in not entirely (co)incidental albeit plenty so. If some such classes can be identified, it might then be possible to analyze any shared parameter among them. If any metaparameters of cohypernymy exist, it might tickle one's innards to become aware of what they might be and how they might interrelate.
  - A few toss-offs:
    - A Wiktionarian is a crowdsourcing dictionary-augmenter. A dictionary-augmenter can be a kind of crowdsourcer.
    - A car is often an imported machine. A machine can be a kind of import.
    - An X is often a Y'd Z, or a Y'ing Z, or a Y-able Z. A Z can be a kind of Y-er.
    - Hmm. It's a start. The start of a hill of beans? I'll have to grow a few beanstalk seedlings to find out. I won't be trading away all my Bessies for it though.
  - Update, a week or three later: old no-eyes has laid hands on the first two metaparameters of cohypernymy uncovered to date; it's not all that exciting, as they are no doubt the broadest ones, or some of the broadest ones; in fact, so broad that people ungifted in eyelessness might take them to be meaningless. And yes, he knows exactly what those people mean, as he can see that point of view through one of his filtering goggles, which emulates noneyelessness well enough to get by where such emulations are required. Nonetheless, he begs to differ regarding these two metaparameters' interestingness, as they are duly interesting (enough) as viewed through some other filters. For example, when viewed from within some of the valleys kissed by the shadow of death, they have a certain pop-up quality that differentiates them from the ambient flatness. He reports that once you've seen things in the nonlight of such valleys and have at least somewhat comprehended what you were seeing, you never wholly forget what you saw there, and it colors perceptibility elsewhere, just yet another filter among a rich panoply of cheaters that may be swapped out in alternation. Anyway, here are the first two stones unearthed as metaparameters of cohypernymy: instantiability^ and attentionworthiness^. Right off the bat, one way in which they are interesting is that they provide an illustration of meta–yes-butteriness: the noneyeless say well yes, but but, to which the eyeless reply, mais oui, but but but.
    - I just realized that I should order a novelty apron for old no-eyes to wear when he's at the kitchen sink: Kiss me, I'm eyeless.
      - PS: An eyeless reply is not to be confused with an Irish goodbye, even though the two may occasionally be coinstantiated.
memory
- in living memory | in loving memory
  - The one collocation you invoke when you're speaking of the living (↑⁺), whereas the other collocation you invoke when you're speaking of the dead (↓⁻). The two constitute a phonemicity minimal pair, as well as a typo one.
    - Traditional human tribal societies tended to have rules along certain themes: Don't speak ill of the dead, and don't speak at all of the devil.
      - (Meh)mory.
pavement
- pavement special·^📅 | pound the pavement
  - shared parameter: dogged (and dog-tired) itinerancy with uncertain and scarce material rewards
    - It really makes one's dogs bark.^
      - Yes but.
        Bonus round: one's dogs are barking | one barks one's shins
        shared parameter: lower-extremity mild orthopedic injury
        Yes but.
/hɜɹs/
- There was a time when places were named Parameter+hurst so as to give off an air of maximal upscaleness. That time came and went. My perception of the dating of its peak is that it peaked in Edwardian times.
  - By the time I came along, the Parameter+hurst names smelled distinctly of the hearse to my whippersnapper nose. The shared parameter was elderliness. But part of growing up into adulthood is decoupling such misapprehensions. I no longer smell any hearse at Parameter+hurst, but I now more fully appreciate smelling the gorse there. The gorse there doesn't belong there, but it's not its fault and it itself doesn't know any better, much like the starlings that land on it. There was a time when the people at places named Parameter+hurst would introduce such plants^ and birds^ so as to give off an air of maximal upscaleness. It was stupid, in retrospect, but I can admit that at the time they didn't know any better. Which does not excuse it, in the sense of laundering it, although it does explain it, regardless of whether or not you accept the explanation.
ladra
- Un ratón frecuentemente rata pero un ladrón usualmente no ladra (aunque quizás a veces a la luna).
  - I'm ónly tooling around.
Zelig·^{Zeligesque·📅} | Forrest Gump^{a homologue as gumpesque, gumpy, or similar is a lexical gap}
- shared parameter: showing up in a surprising number of historical events, interacting with a surprising number of historical figures, handwave etc
  - I've never seen the 1983 film and I don't much care, but I like to scribble parameterizations here.
    - As usual, yes but.
fuckwit ≠ fuck wit ≠ fuck wit
- We like to fuck around around here, as long as nobody be fuckin wit me too much.
  - Speaking of fuckwits:
    - cockfighter | cockfucker
      - coinstantiation, yes; each instance of the first is always more or less an instance of the second; yes but.
shitter
- I feel kind of shitty about my recent edits seeming to focus rather too heavily on the pottymouth^^ dimension, but it's odd because the underlying motivation is (in contrast) strangely academic, or, should I say more precisely, focused on applied ontology (whereas it's problematic to call practically applied ontology academic). Eventually this too (like all other thematic flings) will pass from my system, at least until the next time I eat the wrong thing at the wrong time. #Thesaurus:anus #Thesaurus:toilet #Thesaurus:outhouse #Thesaurus:trash #Thesaurus:jerk #Category:English shitgibbons
  - PS: skibidi
    - shitter | kisser
      - shitter | spitter
  - PPS: The completionist in me is happy to keep whaling away on them, but let's get real — that ocean has no bottom. Which doesn't mean that I promise to forgo whaling on them any more than I already have — rather, merely, that I can stop anytime I want to, as they say. Wasn't there a Nantucketer who asserted as much? It's an old, old story.
    - PPPS: I remember the bad old days when I was more frequently exposed to the sort of speakers who speak that way habitually and unironically. One of their little gems (out of their bottomless bag of them) was peckerwrecker, as I recall; the notion was that metal braces would make short work of one's junk. Looking back now, I can better see that the schoolboys who were so especially worried about that theoretical notion would have precious little opportunity to test its realisticness empirically. Nonetheless I was mildly surprised that when I searched Wiktionary for peckerwrecker tonight it came up as unentered. Wiktionary is generally already pumped quite full of every sort of cumbuckety word, to the point that when one is missing it's a mild surprise. Which doesn't mean that *I* will enter peckerwrecker. Nope, fuck that. In fact one of the underlying reasons why I keep tying together the instances via senses and senseids and cot and syn links is that I can envision that once that action has been done thoroughly enough, it will then be obvious to users how vapidly ridiculous this particular subclass of hypersynonymy is. In this regard I am a bit like the fiend who works in the Ironic Punishment Division of Hell Labs and says to Homer something along the lines of, So, you like donuts, eh? Well, have all the donuts in the world! The joke in that case is that the joke's on the fiend because Homer is into that shit. Is the joke on me? So be it. That shit backsplatters on the ones who would sling it. Let everyone see the patheticness of what shitmunchers they really are. Under the cold light of linguistic analysis may the social power of their epithets wilt a bit, like the tiny peckers that stood very little chance of getting wrecked.
bbl
- single-barrel whiskey | single-barrel carburetor^
  - shared parameter: handwave
    - Bonus points: could you put single-barrel whiskey through your single-barrel carburetor and get a running result? Perhaps only if it is of the cask-strength·ʷᵖ variety. Even then, the following parametric difference is practically relevant:
      - could you | should you | would you
        Under what parametric set of conditions would you ever? One could envision some, but should one? Under most nominal parametric conditions such activity is both prohibitively and needlessly expensive.
        PS: It is possible to run subroutines and store their output as canned results. The cans can be of various shapes and sizes and can be stored in various places.^^^^^^^^^^^ The expense can thus be amortized in a way that makes it worthwhile. Furthermore, to the extent that the initial investments function as grants, their costs become a separate concern from the accounting viewpoint of the beneficiaries.^^ All of this, too, is parameterization in action. The motivations of the grantor might be examined, but look: human motivation is multivariate and multilayered; the question of whether any human ever should drink cask-strength single-barrel whiskey is a relatable but separable concern from the question of whether any human ever would drink it.
℗
- 👂 : ℗ :: 👁️ : ©
  - Why is that eye red? (Lousy stinkin red-eyes.)
    - PS: I went looking for a dereddened eye and found one: 👁
      - red-eye | rotgut
        the ocular–intestinal axis
        shared parameter: cytotoxic microvascular detriment
        The power of parameterization: it had never once before occurred to me to wonder whether detriment and detritus are cognate, until the parameterization stream above placed the likelihood right in front of my eyeballs, pointed it out, and cried, look. I learned that yes, they are. While we're in the neighborhood, let's also record the following:
        look: pruritus is not *pruritis any more than detritus is detritis, but do take care to keep detritus out of your eyes, lest they get reddened and itchy
        PS:
        👁 👁
        
        👃
        
        👄
        
        Why is that mouth red? (Lousy stinkin redmouths.)
ops
- opportunistic | optimistic
  - opportunism | optimism
    - opportunist | optimist
- I must say, my brain has always linked these under the hood, albeit subconsciously rather than consciously (until now).
  - The shared parameter, besides the op–t axis as a key in the database index, is some kind of forward-thinking outlook coupled with a willingness to take risks (such as the risk of getting smacked).
    - What is the antonym of risk-averse, my brain asked itself, and it had to think for more than just a millisecond before the answers started coming. The first ones to arrive were: bold; courageous; daring. It hasn't yet found any that start in morphologic parallel (as for example *risk-happy or *risk-loving, which are idiomatic but not idiomatic, so to speak). Enough for now.
sodas
- Lol, I've been going hard recently, and it's a lot of fun, but I really ought to lay back and sit my cup down.
  - Less writing and more reading, less talking and more listening, is in order probably.
    - More AHD and less ADHD?
  - I like to pair a nice nonfiction(ary) with a good dictionary;
    - Perhaps a day of SOAD and SOED, with whiskey and soda?
      - Retire to my chambers with Chambers?
        What am I owed? A day with OED and ODE? (I sometimes feel too old for OALD)
        Perhaps catch some sun with NOAD and NO-AD?
        Smith 2014? What about my 60/120 special that I set aside, not yet finished?
        Really I have a lot of books (of many kinds) that I could be reading and a lot of sets (of many kinds) that I could be doing. Well. Fair enough.
        It's largely not different from what I've already been doing: I come to Wiktionary to make an edit prompted by my reading and the thought trains that it sparks. The theory is that my Wiktionary activity would then naturally fall off again until the next such episode, prototypically another occasion, to yield small blips in a sea of low-level flatline, perhaps, prototypically. But envisioning that prototypical outcome assumes some parameter values that are often not true. What is the decent interval that operationally defines the separateness of occasions — which is to say, what is the period? One must account for the frequency (as period reciprocal), as well as the magnitude of the potential extensions. The difference with me is that the miner works so many angles and thus gets into so many veins, and once he's in a vein, well,^{^} it's vein time, baby. Kind of like taking a hike on the trail, but with extensive knowledge of geologic tells plus a metal detector slung over the shoulder, plus a radio to call in the ground-penetrating radar crew (or sometimes the ground-penetrating bomber crew). Dude, set the recon and sapper equipment down sometimes and just bring your coffee mug for once. This comes down to being a gold miner walking through rich hills and knowing what's under one's feet (it's down there somewhere, and I can smell it) and yet being content, for the moment, to let it stay there.
        PS: in the moment | for the moment
        I don't mind being mindful, for now
knobs
- One can give as good as one gets, × 69; a knob is also a knob-gobbler in the conventional metaphors of established figurative senses. Thus often does literal coordinateness collapse to synonymy upon the shift from literal to figurative senses.^
  - I'll polish yours if you polish mine
    - knob for nubbin is an exchange of labor; the polishing is not for free^
      - to slob the knob (infinitive inflection) and rubbin the nubbin (gerund inflection) are lexicalized collocations but are not ones that I feel the need to try to enter in Wiktionary and have them stick; I don't object to their being entered, but I am not the one for that. In fact if one were to peel the onion ^^ far enough one would find out that I don't even really give so much of a shit about knobs and slobbin and cocks and nubbins as I once did (when I was a younger buck), but what my brain still finds really interesting is the semantic relations of it all and how thoroughly inbred some of them are, what with all the telescopic collapses and all the polysemy and homonymy and synonymy and parasynonymy and cohyponymy and autohyponymy and autoholonymy; (some even collapse so acutely that they can complete their own circuit lol). (I don't usually juxtapose parentheses with semicolons, but when I do, I don't mind if I do, and speaking of dicks, if I do jump back into Moby-Dick^ (as I'd threatened to earlier), I'll expect to reencounter and reenjoy some hoary but oddly intuitive punctuation.) In fairness to the relations (and what sort of relations they sometimes have), they might take umbrage at my calling them inbred, just because a knob's head is also his body, or his cousin is also his uncle, or his pappy is also his grandpappy, and so on.
lays
- While the Pequod lay at Nantucket, Peleg put Ishmael down for the three hundredth lay.
  - All of the usexes that I write are well enough thought out, and many are quite well thought out,^ but a few stay with me especially.
    - It's been a long time since I read Moby-Dick.^^^^ Really too long, and it would be nice to come back to it. I happened to look at Chapter 16 the other day while laying out a ux for the "share (portion)" sense of the noun, and I caught (for the first time) what I'm pretty sure is a pun whereby Ishmael notes that Bildad is out to screw him good. A sailor likes to get laid, no doubt, but at least buy him dinner before you fuck him sweetly. He doesn't mind your pretenses of politeness, but he wants you to give him a good lay in the end. Depending on who you are, he might have heard that you're a good lay, and he's willing to lay you or to be laid by you, but not necessarily in a way that fucks him over. This young buck might not care how buxom ^ you are (or aren't), and he doesn't mind if he gets laid, but nobody fucks im over and gets away with it.
cocks
- A cock gobbler is neither a cock nor a gobbler;^ the implications of polysemy and homonymy can be staggering.
  - PS: A cock will claim^ that cocks are people too, and in a sense he is right;^ but not every Tom, Dick, or Harry is as much of a man as another,^ and many are more less than more.
    - (Meh)nschen.^
      - PS: bonus points:
        peas
        a peacock is a cock but is not a peacock if one might coordinate as peacock(^) | peabrain
        shared parameter: I contentiously assert that your body part is inadequately small and handwave etc
        adjacent cognitive nodes (nubs): a pea-sized amount; a nubbin (some nubbins are nubbiner than others); a pearl (some pearls are pearler than others); a pearl onion; peas and onions;^ polish the pearl; peel the onion (unwrap its (meh)mbranes)
        Idiom speaks of pea-sized things and of things the size of a flea^ but not (orthodoxically) of *flea-sized things. Which is to say, in a way, that to speak of flea-sized things would be idiomatic but not idiomatic. There is no reason but gap; it is so because it is so; it is what it is.
dispatching
- killcow | cowcatcher
  - shared parameter: dispatching of cattle from contexts
    - I'm proud of myself (I hope myself knows that) because I recalibrated on the fly and pulled this one back from the mainspace to reside instead here in my (special) userspace containment field. Oh — ooh la la, a containment field — is that what we're calling our buckets now, Mr Fancy Pants? Lol, is that what we're calling our buckets now? Jeezuz my brain goes ham. (It doesn't request permission to go ham before going ham because both it and I know that handwave etc)
      - I tried so hard and got so far / but in the end it's all just yes buts
        Lol jk; that's a class 2, not a class 1, but it feels so right tho, as they tend to do to the human nervous system
rackets
- racketry | rocketry
  - If you're making a bundle with your racket, you're best off not making a racket about it.
    - If you're sending your profits sky-high — even into the stratosphere — you best keep coming off^ as down to earth.
      - (meh)king bank? where you gonna put that cush? SFCU more like STFU, amirite?^
        PS: pincushion money;^ watch that cushion, cousin
        The strange thing about that one is that I *know* I've heard the collocation pincushion money repeatedly in my lifetime, and yet web corpus search and book corpus search are telling me at the moment that it is barely attested in writing.^ Is it one of those elusive terms that even in the internet era is much more heard than seen, to the point of a surprisingly wide differential? Hmm.
        Many months later: I belatedly got to the bottom of this one. I had indeed heard pincushion money before, but it hadn't occurred to me when I wrote the notes above that the usual term for the extra-petty petty cash of the household — the two-bit petty cash — is pin money, and household small change on the order two bits here or there is well known for being what can be found beneath the sofa cushions or seat cushions, which is apparently how you get from pin money to pincushion money. Another consideration is some vague subconscious notion of hiding small sums of money somewhere around the house — someplace that kids, or thieves, might not think to rifle through or riffle through (take your pick) — and some pincushion or seat cushion might fit the bill.^;-)
ϕ
- /ˌhiːməˈbɪliə/ is not to be confused with /ˌhiːməˈfɪliə/
  - b is not to be confused with ф
    - Do not adjust your set; this is not a kerning issue (nor a KoЯning one).
      - What a difference an F makes, which is to say, pay due heed to how you're using those lips of yours.^b-vs-ф
        Yes but: under its current parameter values, Wiktionary doesn't give a fuck about notating this fact.
        PS: Perhaps it is true that hips don't lie, but lips do lie; moreover, in some cases (i.e., parametrically extremized ones), the method for lie detection is greatly (parametrically) simplified, as it collapses to merely the (eminently solvable) problem of detecting whether the lips are moving or not.
        PPS: An addendum, a week or three later: Regarding b-vs-ф: in recent days I was introduced to a specific instance of the language-change theme that I hadn't encountered yet, which is tuscanization, including a certain set of consonant-shift trends. It has some analogies with barθelonization.
tele
- I was thinking about teleprinter and telecopier when it occurred to me to wonder whether any gastroenterologists have ever cracked any jokes about video capsule endoscopy and Teletubbies. It strikes me as the sort of thing that must inevitably have happened at least a few times by now.
  - Some gastroenterologists are dadder than others.
    - PS: tele-endoscopy;^ teleradiology; remote viewing; lol gtfo
prodigious·^📅
- prodigious·^📅 | prolific
  - shared parameter: inordinately productive nature
    - That's how they're similar. As for differentiators, one might say that the one is about being a precocious worker whereas the other is about being a ferocious worker.
      - I scribbled that ditty before examining the entry much. Upon examination there, I find that the precociousness aspect is an "especially" aspect and that in one of the senses prodigiousness and prolificness collapse to synonymy. This makes me stop to reappreciate that a child prodigy is merely the "especially" kind of prodigy, not the sole kind.
terraforming
- Terraforming might also have been *earthification or *earthization, but so far it hasn't yet been (to any extent reaching idiomatic establishment, that is; it's possible and not unlikely that if one mines the sci-fi corpi, one might find these attested there; but doing so will probably not make the cut of things that I end up doing anytime soon).
  - Terraforming is about bringing the climate into line with oneself, whereas acclimatization or acclimation is about bring oneself into line with the climate.
    - To make the pants fit, one might lose or gain weight, or one might tailor the pants by letting them out or taking them in. Depending on the nature of the pants and the self, one method often has more appeal than the other.
jokes
- A class 2 or 3 (perhaps 2.5?) sicko instance off the top of my head:
  - justice (noun): a blind old bat who is seldom let out of her cage to participate in human affairs.
    - Lol. You have to understand that I don't personally endorse all such sicko instances. It's just a guilty pleasure to spin one up parametrically here and there.
      - PS: A weird cognitive excursion: I just realized (for what I think is the first time ) that Category:English autohyponyms is grossly underpopulated (lol, that notion just reminded me of the joke where Apu says, I have noticed that your country is dangerously underpopulated). This is true (1) even without twisting the Bierceness dial, as any word with a subsense (##) qualifies. But (2) the scope and scale of its population also depends on the twisting of this same dial. As the dial sweeps somewhere in the vicinity of 2 through 2.5 to 3, the population of this category would swell mightily (that is, either geometrically or exponentially — I'd have to ponder which one, as I'm no mathematician). This is all fairly far out on the edge of visual range, in a nonocular way. A tasty bone to chew on later.
        This is bugging me because it's not just autohyponymy involved but also any carelessly aggressive assertion of false equivalence. This is not unrelated to (what might be shorthanded as) copula aversion. The problem with saying (say) life is but a dream (or, if you crank that sucker up, life is a joke) is that … what? how to put it? polysemy starts to spin out of control? Is that the way to put it? synonymy starts to spin out of control?^{dial twist} hypernymy and hyponymy?^{dial twist} coinstantiation?^{dial twist} all of these in parallel? Hmm. This is for later. In some ways, everything is related to everything else, but in other ways, everything just is what it is. What are the dial-turning agents that connect the poles? (one might aspire to become capable of running the staircases in the dark)
        My first interim thoughts are that this is merely an avatar of the truism that the hypernymy and hyponymy^{dial twist} of literal senses often collapse to synonymy^{dial twist} upon the parametric shift to figurativeness. I've scribbled some workups of that fact before, such as this one. The next line of the sketching out is that this is all related to the recent thought train about serial reportrayals in human sentience — the theme that when it's time to shift mental models it's time to start a new sentence, and so on. These are clearly enough all parts of the same mechanism. I just keep sniffing at the linkages among them, seeking to map them more.
        My gut tells me that although mapping the semantic relations is interesting and useful, getting to the bottom of that ocean is not the creation of a master map (of water columns and seafloor) because it is an ocean of continual recasting of variations and permutations: it is dynamic. Therefore, instead, the more important question is this: how do sentient minds maintain some baseline of orientation while they are continually reframing in that way? They switch metaphors repeatedly without losing the thread of orientation. What is that thread of orientation exactly? AAOx3 is part of it. Oh well. Enough for now. (PS: Reminder for later: These lines of thought co-occurred with the following and have cognitive interconnections with it: Wiktionary:Tea_room/2024/June#joke.)
        An inevitable component of the phenomenon is that there is a spectrum, a sliding scale, for the degree to which each sentient speaker participates in the cognitive underpinnings, even though all are participating in the conversation and the parsing. Countless speakers (of varying neurologic conformations) can successfully participate (where "successfully" = "successfully enough") even though they land on different segments of this spectrum. Some of the more interesting examples are ones when you point out a truism about the standard metaphor (that is, the conventional metaphor) behind any given figurative sense and while plenty of your interlocutors (or readers) are thinking "yeah, no shit, Sherlock," a few others are growing flustered and indignant because that concept has never occurred to them before (at least consciously) and their first gut reaction is that it must be bullshit (because how could it not be bullshit if I've never heard of it or thought of it before?). Well, one of the reasons by which you haven't heard it spoken aloud until now is that plenty of other speakers thought it was needless to say because of how obvious it is (to some neurologic conformations). This line of thought is not unrelated to the theme of people discovering and marveling at the human neurologic diversity by which some people have no interior/silent speech (or if they do it is of some form that ends up being called "none" through ineffability), some people have no interior/mental imagery (or if they do it is of some form that ends up being called "none" through ineffability), and so on.
        
        Another inevitable component of the phenomenon is the conjoined-twin truths that (1) ways of classifying come and go (and come again) and each one is never a last word and yet nonetheless (2) there are alignments among them, on the order of consensuses and greatest hits or jazz standards (as it were), that various humans (never all) temporarily agree to; the consensuses vary in their durability (that is, none are eternal but some are more durable than others) and in their strength of accord (that is, some consensuses are consensuser than others; and humans can sometimes even rank them via measuring them). There is an ontologic flexibility that allows sentients to participate in communication with one another in a way where the mutual intelligibility is worthwhile (adequate) even though it is always somewhere in the mediocre middle of a sliding scale rather than being absolute (perfect). Which is to say, it is analog (to be measured using floating point methods), not binary (1 or 0). It requires conceptual definitions as well as (in addition to) operational definitions. It is vector not raster; raster can represent it but is not defined in the same way as it.
mid
- A medievalist might be a middle-ager, but only coinstantially.
  - Some denizens of the Middle Ages were middle-agers, but only coinstantially.
    - Some middlers better mind their own midness.
captivation
- penis cage·^ | penis captivus
  - shared parameter: phallic confinement
    - Yes but.
daddies
- sky daddy | daddy issues
  - some daddy issues are issuer^^^ than others
    - Why have you forsaken me? / I don't think you trust in my oh never mind
wools
- There are idiomatically cotton wool, wood wool, and steel wool, but there is idiomatically no wool wool, because wool is wool.
  - hypernym: wool; but some wools are wooler than others, because natural language is woolly.
    - An interesting facet of this recurring theme among autohyponyms is that it is entirely possible, and in several ways useful and advisable, to show the autocoordinateness (autocoordination, autocohyponymy), which could easily enough be done by linking cot to a nearby id as anchor; but it is well predictable that such a feature might be rejected by most Wiktionarians and most humans, for reasons that will not be explored here/now, although I have some preliminary sniff test results about them.
      - Here's a first fix that old no-eyes has roughed in and can build out further later: Autohyponyms can be (or in many cases can be) sorted into classes: There are ones where the broader sense gets narrowed to the narrower sense, and there are ones where the narrower sense gets broadened to the broader sense. Graphically, that first class is all about "down and to the right" in sense grouping and navigating, whereas that second one is about "straight up" or "up and to the left". Which is also to say: It is true that all autohyponyms are also autohypernyms, but some autohypernyms are hyperer than others. The cardinal exemplars of the latter class — or at least the exemplars that are occurring to me right now and striking me as cardinal — are the ones around animal products and forest products and field crops. Thus milk, wool, cotton, meat, eggs, and some others that might be mined sometime (old no-eyes can mine for aboveground resources because he knows the rules so well as to know too how and when to break them). Some milks are milker than others; some wools are wooler and woollier than others.
        Humans are funny about being contentious about it even though there are easy, simple solutions available. One angle that gets pushed (by some, and especially, by those with self-interest in this direction) is the no true X angle.^ Another angle is refusal (by some, and especially, by those with self-interest in this direction) to say things like "milk substitute" or "milk alternative" (or "meat substitute" or "meat alternative") because of (selves' or sales prospects') irrational reasons for refusing to admit that there's nothing wrong with those. (Which is to say that they aren't evil, and if it floats your boat to eat tofu and oat milk instead of beef and cowmilk, then no one should be tarbrushing you as a devil about it, and you shouldn't be ashamed to say that you enjoy a meat substitute and that you consider it noninferior to meat for your own purposes. This is true regardless of whether animalian milks and meats might be found to be nutritionally optimal from some angles . Some people struggle more than others not to confuse the concept of "a mostly cromulent thing even if it is not perfect in some applications" with the concept of "repugnant evil garbage".)
        
        Returning for a moment to "straight up" or "up and to the left": a funny thing is that it is easy and logical to arrange even those ones into the "down and to the right" pattern, but many humans would soil themselves from discomfort if you presented that presentation to them. Like the proverbial robot whose head is at risk of exploding for failure of computing capability. Admittedly the distinction of diachrony and synchrony is relevant, whereas this particular subclass of diachrony is one that people know by heart and gut (although some care much more than others), but to be fair, it is a little precious that so many humans would care so much about this subclass of diachrony when they don't give a rat's ass about diachrony in most other contexts. There is a detectably shared parameter to the instances when they do care about diachrony though: it's often when they're standing on purism, essentialism, or essentialization in some way or other (the more pedantic and menacing the way, the better, from the usual standpoint).
        
        In natural language to date, (1) wire wool is steel wool unless otherwise specified, (2) steel wool is carbon steel wool unless otherwise specified, and (3) because point 2 is true, stainless steel wool is usually construed as coordinate with steel wool rather than hyponymous to it.
pods
- An orthopedic concentration in podiatric orthopedics is not *orthopodics, although it might have been.
  - An orthopedic concentration in pediatric orthopedics is (informally) peds orthopedics but is not (in any register) *pedorthopedics, although it might have been.
- An orthopod is not an orthopedic podiatrist nor a podiatric orthopedist but rather a general orthopedist.
  - An orthoped is not an orthopedic pediatrist nor a pediatric orthopedist but rather a general orthopedist.
- peder poder peds pods ped pod?
  - peder poder peds pods ped^-pede pod^-pod?
    - ¿podría ser que un(a) ortopedista puede oh never mind
heft·^📅
- heft·^📅 | heave | hoist | hoik | heist^ | hock | hoch | high
  - hang | hang up | hold up^
    - heighten
      - hold | hire
        hook | wire
        hook | wire | hanger | heaving
        
        harness
        harness
        
        hangup | holdup
        hmm
    - A coda, some days later: my brain later requizzed itself about names for hoists. (It didn't ask for my permission before requizzing, as it and I both know that my say in such things is constrained.) To its own question my brain replied, chainfall. It's a shame that chainfall doesn't fall into the schema above, where /eɪt͡ʃ/, also known as /heɪt͡ʃ/ in some quarters, reigns (or rules the roost). I was a bit crestfallen that I wouldn't be able to hitch chainfall onto the train of thought. Regardless, my brain proceeded to point out to me that one who reigns holds the reins, much as a rigger holds the chains, while the ones who roost are busy roosting in the rafters where the chainfalls are anchored and from which their chains fall so nicely. Don't mind the occasional bit of birdshit; we're out back in the workshop. I've packed a lunch, and I don't mind feeding the birds a bit here or there.
To scale, skin, bone, and gut a fish is to descale, deskin, debone, and degut it.
- To milk a cow is to demilk it, in fact albeit not in idiom.
  - The value in remilking a cow is much like the value in reshearing a sheep: the shared parameter is the duration since the previous episode; the scale of units is best parametrically shifted (hours versus months, even though they're both just milliseconds all the way down).
    - (en-)(de-)(re-): (en)salada | (de)salada | (re)salada: both WT and DRAE show the last-mentioned one as a red link, but why? resalt and resaler pero no resalar? No lo creo. Y así.
short-sighted | short-range vision | iron-sighted | sighted for short ranges
- From a sniper's sharp-sighted perspective, an iron-sighted setup is a short-sighted one, notwithstanding the fact that iron can be sharp. Iron can be sharp, but so can glass.
  - Not so much yes but as meh but.
    - Bonus points tho: being within iron-sight range is not to be confused with being within the Iron Range
      - Lagniappe: in which range is your grange? In which branch is your ranch? Have you been riding the range (you lousy stinkin rangerider)? Or just ranging your rig (you lousy stinkin rig-ranger)? A grange is named after grain, and you might need a few more grains in your cartridge if you want enough range to reach that partridge. But the partridge in this lagniappe vignette is not the partridge à la langrage. And maybe instead of a lagniappe vignette one might prefer a lasagna con viño o una salada con vinaigrette. Lol fu2
I feel weird that I'd never known until today that I live in the Laniakea Supercluster. Here is why it is disconcerting:
- The list of cardinal conically subsuming holonymic entities of which I was already aware that I am an inhabitant is as follows:
  - my township, Township → my county, County → my U.S. state, the state of → my country, the United States → my continent, North America → my planet, Earth → my solar system, the Solar System → my galaxy, the Milky Way → → → my universe, the Universe
    - The two data values at " → " are "my local group, the Local Group → my supercluster, the Laniakea Supercluster", as I learned just today (that is, so late as today and not any earlier).
      - This would make me analogous to a gut bacterium who (if you'll forgive the anthropomorphism) lives in my colon and knows that it lives in the Universe and knows well enough that it lives in the gut of some beast or other but really can't be arsed to learn the name of that particular animal because the name really doesn't fucking matter much one way or the other to this tiny critter, now does it? If the name were Snazzyland or Pineappleville or Whothefuckwhatzitz, how would life be different, and who if anyone is or will be coming to administer any test (with any stakes) of whether or not the critter knows it? Additionally, suppose the gut bacteria had come up with a name for me among themselves, without input from me or any other humans. They would say that my name is (say) Perwhoozzlewhatitz, regardless of whatever names I know for myself, and in a way they would not be wrong. If indeed we're not all alone in this jawn, then just imagine how many names the Laniakeawhatsitz has, even now, even though we'll never know most of them! In this little story, the beast whose name does not really fucking matter is me. I could be Tom, Dick, or Harry; as far as my tenant the gut bacterium is concerned, it's all one, because there is no operational reason to give a shit.
        The only excuse that mitigates my ignorance is that until yesterday, historically speaking (which is to say, until the past century), no human had ever heard of the Laniakea Supercluster because the Laniakea Supercluster had no human-bestowed name at all.
        It strikes me as odd that for something that is so important to (and so utterly holonymous to) humankind, I never knew until yesterday (as of tomorrow), and none of us ever knew until last week (as it were), that it exists or what we might name it. It is one of the largest centrally important facts of our life and existence that most people give zero fucks about. Still and even to this day they give no fucks, and tomorrow they still won't, even (or especially) if you urge them to.
        One might ask how this is different from monks of yore who spent their lives memorizing reams of worthless made-up human-generated info such as the names of all the angels in the 37th circle of heaven or whatever the fuck fairy tales they misapprehended were real. In an important way it is not different: at no time in my lifetime or in yours will it matter to anyone except astrophysics boffins whether the name of our supercluster is Laniakea or Tuba-baloney or Persimmonberry-Nutsack-Alpha. But in another way it is a bit different: I am reasonably confident that this supercluster exists and is real, rather than fictitious; and if someone were to use a galactic flyswatter and squish it tomorrow, I would very much be dead the day after tomorrow.
        PS: A holonymic entity is not to be confused with a hologrammic entity.
        PPS: kärt barn har många namn | success has many fathers, failure is an orphan
        paternity test | everybody loves a winner
A set of cohyponyms: lookalike | soundalike | smellalike | tastealike | feelalike
- As regards the five cardinal senses (the cardinal five senses), all of the five similars above are instantiated in the world of competitive commerce, and yet three of those five are lexical gaps by the standard of absence of widespread idiomatic establishment, although my gut predicts that if I run corpus searches for them, I will find them all at least lightly attested.
  - I'll probably do that one of these days. If any have hundreds of attestations, then they're fair game for WT entry, notwithstanding any lack of lexicographic coverage in other dictionaries to date.
The Exchequer has a chequered past lol.^
- The Chancellor has been behind bars lol.
  - A Chancellor might be scandalous or scandaled, and he might end up even more cancelled than a revenue stamp.
    - meh
      - PS tho: For a man behind a grate, even if his tablecloth is not chequered, it might be ⊕sun-dappled, depending on the angle of the lighting and the fairness of the breeze; and so it ends up a confused and shifting mottle of light and dark, which is perhaps the most chequered sort of chequering of all — and certainly the sort that cardsharps such as Chancellor types are well familiar with: so many grey areas and not many bright lines.
        Coda, some days later: Speaking of a man behind a thing (parameter value selection: THING NOT FOUND), the thing that a chancellor (not least the Chancellor) has in common with a wizard (not least the Wizard) is that he angrily insists that you pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, ostensibly because the man behind the curtain is a mere footnote to the grand system (a footman) but really because he doesn't want you to find out that the grand system is merely a man among some men, all too human. Lastly, I would like to note here that a man behind a thing can in some parametrically defined situations be a man carrying a thing.
Schmoes skimming articles with coffee, episode n+1:
- I enjoyed skimming this article with my coffee. I'm among the intended audience of this piece: a mathematical layperson who enjoys hearing a retelling of the goings-on among mathematicians in a storytelling format that I can comprehend well enough for the purposes at hand.
  - One of the mathematicians quoted therein said, "Isomorphism is equality. I mean, what else? If you cannot distinguish two isomorphic objects, what else would it be? What else would you call this relationship?" Obviously I can't speak to the mathematical formalization at all, but when I read this question, the natural language habitué in me immediately replied, "para⁠equality. You would call it paraequality." That answer concerns what word you would choose to assign your semantic underpinnings to. As for what those underpinnings are, well, that's the part that schmoes like me can't answer.
    - PS: Is it true that "Isomorphism is equality" = "Isomorphism is equality"? Only boffins might tell for sure, and even they might have some lingering questions. Some boffins linger longer than others. One of the factors involved is that it depends on what the meaning of 'is' is. Which can be either an aboveboard cosmologic pondering or a sleazy under-the-desk copout, depending on who the speaker is or what they're trying to do.
      - PPS: Too bad that as a mathematical layperson, I'm shit at being a boffin, which is to say,^=? I'm shit for a boffin, that is,^=? a shit boffin. But all my recent talk of shitgibbons and shitgibbonlike words predisposed me to wonder whether a ˌshit ˈboffin can be said to be a ˈshitˌboffin.
cramer·^📅
- To cream is not to cremate, although the words are nearly homonymic; and …
  - crémer is not crémer, although the words are fully homonymic.
The established definition of a shitgibbon includes the aspect that the trochee component is more or less unmeaningful in the context. Really it could be anything with the same stress and meter plus more or less the same laughability, absurdity, or contempuousness.
- This aspect of that definition excludes the following words. ~~I'll list any here that I think of or run across.~~ I may not try to collate a list here, per the PPS further below.
  - assmuncher; **shitn--ger; **turd burglar;
- However, these words obviously have a thread in common, cognitively, with shitgibbons as defined by that established definition; they are evidently a subclass of a shared superclass, even if no one has adequately defined it yet. Something there is that the human mind likes about the stress and meter pattern and (no less) the contemptuous dismissal. My gut insists that it is no random coincidence that assmuncher and assmonkey are synonymous. (The database index rears its head? Lol don't go there in the context of this particular sentence.)
  - PS: Even asskisser, asslicker, bootlicker, **cock gobbler, and **rug muncher, although their trochee component is indisputably meaningful within the overall unit, likewise form a subclass of the shared superclass. As for assmuncher, not so much, because its usual/principal meaning is not tied to any literal underpinning — which supports my gut feeling that it is closer in nature to assmonkey than anyone might superficially think — the agent noun thing is just a red herring, a serendipitous twist, in its case. It sounds like it ought to mean something in that way, even though it doesn't happen to. Actually this might mean that almost all of the terms mentioned here so far belong to one subclass (the meaningful–agent noun subclass) except that (1) assmuncher is a pseudo-member of that subclass and (2) clearly **shitn--ger is morphologically different, representing a different subclass.
    - I don't care for using words of these types, so I may not have much more to say about them, but I plan to collate any other superclass members if I think of them or encounter them.
  - PPS: While I was thinking about the facts that a shitmonger is a shit-stirrer and that a pudpuller^ is only literally different from a crudbucket (or douchepocket) but not much so figuratively, it occurred to me that I don't have enough time nor enough obsession to get to the bottom of this whole train of thought and produce any near-exhaustive lists. I guess if I ever reprise this particular bucket of shit I'll just focus on ones that catch my attention especially, from certain angles because of certain facets. Which is to say, regarding the superset, at least for now: meh. But there's one that, since it's already in hand, I'll scribble here now. It occurred to me this morning while I was brushing my teeth (yes, I know, I'm just a lousy mthrfkn toothbrusher for chrissakes): *assmonger is the biggest lexical gap I've seen all week; it's the broad side of a barn that I'm truly surprised has not been hit yet. (Some asses are broader than others; I'd hit that lol.) For if a shitmonger is a gossip peddler, then an assmonger is obviously a prostitute (at least in the sociolinguistic register used by jerkwads and asswipes). This is the sort of word that I bet if I did a corpus search it would turn up as already in existence albeit one that has never caught on. Update a minute later: Yup, my gut was right again. You can tell from skimming some of those snippets that people don't always use the literal sense; as with the others above, at the figurative level the semantic takeaway tends to collapse to merely "piece of shit" of one kind or another.
    - shit-stirrer | shit disturber | stirrer
      - Yes and.
        shit-stirrer | shit disturber | turbidity
        Yes but.
In some circumstances, one must remember to place the escutcheon before placing the ferrule.
- An installation can be an act or process, or its result; in the latter case, comeronymy applies for these; and coinstantially, regarding plumbing parts and plumbing supplies, also cohyponymy.
The words unobtainium and **Chinesium have antonymic relation from most viewpoints; the first one's referent is (notionally) a metal that is scarce, expensive, and desirable whereas the other's referent is (stereotypically) any old shit that could be scavenged into the furnace, being cheap, widely available, and undesirable.
- Yes but:
  - The words **Chinesium and **monkey metal don't need to be used at all anymore, for about the same reason as why various other words don't need to be used anymore, including **monkeypox, **n-head, **pretty much all of these, a whole series of **ones on this pattern (including a few that I've heard that Wiktionary doesn't enter yet ), countless ones for any of a hundred ethnicities (e.g., **French disease), and many others. (Some of the ones derived from monkey came from the simian sense , which means that they weren't meant to be offensive when they were coined and even today don't need to be parsed that way; but it is an incontrovertible fact that every negative-connotation term on the pattern of monkey+ has often been and will always be taken with a wink and an OK sign by racists to be dogwhistle/code for racial denigration. New nomenclatural synonyms are easy to generate; we don't need thorny ones.)
    - It is OK, and appropriate, for an unabridged dictionary to enter them and define them and label their offensiveness and provide their necessary usage notes, but they don't need extensive semantic relation links, and it is better that they don't have those, because inserting those is counterproductive and antithetical to rightfully discouraging these words' use.
creeper | creepie
- shared parameter: seats that are extra low
  - Yes but.
    - PS: Creepers aren't creepies, but creepers are creepy. Either way, somebody might be feeling low.
tin-pot dictator·^📅 | tempest in a teapot
- shared parameters: the person with the bad attitude thinks that they either are hot shit or are stirring up hot shit, but their calibration is known (by others) to be suspect
  - PS: pot metal can be chintzy; some teapots are tin, and some tin teapots are chintzier than others; some tin-pot dictators have chintzier taste than others; some tin-pot dictators' supporters wear tinfoil hats (some of which are tinnier than others)
slow news day | dog day | summer holiday | summer hole day·^📅 | news hole
- meh, there was nothing worth reporting here
No, not that English Civil War, the other one.
- But as for Old Roundhead, some civil wars are less civil than others.
dress | rag
- dress | rag
  - dress | rag
    - rag | rag | rag
- —What a pretty dress! —What, this old rag?
memory hole·^📅 | memory palace
- The one is a hole (↓) where forgetting (−) happens; the other is a mansion (↑) where remembering (+) happens.
  - Some holes are hollower than others; some halls are hallower than others.
    - memory lane | memory chest | memory box
      - Some memory chests are laner than others.
        memory leak | memory stick
        If your windows are leaking and sticking, you can try to patch them.
        (meh)mory
        PS: some forgetting holes are forgetter than others.
        PPS: oubliettes de l'histoire | memory holes | holes
A boarding house can be a rooming house.
- An RV can be a roaming house.
  - A boring house is not a reaming house, but boring and reaming can be house specialties.
    - Doghouses and loghouses are rhyming houses.
      - An apartment house is broadly an apartment building and narrowly coordinate with one, as some houses are houser than others and some are narrower than others.
The concept that is idiomatically called room and board could just as likely have ended up being idiomatically called bed and table.
- The only reason it's not is because it didn't, ipso facto.
  - PS: It just belatedly occurred to me that bed and breakfast is something slightly different. Any meal can be at table, but some boards are boarder than others.
Someone who's dauntless will run the gauntlet or throw down the gauntlet at the drop of a hat.
- Such a hearty is archetypally not gaunt and not of haunted hue; he is no goner, although he has apparently become gloveless and hatless, rather than gloved and hatted.
  - Is he gauntletless?^ungauntleted Is he gauntless (ungaunt)?^ant Is his domain (or his conscience) hauntless? And tauntless? Bless his heartiness and its hardiness.
Ozziness extended
- Each of these has some legs: parameter value switch positions leading off to branchings (not branchless; not limbless)
  - body parts:
    - heartless/hearted | brainless/brained | spineless^{≈gutless; ≈unspiny}/spined | headless^≈unheaded/headed | handless^≠unhanded/handed | footless^≠unfooted/footed | armless^≠unarmed/armed | legless/legged
      - mindless/minded/mindful·^{thoughtless/thoughtful} | soulless/souled/soulful
        backless/backed | stomachless·^{agastric; ≠gutless}/stomached·^bellied | fingerless/fingered | toeless/toed
        mouthless | unmouthed | mouthed • noseless | unnosed | nosed • earless | uneared | eared • lipless | unlipped | lipped • tongueless | untongued | tongued
        Nouns but not (or usually not) adjectives: handful | mouthful | noseful | earful | eyeful | headful
        And of course, everyone's favorite around these parts: eyeless | uneyed | eyed
        PS: Many cardinal parts of the human body have a figuratively named counterpart among parts or features of objects. Regarding front and back and sides, well, everything has those; but regarding anatomy per se, the examples include all of the following: head, neck, throat, body; spine; butt; arms and legs; hands and feet; fingers, thumbs, and toes; elbows, wrists, knees (but not ankles though, as far as I can think at the moment); eyes (two of em), ears, nose, mouth, teeth, lips, tongue; belly, breast, nipple; even the asshole and the armpit, as places within geographical regions can be those, figuratively. Speaking of assholes, even the boss is not immune, although that one involves homophony rather than figurative extension.
        This train of thought just reminded me of what they say about even the lips and the anus, and everything but the squeal. But even a vocal squeal has a mechanical counterpart; after all, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
  - Any wizard who can help all these circumstances is more than just a man behind a curtain.·^{(curtainless·^uncurtained/curtained)}
    - PS: A study in blues, reds, and missense blues, to be extended and examined (wire-traced) later:
      - handful/handload | mouthful/mouthload | noseful/noseload | earful/earload | eyeful/eyeload | headful/headload
        PPS: more wire traces: switch | twitch
        shared parameters: short quick movements; electrically charged environments
        flick the switch and try not to twitch; flick | tweak
        
        Also: a -y series: hearty | brainy | spiny | heady | handy | footy | army | leggy | fingery || plus: mouthy | nosy | lippy | tonguey
        filtered down by un-: unhearty | | unspiny | unheady | unhandy
        filtered down by non-: nonspiny
    - Another PS: half-assed and halfhearted are often the same thing, and the same is true of ⊕⁠whole-assed and wholehearted, but not of assless and heartless. At any rate (or ratio or proportion), if you give it your all, it is getting your whole heart, and your whole ass; and yet: you can put your whole heart into something, idiomatically, but the only things you can put your whole ass into, idiomatically, are a sling or a chair.
Some heartless monsters are more heartless than others.
- handwave etc
rachicentesis | cordocentesis
- No, not that cord, the other one.
cartilaginous | mucilaginous
- shared parameter: laginousness
  - jk
The vertebrae are a rack of bones (a rachis), and we hope not to get rachitis in them;
- We also hope not to be racked on the rack, which would be torture to our rachidial bones;
  - And lastly, we must be careful when playing racquetball, lest we jack up our rack of bones through bad form.
    - Now we're really racking up the groans, whether from torturous punishment or from torturous punish⁠ment.
      - PS: The rickets–rachitis axis is a rick–rack axis (concerning a rickety rack), but the axis is part of the back rack.
You can do something expeditiously, and you can do it judiciously, and sometimes both can be true coinstantially, and sometimes it might be either one or the other but not both.
- Not every action that is expeditious is judicious.
  - Not every action that is expedient is judicious.
    - Not everything that is judicious is both juicy and delicious.^
      - Not everything that you read herein is intellectually nutritious.
institutionalize | deinstitutionalize | reinstitutionalize
- institutionalization | deinstitutionalization | reinstitutionalization
  - institute (v) | ‡*deinstitute (v) | reinstitute (v)
    - institution | ‡*deinstitution | reinstitution
      - The reason why those two particular unlinked forms are lexical gaps is that when those concepts are meant, the words that will be used will typically be discontinue or cease, discontinuation or cessation, and so on.
        Just another instance of some en-/de-/re- + -e/-tion + -ize/-ise/-ization/-isation parameterization.
        PS: cession is not cessation, even though both tend to involve giving up. But they both come ultimately from cedere and thus also from a shared PIE root, according to both MW and WT.
mucosity | purulence | viscosity
- mucous | purulent | viscous
  - mucopurulent | puromucous
    - mucus; slime; phlegm ;; moco; mucosidad ;; mucus; mucosité ;; Schleim ;; flema
      - Eine Schleimhaut ist, overliterally but not idiomatically, a slime hide.
        una cuerda temática; una cuerda flemática
        PS: a viscosity can be viscous; however, a viscus is not viscous but rather visceral.
If Transylvania is Transylvania (beyond the forest), and transfermium is transfermium (beyond fermium), then perhaps the neighbor's pasture across the valley might be transfermia.
- It might be, but it's not.
  - Recently I saw some science news where transfermium elements were described as being transferium, which is the sort of slip that, despite being trivial, (nonetheless) elicits a groan.
    - If you're going to tell me to shut up and quit whining because transfermium can be transferium as same difference, then what about transferrum versus transferium? I don't know, but transferrin will transfer your ferrum for you, or perhaps your ferret, and apparently ferrets got their name because they like to transfer things.
      - PS: Although transferral is transfɝrr⁠al, transferrin is transfɛrr⁠in, because life ain't fair.
jimmy | shimmy | shim | shimming | slim jim
- shared parameter: rhythmic, oscillating, manipulatory motions (of a thin or skinny tool or material, of one's own body ), often for bad boy or bad girl purposes (nefarious or salacious ones)
  - When you shim something out with shims to align it, you fudge it into compliance with your wishes as to its physical conformation; when you jimmy something with a shim to open it, you fudge it into compliance with your wishes as to its physical conformation
    - meh, it's a stretch, and yet the database index doesn't not lurk below
      - PS: snap into it | snap out of it — which is what I'll do now.
coal car | ← chemical car → | coal tar
- A reefer might have been a *cold car, or at least a *cool car, but people generally don't say the former (and didn't say it much in the old days, either, if my rapid half-ass search is any measure), and when they say the latter, they mean something different.
  - What about a coal war·^hypernym? What about a cold war? What about cold tar?
    - What about a *cole car as a hopper full of cabbages?
      - meh
As for why Johnny has so many dish soaps:
- Mind your own business, David
All this talk of industrialists and industrialism reminds me that Destro is an industrialist who likes to portray his industries as indestructible.
- Some industrialists are more industrious than others; and
  - some industries are more industrial than others, some are less destructible than others, and some are dustier than others (*cough*).
    - Destro seems destined to get his comeuppance tho, despite his intestinal fortitude lol
      - PS: Bruce Wayne is also an industrialist, but not in the Rust Belt, although he keeps a lot of metal gadgets on his Bat Belt. (He's the type of magnate who does cool things with magnets and such.)
        M.A.R.S. Industries | Wayne Industries
        shared parameters: diversified industrial holdings led by shadowy, wealthy leaders in tight black clothes that show off how these unlikely magnates are ripped (jacked) to an unlikely degree
        Some holdings are holder than others.^^
        PPS: regarding science and industry: Batman's a scientist, but it's not Batman.
theft of fire | management of fire
- theft prevention | fire prevention
  - you have to crawl before you can walk; you have to steal fire before you can manage it
    - Blah blah blah the old theme about how if you steal a little, you're a thief, but if you steal a lot, you're a business titan
      - Whether Prometheus was himself a Titan is a matter for the courts, but as a business titan, he makes the cut.
        PS: permethrin is not promethean except in the sense that it was cleverly devised and has been quite useful: a natural resource cleverly and usefully exploited.
        PPS: promethium is not promethean except notionally and honorarily.
A codpiece can be a piece of mail, but it is not a mailpiece because it is not a piece of mail.
- Nevertheless, if I ever become a mail carrier, I plan to wear pants that offer bite protection,^^ because just because I'm obliged to deliver your mailpieces doesn't mean that your dog is allowed to address himself to my malepieces.
Blah blah blah something about the analogy between (1) the mixing of metaphors and (2) the juxtaposition of competing or alternative mental models — this ties into the standard amount of polysemic flexibility in natural language, which involves referential indeterminacy and competing or alternative operational definitions (besides polysemy and homonymy themselves).
- The reason why there is no one single ontology behind natural language that could be rendered machine-readable is because instead natural language constantly projects new projections upon the screen using competing or alternative mental models, each of which is fairly limited in scope — when it's time to extend the scope, it's time to reframe: start another sentence, another paragraph, another discussion, another line of thought. Human minds do this effortlessly; moreover, just as this method comes so easily to them, other methods are not even possible for them (they cannot operate from the premise of some single intricate-but-vast model because they can neither fully keep track of nor fully agree on its countless details). Moreover, to treat such a thing as a goal is a fool's errand anyway, because reality is a vast noisy place with competing or alternative possibilities for sensemaking.
  - If one recognizes the constraint of the cave and recognizes human cognition as a woven/connected collection of shadow puppet shows upon the wall, then one need only crack (and learn to emulate or simulate) the mechanisms by which the weaving is done so expertly (albeit unconsciously).
    - Easier said than done. All this thread is is an idle sketch, a daydream, that I would sooner capture a recording of than lose entirely. I lay no claim to any notion that it isn't mediocre and mostly useless.
      - PS: sentiences | sentences
        We used to think (before generative AI was developed) that it takes sentiences to string together multiple sentences in ways that are convincing to sentients.
        Now we have learned that either sentience or pseudosentience will do for that task per se.
        Next we are looking at how to run validating tests on the fly to filter those outputs down to their factive subsets.
        Easier said than done. All this thread is is an idle sketch, a daydream, that I would sooner capture a recording of than lose entirely. I lay no claim to any notion that it isn't mediocre and mostly useless.
jumping jack + squat thrust = jack squat?
- there are various ways to get jacked; some are squatter than others
  - speaking of squatters, you'll have plenty of time for jacking when you're livin in a van down by the river
    - Some people know jack squat; I knew Jack Squat, and you're no Jack Squat — you're jack and squat compared with Jack Squat.
      - If Jack Frost squats in the forest and no one is there to see it, does anyone know or care? Can heads or tails be made of the scat, which is to say, is there any scatology involved?
        scatology | eschatology: shared parameter: close study of shit, but some shit is shitter than other shit
        I really should stop jazzing around in this scat session now, as there's nothing of value in it
Here is a special one that may end up rebucketed maybe:
- what a memory palace has to do with one of old no-eyes's mineshafts
  - The thought is interesting in light of the relationship of a hypothesis to an experiment that empirically tests it.
    - Riding the elevator again, have we been? The mineshaft elevator this time?
      - Is it a strange combination of mining and construction?
        That's an interesting vein that is resisting my pickaxe at the moment. Something about needing wormholes to get the analogy to work.
        That's OK, because no one loves a hole in the ground more than a worm does.
        And if instead all that comes of it is jack shit, well, that's fine too, because no one loves shit as much as oh never mind.
        PS: blah blah blah redacted, yada yada yada lightning rod RIP.
        Seriously, God bless them, they're all dead, they just don't know it yet.
        Lol jk as if
        PS: telemetry | parametry
        shared parameters: data at a distance; is is as is does
        telemetry measures where something is, what it is doing, and where it is going; parametry controls those things
        blah blah blah passive (↓) versus active (↑); find out versus fuck around
        if you combine them you get the whole package (↕); both fucking around and finding out
obsess | obsidere
- Yes.
  - obsidian | obsidere
    - No.
      - cession | supersession
        No, but thanks for playing and play again.
        obsession | supersession
        Yes but.
        PS: bonus round:
        supersedence | subsidence: ↕?
        No; sitting is not sliding, although it may entail sliding into a slouch, and despite the fact that when a thing is superseded its importance subsides.
        As we saw recently, if you're going to double down, you may as well make it a double time hoedown.
adumbration^ | blind men and an elephant^
- Putting the dumb in adumbration lol
  - Lol, but who among us is entirely clear of the cave? Outside the umbrage of the umbrella (a parasol, in this case)? Let him cast the first stone.
    - Blah blah blah people who live in glass houses, but the places where everyone lives are obstructions of view, not transparencies — this is what happens when metaphors collide, in a way that is perhaps in some ways comparable to when names collide.^ But old no-eyes loves kitbashing and wants to know whether you call that a collision.
You bell the cat and name her bell cat;
- She wears hell's bells cause she's a hellcat —
  - Who will tame her? Best not you;
    - She laps from a dish of witches' brew;
      - But something stronger still is lurking
        If I can just get this outfit working
        Distill witchspirit from a monster mash
        of jimson, wormwood, rye, and ash
        Let it soak in oak awhile
        Drive it around for a country mile
        Let every hillbilly gawk and stare
        Step to the porch to get some air
        Take it all back until next year
        Y'all come back now, soon, ya hear?
- encore:
  - the whip-poor-will will sing with a will·^📅
    - till the revenuers bust up the still
deal breaker | circuit breaker
- shared parameter: both stop the music, as they say; but:
  - the first stops the music in a reliably disappointing way, whereas the second stops the music in ways that are often disappointing but sometimes dearly appreciated
    - A deal breaker virtually always is, or represents, a defect, whereas a circuit breaker is usually a nondefective hero agent that successfully intercedes with something else's defect
      - By corollary, one might say (even if one doesn't) that a circuit breaker, as an agent that breaks a process in a good way, stands guard against deal breakers, as defects that break a process in a bad way.
        PS: My mind couldn't let it go quite yet. Why it is interesting is that there is a shift in frame of reference on (what the general semanticists like to call) the silent level. A circuit is a deal too, in several ways (e.g., e.g., e.g., e.g., e.g.), just as cats are people too, which is why my mind lingered over the disjunct that arises from another angle; but some deals are dealer than others, you see.
        PS: Regarding dearly appreciated: the difference between dearly appreciated and clearly appreciated is sometimes barely appreciable, at a glance and from a distance. Meow.
To cancel a check and to void a check both involve rendering it nonnegotiable; but each one is done on a different side of the check by a different person or entity: a check-writing role can void a check so that no one will ever cash it, whereas a check-cashing role (a clearing role) can cancel a check so that the recent cashing is the last one that can ever be successfully attempted.
- What's (mildly) interesting is the total combination (1) that natural language neatly provides for a reliable differentiation by reserving one of the parasynonymous verbs for the one side, and the other one for the other side; (2) that fluent speakers pick this up effortlessly, and most of them know it down pat without anyone ever having consciously "taught" it to them (pedagogically); and (3) that it is also possible to have enough metalinguistic awareness to be (mildly) impressed by these facts: to (duly) appreciate how neat/cool they are.
  - PS: annul; cancel; cancel out; invalidate; nullify; void
    - stamp
      - cross out; shred; rip up; tear up
petrify is stonify, and it might also have been *stonize or *rockify, but it's not. (And rockify is something else, homonymously.)
- ossify might also have been *bonize or *bonify, but it's not. (And bonify is something else, homonymously.)
  - *denatrify and *cuprify might have been — and so might have *desodiumize and *chalcify, respectively — but they didn't, so they're not.
    - I might have cared, but I don't, so — ■
      - PS, though: I'd rather be bonified than boned.
        PPS: to skeletonize and to ossify are both to turn (something) to bone(s), in one way or another.
market power
- relations:
  - See also > antonymic force > commoditization; fungibility
  - See also > hyponymic force: pathologic extremes > price fixing; price gouging
- Yes but.
  - Why the but? Not because of irrelevancy — not at all. Rather, because this set is slightly outside the parametric environment of optimization of Wiktionary.
    - An interesting thought: a Wikipedia article about market power can incorporate these relations into its text (if it is written well enough), but stripping down to the skeleton is slightly too threadbare pedagogically. It produces a set of terse statements that is entirely accurate but fairly unpedagogical. Nonetheless it could still be useful for certain use cases. Who are the user personae for such use cases? Certain roles among humans and machines, one could say summarily.
      - Gossamer at the edge, but the gut senses validity: What this is doing is showing a schematic and saying "you are here." Whether the truism is either boring or interesting — either truistic or insightful — depends on the current configuration of scales over each set of eyes. Reaching for an analogy, it is this: the ones who are already oriented, like habitués well familiar with a building layout, will say "yeah, no shit, so what" (in response to seeing the schematic hanging on the wall), whereas the newbies will say, "oh thanks, that helps." Somewhere in between those poles is also the persona who keeps moving from place to place to place and mostly is oriented but is helped by signposts that quickly confirm and enhance their orientation — "oh yes, a reminder, this usefully refreshes a certain portion of the map in my memory."
        An interesting fact about this line of thought is that it is actually the same line of thought as to why nondiscriminator-type thesaurus-makers consider the discriminations omissible — "the target users don't need them because either (1) their minds fill them in upon seeing the signpost OR (2) they look it up in a separate reference work (i.e., a dictionary as companion to the thesaurus)." What plenty of people don't happen to know about Roget and his original thesaurus is that subclass 1 is what he and it were about. He built it originally for himself as the prime target user of subtype 1.
        
        Tracing this all a bit further, one can see a vista — one could build a parametrically modified cousin of Wiktionary that was broadly similar but a bit extended, allowing for entering the relations that broached this line of thought. I think idly of doing this for myself if not for anyone else (which is how Roget's thesaurus began), but it doesn't strike me as something that I alone can expect to do practicably — the scope is too huge, and there's not quite enough point in it, for my own use and amusement alone. This brings the train of thought back around, once again, to the idea that this userspace is the closest cousin to such a thing as I will build, at least now (in my current era) and perhaps also ever. The eyes are bigger than the stomach, and I imagine how cool a vast banquet would be, but a soup and sandwich here and there is the sketch in the meantime.
        
        There is also the theme of "didn't somebody somewhere already build such things elsewhere (so why reinvent the wheel)", but no — show me the existing reference work of thesaurus or thesauruslike type where you'll look up market power and find those same relations, labeled as to their force. It's unavailable. The closest thing that I'm currently aware of is OneLook Thesaurus, which does get into the ballpark but doesn't contain those particular hits (swing and a miss, you win some, you lose some). And I must point out here that what I'm on about here is more focused on a schematic of branches in a canopy, whereas the gestalt effect at OneLook Thesaurus (so far, in the current era) is more a basket of leaves to flip through than a schematic of branches showing "you are here, and look how you can move over to there — which branch leads there." A schematic of tree limbs versus a basket or pile of leaves. This thought puts me in mind of visual thesauri and word clouds and such, but honestly even those often feel gimmicky in gestalt effect. Just throwing a pot of Spaghetti-Os at the wall and "marveling" at the "picture" that they make is a bit like hanging a Jackson Pollock painting and "marveling" at the "scene" that it provides — misplaced enthusiasm. Hey, a Pollock is great for what it is (i.e., in its own way, for its own purposes) — but a landscape scene is not what it is, nor is a schematic what it is.
        
        I don't especially care for this exposition at the moment, but neither am I quite willing to throw it in the garbage can yet.
referential indeterminacy | referential integrity
- shared parameter: the (fixed or variable) nature of the map-territory relations: exactly what does each symbol or value refer to, or not?
  - In RDB design, integrity is strict and dichotomous: it either exists or fails to exist, and the strictness about PKs and FKs enforces complete absence of ambiguity, nonuniqueness, overlap, and so on; in natural language, integrity is fuzzy: the indeterminateness of the referential indeterminacy has limits, which means that the indeterminacy has (some/enough) integrity as long as the variation is within certain parameters (of sensibility, shared ontologic outlines, etc: agreeing on forests even if not on every tree) (→). But there is an underlying thing in common (namely, map-territory relation) that referential indeterminacy in natural language does not serve with full precision (objective repeatability down to any degree of granularity with zero inter-rater differences) whereas referential integrity in RDBs does serve it so.
    - Yes but: you can't point this out (not even unobtrusively) via see-also links in the two Wikipedia articles, because some moron or other will come along and complain that there is no possible conceptual relation. Which is dead blind, but there you go: welcome to the discourse.
sail close to the wind·^📅 | fly too close to the sun | push the envelope | toe the line
- shared parameters: flirting with disaster and either slipping into it or maintaining a footing on the brink
  - toe the line flirts with contronymy without quite slipping into it: one sense (the main one) focuses on the outcome of staying within the line whereas another sense (a less established one) focuses on teetering and wobbling upon it and awaiting the outcome (→)
Reading the news (via a digital newspaper) and saw someone quoted as mentioning an *end-around (n) where the noun end run would clearly be expected.
- A subtle catachresis by the speaker? A minor mistranscription by transcription software? One would need to know the method of interview to say. Did the quotee say it in an email (as news stories not uncommonly specify in the 21st century)? If so, the catachrestic construction is probably his own, unless it was erroneously introduced by a misguided editor while the article was being lightly edited (as news stories not uncommonly specify in the 21st century).
  - Those who seek to get around an obstacle might try to go around it by making an end run.
    - Sometimes the obstacle is the runaround that you're getting from someone else; that is, someone is giving you the runaround and you need to get around it.
      - When an obstacle is in your path, you might try to detour around it (go around it) so that you can get around it, and this involves going all the way past it, around its end.
        PS: A circumvention is,^ overliterally but not idiomatically, a come-around; and a workaround is a way to get around an obstacle by working around it.
        meh
Low Dutch | High Dutch
- Low German | High German
  - Low Church | High Church
    - low-level | high-level
      - low-energy | high-energy
        meh
An earthnut is usually a groundnut, that is, a peanut, but sometimes it is a truffle.
- A groundhog is usually a whistle pig, that is, a woodchuck, but sometimes it is an aardvark.
  - An earthhog is an earthpig, that is, an aardvark (earth+pork(er)).
    - An Osage orange is sometimes called a hedgeapple, and it is sometimes called a horseapple.
      - A potato is sometimes called an earthapple in English, and in some other languages it is either often or usually called so (aardappel, Erdapfel, pomme de terre).
        They say that Kartoffel comes from tartufolo.
        An earthapple (pomme de terre) is not to be confused with a goldapple (pomodoro), although they are cousins as fellow nightshades (shady fellows) and the fruit of a potato plant looks like a small green tomato.
        Some people use an earthier sense of horse apple or horse potato, in addition to the hedgeapple sense.
reap what one sows | reap the whirlwind
- Such hot shit. Such hot, hot, hot shit.
  - Poultry territory, I know — but:
    - One must consider what one needs (or not), and why (or why not). Some are less needy than others, and oh — oh, oh.
      - Even so, dueling dualities, I know, I know. I've known from the start. And yet — one must be careful who one has staring contests with; some stares are starer than others, and look what you've gone and done, so cavalier, so cavalier.
persistence | dedication
- persistence: ux: You've got to admire her persistence | dedication: ux: Her dedication is admirable
  - Yes but.
    - Blah blah blah note to self redacted, yada yada yada static blips. Lol xoxo
Semiconductors exploit the concept that some conductors are, conditionally and parametrically, conductor than others, including themselves (i.e., their past and future selves).
- Parameters on parameters.
  - Not only parameters on parameters, but also, solid state baby. Ain't nothin movin. Just like 4D chess.
bibs and braille all around
- all around | all-around | all-round
  - round and round | round and round | round and round | | right round | spinning round and round
    - running rings around (sth. or s.o.)
      - 🥄
        bus wheels | steel wheels | wheels of steel
        steel wheels | wheels of steel | steel wheels as wheels of steel
        I'm all right, and so are the kids. Not not sane.
        Lol, some sanenesses are saner than others. Makin my ʷᵃʸ lmao
baby dedication | book dedication | building dedication
- shared parameter: this one goes out to the one I love
whither·^📅
- It ended up being a yes but.^

Modern word Preposition	here	there	where
to	hither "come here!" "come hither!"^	thither "go there!" "go thither!"	whither "where are you going?" "whither goest thou?"
from	hence "get out of here!" "get thee hence!"^	thence "get out of there!" "get thee thence!"	whence "where are you coming from?" "whence comest thou?"

hardcoded | hardwired | hardheaded
- shared parameters: fixedness, obstinacy, inadaptability, inflexibility, dedicatedness, unchangeability
  - an obligate nature is an obstinate nature: immovable, unadaptable; it has its places, and some of those places are admirable, but it is also true that one of the places is near the drain (or dustheap, or scrapheap)
    - PS: So what you're saying is, nonparametricity is, parametrically, either a good or a bad thing; and all of its instantiations are polar opposites of parameters on parameters, but some opposites are opposer than others.
      - Nothing is so eminently reusable as a meta-theme, and people often mistake them for an invariably bad thing (that is, any of various supposedly invariably bad things^^^^^^^^^^^), which admittedly they often are (under parametric conditions, in any of many parametrized sets (patterns) of circumstances, often not subject to rapid human parsing and validation); but sometimes some other folks are smart enough to know a fat tree limb when their ass is lucky enough to get a chance to sit a spell on one, and (naturally) nobody complains about the fact that their favorite venerable and beloved shade tree has the selfsame trunk and limbs from one month to the next (even if its leaves come and go with the seasons and the wind). The disjunct highlighted by the latter fact (senselessly inconsistent, or at least parsing-and-validation-impaired, choices of what to complain about, or not) could be labeled as hypocrisy, but it is hard to argue with a straight face that a blind man is (i.e., can be equated to) a hypocrite only for mixing up (a) ropes and trunks and (b) trunks and legs. No, what he is is merely blind, whether he knows it or not.
pen picture·^📅 | a picture is worth a thousand words
- Yes and.
get someone's goat | yank someone's chain
- Yes and: coordinate.
  - Strictly speaking, though, to get someone's goat you must cut or break the chain, or the fence wire, if livestock thievery is your thing; damn your eyes if so. In some places, the parameter value may be less chain and more cane, in which case, your perfidious pilfering involves more canebrake than chainbreak. I can still hear you sayin that you would never. Don't jerk me around; stop draggin my heart around. You could never look me in the eye, especially if I don't have one to look into. What if I could nonetheless look back? It might shiver your timbers, or at least rustle the leaves and stems of your canebrake.
Celsus | Celsius
- shared parameter: famous forefathers of modern science
  - Some say that Paracelsus is para-Celsus, and they may be right, even if he's also a hillbilly. A man can be two things, no less than a cat (or a duck-rabbit).
    - There is no Paracelsius except that in a way Kelvin fits the bill; the Kelvin scale is just the Celsius scale gussied up and shifted with a constant, except that in a way it's nowadays the other way around, thanks to official redefinition.
Nostradamus | Nosferatu
- shared parameter: eerie medieval characters with alleged supernatural powers
  - ¿nos damos a tu poder? ¿nos fem a tu poder? ay, no no; nos santiguamos
    - ✞ | †
      - cross as dagger: that's some dual-use technology for yə
        el poder de Cristo te compele
        compeler | compulsar
        Wiktionary already beat me to them, God love it
        
        also: crucifix necklace | neck knife
        ha ha, that one really yanked my chain
        
        lol gtfo w/ur throwaway
wordie | workie
- Some labours are lover than others.
  - Oddly enough, I was just conversing about an electro-dirtspading wordstock-cataloguer a hot minute ago.
    - You call *that* a spade?
t-crosser | salad-tosser
- shared parameter: variability of the nature of coinstantiation
  - Sometimes a salad is just a salad. Didn't a leaf-roller once say something to that effect?
Wiktionary helpfully provides Category:Hapax legomena by language, but it cannot provide any *Category:Hapax legomena in English, aka *Category:English hapax legomena, for an interesting reason defined by parameters on parameters: any term that meets the criteria for being in that category does not meet the criteria for inclusion in Wiktionary.
- The same theme is naturally instantiated by any other well-documented language, as well.
  - These facts are concisely explained at Category:Hapax legomena by language, thanks to whoever built it (God love em).
Dr Johnson is not to be confused with Dr J nor with Magic Johnson.
- Magic Johnson's johnson is not to be confused with a johnson that is magic, whereas in some ways it is magic and in other ways it is not.
  - You kids are not to be confused with someone who should be on my lawn.
brainchild·^📅 | wunderkind
- Yes but.
  - brainchild | brainfart | food baby
    - shared parameters: figurative offspring; literal or figurative excretion/effluent
      - Yes but. Emphasis on the but.
You call that a lack of vision?
- lmao
  - welcome to your life / there's no turning back
page-turner | book-burner
- Contrastive force: The first one involves loving books and the other one involves hating them. But:
  - A page-turner is a book that burns up the charts. And:
    - A page-turner is a book that the reader burns through rapidly.
simple leaf | sweetleaf | shortleaf
- short and simple, sweet and simple·^-SS | short and sweet
dust jacket | wrapping paper
- Yes but.
  - wrapping paper | rolling paper
    - Yes but; also, outer leaf
      - pastedown | clinker || flyleaf | fly ash? (shared parameters: the bound and the free?).
        endpaper | wallpaper
        shared parameters: pasted installation (pastedown); perimeter film lamination
        Yes but.
      - Wrapping papers can be sealed with a lick; envelopes (outer paper) can be sealed with a kiss; the loose ends are pasted down
        After one seals the envelope with a lick or kiss, one pastes down the stamp with a lick, prototypically.
        After all these papers (wrapper leaves) and ashes, someone might ask: what are you smoking? Here's where the train of thought goes up in smoke.
overleaf | cloverleaf
- overleaf | cloverleaf | overlook | overpass | press a leaf in a book
  - If you find a four-leaf clover, you might press it between the pages of a book, and take a look through the book (look it over) by turning the pages, that is, turning over new leaves. And when it comes to cloverleaves, some clovers are clover than others (by being quadrifoliate, even though trifoliums (trefoils) are archetypally trifoliate), and when it comes to cloverleafs, you can't have a cloverleaf without an overpass, after all.
    - Sometimes riding the bus has no point except looping the loop and watching the scenery pass by (or pass over).
      - page-turner | paper-folder
        Yes but: some turnings are sharper than others.
        PS: overturned.
        PPS: All well and good, but when looping a bus, avoid overturnings.
Seven Nation Army | Six-Nation Confederacy's army
- I must admit that when I first heard the song, and until I happened to learn more about it (years later), I assumed it was an allusion to some historical martial alignment of Iroquois et al (Iroquois plus temporal allies).
  - No, it turns out that Seven Nation Army is merely the mondegreen that Jack White's 5-year-old mind heard for Salvation Army in speech. But I like my interpretation better.
bête noire·^📅 | black beast | bugbear | black bear
- Yes but.
untenability | tenuousness
- shared parameter: the prospects for upholding the argument are hangin by a thread
  - This is probably a yes-and affair. Scribbling it here now for circuit tracing and closure later.
    - Another scribble for later: tracing the two -ten- syllables back to their PIE bones traces to (1) thinness and (2) stretching/drawing . The connection between those two doesn't seem too thin to me. I wonder whether PIE experts confirm it. Check later.
inside job | inside joke
- Shared parameters: some ingroups are inner than others, and the ingroup who are in on the inside job consider it an inside joke that they're pulling this con and getting away with it, but the rest of us can hope that we'll have the last laugh in the end, once we turn the insides out. A special case of doing so, when those innards are officeholders, is turning the bastards out.
  - Yes but.
    - PS: ins and outs | innies and outies
      - Not really, but thanks for playing, and come again.
If Benelux is Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, then is a hapax a happy accident?
- No doubt many a hapax has been a happy accident from the point of view of linguistic detectives searching for historical-reconstruction clues. One bit of attestative evidence instead of none.
  - This idle plaything is in the same class as the one a while back wherein I wondered, if hazmat is hazardous material, is Hazlitt hazardous literature? (Read at your own risk.)
bananapants | banana hammock
- shared parameter: slangily informal blends of banana-theme adjacency crossed with pants-adjacent-areal-theme adjacency
  - Yes but.
    - What's interesting is that for most speakers the two needle grooves will never be bridged by a skip unless someone points out the skip to them.
under the knife·^📅 | on the table
- Yes but.
  - The but is interesting in this case. The issue is that although the collocation on the table is in fact used a lot in surgery, the sense that is used there is the literal sum-of-parts sense. And thus there's not quite enough reason to link the two Wiktionary entries.
notes as scent components: top note | head note | middle note | base note
- notes as document components: headnote | head note | hatnote | endnote | footnote
  - Yes but.
    - The only thing interesting about the recitation or juxtaposition is the butness itself. But all this talk of buts, base notes, bass notes, and footnotes is oh never mind.
palladianized | asbestosize
- asbestos can be palladianized so as to make a catalyst; and
  - one's search for catalysts can be asbestosized
    - The only reason the pair was interesting was that the search results for a rather unrelated set of search terms juxtaposed them.
      - Sometimes when such a roll of the bones happens, there is a third variable somewhere, however well hidden from human eyes it may be, at least superficially.
        Not always, though, because some third variables are thirder than others.
        I'll usually glance around to see whether I can find one (that is, a real one, not a specious one); but I've learned (as I've gotten older and wiser) to accept the appropriate level of giving up: give those bushes a good shake, but if nothing falls out in a timely way (on the first few shakes), then let it be, because otherwise you'll just be Ahabbin it until you find what you were looking for, whether it was there or not.
        In this case, the bushes weren't coughing up any answers, so I had to put it down to a mere bell ring. Those are usually good for an idly synchronicitous laugh, if nothing else. I like to envision some bell ringer somewhere in the spirit world pulling that rope, although I readily admit that an entertaining fiction is only that. If laughter is the best medicine, then are bell ringers drug dealers? Perhaps, more flatteringly, medicine men (or women).
        PS: Some spirits are more palladian than others; and some spiritly birds just want to sit on your bust of Pallas — at least until it's covered in birdshit, and perhaps longer still. Some columbaria are more of a forever home than others.
        PPS: Sleeping Beauty problem | Monty Hall problem | anthropic principle
        I'm no mathematician nor philosopher, and it's almost all Greek to me, but transom bird seems to tell me that the shared parameter up in this particular birdhouse is a species of selection bias. My first thought was that it may be a bit like the billboards say: if you lived here, you'd be home by now. Then I thought, maybe more like the bumper stickers say: if you can read this, you're too close. But then it occurred to me that it may be the most like a Dear John letter: by the time you read this, such-and-such an event will have already happened. Yes, that's the one. In fact quite a lot of human life is like that, even in ways that are normally latent. But what do I know of speculating on spirits? I'm not rich enough for such things. Which doesn't mean that I won't shell out for a nice one now and again — merely that I don't let any dust settle on it. The rag-and-bone man'll roll them bones while he still can, before the bone man burns em. Between the birdshit and the settling dust, there's got to be a shared parameter in here somewhere.
        Addendum: It's not like I have time at the moment to be dallying here, but I have to scribble this additional bit down before it flies out the window (unlike Mr Pallas-bust-sitter). The cardinal shared parameter up in this particular birdhouse is what the general semanticists like to call time-binding. "If you're reading this, then certain events have happened and/or you're in a certain location, which (latter) fact is (itself) likewise the result of certain events having happened by now ."
        Update a month or three later: I was skimming a fun article with coffee and got an eyeless alert regarding this thought train.
mentee | manatee
- shared parameter: your buddy
  - mentee | mentation
    - shared parameter: a positive attitude goes far
      - mentee | mentos | menthol
        shared parameter: minty breath management in the workplace
        meh(ənˈtiː), meh(əntəl), meh(bi)
bread and water^{bread and water}
- soda bread and soda water
  - sweetbread and sweetwater
    - blackbread and blackwater
      - meh who cares tho
        but you know who likes bread and water tho? waterfowl
        the duck says, don't mind if I do
        PS: I was trying to remember the name of a See 'n Say and all my poor brain could come up with was Speak & Spell. So I asked Gemini, and Gemini threw me a bone. Thumbs up dear robot.
        PPS: chowdown | hoedown
        dinner and dance
        house and house?
        Mr mallard might either eat you out of house and home or bring the house down (he's a barnburner)
waterfowl
- Today it was brought to my attention that waterfowl kick ass because they are triphibious.
  - This is the sort of thing that one knows in a general way but perhaps did not fully and duly appreciate until one stops to think about it.
    - These birds are out here kicking ass every single day, and you would please to give credit where credit is due.
      - Are they triphibians? Yes, of a sort.
Recently I mentioned Destro (that bastard) because I ran across an envisioning in which he is low-key desperate to meet you at a bistro to discuss the next distro.
- Today the following wisp scudded across my consciousness: according to the lore of canon, Destro is a Scotsman of the very truest kind (being pedigreed and landed and whatnot). This now strikes me as apropos, because he is the kind of person, and serves the kind of master, who most overvalues true Scotsmen.
  - I'm not dumping too hard on true Scotsmen per se, as I'm well aware that the fallacy fallacy is the fallaciest fallacy of all; I'm just sayin. Sometimes fixation equals overfixation.*
At big-ass (adj): one for the department of yes-buttable ux items:
- Aside: I never knew I had such a department (subdepartment) until this very moment. Well yes, I do now. That's how the rag-and-bone man's field of rustbuckets works. Pull up a bucket, overturn it, and have yourself a seat; and grab another to put the work in, and maybe a third for a spitter or ashtray if such is your thing. (Me I don't partake, as I put that money ($/$) in my own pocket instead of the man's. That's how they get yə.^;-)) Now listen while I play a drum solo on another and then get down to business with a third:
  - I remember the old Vine that goes something like:
    - What are you doing?
      I'm plucking my eyebrows.
      That's a big-ass mirror.
      I have big-ass eyebrows.
      - Downshift: man in the mirror | man in the moon
        Shared parameter: what you see and what I see are not necessarily the same hon
        PS: from some angles, some people seem to see a rabbit, at least sometimes. Our friend duck-rabbit knows all about such things.
self-serve | soft serve
- self-serve soft serve
  - such things exist, and I have seen and partaken of them (so help me)
    - what a time to be alive
      - help oneself
        self-help; do it yourself; serve yourself; suit yourself
        have it your way
        don't mind if I do
healthcare | deathcare | aftercare
- Almost; yes but.
  - death | afterlife
    - Yes and.
      - life and health | life and death·^{life-and-death} | health and safety·^{health and safety} | before and after·^{before and after}
        caring and sharing
        helping and healing
        
        life and health | life and death·^{life-and-death} | life and liberty·^{life and liberty} | life and property | property and casualty·^{property and casualty}
        
        life | health | safety | liberty | property | × | casualty | insurance | indemnity | protection | security | insulation | defense | care | caring | help | helping
        
        handwave
bone up | ramp up | hurry up
- boning up is usually a species of ramping up: one species or another.
  - Meanwhile, when you're ramping up, usually there is someone or other who is expecting you to hurry up about it.
    - What else ends up in this cubbyhole? I'm casting about for others; my brain is spooling up.
      - I might be able to speed it up if anyone can muster up the dough to pony up for a round of gearing up. Then we'll really see what we can gin up. It depends on whether anyone cottons on.
        PS: Speaking of cotton, let's spin up some more.
        Shifting gears again, I realize that we could be mixing up any number of batches and cooking up a storm. So I'll leave off with this one for now.
So Destro meets you at a bistro to discuss the next distro
- He plans to distribute and destroy
  - Blah blah blah determined to rule the world, yada yada yada half the battle
    - bistro more like brewpub, brewpub more like bropub amirite
A recent bit of thought in the line of totally developed wholeassery led to:
- a grown-ass adult eating a whole-ass bag of candy
  - I believe that Wiktionary is not wholly sure where the SoP outlines lie for this one; I seem to recall reading that some Wiktionarians have taken a dim view of treating terms derived from -ass as non-SoP, but Wiktionary does contain a fair bolus of them. Presumably either both of the links above should be red or both should be blue. But the state in which they are a little of both is venially acceptable for any interval of interim; as with raspberry candy,^∴·∴ it's all good.
    - PS: I just remembered something that I had meant to jot here earlier — one of the arguments in favor of why whole-ass makes the grade (to arrive at something a little more than mere SoP) is that the whole unit is idiomatically coordinate with half-ass (and, in morphologic parallel, whole-assed is an attested complement of half-assed). OK, that aspect puts me over the top — I'll enter them sometime, when I decide to fritter away some free time assembling a set of citations. All this talk of units and wholes went over the edge. (You needn't pine to slap me for that one — old no-eyes just groaned and did it so you don't have to.)
      - Update, a few days later: I just reappreciated that the aforementioned dim view is quite well justified within the framework that it depends on the lexicalization status of each instance because some collocations are more lexicalized than others. Just because Wiktionary wants a headword for big-ass (yes) doesn't mean that it will ever want headwords for huge-ass and giant-ass (no). So the upshot is that some earn their keep whereas others cannot. Box cat points out that the same is true of barn cats. Just because the farmer aims to keep the population managed at appropriate levels doesn't mean he's inherently against all cats. There's a balance to be maintained.
outright | out-and-out | flat-out
- an all-out push to go all out and be all out with all the stops pulled out
  - shared parameters: wide open throttle, all dampers open, all control rods out; all-out outness with caution thrown out the window
    - A man about town is out and about; he's not down and out with his pockets turned out but rather up and to the right, with all the stops pulled out.
      - Is he an outright chad or a downright cad?
        Guess it's time to put this fire out. Consider it snuffed out.
Yet more breakbonery:
- When it comes to a leg-breaker, a bonesetter is a species of ant. Yes but.
  - It is interesting to analyze why the but buts. It is one thing that obviousness exists on a gut feel level. It is another to dispassionately admit the things about human cognition that cause the but to be butting. I find this idly interesting because many a human likes to make a fuss about mindfulness, but they are often a bit funny about which things they are willing to be mindful about, and when, and why. Which strikes me as a rather unmindful way to be mindful. It is not unrelated to the coolness requirement for dorks, speaking of breakbonery. I could attempt to explain how, but uninquiring minds don't want to know.
shifter | drifter
- shared parameters: changing, moving
  - Yes but.
    - scene-shifter | set shifter | shapeshifter | beachcomber | beach bum | drifter
      - Yes but.
        shifter | drifter | grifter
        Yes but.
        beachcomber sometimes = shifty shifter–drifter–grifter with a sifter who's not above playing the lifter
        Yes but; and this exercise was a mood lifter. (Is a sunny beachcomber at Brighton a Brightoner brightener–lightener? Does posing such a question make me a get-the-fuck-out-en-er?)
        PS: driftwood, if you would
A contrast set of essentializing qualifiers:
- real • true • proper • actual • ■ • regular • normal • classic • standard • traditional • orthodox
  - Chief source: one true Scotsman
    - He points out that the first four constitute a subclass with a higher order of magnitude of tendentiousness, because they constitute the subclass exhibiting blindspot class 4.
      - PS: blindspot class 4 is about good versus bad, valid versus invalid, with nothing in between. This line of thought reminded me that many years ago I read somewhere that one thing that was repeatedly noticed by people who engaged in conversations with that one weird Schicklgruber fellow was how often he used to go off about (or go on about) how there are two kinds of this-or-this in this world or two kinds of that-or-that in this world, and either possibility A will happen or possibility B will happen, full stop. It makes one think about personality traits and political predispositions, and about kinds of people who not only are obsessed with false dichotomies but also are eager to shiv you for disagreeing.
A contrast set of bad-financial-ending characters (cast of characters for unfortunate economic endings):
- bill collector • debt collector • repo man • evictor • forecloser • sheriff (of sheriff sale fame) • bankruptcy lawyer • leg-breaker (of loan shark fame) • payday loan man^hypernym • the man • the old man • the old lady • the piper (of payment fame)
  - special case: vulture capitalist
lighting-up time | lights-out
- shared parameters: time for light switches to be flipped
  - Yes but.
    - PS: wipers on, lights on.
cold call | cold cock
- shared parameters: surprise; rudeness; false pretenses
  - lol no; gtfo, b/c to claim that they are even slightly comparable is worse than false equivalence; it's worse than Bierceness class 3, being in fact class 4 more than class 3
    - which is obvious even by gut feel alone, but I find it idly interesting that it can also be analytically deduced
dowager's hump | widow's peak
- See, it's like this: Here at my place, you can get stuff like this. Elsewhere, no one will offer it to you. Do with it what you will: it's no skin off my back nor sweat off my brow either way.
brickbat·^📅 | bricks | bats | baseball bats
- shared parameter: fuckuppery
  - bats and bricks | sticks and stones·^{sticks and stones}
    - shared parameter: woodery and masonry as breakbonery
      - meh, just some clown·around·ery
        PS: fuck around and find out | clown around and clue in | get a clue and get the fuck out
dictionary | lexicon
- dictionary | lectionary
  - dictor | lector
    - decir | leer
      - dictator | diction | lection | lecture
        speak | say | tell | read | words
        lexical | lectal
        lectator, dicture, dictal
scrappie | scrapple | scrapie
- lol gtfo no, although a scrappie does like him some scrapple; fortunately, though, he can't get scrapie from eating it
hip-shooter | straight shooter
- Some people pride themselves on being both coinstantially; I can respect that notion as long as they don't conflate the two, which is to say, as long as they recognize the two as independent variables that can happen to coincide. (PS: happening to coincide is the best way to coincide.) People who are hip-shooters because they aren't properly capable of being otherwise don't have as much to be proud of as they imagine, though.
  - This thought train is in the vicinity of the fact that breathing through the mouth is often useful, helpful, and/or therapeutic, but being a mouth-breather because one isn't capable of being otherwise is not properly a point of pride, even though it is not one's fault.
peccant·^📅 | pathogenic | infectious
- yeah but I may be the only one who cares tho
close the loop | come full circle | circle jerk | circular firing squad
- Mexican standoff | Chinese fire drill
  - None of the above.
xoxo | tic-tac-toe
- shared parameters: love is a battlefield?
  - lol gtfo; but yes and: X's and O's
    - Not to be confused with SpaghettiOs nor alphabet soup.
exceptionless | unexceptionable
- lol gtfo; no and.
A junkman likes a hunk of junk; but is it ever the case that the junkman is a hunk of junk?
- There is more than one way in which the parameter values may say yes: it depends on whether he's hunky enough and/or whether he's a piece of shit.
  - As a rag-and-bone man sifting through piles of shit, I make no bones about the scrapyard (boneyard) I've got going here. It's a field of buckets — and some buckets are rustbuckets.
make no bones about | bare bones
- Shared parameter: someone who makes no bones about being a straight shooter is someone who will give you the bare bones version of the truth; they will lay bare the facts.
  - Would one then also say that they are thus skeletonizing the sugar-coated or candy-coated version of the story?
    - Well, no, one would not say that, because juxtaposing metaphors and/or overextending them is something that is not done to excess in well-spoken natural language. But thank you for offering.
      - PS: All this boniness constitutes starkness; enough with the bones for now. I like me some meat on them bones.
        PPS: I tried to put the bones down but some fishbones and dogbones distracted me. Now that I've gotten that out of my system, would you say that all this talk of them bones can be laid to rest for now?
        PPPS: I tried to put the bones down again but the parametric dialings practically dial themselves. That's OK — once you've been digging dirt long enough, it's in your bones, and sometimes the bones bone you, in a boneless way.
nonkosher | off-kilter
- shared parameters: ways for something to be not quite as ok as it could be
tycoon | typhoon
- big boss | big storm
  - The ty syllable in tycoon definitely comes from an East Asian root for bigness; it is interesting that the ty syllable in typhoon very well may not have come from such a root, but according to both Wiktionary and MWCD, no one is dead certain about whether or not it did, and there may have been after-the-fact influence, as opposed to descent.
special case | species
- Yes and.
  - specialization | speciation
    - Yes and.
International commerce
- ROMAINE • PRODUCE OF MEXICO
- MEXICANA • PRODUCE OF ROMANIA
- CHINA • MADE IN POLAND
- POLISH • MADE IN CHINA
at large | living large
- shared parameter: both often involve having the freedom of the city, as it were
  - latitude plus resources equals self-actualization
    - special case: large and in charge
Anglican prelates | Anglican curates
- Desmond Tutu | vicar in a tutu·ʷᵖ
  - the queen is dead, long live the queen
  - the queen is dead, long live the king
  - Queen Anne's dead, long live the king
  - the king is dead, long live the king·ʷᵖ·ʷᵖ·ʷᵖ
on the road | on the street
- Yes and.
  - pounding the pavement
    - Yes but.
barrel of laughs | bowlful of jelly
- shared parameter: mirth-related containerfuls
  - Obviously a yes but, in a way that wasn't even a question regarding Wiktionary specifically; but the bowl and the barrel are obviously in the same room though.
backerboard | blowout preventer
- This one is of a class that is more interesting than most people would assume when looking down from the surface. From that vantage point, they can't see the damage that's being done on the other end. (PS: That one has box cat purring — nice one.)
  - I lack time to do it justice at the moment, but it has to do with when lexicalization of collocations "steals" a position (a node, a locus) from availability to mere sum-of-parts construction. And the stealing of a location involves occupying it and blocking something else from occupying it. There's blocking involved (or at least, in most cases competitive inhibition): those damn receptor agonists and antagonists again. The interlocutor replies, "No, dork, you can't call it that — not because it doesn't make sense but rather only because when we say that collocation, we mean the lexicalized sense of it." (Well, dork-slapping interlocutors generally wouldn't be capable of constructing that sentence, but that's the underlying issue that would manifest itself in their consciousnesses as an ineffable urge to slap.) There are many examples of this class in natural language, although I can't think of them rapid fire off the top of my head. I plan to dig some up and bring them here when I get a chance. But for the moment I'm trying to force one out of the woodwork (meow), even just one, to leave here. I'm idly curious as to whether I can succeed in forcing one to the surface on demand. I'm scanning and I'm groping for which parameters to start weighting so that I can dig one out.
    - Well, I dug out a few, albeit not the best. It took a minute. Many a bird is a black bird, but only some black birds are blackbirds; and a blue jay is a blue bird but is not a bluebird. Those are not the best because they are of a different subclass involving stress differences for solid compounds. No, the class that I am after right now is the one exemplified by the pair that started this thread. (A backerboard is a blowout preventer but is not a blowout preventer.) Argh. Maybe later.
      - Later: So far:
      - Weighting for degree of polysemy for each component word is one crowbar that's available.
      - A wedding ring is a metal band but is not a metal band. (Akin to the blackbird subclass because /ˌmetal ˈband/ versus /ˈmetal ˌband/.)
        Aside: anticipable: Someday there will be a metal band called Wedding Ring. It will not, however, be a wedding band, except to the extent that some customers would in fact be into that sort of booking. Joke's on you, I'm into that shit.
      - Unusual artwork licensing is not special drawing rights. (Box cat's whiskers just twitched.)
        But now aren't we just back to what started the entire mirror bucket in the first place? Recall decompression chamber versus breathing room, for example.
        Speaking of rooms, it's odd to open this door and find myself in a different room from the one that I thought I was next to. One that I've been in before and thought was several hallways away.
        Did the record just skip in a way that caught me by surprise? Whose tiling am I in now?
        One tendency of the rooms that I find myself in lately is that truism lives right next door to insight. That by itself is a truism (after all, it always does and always has), but what's different lately is that I've been riding the elevator more. Did you ever step out of an elevator while failing to duly appreciate how many floors you just went up? All you experienced was stepping in, watching the door close, then seeing it open again shortly after. Even if you pressed the elevator buttons yourself, it's easy to forget in the moment exactly how far you just went; 2 floors isn't different from 20 except for a few measures of muzak. If the elevator buttons were pressed by someone else, you wouldn't even know your location, if no windows are nearby when you step out. What is the precise relationship of the room you now enter to the room you just stepped out of umpteen seconds ago? Maybe it's below you, maybe it's above you. If it's one of those elevators with doors on both sides, then maybe that room is behind you now. Just because you don't know the answer doesn't at all mean that there isn't one. Elevator passengers are inside a building — the building is not inside their heads. One argument is that I just hadn't realized earlier tonight that the blackbird room was next door to the decompression chamber. But another argument is that I'm trying to deduce who pressed the elevator buttons and what the number difference was. I'm after the building schematic. I plan to see all floors simultaneously with x-ray vision by the time I'm done, and to run up and down the stairwells knowing exactly how many steps I just ran and exactly where I am. Some buildings are more radiopaque than others. But before one should assume that this one will defeat me, it's worth knowing how many others I've already successfully x-rayed and mapped in my time. That reminds me of an article I just read the other day. If you want to make accurate predictions, it's best to know, or to see about finding out about, base rates.
        PS: Speaking of elevators and of mirrors: some elevators are lined with mirrors; some elevators are more mirror-lined than others; some would say that mirror-lined elevators are the best kind of elevators; others would counter that the optimal degree of mirroring inside any given elevator is just enough but not too much — that is, just enough to allow the passengers to check their hair and teeth before heading into an appointment, but not so much as to disorient, vertigoify, nauseate (via motion sickness), or creep out. Which is to say: a mirror in an elevator is fine, but an elevator is not to be a hall of mirrors.
an impeller for one's Impala
- an impeller for one's Impala
  - a Powerglide for one's motoring pleasure
    - meh, I've seen sedater sedans
draft board > See also > (not to be confused): drafting board, draughtboard
- Yes but:
  - Wiktionary does not have a dedicated element for this subtype of relation, and (relatedly) it usually does not capture such instances; and …
    - Although this subtype's value is more than just for ESL/EFL help alone, the trouble with it regarding native speakers' use cases is that at the end of the day perhaps the only people who give a shit are wordplay fans, psycholinguistics types, and coinstantiations thereof. As for what my excuse is, well, whatever turns up in the sieve is whatever happens to have been mixed into the dirt, and I'm allowed to glance at it and remark idly upon it when the sieve gets dumped. I like seeing ones of this type sifting out, because I enjoy the disjunct of why I hadn't ever noticed each one before despite the retrospective obviousnesses: it says so much about cognition, in a laconic way. The record contains hundreds of laps, but the needle is only in one of them at a time. In many cases not even near-homonymy or outright homonymy can manage to make the record skip, even for years or decades on end, because each valley just is what it is, and which of countless others might be any more relevant than another? It is like wondering what else is on the dial: everything, and somewhere there is something especially relevant, but you would have no way to sift for it though. However, once you've seen thousands of skip instances, you might forget a lot of them on the surface but you never entirely unsee them. Tuning up and down the dial for relevant analogies, I happen across immunological memory and have some gut sense that I've stumbled across an epitope match. Which is odd because I think it took this same analogue of immunological memory to sift for the analogy of immunological memory. We were speaking of needles in valleys but yet there's more of the needle in a haystack about the first time of recognition. A mark is left for next time though. I guess I'll leave off pondering it for now because it's putting me to sleep. Still, it does remind me a little bit of being set down in someone else's tiling: following the groove like a needle will never connect you to the other information no matter how many times the record spins. No, it takes the right permutation of record skip to identify a relationship with some certain other locus in some certain other valley.
latibulum·^📅 | cuniculus
- leporine | cunicular
  - As soon as I looked over the WOTD, my brain instantly sensed (at the TOT level) that there was a rabbit-hole connection (a rabbit–hole axis) at the level of the burrow (which is an underground level) and also at the level of initial-L words; but it took some digging down the rabbit hole to fully excavate the connections (and thus to extend the burrow).
    - My Cornish friend asks whether I call that a rabbithole. Nowadays I borrow his gear when I go underground.
      - PS: I deeply value his friendship, for the same reason that any particular sort of industrial chemist might deeply value a pet catalyst: It is not only that the catalyst facilitates reactions that would be impractical otherwise; it is also that the catalyst is not consumed by the reaction, to any nonnegligible degree.
diatomic | diatomaceous
- meh; birdshitty; uninterestingly/truistically tangential connection
  - And thus the same is also true of …
    - diatomic molecule | diatomaceous earth
      - You know the guano must be pretty thick when even I (of all people) don't give a shit.
for what it's worth | my two cents' worth | my two cents | handwave | a penny for your thoughts | pennyworth | tuppenceworth
- $0.01 = 1¢; $0.02 = 2¢
  - 🪙
unsanity | unsoundness | unsanitariness
- Yes but.
  - I was prompted to ponder the unsanity–insanity axis, and the amount of daylight (if any) bridged by that en dash, by a passing encounter of an attestation in the wild.
    - First assessment (later revised): I had concluded that to assert coordinateness rather than synonymy for this pair is, in the end, a loser's game regarding clear communication with a wide audience or any likely audience — and I still consider it so, because if you want to use an unusual sense of a word with the general public, you must belabor the definition that you are using (including sometimes even tersely conveying its underlying ontologic model), because otherwise they will assume (reasonably) that the normal sense (and its ontologic underpinning) is being used and will assume that you must be wrong somehow — but I did give a bit of credit for the effort, and it did make me think about the santé–sanity axis, the nature of whose dash is not irrelevant to the alleged coordinateness.
      - PS: fun with collocations: mental hygiene; mental sanitation; the upstairs maid? mental cleanse? mental colonic?
    - Reassessment (after reading a bit more): I will grant (and some will more than others) that the people who have upheld this sense differentiation — such as Horace Bushnell, as well as Alfred Korzybski and various general semanticists who follow him — are invoking any of several quite sane versions of a mental model whose ontology allows for a trichotomy instead of a dichotomy (or, I really should say more precisely, a trichotomization instead of a dichotomization ): thus, sane • unsane • insane (three coordinate nodes) rather than sane • unsane=insane (two antonymic nodes). The gist of their point is that the world is full of abundant unsanity as thus defined (it being the world's widespread norm, its default state) and that it takes some conscientious effort to transcend it and thus arrive at sanity. Well, OK, when you put it like that, you've won that argument by pointing out an irrefutable truism. One of the interesting corollaries of this line of thought is that many people (perhaps most) might look at any particular person who might have a high sanity level (as defined in this trichotomization) but also some neurodivergent behaviors and claim that they are "crazy" (="insane"), but that assertion is counterfactual, because (to state more accurately what is really happening) in fact the one who they accurately identify as having some degree (or other) of neuroatypicality and erroneously label as insane is in fact less unsane than they are, rather than (as they assume) more so. (Ask me how I know lol.) Their conflation of neurotypicality with sanity leaves them unable to accurately qualify, which also raises the point of the word nonsane as well. At bottom, though, there is still a takeaway point here that as a writer you are foolish to assert coordinate-term status (versus synonymy) for the unsane–insane pair except in the special case of an adequately disabusing exposition.
general semantics | generative semantics
- Not to be confused, but having certain overlaps and connections.
  - general artificial intelligence | generative artificial intelligence
    - Not to be confused, but having certain overlaps and connections.
      - General Electric | generating electricity
        Not to be confused, but having certain overlaps and connections.
Some idle playing with blocks:
- foods | feeds | foodstuffs | feedstuffs
  - feedstocks
    - foodstores | feedstores
- In other news: a reminder today: a superclass is defined by a common trait, but it is folly to assume that its members have homogeneity otherwise; the instance today was enzymes (unifying theme: biocatalysis), but the meta-theme is widely reinstantiated. Some superclasses comprise less heterogeneity than others; but all have some, as classes with none are not superclasses. All of this is but a fabric scrap of interwoven truisms, and yet we humans tend to need reminders about it anyway, to avoid cognitive distortions, for reasons that have prompted the writing of many shelffuls of books (e.g., e.g.). The most enthusiastic of such books get a little too carried away with esoteric philosophizing about it, to the point that most people decide to ignore them entirely. This is a counterproductive turn; it is better to write a shorter and plainer and cheaper book, and get more people to engage willingly with it. Which is in fact what some of the relevant authors have done. Nothing more to be said here and now about it.
Malapropism of the day: I was skimming an article that claims to discuss a study published in the European Journey of Pediatrics . Lol, yes, well, pediatrics certainly is a journey, isn't it? Nonetheless, the rest of your article is going in the trash anyway, unread, because evidently you were phoning it in and didn't reread your own writing. I have a triage list for my reading, and careless slop doesn't beat the other priorities for ranking.
cut the mustard·^📅 | cut the cheese
- Yes please — I love me some mustard on a cheese sandwich, yes, but — I'll spare Wiktionary the trouble, though.
Something that is under the rubric of X may fall under the aegis of the preceptor who is on the dais or at the lectern (or both coinstantially).
- This was an interesting instance — a fairly uncommon chance for me to test my shelfful of thesauri with a garden-variety real-world test case (as opposed to more intricate explorations prompted by other categories of cognition than the quotidian-TOT one). Fairly uncommon because (blessedly) my mind seldom TOTs long enough plus hard enough to send me flipping through thesauri (which may explain why I am so pissy about TOT moments: I don't have to live with legions of them, which is a blessing, and I well realize that someday the blessing could end); but on this occasion, my mind was taking too long to de-TOT-ify the word preceptor, although it came real close (which the mind is somehow able to detect, which itself is an interesting rabbit hole). (Relatedly, it is also interesting to jot down here the other fish that it netted while it was fishing for that one, and I'll take these up some more later: lector, mentor, lecturer, instructor, and at least one other that has already evaporated ). An interesting outcome — and an instance of the same theme that I have encountered before, on previous uncommon high-TOT-value occasions — is how hit-or-miss the results were, across thesauri. Some of them scratched the specific itch (and quite rapidly, when at all), whereas others failed to (and I duly emphasize the word fail here). Even OneLook Thesaurus, God love it, spewed scores of connections but not that one, which is a gap. (I still love it, though.) This hit-or-miss nature is a truism on one level (not news), but I have further analysis of the differentiable geologic strata underlying that grade-level upshot. In fact it is such an interesting piece of the web (the map–territory web) that it will take me several hours to hew out even the most proximal stretches of the coal vein. I lack time for that at the moment, but it's likely that I'll take it up again soon. Regarding the web (the map–territory web), a bucketing challenge: plenty of it can probably go here, but … there is a component that the web vibrations identify as rebucketable. The answer will be simply to take one's time and work with patience and care. Ha. How un-21st-century — it's nearly an act of rebellion at this point (a quarter of the way through this century) to tell anyone to work patiently and carefully on anything. When I was young, it was merely table stakes in plenty of spheres of activity. And if you weren't capable of it cognitively, well, that was unfortunate for you, but there was someone else who was (so please step aside to let them through, because we need someone who is). Anyway, until later.
  - A piece of the puzzle that I ought to sketch quickly here in barest form, for the moment, just to freeze the gossamer if nothing else:
    - Miscellaneous segments of the web (the map–territory web) — a handful of nodes and edges, here and there (a scrap of fabric) — to be jotted down although not fully localized/placed in situ; involving collocations that others either haven't gotten around to yet or have refused to handle adequately (or at all). For example, technical expertise, and the science reporting and business reporting that transmits upshots from it, are full of these pieces, and they're ones that an adequate web is often able to triangulate adequately approximated parametric situations (localizations) for — but where does that leave most people, though? (PS, regarding competent science journalism and business journalism — some of us still like to read it and are willing to pay a reasonable price for it, although you'd be forgiven for perceiving that there are none of us left nowadays, because the ones who skip it are so earsplittingly loud and legion now.) It's fascinating that there is so much of it (i.e., so many scraps of this web) out there waiting to be encoded/codified — it's like pointing to an ocean full of fish and saying, "get busy catching some": it can only ever be a miscellaneous selection, but that's OK; that's all the more that one fisherman has time for, even if he's lucky enough to devote full time to it, and for those who aren't that lucky, well, the selection will just be all the smaller (i.e., even smaller) for that. A question of the moment is, should I slap together another bucket divider even herein, which is to say, assign another subbucket herein? I'm thinking so. It doesn't so much matter whether any given scrap of fabric might have sensibly gone into either of two bins; such is the nature of discretization anyway. It doesn't negate the bucketiness of buckets, which is to say, it doesn't defeat bucketry, or bucketization.
      - PS: Speaking of such scraps of fabric, Bard just helped me out with an extra special little bit of wordfinding recall in a way that (among thesauri or thesaurus-ish things) only a pseudosentient interlocutory kind of thesaurus-ish thing could help. I've noticed that there's something about Bard that's dead on lately — like, ground-rumblingly resonant. Apparently there are layers of whatever it is doing that model reality in some way, as opposed to tossing word salad alone. It encourages one to envision that we might be close to an era in which Bard might reach a stage where humans' being too dull-witted to ask it the right questions could become the rate-limiting factor in its application to the world. Perhaps. Or maybe it's just Friday night and I'm ready for some spirits (Scottish ones, bell clapper ones, and otherwise).
Well great, they put Sabbath into my head and now it might stay there until next Sabbath.
- Lord of this world / * * * / He's your confessor now
  - confessor • intercessor
    - Shared parameters: both are intermediaries who might fix you up with the man upstairs; both offer to be fixers who'll run interference with him, or perhaps at least butter him up better than you know how to.
      - Corollary analyses:
        Some others say something about cutting out the middle man.
pipeweed·^📅 | potherb | sweetleaf
- Yes but: this particular potpourri is not for Wiktionary, because some people don't know what you're about; they put you down and shut you out.
  - Lol. Even though that song's lyrics are corny and ridiculous, a predictable product of their time (and speaking of corny, old no-eyes snickers: you call that a master of reality?), I couldn't help enjoying a laugh about it tonight. Earworms are like that. There's something about early Sabbath that still isn't old (after all this time) and perhaps never will be. Which is why it's a bit funny that one of the lines of that song goes, I can't forget you or your surprise / you introduced me to my mind. That's what the world can say about early Sabbath: what it brought to the world was a surprise at the time (no matter how old the more clichéd aspects of metal would later become); it was welcomed by quite a few (those who were ready for it), even though it was regarded as the harbinger of societal doom by others; it remains unforgettable (both in the broader senses and in the most immediately literal sense, at the times when it happens to be earworming you); and it introduced the mainstream culture of the day to a part of its own (collective) mind that it earlier either had pointedly ignored or had been unconscious of — think how odd it must have seemed to some of the earlier rock-and-rollers (performers and fans alike) that anyone might propose to write and perform rock-and-roll focused on dark, cynical, macabre, and even doomer themes! Don't forget that just yesterday the airwaves had been all about puppy love, sock hops, and falsetto beach parties!
    - You made me master of the world where you exist
      The soul I took from you was not even missed
      * * *
      You think you're innocent, you've nothing to fear
      You don't know me, you say, but isn't it clear?
      You turn to me in all your worldly greed and pride
      But will you turn to me when it's your turn to die?
      - Lmao; old no-eyes snickers: you call that dark? He eats the very void for breakfast. Some black holes are blacker than others. Somehow that venom isn't toxic to him, although for a while after eating, he has heartburn, in a heartless way.
        Lmao2: update: Speaking of what a Cornishman might eat for breakfast, archetypically at least, don't they say something about extra crust to keep one's own fingers from poisoning one(self)? Lol, his fingers don't lie, but you might want to insulate yourself from direct contact with them; which reminds me of the sun: we all love some sunshine, but try not to stare directly at it. This is why he wears torch goggles over his eyeholes (in one of the cardinal framings), or why he is careful about where he aims the rays from his eyeholes^^ and for how long (in the other cardinal framing). And speaking of mealtimes, don't mind if I do now.
Holy Family Medical Center | Holy Name Medical Center
- shared parameters: a thing = yes; "you know which one " = yes
  - Jesus, Mary and Joseph Medical Center | Insert Deity Name Here Medical Center
    - a thing = no; i.e., not a thing
      - Deity Not Found Medical Center
        lol; handwave
"So I learned that hereabouts a wide ditch was termed a river, just as, in this country of no hills, a gradual slope was called a hill." — Adrian Bell, Corduroy (1930).
- 🎛️.
spate·^📅 | spree
- a spate of robberies or killings | a shooting spree or killing spree
  - Yes but.
    - shared parameters: human incompetence (persons not morally competent enough to refrain); an incontinent burst of criminality.
psychrometry·^📅 | cryometry
- shared parameter: roots corresponding to cold + measurement
  - Yes but:
    - This is the sort of thing where you have to be careful how, where, when, and whether you point it out (that's 4 parameters), given the existing framework in which dorks are expected to remain cool and their degree of coolness^^a is subject to monitoring^^b.
      - ^a,b🎛️.
backfriend·^📅 | backhanded compliment
- shared parameter: a frenemy would serve a backhanded compliment
  - Yes but.
    - some tennis partners serve backhand
      - a back-of-the-hand mouthsmack is not what they mean by hand-to-mouth, by which they mean one's own hand to one's own mouth (or the non-manual non-oral equivalent); but although a back-of-the-hand mouthsmack isn't reflexive, it may be reflexive.
I don't think it's true that slightingly·^📅 never means skimpingly as in skimpily, but the thought's not worth messing with the WOTD for, and someone else might insist on citations to prove it.
- Meh, a nice thought. Maybe later, maybe not.
carcinogenesis | carcinisation
- Shared parameters: besides the obvious, old hat one (i.e., why cancer is called cancer), here is another that is related but differentiable: cellular differentiation portrayed as a teleologically defined agent that keeps trying and trying and trying (doggedly, like a dog with a bone) to evolve toward aggressively unkillable forms that maximize hardiness via natural selection.
  - PS: whether or not you jazz it up teleologically for storytelling effect (which is hyponymous to pedagogy) is the parametric difference as to whether you misportray convergent evolution as if it were orthogenesis.
  - Side note: barfly | bottlefly
    - Leave the bottle, barkeep.
      - ant: Lock up the bottle, barkeep.
        cf: Lock me through, lockkeeper (just don't lock me up in there; grease your gears, please).
washout | rainout
- Shared parameter: a rainstorm mucked things up.
  - I was ready to let it go as an "almost", and then I clicked through to the entries and found that the slangy sense of washout as synonym of rainout was indeed already entered.
A sketched exercise in the property of antonymy, that is, diametric or near-diametric coordinateness (coordination); and that is to say, less elliptically in slightly different terminologic-ontologic schema, antonymy or near-antonymic contrastiveness (contrast)*:
- Parametric flavor: initial-s–flavored, body-habitus-based-phrasal-verb–flavored subset (lit/fig-extension):
  - stand back | step forward
    - stand down | step up
      - stand up | sit down
        stand out | stay back
        stand in | sit out
        stand over | sit under
        stand off | step in
- *These are the Ant and Con of the old-school MW thesaurus, or the ant and near-ant of the newer one.
eeny, meeny, miny, moe | tic-tac-toe
- Shared parameter: games of alternation named with ablaut reduplication and well known for being not as much of a true randomizer, or having such a truly unpredictable outcome, as a childlike mind would assume.
  - Which is to say, the game is rigged, and is well known to be so, but not in such a way as to totally discourage anyone from ever playing it — that is, not quite to such a degree, although almost. To identify the persons and situations where the game will be (cheerfully) played (anyway) requires the appreciation, observation, and measurement of various parameters, such as age (e.g., being a child) and theory of mind (e.g., humoring a child).
    - The meta-theme of games that are not quite rigged enough to up and throw over the game board is a soundless one (in a nonauditory way).
crazy as a shithouse rat | quiet as a church mouse
- town mouse versus country mouse
  - Shared parameter: playing off the murids against each other?
    - Fuck the rat race? Fuck the rat maze?
      - The answer is cloudy; try again later.
        It's a close-run thing at the moment (speaking of races). One of the three little pigs lived in a brick house, and the point was that it was blowdown-resistant (speaking of twisters); and a shithouse rat may be crazy, but perhaps he lives in a brick shithouse, which is built like a tank (but not a septic tank, though), and perhaps he himself is also built like a brick shithouse. His craziness might begin to seem crazy like a fox. Lol.
twist-off | twister
- Yes but?^†
  - ^†🔄
final reckoning | sum total
- ✞ | +
  - Yes but.^†
    - ^†🖥.
We've all heard of a meet-and-greet, but what about a fuckaround-and-findout?
- Perhaps ask your event scheduler.
  - However, it occurs to me that most fuckaround-and-findouts aren't scheduled. The surprise is a part of what puts the findout in a fuckaround-and-findout. Speaking of surprise parts, meanwhile, a surprise party is a planned and scheduled affair, but not everyone is in on its planning.
crackdown | smackdown
- Yes but: cf: cot-ish; shared parameter, stonecoldery; more cot than also, but standard emics can't handle the truth without gloves though.
  - Lol 4realz, good thing I have meta-parameter circuits to set off a detection. Some emics are more gloveless than others, one might say; which is to say, some gloves are thinner than others. As with veils. Some veils are veiler than others. Lol 4realz, more whisper-down-the-lane.
    - crackdown | clampdown
      - Yes and; and I had to savor whether more syn than cot or more cot than syn. The latter, because throttling is a focus on a reduction of a given stream, whereas whipping is somewhat differentiable. You can feel it easier than describe it; ineffable, semieffable.
        PS: fuel line clamps
        PPS: stonecoldery | Cold Stone Creamery
        Yes buttery-creamy (buttercreamy, creamily).
        lipsmack | smackdown
chaparral | sagebrush
- Shared parameters: ⊕southwesternness; the ‡hydroparsimony of semiaridity; the axis of single plant–single plant species–single plant genus–landscape full of such plants.
  - That last one isn't not an axis of synecdoche–metonymy–metalepsis. Such axes are not uncommon in natural language. Out there in the pines; can't take the country out of someone; handwave.
Speaking of putting some cor into it (as I recently was), this morning while I was contemplating my coffee mug, the following moved from subconscious to conscious:
- Cornell | Corning
  - Shared parameter: Southern-Tier-subclass Upstate-New-York-ness
    - Although their effects and influence are widely distributed, a home base exists for each, and at a certain scale its localization has ⊕coterminousness
      - Speaking of corn, you know who likes corn? And cake? Who wants cake? Ooh! Moo! Bossie says, signifying moi. (She speaks only a bit of English and French, and that with a heavy bovine accent.)
        She can have the corn and cake, and I'll have corncake, and we'll both be well pleased.
Boss-people:
- cattleman | cowkeeper | cowman | cowherd | cowhand | cowboy | cowgirl | cowperson | cattle rancher | dairyer | dairy farmer | dairyman | dairywoman | dairymaid | herder | herdsman | milkmaid | milkman
A convenience of a split-rail fence is that it is self-stiling, i.e., self-stiled, at any place along its length.
- An inconvenience is that it is more expensive than a wire fence.
  - A convenient way to make a low-cost stile at intervals along a wire fence is to put some large lag screws in some of the posts, to stand ready as climbing rungs in the way that some telephone poles have such rungs. (Those rungs could be called footpegs, but they're not.)
    - As for footpegs and shoepegs: yes but.
      - Update: Browsing some hardware, and coming upon the aisle where equipment for camping, fishing, and hunting lives, I ran across a pack of tree steps. Not so much commentworthy except that it counts as a bell ring.
A dairyman has his teacake while a dairy cow has her dairy cake, and both are well pleased.
- Give her a kiss for me, on that big dumb sweet stupid cute face of hers.
A clarinet is not a recorder, but both are woodwinds, and a cornet is not a woodwind (nor a coronet), but one can still put a little cor into it. Oh won't you even try to / Give a little bit of heart and soul (and don't you make me beg for more)
- Some performances are cornier than others, we'll give them that.
Midcentury feminine-diminutive excesses:
- Her kitchenette's dinette had a banquette finished in leatherette.
  - So did her green Coronet.
    - Her daughter, a coquette with a cigarette, drove a Corvette with leatherette.
      - Barbiefication was having a moment (wrapped in plastic / it's fantastic).
cowhouseᵃ | neathouseᵇ || beefhouse | steakhouse
- Yes but.
  - neatsfoot | cowfoot | sheepsfoot | lambsfoot
    - Yes but.
      - ᵃcow'us | ᵇnett'us (thus spake the back'us boys)
cluck | bok || moo | low || oink | grunt || neigh | whinny || bark | woof || meow | mew
- Barnyard thesaurus: Doctor Dolittle, chief editor; with contributions from many correspondents.
  - PS: Even livestock love synonymy and cohyponymy, although some critters maintain tighter vocabulary control than others (bleat, quack, gobble).
    - PPS: Maybe I will read this if the spirit moves me: H. Carrington Bolton: The Language Used in Talking to Domestic Animals. American Anthropologist, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Mar., 1897), pp. 65-90.
If hazmat is hazardous material, is Hazlitt hazardous literature? Read at your own risk.
These are multidimensional not linear, but in their linear presentation here they are sorted along a gradient by the length of their vector that is parallel; their various orthogonal vectors are discounted here. Subjectivity clouds the vector length comparisons that govern whether any two or three might be swapped around a bit, locally, although at scale the order is objective. Meanwhile, what is the best name for the shared parameter? Is it degree of goodness? Or something else? Various candidates come to mind, and again there is a theme that ranking them via comparison is subjective.
- critical | vital | crucial | mandatory | required | nonoptional | necessary | noncritical | noncrucial | recommended | recommendable | advised | advisable | wise | prudent | preferable | desirable | optional | unimportant | unimpactful | effectless | acceptable | adequate | cromulent | OK | omissible | omittable | unnecessary | superfluous | redundant | counterproductive | undesirable | harmful | toxic | poisonous | deadly
A wee bit of a Scots–slash–Scottish English lesson on the telly tonight — always a good time.
- Did you ever wonder who or what put the /ˈfɹiːs/ in Dumfries and Galloway, and why it's not /-ˌfɹiz/, as might be expected by one who's coming at it from the outside? I have, idly; and I'm not up enough on my ancient history to know, and I haven't googled it very hard yet. Imma spin my own pub tale first before doing so, as I've been into the Scottish maltings' fruits tonight.
  - As far as idle speculation goes, if whoever put the /ˈfɹiːs/ in Dumfries also had anything to do with putting a shedload of Friesians there (and most specifically, a cowshedload), then I'm apt to suspect the Frieslanders (or some flavor of Frisians), but I know that etymology is never that simple, even though it makes for a good story.
    - Anyway, the main lesson that I came here to scribble:
      - Some /miːrz/ don't take to the /ˈhɛltər/ as quick as others do.
    - PS: Here's a cowshedload of advice: a cattle buyer is not to be confused with a cattle byre: although either can be steeped in bullshit, some bullshit is bullshitter than other bullshit, or steeper.
Here's one that I alluded to earlier, fully captured now:
- moonshining | moonlighting
  - Many a moonshiner has been a moonlighter: that is, a shiner whose choice of moonlighting gig was moonshining.
    - And I was all set to say 'yes but' to all angles and directions of this pair, viewing its degree of parametric connection as warranting an EFL-help 'not to be confused with' cross-reference (a structural element that Wiktionary so far lacks) but no more than that, when I looked at Wiktionary's entries and found that it asserts that one of the senses of moonlighter is moonshiner; I found that dubious (the fact that I've never encountered it in my reading is a measure of how rare it must be) and felt an urge to RFV it, but then I checked MWU and found out that it agrees, so OK then: it must be rare and dated, but it exists, so a few improvements (for senseid and syn) will come out of this instance after all.
social ladder | Jacob's ladder
- Shared parameter: life-and-works achievement ascent;
  - Parameter value differentiation: one gets you only so high, whereas the other gets you on high
    - If you're looking to get high, a social ladder or a corporate ladder may work (after a fashion), but never get high on your own supply / Number five
      - Yes but.
        PS: She was runnin from a fat man sellin salvation in his hand / "He said he's tryna save me, but I'm doin alright, the best that I can"
        PPS: Hornsby's version is way better than what his licensee produced (no offense, licensee). One of the performances clearly has a soul, whereas the other doesn't seem to, IMO.
        Not to make too much of that thought, but I'm a bit earworm-prone, so while doing a bit of laundry today, I couldn't help but savor the difference between two versions of the lyrics that are out there (in various performances and covers): the line just a pair of fallen angels frames the whole song in a different light from just another fallen angel — a better light. Hornsby's album version, which is my favorite version that I'm aware of, has the better lyrical turn in that spot. The fact that so much can turn on that one small detail is emblematic of (1) how language is so interesting and of (2) how life ain't fair.
        Mister I'm not in a hurry / and I don't wanna be like you / oh no / All I want from tomorrow / is just to get it better than today
        step by step / one by one
        step by step
salteds | malteds
- Yes but yes please — both together — don't mind if I due, eh?
eyes | ears | nose | mouth | hands
- eyewash | *earwash | *nosewash | mouthwash | handwash
  - meh
credential inflation | credential stuffing
- No but
  - That is, no, not really (which is even butterier than yes but), and yet — sometimes when I've read the term credential stuffing, I've felt reminded obliquely of credential inflation, because credentialism, especially in some occupations more than others, involves a race to cram ever more postnominals into one's existing string of them. Let's stuff that business card or résumé right full of em, the thinking seems to be. This effect is not always particularly exaggerated, but it occasionally gets to be so in the sillier instances in some fields (esp. e.g., e.g.), where if you go digging to look up the meaning of some of them (which of course you might, because who the hell would know these ones off the top of their head?), you find out that they are flashes in a pan — sometimes a particular one is clearly rare, and sometimes it is no longer even offered (or has been renamed/revamped/replaced with a newer one), which sort of undermines the effort to seem important; in the few worst cases of my own experience, I've googled one and been hard-pressed to even find its expansion at all. At that point, the natural reaction is, That's not even a flex at all, to put that one after your name — quite the opposite: it's almost an invitation to embarrassment or vicarious embarrassment. But what this lookup exercise also highlights is that the credential crammer is banking on an unspoken reality that most people don't bother checking what the letters stand for — it shows that in many people's minds (not only the postnominalee but also their audience), the whole point of the exercise is solely that "the longer the string of alphabet soup after my name, the more you should just trust that I know what I'm doing, and stop thinking about it, and not bother looking into it." (Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain !) Such an exercise is the type that they invented the collocation empty exercise for. But it can easily fail, though, because banking on other people being lazy and thinking perfunctorily only gets you past most people, not all people; I sometimes wonder whether the people who tried it have failed to even conceive of the existence of that X% minority. Is the value of that parameter 3%? 1%? 0.001%? Whichever it is, it's not zero, but I suspect that they imagine that it is, or, that is (more precisely), that they fail to conceive of the possibility that it might not be.
Bovie | Bowie
- shared parameters: both have been the cutter of choice for many a smooth operator; both have often been one-stop, go-to mainstays in that regard; which is also to say, both are Swiss Army knives in their respective classes, albeit in a non–Swiss-Army-knife–knife kind of way.
  - Lol: Many knives are Swiss-Army, but Swiss-Army knives are Swiss-Armier than others. (I deserve the groaning and slapping for that one; I'll own it, lol)
to give someone a haircut | to scalp them | to take a haircut on (an investment)
- Getting warmer
to have someone's hide | to scalp them
- Yes but.
  - Part of what drives the "but" in "yes but" is the recurring theme that individual metaphors, although they are quite sound individually, don't stack up together without revealing some limits of the figurativeness. Thus, figurativeness is a vignette, an episode, a snapshot; it is not the whole tome, the whole series. It involves archetypes (not only of people but of processes), which are valid up to a point but are not an exhaustive representation of reality. This is all just truism on one level, but on another level it is interesting, for about the same reason why the bowel habits of bugs are both a truism (on one level) and an interesting journey for an entomologist.
PaO₂, Z→A:
- hyperoxemia | hyperoxia | normoxemia | normoxia | pseudohypoxemia | pseudohypoxia | hypoxemia | hypoxia
  - If the word pseudonormoxemia were ever to become realized (degapped), the distinction of (1) not measuring because asymptomatic, versus (2) a measured value being wrong (in either the spuriously high direction or the spuriously low direction), would need to be kept straight. The term for clinically deceptive hypoxemia is silent hypoxemia·ᵍʰⁱᵗˢ; I suppose that there might never arise a term for clinically deceptive hyperoxemia, because it seems irrelevant for real-world purposes, because I believe that it is true that oxygen toxicity does not cross the threshold into clinical relevance until it passes beyond the range of clinical silence/deceptiveness.
retinue | litany
- shared parameters: a long tail appended, whose details are not worth belaboring (e.g., the components' identities, the explanation of each's relevance); + internal assonance, internal alliteration, stress pattern
  - hangers-on | rambling on
    - trail of persons | trail of words
      - Each tail (retinue and litany) is a handwave of trailing detritus in its own way
        When people mention either one, they usually want to avoid dwelling on its contents — they aim to gloss over those
        Some (half-)interesting collocations: retinue of clowns; retinue of fools; litany of bullshit
        When it comes to some clown parades, you can't unsee them; there is no eyewash that will cleanse your retinas of that retinue of fools, nor cleanse your ears of their litany of hogwash.
        PS: Under most circumstances, washing a hog only wastes your time and annoys the hog.
ménage | manage || abide, abode | hand, handle
- dovecot guano
take the piss out of someone | take the wind out of someone's sails | knock the wind out of someone's sails
- Yes and.
  - knock the wind out of someone's sails | knock the wind out of someone
    - Yes but.
      - take the piss out of someone | beat the shit out of someone | knock the wind out of someone
        Yes but.
undercard | subtitle
- Yes but.
  - undercard | top billing
    - Yes and.
The following may well be a retread of something that others already have down cold, but I'm not convinced that it is; I think most people stumble in dealing with it and no obvious pat answer is widely and readily available. Perhaps I'm wrong. Here is my gut's little stab at it for tonight. Maybe later I'll either (1) refine it further or (2) realize that I was missing something obvious when I was messing around with it in this moment.
- Pop management science likes to parrot the saying that you can't manage what you can't measure, and admittedly it reflects an important and valid grain of truth. But one should ask oneself how it properly relates to the McNamara fallacy. They are two things that both touch a true piece of the elephant, so how do they connect to each other? Clearly there is an aspect of necessary but not sufficient involved (i.e., metrics are necessary but not sufficient). But the "you can't manage" saying is flawed, though; it needs more work. In fact you must manage a wide range of inextricably interconnected things including some things that you can't measure. Some things you can measure directly, many more things you can measure indirectly (that is, by proxy measures) with more or less accuracy from excellent to good to fair to mediocre to poor (some more, some less), and some things you can measure only very poorly or not at all; and you must ride the whole boat at once, because you can't ride only parts of it and it's too late to get off; the boat has already left the dock, we're all on it, and someone has to helm it at least somewhat, if only to keep it from being broadside to the waves.
  - PS: While in snoozeland, my brain reminded me that the aphorism numbers don't lie is another piece of this elephant.
    - Yes, it's true that numbers per se (and the maths that love them) don't lie; that is, math does in fact work honestly and reliably if you do it correctly — at least, any of the math that us nonmathematicians are capable of conceiving (e.g., arithmetic, algebra, orthodox calculus). But the devil is in the application. Another parametric layer removed from the mechanics. It's like saying that cooking and baking methods work reliably and then baking a giant shitcake and proceeding to complain that it tastes shitty. It's not the oven's fault. Ovens work great. (It's a poor workman who blames his tools.) OK, but in the math instance, that brings us into the other well-known territory, that of lies, damned lies, and statistics. Now we're only the next table over from the shell game section of the bazaar. We can hear the shysters' patter and smell their colognes from here. Feeling our way through parametric landscapes and environments.
chancel repair liability | tithing
- shared parameter: we're all required to pitch in on the parish's finances
  - Yes but
    - PS: Churches don't reroof themselves, you know; and some pitches are steeper than others.
Although a rite of passage is not a right of passage, there are such things as rights of passage. They include (where available) the right to roam and easements. Some people even have rights not only to look but also to touch: profit à prendre.
You cannot frenchify a piece of potato by turning it into a french fry, although the history of that term involves some half-baked notion that you could.
- You cannot Japanify a piece of furniture by japaning it, although the history of that term involves some half-baked notion that you could.
  - PS: But if we're going to bake the potato, then I'll take mine twice-baked instead of half-baked, please; that'll set that parameter to a factor of 4×. And I'll go set the oven to 400°F.
The WOTD often sets me to thinking, as it does many others. A precipitant person is a head-firster, whereas a participant is a part-taker (and a partaker) who takes part; one can rashly decide to take part in something (and some things are more thing than others), but the -ceps in one is not the -ceps in the other.
food processing | food preservation
- From a certain etic viewpoint, this pair of open compound nouns is more of a hypernym–hyponym pair than a coordinate term pair.
  - However, given the typical cognitive focus when each is mentioned, and comparing those two foci, there is a reasonableness to concentrating on their casting/framing as a coordinate pair. Moreover, processed food, especially ultraprocessed food, has been giving food processing such a bad name that that factor helps push the balance toward contrastive focus (and thus the coordinate framing): the average respondent would focus mainly on the contrastive focus if asked.
- Speaking of such orthodoxy of archetypes, versus its alternatives that also exist as logical possibilities:
  - For a lot of people nowadays, a mention of food science evokes thoughts and feelings that quickly lean downhill into the negative territory of ultraprocessed food, but strictly speaking, good food science equally includes the empirical wisdom that "evidently you should eat lots of whole foods , which can be demonstrated empirically regardless of the degree to which we understand exactly why, analytically." In other words, good science knows itself not to be identical to reductivism — to scientism. But many humans are funny about science: all science is (more or less) scientific, but some science is sciencier than other science, or more scientistic. Humans sometimes have a hard time differentiating science from science, or vice versa.
    - PS: It occurs to me that the gist above is recapitulated by the difference between artificial and artificial, if you know what I mean, which many will. In fact that adjective is even famous for that difference.
      - PS: Another recapitulation: every process is a process, but some processes are processer than others.
pearl-clutching | pearls before swine
- shared parameter: in both cases, something's gone wrong in a way that only one side/party (in the transaction or interaction) perceives
  - Lol, that's the butteriest yes but this week. As far as runnin the still goes, that's everclear lmao
a sodbuster wears clodhoppers
- … because busting sod involves clambering over clods, when the plow is a walk-behind one (which most plows were until recently).
  - Relatedly, busting heads is usually busting clods, and you might want to wear your steelies if you're headed that way.
    - Are you slummin it with us yod-dropper clodhoppers?
      - Traditionally, most sodbusters were clodhoppers, and vice versa.
hold-up | jam-up | freeze-up
- Shared parameter: the unexpected and unwelcome advent of stasis where flowing operation is due.
  - Lol, the extraction is more interesting than the mash is. Ain't that so often so. A funny thing is how it's a yawny truism from one angle and weirdly interesting from another. Puts me in half a mind of iridescence on an oyster shell. A funny business, running a backwoods gist mill and gist still.
    - moonlighting | moonshining
      - jamming | freezing
overdue | overdo
- undue | undo
  - The reviewer promises us: I won't overdo this overdue review of an overdone piece of overkill.
    - His review then proceeds to give us an overview.
      - Overdone? Undue? Well I can never entirely undo it.
        PS: This one works best among us yod-droppers.
black arts | black ops
- Both carry scents of dirty deeds by spooky bad actors and the idea that their secrets are mostly unknown to the rest of us (a black box, heh heh; but unseemly interest in them is widespread though).
  - Yes but.
    - bad actors | bad guys | badmen | bad boys | bad girls
      - Handwave etc
A special class of handwave etc:
- Appendix:English examples of anapodoton
  - There is also a lawyery subclass of this — I just saw some stuff about it (somewhere) not long ago. Come back to that sometime. Strangely Hendrickson 1997 was telling me just today that sine qua non is an example, but WT at sine qua non#Etymology differs. Meh. I'm not the one to dig further into that one.
    - PS: all anapodoton is anapodoton, but some instances of anapodoton are anantapodotoner than others; and I could go on but you already know what I'm talkin about
watchstrap | wriststrap | wristband
- on the wrist for different reasons; reason for strap on wrist = parameter
  - a wrist-slap is not a lashing with a strap
  - a wristwatch needs a watchstrap (watchband)
Looking at poach and poach, I'm not yet wholly convinced that bagging things and bagging things up isn't archetypally involved in both cases. Trips to poke and poke, plus pocher, pochier, and pocket, don't answer all of my questions. Was there some ur-idea of a poacher poking with a stick to drive or drive a critter into a poke? Poachers bag critters up in nets, after all. Hmm. Oh well; at the moment it is not worth poking through other dictionaries to further pursue this particular game.
fried-egg plant | fried eggplant
- Yes but, and yes butter (or olive oil)
A shedful may or may not be a shedload; it depends on what's in the shed. Some shedfuls are shedloads, whereas others are quite the opposite. Some loads are loader than others, and some loads are loder than others.
- Yes but
queryable | questionable
- Yes but
  - questionable | askable | interrogable | queryable
    - Yes but
      - Nonetheless, imagine a dictionary with a "Not to be confused with" subhead. Such a thing could sometimes be useful to EFL learners.
winds and the people they may blow on
- noreaster | down-easter
- souwester | downwinder
ridge | edge || ridged edge | saw-edged | ridgeback | sawback
- ridgebacks and silverbacks are both critters who live in Africa, have special dorsal fur, and make one wary (i.e., not someone you'd like to meet when out for a hike)
  - sawbacks also warrant wariness, whether you're climbing them, carrying them, or encountering others who are carrying them
    - aunque (o porque) que sera sera, tenga cuidado con serrados
Lines of thought about how best to capture the following sorts of cohyponyms. A Thesaurus entry seems like a good answer. It is one layer removed from the main dictionary layer, and the latter offers hyperlink keyholes to jump to that level. Which Thesaurus headword? Not so much Thesaurus:lot. Nor load or quantity. I am thinking aloud as I type this. The thing about cupfuls, capfuls, thimblefuls, and housefuls (let alone pagefuls or headfuls) is that they don't necessarily/ideally belong on that same page, because they are cohyponymous beneath a meaningfully different hypernymous concept. The thing about carloads, cartloads, and so forth is that they are shitloads at a manhandling scale, for physical materials.
- carful, carload | cartful, cartload | drayful·ᵃᵗᵗᵉˢᵗᵃᵗⁱᵒⁿˢ, drayload | sledful, sledload | trailerful, trailerload | trainful, trainload | truckful, truckload | wagonful, wagonload
  - Daydream corollary: Just as THubs are semantic nodes regardless of noun phrase or open compound status (for synonym-level stations for transl connections), does a dead-proper thesaurus require thesaurus hubs that are semantic nodes regardless of noun phrase or open compound status (for hypernym-level stations, so that relevant contrast sets of filtered cohypo can be listed there)? What all would that look like? No doubt the schema layout would be subjective. And yet — some consensuses are consensuser than others, in a way with practical applications. What instantiations of that theme already exist, if any? Should one build one of one's own? One would need a room of one's own so that one could build such a room (of one's own). Parameters on parameters.
    - Interim sketches: User:Quercus solaris/sets
seafaring | steaming || seafood | steaming
- seafood is sea fare; seafaring costs a fare; and steaming is a fine choice either way.
  - I promised you steamed clams, but they became steamed hams, which was delightfully devilish. Some hams are more devilish than others, and some are hammier.
w:User:Quercus solaris/Bingo card No. 12
- This parametric exercise of archetypal characters crossed with archetypal concerns was a nice laugh.
  - Savoring that extract of course made me realize that another special case of bingo cards suggests itself: God, the angels, the Devil, et al. versus their chief concerns or complaints. However:
    - Playing bingo against the devil is no fun because he has too many cards up his sleeve. The bastard.
/kəˈɹɪbdiən/ | /kəˈɹɪbiən/
- Shared parameters: Both can present their due share of seafaring danger; but one is localized and famously horrible whereas the other is diffuse and largely delightful — one is mostly a place you hope to avoid and the other is mostly a place you hope to go
  - what a difference a d makes
    - don't you say it
thunderbird | thunderword
- Thus spake handwave etc
A Freightliner pulling a Fruehauf to Freehold
- Sometimes a bit frightening on the throughway or freeway
  - wipers on, lights on
Grinding on some grist for the mill; here is the gist:
- An oil press is a kind of extraction engine, and it puts one in mind of other contraptions for cranking away at food processing, such as a grist mill; and another kind of extraction engine, one for abstraction, might perhaps be called a gist mill. Some essences are more essential than others.
  - hard as the nether millstone | between a rock and a hard place | grind down
    - don't let the bastards grind you down
      - Perhaps I'll look into some additional millstones for the mill; some look harder than others.
A nonsentient machine blindly informs me that an anagram of sharecrop is horsecrap. Is the universe trying to tell us something?
- Lol, a thousand monkeys (or a dovecot full of birds) are just exactly that, but still, it's idly fun to run simulations of worlds in which they're something more.
  - Although horseshit can be useful fertilizer on crop fields, some horseshit is a raw deal, some manures are rawer than others, and some shares are less share than others.
fodder melon | watermelon
- This one is juiciest when read in a thick Midwestern accent (donchaknow) (/ˈɑɾəɹ/)
  - Admittedly, down in Waco they pronounce "wamdermelon" differently
tree nut | nuttery
- tree nut | tree hugger
  - tree hugger | nuttery || climate denier | nuttery
    - countervailing ways to be nutty; both have their own sort of nuttiness
      - Yes but
        buttery | nuttery | Nutter Butter
        Yes buttery
Unlike the previous breezy throwaway, here's a thicker piece of heartwood:
- Humans have a certain finickiness about things: some things are thingier than others.
  - It has interesting ramifications. I lack time to explore them here right now, but an upshot is that if one were to provide syn-cot discriminations for the list item population at Thesaurus:thingy (which is not necessarily something that will happen at Wiktionary, as opposed to other garages, hangars, chopshops, or skunkworks — but leaving that aspect aside for the moment), one would end up handling the main branch bifurcation of how some jawns (and joints and shebangs) are less thingy than others. Granted that there are a lot of dongles peppering the branch tips of this tree, but there are some main limbs leading to those. More later.
    - Here's some interim stankiness (⊕) related to it:
      - This jank sure is janky; this stank sure is stanky; this jank sure has some stank on it.
        What about (then also) This jawn sure is jawny? I predict that that adjective will arise eventually. I see (by googling) that a fella named Jawny (f.k.a. Johnny) has beaten the rest of us to the punch on that one in certain respects.
        Some jawns are jawnier than others; some jawns are scrawnier than others; we don't want no scrawn on it; and get off my lawn.
a bit of handsiness, in alphabetical order:
- at hand | backhand | by hand | nearhand | offhand | on hand | overhand | to hand | underhand
  - Meh. I spewed these offhand, but if one really wants to lay hands on the whole shebang, one can merely go to hand § Derived terms.
stigmergy | synergy
- shared parameters:
  - phenomena leading to …
    - emergence: a sum that is greater than its parts
    - amplified yet undue influence: some figurative analogue of spooky action at a distance; that way of expressing it is hyperbolic, yes, but not exactly wrong
      - there seems to be something of the "give me a big enough lever" to it
      - there is also obviously the shared theme of cooperating agents busily undergoing some combination of collaborating with one another and/or being influenced by one another; but the other parameters (aforementioned) are the accelerant/amplifier layers — the layers that show that the cooperation/influence layer is merely one of the parts whose sum is greater still.
Jesus Day | Christmas
- Yes but?
  - Relatedly: ΙΗΣ | /jis/ | yes
    - Say yes to Christ?
      - Is this one too cra-cra (ΧΡ-ΧΡ)?
        Jesus H. Christ's monogram would be JHC, but Christ's monogram is a Christogram (☧)
        PS: A synonym of JHC is JFC, but handwave etc.
        PPS: Down the block from JFC there is a KFC, but handwave etc.
  - suffixation
    - Jesusian | Christian
    - Jesusy | Christy
    - Jesuslike | Christlike
  - suffixation | affixation | fixation | crucifixion
    - This was a fun little exercise (and all in good fun), and strolling through Jesus § Derived terms was a pleasant diversion tonight. Isn't there a song about such strolling?
  - Is it the case that suffixation can be suffixion, and affixation can be affixion, but fixation cannot be *fixion? Are you telling me (O perverse dystopian universe) that that word is pure fiction? Life ain't fair. I see now that I missed (earlier) a degree of maximal opportunity regarding (perhaps) putting the /səˈfɪkʃən/ in crucifixion. Hey, not every swing can be a grand slam.
people × place × time
- dwellers
  - denizens | citizens
- lurkers
  - netizens
mall denizens
- mallgoth | gall moth
- mall ninja·ᵃᵗᵗᵉˢᵗᵃᵗⁱᵒⁿˢ | mall rat | mall cop | mall santa
some gardens are gardener than others
- medicinal herb garden
  - herbalism concerns: medicinal concerns
    - some garden walls are higher than others
- kitchen garden
  - kitchen herb garden
    - culinary-optimization concerns; gourmet-optimization concerns
  - vegetable garden
    - quotidian feeding concerns; food security concerns
    - Give us this day our daily bread (and veg, and meat), at the most direct and proximal level: not so much purity of self-sufficiency, but degrees approaching it: no man is an island, but a peninsula would be nice; that is, purity of autarky is a delusion, yet semi-autarky approach is wise; at best, semi-independent prosperity; at worst, hand to mouth but not starvation
- market garden
  - all of the above themes plus one parametric level higher: trade is more involved, beyond a lowest degree of bartering
- crop fields
  - quotidian feeding concerns; food security concerns; fodder and forage concerns; on-farm concerns and market concerns, both (on-farm consumption plus trade)
  - all of the above themes plus one parametric level higher: trade is more involved, beyond a lowest degree of bartering
back-to-back regressions
- clawback | takeback
  - a clawback is payback for a hack job
    - a drawback of fraud (from the fraudster's viewpoint) is the risk of clawback of ill-gotten gains
- takeback | giveback
  - buyback | sellback
    - it takes two to tango
- walkback | rollback
  - you have to walk before you can roll
- fastback | hatchback | notchback | squareback
  - hot hatch | potlatch
    - boot sale | boot fair
- wetback | diamondback
  - trek | tread?
- passback | throwback
  - it was the stile at the time
    - piggyback | tailgate | coattail
      - some coats are tailer than others
- hardback | softback
  - wait for the paperback
- sassback | talkback
  - backtalk | backchat
- hardtack | fatback
  - red-eye gravy | gravy train
    - take the red eye | night train
      - some eyes are redder than others
ill-used | ill at ease
- Someone feeling the former way is probably also feeling the latter way. Causally related co-occurrence when flowing in that direction; directional. Independent when flowing in the other direction, but can be linked by because in the subclass.
  - One of the factors limiting the strength of causal-subclass association is that although most of them want to use you, some of them want to get used by you; and although most of them want to abuse you, some of them want to be abused. Sweet dreams; nighty night.
Do not confuse officinalis with officialis, despite their ultimately cognate relation.
- Power leads to work, and work leads to power; and thus some workers are worker than others, at least according to themselves. Wasn't there a hog on a farm who said something about that once?
punch dialogue | catchphrase
- Yes but, having been bounced off the Tea room.
In which place will you tuck your pencil?
- A. pencil holder
- B. Pennsyltucky
- C. pencil box
- D. pencil case
- E. penicillinase
- F. auricle ipsilateral to dominant hand
- G. where sunlessness prevails
- H. None of the above
point of pride | pride of place
- Shared parameter: ways for pride to be connected to a certain point, but some points are pointier than others: point as aspect, point as rank being connected to point as location, handwave etc
  - Yes but: no one cares, in the way that Fowler said that no one cares about synonym discrimination: the "almost" in "almost all" has such a high parameter value for percentage of completion that Wiktionary is not the place (not the point?)
    - Nevertheless, it gets recorded in a laboratory such as this one because the database index thing is operative, regardless of whether most people are unaware of it.
column inches | inches of water in a water column (not to be confused with a water column); inches of mercury in a mercury column
- Yes but, my little newspaper-reading/barometer-reading mad hatter.
  - Amidst all the measuring and comparing of inches, it occurs to me that news holes are like assholes: some holes are holier than others.
    - water column | jerkwater burg
      - Yes but, my little soda jerker.
    - royal asshole | holy terror^{holy terror} | royaler | holier | holiest royal | Holy Roman Emperor
moon-eyed | starry-eyed
- Shared parameter: celestial bodies in one's eyes
  - Is that anything like a foreign body in one's eye? Leading to corneal abrasion? Some bodies are cornier than others, we'll give them that.
    - Someone who is starry-eyed may ask for the moon, perhaps even on a stick, and they may become moon-eyed in nonplussed disbelief when they find out that they can't have it
      - Which is to say, they don't get it when told that they can't get it
        Her eyes could light up a room.
        Yes but.
paradigm shifts | punctuated equilibria
- Shared parameter: timelines with stable eras punctuated by episodes of heightened changeability and change
  - As follows:
    - Having read a mention of some Kuhnian thought trains
      - WP s.v. Thomas Kuhn (accessed 2023-10-20) says that "Kuhn made several claims concerning the progress of scientific knowledge: that scientific fields undergo periodic "paradigm shifts" rather than solely progressing in a linear and continuous way".
    - The noticing of the shared parameter is trivial from an informed viewpoint (albeit not from a blinkered one) — so trivial as to throw an instant eyeless alert — and yet, as of this writing (accessed 2023-10-20), you cannot get from WP s.v. paradigm shift to WP s.v. punctuated equilibria in any direct way by following any link either integrated into the text or at least given in a see-also section. Worse, it may not be possible to improve that lack by providing any such links without someone else complaining that they are a "problem" because the topics are "unrelated." That claim is clearly problematic, as it is merely critical thinking 101 to see (in an eyeless but clear way) that the punctuating events between punctuated equilibria are exactly the junctures where shifts occur between paradigms in bioevolution. If you point that out, then many people will agree, "OK, yes, I will concede that that's obviously true, now that you've pointed it out." Yet dorks had better stay cool by shutting up about it. Thus: yes but.
    - PS: paradigmatic shifts are parametric shifts insofar as various reparameterizations can turn ducks to rabbits or barrels to caterpillar tracks.
air denial | denial of service
- Shared parameter: adversarial denial of operations: thwarting adversaries in the multidimensional battlespace
  - Yes but.
    - However, in the course of parametrizing, it occurred to me by corollary that the word *cyberdenial will probably arise sometime sooner than later; and then it occurred to me not only (1) to google it to see whether that has already happened, but also (2) that when I would do so (google it) I would find it to be already coined and attested, albeit perhaps not yet widely. Yes — thus, thus, and thus. Thus again demonstrating that my gut has really developed regarding this parametricity bullshit. You start with the predictable dose of human malice and bellicosity and then you multiply by morphologic and collocational combinatorial potential, while not forgetting to divide by conquering.
      - Related to this line of thought (which smells burny, in a nonolfactory way) is the reminder that humans are still debating how many and what sorts of cyberattacks they can do to each other before they cross a threshold from civilian to military spheres, if such a threshold exists (perhaps they'll throw a boil to find out), which is to say, how much they can fuck with each other cyberly before they start a war. Of course they will predictably bust out the truism that it depends on what sort of war you're talking about: some wars are warrier than others; some like it cold, some like it hot, Pollyanna is derided by both sides as a fool (per aggression's cruelly steep Dunning-Kruger tax on everyone's standard of living), and there's perhaps a Goldilocksian position in here somewhere.
        PS: Can fucking around cyberly be done soberly? Perhaps it depends on one's definition of sobriety, but I'm not convinced that humans crawling shakily a mere one day at a time, by itself, will cut it in this domain. Some fucks are soberer than others. Some parametric level beyond which a teetotaler approach applies might be helpful, as some totals are totaler than others. With some things, just because one can do them doesn't mean one should.
wind power | water power | airpower | seapower
- Shared parameter: handwave etc;
  - And also: cyberpower
  - Yes but
Just yesterday or so, I saw a graphic to divide sections wordlessly and recalled that I knew the word for that but couldn't recall it unprompted. Tip of the tongue.
- dinkus | dingus
  - The word you were reaching for was dinkus, dingus.
    - solche Dinge sind handwave etc
No one is better at deigning than one who is reigning, for they (of all) are the ones who have the farthest to stoop.
- Is one who is regnant then also one who can be *degnant? If life were fair, there might be no such gap to mind.
- Can one who is regnant also be pregnant? Certainly, if she deigns to be impregnated. Her sovereignty is impregnable, but Her Majesty isn't necessarily so. Even a royal person is still a person, although personal union is a different thing from the beast with two backs.
  - Speaking of backs, this little back-of-the-envelope exercise is a throwaway, but I should just like to acknowledge that it is well that I live in the present era, for if I'd composed this little chickenscratch in Victorian times and places, they might have clapped me into jail for my temerity, considering such a sketch to be in the vicinity of obscenity. In that day one dared not talk so personally of the royal personage. One was hardly safe to speak of the legs of a table (ooh la la), let alone what a regnant might stoop to. Some stoopers are stooper than others.
"and so is the tip of an iceberg"
- X does Y, and so does Z; X doesn't do Y, and neither does Z;
  - native speakers know that difference by osmosis;
- dept 7: 4-dimensional chess doesn't move, and neither does such an iceberg;
  - dharma: 4D freezing
    - bucket diversion: extensive; but a taste — a residue — is suffered here
      - neurodivergence models include driving stick: I've already downshifted and upshifted again by the time I'm asked; "don't worry your pretty little head about which gear where and when"
covey | coven
- Both can be a group of people, especially an in-group or clique of tough old birds; and a covey otherwise is a group of birds, especially galliform ones. But the gall of some old birds may gall you. And watch out lest you be henpecked.
  - Yes but, my dear /ˈkʌv/ ˈkʌzɪnz. I ˈlʌv yəz though.
Speaking of profundity, the distinction between lumpiness and bumpiness concerns depth: bumps are on the surface, whereas lumps are scattered throughout. There's a better word for that (I'm sure the mat sci people have one), and my mind keeps landing on constituent when it reaches down into the depths of the substrate to lay hands on the lump that I'm after, but when I bring that one back up to the surface, I have to take a look at it, handle it, sniff it, and throw it back: nope, that's not it.
a winkler who couldn't run a whelk stall, learning at a snail's pace
- walks into a bar and yes but
"the crux is that the profundity is conditional; it depends on prevailing parameter values in the environment"
- A thorough sounding (or a submariner's sonar) can show that some bottoms are craggier than others.
  - a thorough sounding | a sound thrashing | the sound and the fury of the waves thrashing in a shallow sound
    - Stay in the channel please; our draft precludes laxity.
heavy roller | high roller | heavy hitter
- meh
A day in the life
- Today's nonce words:
  - *romantify; *romantification; *romancify; *romancification;
  - *predarken;
  - *partify; *partification;
  - *immensified;
- Today's pseudowords:
  - *romantific; *romantifical; *romancific; *romancifical;
  - *partificated;
  - *Parkensian;
  - *vercasification; *indolnification; *redultenated;
  - Some wug words are wugger than others.
Casting about for fire, seeing it in a mirror
- Yes but, although
body transfer illusion | body snatchers | body snatching
- Yes but
prowess | power ——— abilities | capabilities
- Shared parameter of prowess and power: the capability to achieve a goal — to make something happen; the requisite/prerequisite potential
  - prowess and power are not synonymous and they are not cognate, but they do have semantic overlap, because it takes prowess to achieve a result that requires skill and knowledge to achieve, and it takes power (of one sort or another) to accomplish anything.
    - In other words, for goals that require skill to achieve, there is no potential for realization without (at least a modicum of) prowess, and there is no potential for realization without (at least a modicum of) power.
      - The thematic connection's strength is flowing mightily beneath the collocational power: demonstrating one's prowess , using one's power , and so on (handwave etc)
        I scribbled the above first, of my own accord, and then I also decided to do the lookup legwork to find out what each of the following had to say about this particular semantic connection: Devlin 1961, M-W 2005, M-W 1984. The first two, nothing; the third, not much, but yes, one hit: at prowess, the last item of its list is a pointer to power.
        prowess is also about bravery besides skill (that is, both the courage to do action X and the skill to do it), which shows an avatar of the twin sibling pair of willing and able (willingness and ability as the twin prerequisites for the potential of any human-performed action to occur). In fact the word's origins apparently lie in the bravery locus, but certainly its present-day meaning is just as much about skill (that is, just as much or maybe even more, depending on which speaker you ask or which attestations you measure). Devlin's entry for prowess focuses mainly on the bravery and not much on the capability, which explains why it omits power. I'm glad to see that M-W 1984 gives power, because it proves that "it's not just me." A thought for later: when I'm looking later for a toy to play with for some minutes, I should have a look(up) in 5 or 6 other thesauri that are at hand, as well as OneLook's. (Update, later: Rodale 1978 s.v. prowess has sufficient power on this point lol.)
        One fact that this thread's existence demonstrates is that when Fowler claimed that no one gives a shit about others' syn-ant-ana-con-rel-cf-also discriminations ("for the reader, nothing but boredom"), he was (partly) wrong; there is a difference between the average reader and the adequately interested reader. It is the difference between almost all and all. Conflations of the two in human thought are at best hyperbolic misrepresentations for practical heuristic use and at worst failures of emic conception. Some lumpings are lumpier than others, and some readers are reader than others. (Old no-eyes snickers: you call that a reader?)
three-strikes law‎ | Law of Three Spikelets
- Shared parameter: Placing a strict parameter value on the degree of tolerance, or at least one that can be defined as strict under various conditions albeit not all
  - Thus: a concept that these laws have in common is an idea not only that the citizen is responsible for adherence but also that there is a demonstratively (even performatively) constrained degree of forbearance in the enforcement.
  - Yes but. However, …
  - A three-strikes law‎ places the value at 3 (regarding events), which under some parametric conditions is not even strict but rather lenient (for example, society doesn't tell a murderer that they get the first two murders free (or for a mere wrist slap) before they get punished starting with the third), but it is sufficiently strict under various other parametric conditions, where it is stricter than some alternative option that is ridiculously lax (for example, "hey it's fine if you break the law 14 times, we'll just give your wrist one slap for each").
    - The Law of Three Spikelets was ostensibly a law setting a low nonzero parameter value on tolerance (regarding the number of specks not "properly" accounted for), but in reality it was functionally a zero tolerance parameter value, and furthermore, in reality it was an Orwellian scam, a false pretense ostensibly licensing egregiously horrible treatment of the populace, including a false pretense for slave labor "recruitment".
      - The wire crossing happens at this juncture: the three-spikelets law was a one-strike law, not a three-strikes law (where each strike equals an event), because under the three-spikelets law, three spikelets (or more) at one event constituted one's one and only strike: one's first and last strike, coinstantiated.
        Someone will ask why mere truisms are being shuffled in an exercise such as this one. It's basically the same reason why anyone draws or paints or sculpts or knits or bakes or fucks with novelty puzzles or crosswords. Such an exercise holds one's interest for a time, is sometimes fun to fuck around with a bit, blows off some steam, and produces results that are interesting to look at, handle, or sniff, notwithstanding the fact that they weren't strictly "necessary".
        Proximal connections to "a demonstratively (even performatively) constrained degree of forbearance in the enforcement" (above) — tough on crime, law and order, show trials, cruel and unusual·ʷᵖ
incorrigible | indirigible
- There's no correcting it and there's no directing it; | unmanageable | unsteerable
  - It can't get right and it can't be set right; | unrectifiable
zero fighter | Zero (fighter)
- meh
zero hour | H-hour | D-day | X-Day | zero-day
- T minus X, T plus X, D minus X, D plus X
give a fuck | put out | sell one's body | walk the streets
- charity donation versus sales | handwave etc
off-the-charts | off-the-wall
- Shared parameter: in both cases, at least one parameter value is far outside its reference range; but the current assessment on yea-or-nay for Wiktionary links is nay.
  - The obvious parameter dial twists without even digging for any: off the chain; off the hook#Etymology 3. Again, though, the current assessment is nay. But I find it interesting that I get eyeless alerts for such things while reading the news. Just because some people can't handle it doesn't mean handwave etc.
    - Related to shit that's off-the-wall: to end up up against the wall owing to outlier parameter values also touches on being balls to the wall. Just figured I'd throw that one here too since it popped up and took no effort. Which is how it goes with most spaghetti that ends up on the wall.
Recently I spoke of promulgating. There is no promulgation without propagation.
- The promulgating of opinions is their attempted propagation, most especially when via propaganda.
  - The latter brings us back to hermitic hermetic affairs again. Three moves. Your move.
Here's a bit of birdshit that flashed by while I was reading the news:
- Porous borders are sometimes said to be permeable, meaning that they are penetrable (by persons);
  - If borders are sealed effectively enough, they are figuratively hermetically sealed;
    - A certain country with brutally tight border control (and mind control) is said to be the Hermit Kingdom because it is so hermitic;
      - This gets us from hermetic -ally sealed to hermitic -ally sealed in only four moves, despite the fact that when the collocation hermitically sealed occurs under any parametrically normal conditions, it is invariably a mere catachresis. Four moves; your move.
If a transatlantic destination is across the pond, then a transatlantic flight to get there is but a hop, skip, and a jump, or a skipping of a stone across a pond.
- PS: To call an ocean a pond is a move that undoubtedly originated in humorous or ironic understatement, and to admit that fact is to admit a fact (rather than to editorialize, which has to do with promulgating opinions), but not all Wiktionarians will agree that it should be explained in the etymology section for the term. Very well; so be it. I suppose that the best argument in favor of that position (the one that holds that it should not be explained there) is not only (1) that explaining a joke kills it, but also (2) that readers don't need the explanation anyway (because they should figure it out for themselves). As for the notion of "can you point to a reference to be cited that proves it," well, probably not (I won't bother hunting to find out); but I question the notion that it is doubtworthy. In fact I would class it as blue because any chance that it could be an incorrect folk etymology seems too small to entertain realistically. C'mon, that's not what it is, and we all know it. Some waters are bluer than others.
  - PS: Jocular hyperbole has limits; it can be mugged by reality. Although a transatlantic flight may be but a hop, skip, and a jump jocularly, one had better not try to use a puddle jumper to do it.
A vicar's wife is a vicaress, and a rector's wife is a rectoress, but a curate's wife is not a curatress, and a priest's wife (if he's the sort of priest who can have one) is not a priestess, except in an obsolete sense of that word. Also: presbyter's wife: presbyteress.
The economic importance of the interstates should not be understated.
- We passed over our chance to emphasize the importance of overpass and underpass maintenance.
  - Perhaps some of the best dad jokes involve themes of failure to appreciate resources and the undue (short-sighted) deferral of their maintenance.
    - When reporters asserted that there was a problem of deferred maintenance, he demurred, then deferred to a department spokesperson, who deterred him from further comment.
      - When maintenance is due, deferring it is undue, due to the costs of neglect.
        deferred payment | overdue payment | undue deferral
        If deferring is deferral, and demurring is demurral, then why is deterring not *deterral?
        Why isn't *jokery an attested synonym of jocularity by now? Jokers want to know. Is it the case that every Tom Fool can have his tomfoolery but a joker can't have any *jokery? Of course, I kid — to expect idiomaticness to be rational and fair is a self-own. In contrast, as with various things in life, one needs to comprehend that it is what it is.
stints
- unstinting generosity has the potential to be expressed through unending largesse
  - especially when the recipient is a deadbeat, if unflinching candor may be excused
    - An effort that is unflinching is one that neither pulls its own punches nor flinches at the opponent's punches.
- stints and stunts share the parameter of finiteness of episode, and they not infrequently also share the parameter of picaresqueness: an interesting stint, if short enough, might be viewed as a stunt. (Did I ever tell you about the time I worked in a pickle cannery for a hot minute? Long story short, I was fired before noon)
  - stint—/ü/—stunt
drama | trauma | melodrama | mama drama | mama trauma | dramatic | traumatic
- Shared parameters — negative emotions; rhyme in some varieties even where not vowel merger generally
Do not confuse an altercation with an alteration, even though many idiots have.
- A standard defense of such things is that "I'm not stupid, I'm just careless, sloppy, unconscientious, or lazy." Yes but: self-own.
  - Getting into an altercation may cause an alteration to one's face. Make sure it's worth it, in any case where you consider doing it.
vivid | lurid
- Shared parameters that are not always present, but often — visually striking; emotionally stirring; memorable (whether in a good way or in a bad way)
  - collocations: in vivid detail | in lurid detail
    - PS: livid is in this mix too; there is a sense of livid that is more or less synonymous with a sense of lurid.
      - PPS: livid | lurid | lead | white lead | whitish-yellowishness | paleness | wanness | jaundiced | lead makes people sick, pale, and yellow; anger makes people pale and drained (unless it is alternatively reddening their faces); handwave etc
hillbilly | mountain man | highlander | mountain goat | billygoat
- Shared parameters: hardy ± rustic ± high-elevation critters
  - highlanders | lowlanders | hilldwellers (hill dwellers) | daledwellers (dale dwellers) | Talwohner
modal siblings:
- Darren daren't | Austin oughtn't | Justin mustn't | May mayn't | Micah mightn't | Shae shan't | Shaun shouldn't | Will wouldn't (Woody?)
  - The makers of the Garbage Pail Kids may have missed a few opportunities here.
Equine putdowns include horselaugh and horseface, and horseshit as a spat assertion is one too; but these equine putdowns are nothing to do with putting down an equine.
- A horse boy, a horse girl, a horseman, and a horsewoman walk into a bar — or a horsebarn — and the horse says nay; he's having none of it. And neither am I, which is why the setup ends here.
hold your breath versus don't hold your breath; hold out hope versus don't; | hold your horses | hold the phone | hold on | on hold | hold out | hold up
- Shared parameter: waiting, not waiting, waiting in vain, not waiting in vain; holding
  - The point: nothing at the moment except recitation and collation.
    - People who hole up aim to hold out.
      - One should hold up before deciding to hole up.
      - There's no concept of holding out while holed up without the concept of holding off the bastards.
      - The duration of holding out while holed up is a parameter value that depends on the variable of whether one has an edge over the bastards, and on the degree to which one doesn't let the bastards wear one down, which depends on parameter values of hardness and toughness; and the concept of edge retention as a gradable parameter value depends on the same (in a nonfigurative way). Some bookkeepers' sons have more of an edge than others, and some tools take an edge better than others, but the latter may hold an edge better than the former. But the big picture logistically is that all edges wear while working and thus new edges must be periodically brought to bear (in one way or another); the tip of the spear must be renewed somehow, and the wearing down of bastards eventually comes down to attrition of edges and of edge-maintaining and edge-renewing capabilities.
a Peacemaker on his hip | a pacemaker in his chest | a prosthetic hip
- He may be old, and old-school (single-action), but one had best not test him; and ladies, he may be single
  - all the single ladies | all the older ladies | all the older single ladies
    - Is his Peacemaker nickel-plated?
Rod Steiger is not to be confused with Rod Serling.
- Shared parameters: coeval dark-haired US American on-screen talents named Rod S(omething), born mid-1920s, fl. 1946–197x, before my time, handwave etc.
  - Wasn't I just bitching about humans lacking institutional memory, and now I'm bitching that I can't keep all these classic rod(s) straight? I'm human too. (Yesss, that'll do.) Some rods are straighter than others.
it's what's inside that counts | it ain't the meat, it's the motion
- Shared parameters: disabusing popular misconceptions (or at least conventionalized archetypes thereof) as to whether or not superficial attributes are the governing factors (the defining parameters) of a given environment.
  - Granted that by now the notion of contrarianism involved is itself at least somewhat conventionalized. It can never reach purely absolute formulaic emptiness because humans are an unending well of disabusability, not least because in aggregate they lack the capacity for adequate institutional memory. Nonetheless, you know what comes after "it's what's inside that counts": that's what she said (hardy har har, which of all the kinds of lol is the most non-lol kind of lol).
    - PS: Some inside jobs are insider than others, but in all cases it's what's inside that counts operatively. The innermost of inside jobs are the trade ones, as measured by parameter value magnitudes of total aggregate screwed-over-ness (howsoever it may be distributed across populations of marks), which is interesting because it illustrates how the dirtiest collars of all can be the white collars. The latter theme is of course a truism, but the problem with refusing to discuss the obvious in human affairs is that the wider open one's eyes are, the tighter one's tongue would end up being tied — fast forward to the natural conclusion: eyes taped open but mouth taped shut, which is not so much a parameter value for thinking before speaking as a torture chamber.
A nonsentient machine blindly informs me that an anagram of endless chain is side-channels, but all this talk of chains and side pieces prompts my sentient mind to point out that side chains seem more relevant, given that they can be endless chains when R is aromatic. What's less useful — a meaningless computational artifact or a dreamlike daydream devoid of practical application? Two different ways for a stopped clock to be right twice a day. No need to apologize for the fact that a mind as an ore mill spits out speciously shiny bits here and there; many an ore mill has, as a natural artifact of its valid activity — a side effect, speaking of side pieces. These bits and pieces are good for a laugh if nothing else. Some laughs out loud are less out loud than others (lol.), but even some non-lol lols are lols of a sort. Bierce's loaf is leavened by (dark) levity throughout, whereas it's funny 'cause it's true (some loaves have more whole grains than others, and some black bread slices are darker than others). Every so often when people are fucking around with bits and pieces they stumble across one that fits into a larger puzzle in an interesting way (lol.).
- PS: Speaking of side pieces, a side arm is a piece on one's side (which is the mobile type of being at one's side), but it is not on the side in the same way that a side piece is.
like a ton of bricks | one brick short of a full load
- Both involve the parameters constituting the nature of a load of bricks (most especially a metric shit-ton thereof, in magnitude and in precision), but their relation to each other is nonetheless too trivial for Wiktionary to point it out.
  - Not too trivial for this particular little hall of mirrors to contemplate, though, at least for a moment in passing.
    - Dictionaries are subject to parametric differentiation. Bierce recognized that if one shunts all the most darkly cynical insights into a bucket dedicated to them, one gets an accruing juice that might be called the dictionary of (or by) the Devil. Some wine grapes are darker than others; some fermented mashes are sourer than others. Mashes; doughs. His loaf is leavened by (dark) levity throughout — as makes for a more salable loaf of course — although it is trivially easy to contemplate a twisting of the parametric dials to produce the unleavened version. (But who wants that, as it's just a chore to chew and gives one indigestion to boot.)
      - The answer to the question of who wants that is interesting from some viewpoints. It reveals the parametrization between end user and B2B customers. I don't have time for a proper contemplation right now, but it has to do with (1) machines, nonmachines, and some nonmachines who are more machine than others, and (2) the cognitive analogues of chemical intermediates. Who wants or cares about cumene? Those who want or care about phenol. Some wanting or caring is more proximal than other wanting or caring. Lately it is getting weird because nowadays some machines are more machine than others; a chained beast is an intermediate too, or juggles intermediates.
        More on the theme of "who wants that?": Devlin pointed out that Fowler said (in effect) that syn/ant discriminations are stupid because no one wants them except the synonymizers themselves; others are merely bored by them. He's not wrong about the leg of the elephant that he's touching, but he's wrong about the wider elephant. (Some elephants are wider loads than others.) He forgot to parameterize for use cases and user personas before passing judgment; some end users are ender than others.
        BTW, in effect: paraphrasis is a parametric exercise.
in writing | on paper — one is "with proof" whereas the other is "in theory".
- One might reply, "No shit, what's your point?" But I had never thought about them together until today, although in retrospect they seem to invite comparison, in a way that makes me think, now why hadn't I thought of that before? And that is what my point is. The pairing isn't very interesting, but the failure to contemplate the pairing earlier is somewhat interesting (to someone curious about cognition). Corollary: a native speaker of English might easily go decades without thinking to compare them consciously (as I did), and yet I could easily imagine and predict (1) that another language might potentially end up with their homologues being synonymous, or (2) that another language might use one of the forms for the "opposite" sense ("opposite" from English's viewpoint). And yes, this is borne out: when I glance at on_paper#Translations and at in_writing#Translations, I see that the same distinction seems to be carried in parallel across various languages (as is detectable from the visible cognation), but Irish is an exception, according to Wiktionary as of today: it tells me that ar pháipéar (etymonically parallel with "on paper") means "in writing" idiomatically. Assuming (provisionally) that Wiktionary isn't wrong about that, I find it idly interesting at the moment.
  - Another idle thought: cognition versus cognation: only /ɪ/ versus /eɪ/. Again, no shit, but again, why never before now?
    - Update a day or two later: It occurred to me today that natural language often excuses a certain degree of subtle catachresis, even to the point that a listener may not notice it, and thus it is that one might hear, in passing, an English speaker use on paper when they meant the concept that in English is idiomatically conveyed by in writing, and one might not even think twice about it: you know damn well what they meant, and it almost works somehow, even regarding idiomaticness. "Well you'd better get that on paper if you think there's a prayer's chance in hell that they'll honor it later." If one's interlocutor were to say that sentence, one would know what he meant; furthermore, the parametric environment for pedantically correcting him is constrained by social-skills factors: one must know how to be cool so as not to play the dork.
Do not confuse a heart of stone with a hearth of stone. One is a chill at the core of a person whereas the other is a warmth at the core of a home. For warmths at the core of a person, see heart of gold, hyperthermia, and fever. For chills at the core of a home, see HVAC, draftiness, and homewrecker.
inset (adj) | recessed (adj) | INSET day (kids not in classroom) | recess (kids not in classroom)
- pure birdshit in this case
endophorically (anaphorically or cataphorically) versus exophorically; | dysphorically
- Shared parameters:
  - If there's any trouble among the first group, you can always have the second group instead
    - Some defaults are more default than others
    - Some ways of being phoric carry less baggage than others
      - heterophoric, gametophoric, trophophoric, hemophoric, osmophoric; | euphoric (how's that? you who now?)
mountebank | mendicant — shared parameters: both archetypally address passersby in the street or square, and their pitch, at heart albeit not superficially, regards money and its disposition; the value of the parameter for the suggested direction of flow is (predictably) the same in both cases: meward, they point, endophorically. (That's the normal value of that parameter, and to such an extent that it is strongly predictable even in low-clue contexts: it is at least one clue that the passerby has, even among a dearth of others.) Another shared parameter is physical positioning, but the values for that one are archetypally diametric between the pair: a mountebank is archetypally mounted, whereas a mendicant is archetypally laid low. In fact it is interesting to think consciously about the fact that the effectiveness (parameter value) of his pitch relies in part on not flouting the archetype: if he wants to persuade you, he's best off doing it from a low stance. The same perhaps can be said about the other's archetypal value for the positioning parameter: he might perhaps seem more persuasive if he delivers his pitch from a commanding height; but he must be careful, though, because another predictable human parameter is that humans' suspicion or reservation parameter values are easily heightened if they perceive that they are being talked down to.
Recently I mentioned misinterpretation under deranged parameter values, without even consciously realizing at the time that that is not different from the object that Hoel was recently talking about.
amor fati | vivir para servir | memento mori
- To assert that the profundity is artifactual will strike some as heretical, and that's fair because in fact the assertion isn't wholly accurate. Rather, the crux is that the profundity is conditional; it depends on prevailing parameter values in the environment. This little tuple of concepts (irrespective of which words are embodying them) when offered as a life tip could be misinterpreted as an apologia for feudal serfdom or for chattel slavery (under deranged parameter values), although it is meant as a stoic self-liberation. Does that say anything about the nature or qualities of our universe? The line of thought smells dystopian, w:dystheistic, or similarly burnt. But that whiff, too, may be artifactual. Anyways lolz who cares tho amirite. I wasn't going to hoover this item into this bucket, but hysteresis handwave etc. Also something about Fleming's washing-up surprise and what such a thing leads to: soon enough people are leaving scores of dishes of dirt out to set, just to see what happens or doesn't. I seem to recall that that's part of what w:Waksman et al did. The fact that there was more to it than that doesn't make that an oversimplification. Rocket science is complex but it isn't wrong to say that rockets are cleverly aimed explosions. The complexity is in the clever-aiming part, not in the go-boom-boom part per se.
  - It's odd that you mentioned rocket motors, as something adjacent popped off in my face mere minutes afterward. I hadn't had any (true) bell rings in recent days — I had been detecting that Bell (1961) was ringing for others (not me), whereas not every ring that I can hear is for me. (And that's fine, because it is merely a matter of a party line, not a wrong number, and I hang up once I detect that the call is meant for someone else.) Then I capped off my night with some more Jaffe (1976), and I came to Jaffe 1976:60, where we find Priestley fucking around (not so much in his garage as in his rectory), lighting off H₂ + O₂ inside "a closed thick glass vessel". Well that's inherently asking for it (in the name of science), lol. The poor fucker couldn't even have had any polycarbonate face shield, either. I'd like to call his thick vessel a bell jar although I realize that it probably wasn't — but it'd be fitting, allegorically. But it's funny you mention glossing over details for w:storytelling effect, because I'd recently had a thought about an echo between Jaffe and De Kruif (two peas of an era/pod in w:popular science). I didn't even hoover that one into any bucket (whereas some dust bunnies remain free-range). Speaking of which, the only reason I'm doing any hoovering hereby is because procrastination between fires while on call (as it were). Anyway, Priestley was preoccupied at the time by other matters (for example, one of his pet white whales was doggedly pursuing the phantom essence of fire with conditionally activated antigravity properties), and he figured that this H₂+O₂ bullshit would probably never amount to much as compared against gunpowder (whose parlor trick involves N and O). One could be forgiven for thinking so, especially under a prevailing set of parameter values (constituting an environment). (Side note: Why did it never consciously occur to me until now that Priestley was priestly? WTF?) Anyway (to continue this particular instance of storytelling), Jaffe flicked his flint and promptly popped off the following shit and thereby rang the bell jar right in my ear, as if to say, "You were straining to the tunes of distant bells and whining about their high rangefinding values? Well fuck you kid — flick this flint instead and smoke what the trapped gases yield." He said:
    - "Cavendish's suspicions became more and more confirmed. The facts seemed to be as clear as daylight. He went to his bottles and his bladders, his gases and his electrical machine to probe a great secret. The way had been shown him — this fact Cavendish, like Priestley, never denied. He sought no fame in the pursuit of truth. Not that anything mattered to this misanthrope, yet he could not help peeping into nature's secrets. He was a machine, working to unfold hidden truths — not because they were useful to mankind , but because he delighted in the hunt."
      - PS — Cavendish was a dick, but that's not the point.
        PPS — If one is going to be a machine, one might as well be self-aware about it. Reversing the polarity on those parameters (diametrically), if a machine is going to be a one, it might as well be self-aware about it, or at least speciously seem to be so, and nowadays people will even trip over themselves to hand you wads of cash even just for speciously seeming to have produced that effect. The prevailing value of that parameter (that is, the number of bucks given for that particular parlor trick, because of the number of fucks given for that particular parlor trick) may eventually change (to low nonzero or zero?) once the novelty wears off; it is the goldrush of our moment (2023–?) to explore that question. Meanwhile there are earnest discussions of whether or not such a one should refer to oneself in the first person, given that there is no true there there (behind the "I" or "we"). Every time Microsoft Office tells me that "we didn't find that search term in this file", I scoff — who the fuck is "we" in this dialog's parametric environment, you charlatans? Parlor-trickin mthrfrs.
        P^^handwaveS — Some bells are made of metal whereas others are made of GLASS. Good bird.
blowhole | blowhole — one brings the hole in the head for breathing to the hole in the ice for breathing
earth tone 👁️ | earth tone 👂 | earth's ring tone | ringing tone | pick up | hang up | return call
- METI | the call is coming from inside the house | the return call will be coming from inside the house | problem solved?
dislocated | disoriented: shared parameters: handwave etc
eminently | elevatedly: shared parameters: handwave etc
- None of the others are far away — not especially, not markedly, and so on — because the number of degrees it takes to get there is low, handwave etc
veneer | vernier: shared parameters: semantic overlap of thin thickness differentials plus phonemic overlap
- The fact that a joiner misspoke and corrected himself midword only reinforces that I'm not the only one to make this connection
digital clock | quartz clock: shared parameter: Digital displays don't always get run by digital guts, and digital guts don't always run digital displays, but most digital displays are run by digital guts; not everyone always uses digital displays, but perhaps when they do, they prefer dos equis (XX:xx)
Haldane | halothane: shared parameters: anesthetic-adjacent; I seem to recall that Haldane was the sort of chap who would be willing to huff some halothane to see what happens, much as Davy also was?
- (I mean huffinstuff Davy, not briny Davy, but speaking of shared parameters — Na, never mind, you wouldn't be interested)
  - briny Davy | blue-water Navy: some waters are deeper and bluer than others
eyeholes | pupils (the holes for the eyes | the holes in the eyes)
- windows to the soul (some windows are more glazed than others)
dog food | dog meat (ew)
- dogfood | dogmeat
- dog meat | hot dog
Glengorse | Heatherdale
living room | lebensraum (ew, thumbs-down)
cat × 10²? (box cat in cat box is only the tip of the miceberg)
- cat's-paw | pussyfoot
turnspit dog → puppy mill
- To buy a pup one must see someone about a dog, but if that someone is running a puppy mill then he may be looking to sell someone a pup, or at least a polished dogturd
  - Some say that you can't polish a turd, whereas others clarify (more accurately) that you can polish a turd but it will remain a turd (though). As for dogturd as a solid compound, it's attested and blueworthy (albeit tinged red at the moment), but some compounds are solider than others, or at least solider on some days than on others.
pigfeed | hog fuel
dream feed | nightmare fuel

Orientation

Some of these are admittedly trivial to generate and trivially uninteresting (for example, breathing room and decompression chamber). I am well aware. Relatedly, they remind us of zh → en → zh → en re-retranslation games (or ja → en → ja → en ones), which are likewise ultimately not as interesting as they at first appear. But what is holding my attention in recent days is that worthwhile semantic relations links can sometimes come out of briefly considering semantic parameterizations. In other words, the only thing different about the funhouse mirror as opposed to the plane mirror is the coordinating parameter constituted by the curve itself. The disjunction — of (1) worthwhile but (2) nonetheless not yet added — is interesting because it uncovers something about cognitive modes. I have analytical thoughts about that something. Below are some sketches.

2023-10-19:
- Most of these daydreams yield no connections entered into the Wiktionary entries, in my current judgment, per Wiktionary's parametric limits.
  - In many of them, I did not explicitly record whether that outcome applied, because the point of their being in this section instead of any other section is that if they're here then they are too tangential to yield any edits to the Wiktionary entries. Sometimes other (valid) edits come about via the surrounding thoughts, but the core of these daydreams is (appropriately) unactionable for Wiktionary's purposes.
    - What "yes but" usually means herein is that "there will (nonetheless) be no connections entered into the Wiktionary entries, in my current judgment, per Wiktionary's parametric limits."
      - Granted (also) that other garages build other monstrosities, yes, but.
      - Jung and Everett both commented (each in his own different way) on monstrosities that may be either real or illusory and either mundane or otherwise.
2023-07-20:
- Regarding the handwave etc for the shared-parameter exposition: that is, meh, you know what I'm talking about. On one hand, it is an established truism that everything is not far removed parametrically from anything else. (Wiktionarian corollary: "However, since almost all words are semantically related to each other on some (sufficiently remote) abstract level, please use your own judgement on whether somebody possibly would find it useful.") Fair enough, but on the other hand, humans in general seem to spend a lot of time (cognitively) in the land of sui-generis-ness. I should even say way too much, if I'm stinting on generousness. Everything just is what it is, they seem to say, and what's in front of my nose is what's in front of my nose (no more nor less); and not only can I not spare a thought for anything else, I can't even begin to think what that anything else might even be. Still further: And I forbid you to suggest any answers to that question. (Be cool, dork.) What would be the happier medium on such a spectrum (instead of endlessly and nearly exclusively fucking around on the bottom-ass end of it)? Well, provisionally, a developing hypothesis is that it's not anything special or surprising, really. It's just optimally tailored semantic relation links, which (moreover) are ideally collapsed to hub-pointers when possible (hyperlink-jumping into expanded spaces one degree removed, whether it be in the Wiktionary instance via this or the Wikipedia instance via choice hat-navs, cat-navs, and see-also accordions). They can't all be hub-pointers, and that's fine, whereas the optimization is merely for them not to fail to be such whenever such is appropriate. But what else is involved in being optimally tailored, though, operationally speaking? Well, some themes are: links, but not too many; links, but not too tangential. Again, retreading known ground. But there's a reason why I'm sniffing around, trying to lay hands on a latent parameter ID (which is basically equal to sniffing around for a space to be deneglected, which might perhaps be something like a room of one's own, perhaps even in several simultaneous de-roomlessness-ənating ways). The thing that I am after (like a squirrel is after a nut, the little dirtspading nutter) is the precise nature of how too tangential is operationally defined. I think perhaps the answer might not be anything special in the end, by which I mean, it may be possible that there is nothing about its quality that is remarkable, but rather only its quantity and distribution: it is too scarce. They say that quantity has a quality all its own, by which they usually mean the clockwise hyponymous parametrization of that hypernymous fact, which is that big quantity has a quality all its own. Flip the polarity, though: small quantity has a quality all its own, as well (which is no less). Especially when it feels like unaccountably small quantity. Granted that Wiktionary is but one instantiation of a theme, and most people won't help build it. Very well. But what about the fact that the things that can be easily achieved at Wiktionary are not much being achieved anywhere else, either, in various respects? I respect arguments such as, "Well, that's nice, but I'm building or doing something else somewhere else for profit (slash for a living), so that's my opportunity cost." Very well. But that's not what I see happening, so much, though, in aggregate, among humans. What I see happening is (evidently, apparently) more like, "The lights are on all over the world, and lots of porn and murder and TikTokery and anorakery are being achieved/created at full throttle, but the average dictionary, as well as our best stab at any collaborative set of student notes to date, still suck ass though, in various easily improvable ways, and yet no one cares, which is to say, 0.001% of people care." Even if you grant that lots of people are dumb (and many of us will do), does a parameter value of 0.001% seem unaccountably low? I'm glad you mentioned a room of one's own, though, because it raises a relevant parameter ID: no one who can't afford any free time and device and internet access can afford to build any such resources. Very well. I grant it, heartily. And yet: who has all this time and money for porn and murder and endless TikTokery and anorakery, then? TikTok's name has an ironic flavor when tasted under this light.
  - Addendum 2023-09-10: Anyone who enjoys crosswords, and perhaps most especially those who enjoy cryptic crosswords (which is a population that Wikipedia asserts is large), has more than enough cognitive power to build Wiktionary's noncryptic semantic relations links, but it seems that almost no one among that population does so to any nonincidental degree. Perhaps a natural response is, so fuckin what, who cares anyway, dork? My counterargument is already documented in my WP and WT userspaces. Granted that Wiktionary is but an instantiation of a theme. But I do think that it is a rather important one among that class of instantiations (for various reasons), and one might wish (as I do) that more people agreed. I suppose that to give a shit is to self-own, or self-troll, in a way. Thus one mustn't too much. There is a balance point.
  - Addendum 2023-10-17: Rebucketed in transit. Some dead sharp eyes are deader than others.

Reflection subclass pearl 10

General notes

This is a subclass of the yes but class.
This subclass is in the mirror and is subtly differentiable from the main class there. Maybe later I'll write here a better description of the mechanism of differentiation.
- Speaking of intrapage relationships (among sections), one might ask how some of the items in this section arise at the peculiar times that they do. Are the times peculiar, or do they merely seem so? That is a question for bell ringers and rock thwackers, not mushroom hunters.
None of these would be wrong for the mainspace; some of them could go there eventually; but let each one live here until any such time as it might go anywhere else.
Parent bullets are flowing chronologically, newest first.
PS: Speaking of pearls, remember handwave etc.

List population

An ossifrage is also an ossiphage:
- a bearded vulture eats bones;
  - this bone breaker is a bone eater.
    - Yes and, on the condition of terseness; criterion met.
diapositive | diaphane
- Yes and.
  - Merely a bit of perspicacity. Did you see through it?
    - per- | dia-
      - Yes and.
penny wise and pound foolish | chasing pennies with dollars
- Yes absolutely. Done. (Cross-linked.)
  - Mildly interesting — being a native speaker of AmE, I've been hearing penny wise and pound foolish my whole life; I'd never heard the phrase chasing pennies with dollars until today (as far as I can recall), but as soon as I heard it, I was like, "yes, absolutely, my God I can't even count how many hours of my working life I have spent doing that because of flawed managerial systems." I could go on at length about better alternatives, but doing so here would be pointless. Oh well.
coffee machine | water cooler
- breakroom appliances; especially, ones that involve paper cups, or at least did so especially in the old days
  - meh
degasser | degausser
- This is a typical pair of the class whose traits include that (1) dumb spellcheck won't catch a mis-substitution (the machine says, "the one weird trick that I am capable of is seeing that they're both spelled correctly, and I cannot judge whether each is semantically appropriate within context"); (2) furthermore, dumb spellcheck might well even suggest, and even beg, that you introduce the mis-substitution ("did you mean this other one?" NO IDIOT, you'd know that that question is moronically stupid in this instance/context if you could read for comprehension at all, even a little bit); (3) EFL learners of non-Latin-script languages might appreciate a warning ("not to be confused"), although most native speakers would tend to consider the warning unnecessary.
  - I need a convenient label to name this class. Perhaps the not-to-be-comprehensionlessly-confused class? Meh. I'd rather not name it by a random example (such as "the degas-degauss class"), but perhaps that is a pithier path.
plankton → also → drifter, floater
- Yes but.
  - More specifically: if life were fair and humans were wise.
    - Yes, exactly why the but.
Parameter value ranges:
- "very little" my ass
  - not so
  - not so
- In fairness, I admit that one mustn't be too orangish about one's apples, as the "very little" value assignment came from a straight-up ALD whereas Wiktionary is not (quite) an ALD. Wiktionary is a bit cheeky in that it tries to have it both ways by going some way toward being all things to all people. This is natural for a thing that is made by any or all for any or all. (Such a jack never makes it (quite) all the way in any particular direction, but that's OK because he may not be handsome but he's handy.) But the reason I added the ux items in a fit of pique was my annoyance at how the "very little" value assignment was phrased. It didn't say "very little value for an ALD" — it said only "very little value", which as a universal claim is easily falsifiable. They forgot to parametrize for use case and user persona before making an unqualified assertion. As humans tend to do.
It's one thing to be edgy, as long as one doesn't go over the edge.
- Done There's a subset of ant-cot-ery that needed to have its loop closed the rest of the way at all of the following coordinates, because some nonsane entities are saner than others:
  - Thesaurus:sane | Thesaurus:insane | Thesaurus:sanity | Thesaurus:insanity
antiepileptic : neurostabilizer :: actor : director
- antiepileptic : neurostabilizer :: confectioner : chef
  - antiepileptic : neurostabilizer :: tutor : teacher
- Two concepts that are both (1) closely related semantically/ontologically and (2) often coinstantiated are not always (3) synonymous, and the easiest way to explain that fact to someone is to give them a practical example with garden-variety concepts that are readily to hand.
  - The examples above get the job done well enough in the instance.
    - An interesting challenge: what is the juiciest analogous pair that does the job most juicily for any particular corresponding less-obvious pair? (The lower degree of obviousness comes from the higher degree of abstraction, technicality, or both.) They're hard to force out of the woodwork spontaneously; the extra degree of juiciness tends to come serendipitously. The fact that it comes so often as it does might possibly say something about the underlying nature of reality. The easiest way to explain what that something is, is to give a garden-variety analogy; so here's one: If you're going to go sugaring, it's helpful that the forest that you're in happens to have a lot of maples. Or, to shift gears a bit, if one day you're a-shootin at some food, it's helpful if the holler that you're in happens to be one in which the odds are nonzero albeit long that up from the ground might come some bubblin crude. But before you get all self-congratulatory about your good luck (or all dubious about the triumph over long odds, or both), recall that everything is related to everything else, even though everything also just is what it is. All it takes to get from the one to the other is a handful of parameters, if you can zero in on which ones. Some parameters are parameter than others, but all are antidisjunctive. While zeroing and antidisjunctifying, mind the gap, as differentiation is a species of fuckgiving, and getting all the way down to absolute zero is like dividing by zero: the dog finally caught the car and damn if he knows what to do with it. No, the thrill of the chase shall remain its own reward. Bow wow wow mthrfrs.
beneficence : nonmaleficence :: superior : noninferior, as follows:
- If you're not going to make things better, at least don't make them worse;
  - If you can't be better, at least don't be worse;
    - If you can't be good, at least be nonbad.
cryptography
- 3 × 4
  - code | crypt | cypher/cipher
    - encode | encrypt | encypher/encipher
      - decode | decrypt | decypher/decipher
        recode | recrypt/reencrypt | recypher/recipher | redecipher
- 4 × 3
  - code | encode | decode | recode
    - crypt | encrypt | decrypt | recrypt/reencrypt
      - cypher/cipher | encypher/encipher | decypher/decipher | recypher/recipher | redecipher
- Done
fish → mer → fishbone, fisheye, fishhead, fish oil, fishtail
- yeah but maybe not at Wiktionary tho
  - (although there are plenty of fish in the mer, and plenty of mer per hol)
  - There are a few certain cot and rel that are worth entering at Wiktionary; for example, it's worthwhile for fishhead and fishtail to cross-reference each other as cot, and fisheye → rel → fishhead makes sense, even though fisheye → hol → fishhead is a yes-but for Wiktionary's purposes — which leads into this:
    - The lit–fig axis factors in, as does the coal mine–coalmine axis. One thing that would be interesting (and this thought could be developed at User:Quercus solaris/sets) would be a list of cardinal fish parts (the literal ones) without regard to SoP and without regard to coal mine/coalmine status, where each part could have a lateral branch (node) pointing to the form lexicalized as a solid compound, where applicable, which in turn leads to the figurative senses for each one; thus, for example, a fish eye (a fish's eye) pointing to fisheye. The overall skeleton of such a diagram would yield a fishbone appearance, given that the X bone's connected to the Y bone and so on. Our friend box cat could pick his teeth with such a fishbone. He has a bone to pick with me because if box car can solidify as boxcar then his name too might solidify, and I had considered such an evolution before although I had never bothered to mention it in front of him until now. I would remind him, though, that he didn't get where he is by focusing on solidification, crystalization, and arriving at eventualizations. Part of me sez somewhat smugly, that rejoinder oughta keep im in his place.·• In fact so far I've kept his name open and lowercased for the same reason that animal rescuers don't necessarily name their rescues right away: first you wait and see whether he's long for this world or not. If his nature is an open problem then perhaps it is most fitting that his name be one too. But he counters that there's always some part of him that's long for any world, and he's got everyone else beat on that score. Meow, touché. Anyhow, speaking of Dem Bones, the reason I'm interested in this particular fishbone exercise is that I'm convinced that worthwhile cognitive models are connected with it — the way the human mind tracks semantics might recognize the artifactual aspects of which joints are more ankylosed or arthrodesed·•• versus which ones are more dislocatable, but those disjuncts aren't firewalls, regarding how thought trains burn like coal veins.·• A cat with a prize fish eats as much of it as he can, and some fish are even small enough to down whole.
be → also → E′
- yeah but almost no one cares tho
trackway → rel → trackbed
- meh, enough's enough, for Wiktionary's purposes
  - PS: As for trackway → rel → trailway and railway, the line of thought was prompted by encountering in the wild a usage where someone said trackway where perhaps they meant desire line (but admittedly the distinction between the two is subject to blowing away in the wind, like footprints or bear tracks), and it was odd because I'd just been on about paving the cowpath recently.

Selected collocations flirting with lexicalization

General notes

For what this list is on about cognitively, see meh you know what I'm talkin about.
- Update, though — just when I thought that there would be nothing worth explaining here:
  - I started this list to cover such ones as are more in the category of mildly interesting, mundane, not slangy but rather just workaday, largely unremarkable except for a desire to have adequate lexicographic coverage — such ones as arise in the course of business, science, technology, economic activity, health care, and so on. That's what the scope of this list is still intended to focus on.
    - In addition, though, it was pointed out to me that there is also a special case nowadays, another category that is trying to be especially productive lately, which is the tryhard mode of trying to make it happen regarding some utterance that some would-be influencer would dearly like to see become a term . That category is interesting too (and I'll have to continue learning about its member items mostly by the indirect route, given that I don't much consume the type of influencer content that is desperate to generate them).
      - Updated circa D+300: The influencer-desperation flavor above is the lexicalization subset of the tryhard subset of the try subset of the pɹəʊˈtɒləˌdʒɪzm set.
  - My general outlook on the lexicography of lexicalized collocations is elsewhere herein.
    - The main reason for starting this bucket (this section) is as a holding pen for mental notes, incidental scribbles, and incubation, in a unified place separate from (and thus freed up from) the dichotomizing engine that is WT:SoP. Handling any of these items begins at least with jotting them down, scribbling some thoughts about them, and leaving them sitting (fermenting) in a bucket where the distinction of whether or not Wiktionary is allowed to enter any given one of them is irrelevant for the time being.
      - A convention of this section shall be that these items generally will not be redlinked. That signal is superfluous in this context, and it could wrongfully imply that I'm suggesting that any given one of these items ought to be dereddened in the Wiktionary environment (use case) specifically. That's not what I'm saying here; rather, what I'm saying is that this is a place for interim collocation-lexicalization-status agnosticism.
  - Updated still later: the title of this section (as "selected collocations flirting with lexicalization") is usefully terse albeit not entirely precise. What this section is really about, precisely speaking, is "selected collocations known by sufficiently informed readers to be already lexicalized within one or more sociolects and flirting with wider lexicalization status that extends to general register (however one might best choose to operationally define that register)". Yes but: don't sweat it, egghead; remember which feedlot you're feeding, and proceed.

Parent bullets are flowing chronologically, newest first.

List population

mean-revert (vi) or mean revert (vi)
- A naturally evolved verb synonymous with "revert to the mean", that is, "regress toward the mean"
  - meh: I probably won't be bothering with this one anytime soon. I saw it in the wild today, and I don't doubt that it's established in certain sociolects (e.g., among some percentages of investors, managers, sci-tech people, and so on), but until I encounter it more, putting it here is enough for my purposes
spatial omics • spatial biology • spatial medicine
- these boffins with their newfangled doohickeys
  - "They have the internet on computers now?"
    - PS: digital biology — effectively digital twinning as a method in biology as basic science and in biology as applied science (biotechnology and biomedicine)
      - Thus also: virtual whatevers (biology, labs); augmented whatevers (biology, labs); systems biology·^{systems biology}
        VR+AR vs IRL: still differentiable perhaps, but with ever more interconnections/interactions
        Interesting, potentially useful, and intellectually exciting, but also at the same time, these damn kids with their computery dealies; and we schlubs and schmoes still have to work for a living though. We hear things about postscarcity this or that, and AGI around every corner, but also somehow nevertheless almost everything's more expensive now than before (maybe not certain gadgets, but nearly everything else in aggregate: health care, housing, real estate, tuition, groceries) and every time they talk about the social safety net, it's just to tell us how it's long been crumbling and it keeps on crumbling, and how they're planning to shred it, and how it was never affordable anyway, and how they plan to piss on its grave (and on ours too I guess).
working world and business world
- Passing thoughts about the working lives of various workers and how their relationship to the working world sometimes changes over the years. Noticed that Wiktionary enters working life but neither working world nor business world.
  - As usual in such cases, I apply the reflex that I have learned as a Wiktionarian: start from the argument that its absence is already excused because it qualifies as SoP and then work backward from there to test how watertight that argument seems to be. Most often the devil's advocate in me is able to admit that you can't fight City Hall in the instance. (The devil's advocate in me may or may not be a different worker from the one who appreciates a good hearty squeeze of devil's dictionary juice as leavening for any possible pseudo-angelic distortions.) In this instance, the advocate buys the pitch, although he wonders whether the blueness of big business and small business logically clashes with the redness of these aforementioned worlds. At the end of the day there isn't time in my world currently to bother further with it. Scribbling it down here is enough for me for now.
inspection paradox
- Overviewed in a 2024 article in Sci Am.
  - A recap variant: The paradox is no^ paradox. You found an instance of subclass A because (1) you were putting yourself in the way of superclass instances and (2) subclass A is a populous subclass.^
    - PS: Some months later: a wisp of this coda fired off a week or two ago; condense the rest here now. There are some themes in life along the following lines: if you go looking for trouble, you'll probably manage to find some; the thing that you are looking for is always in the last place that you look; sometimes the harder you look (or the closer you look), the less you can see; you can't measure something without fucking it up, fucking it over, or otherwise fucking around with reality; and similar bits of dysphoria-adjacent shittinesses. Perhaps a worst-case scenario is when everything you touch turns to shit. There are shared parameters among all of the following. Something that they have in common is the dysphoric consternation felt in a bad dream when the closer you look at something, the less of it you can see, and yet somehow your idiotic sleeping brain never learns to recognize that theme as a cue for meta-contextual frame shift, as would happen either (1) in lucid dreaming or (still better) (2) in simply waking the fuck up for chrissakes. My Cornish friend has been to entire valleys where no one ever awakes. It does make him wonder sometimes about one's ability to objectively measure one's own degree of asleepishness.
      - inspection paradox | quantum superposition | uncertainty principle | Goodhart's law
    - PS2: Some weeks later: Just to be safe we did some hosedown tests; to make a long story short, blah blah how is a wet standpipe like a sword of Damocles? Yada yada you don't have to forgo plumbing, you just have to do it right. The expense to record this upshot is as much as one need pay; and the ability to slap oneself, or pinch oneself, goes a long way. Speaking of hosedowns from standpipes, one might even use that method for the slapping, as it is proverbial for not leaving bruises.
sales and service
- the standard collocation by which a business lets you know that they not only sell em but also service em
  - The advantage to you comprises factors such as convenience, reassurance/reliability, trust, and so on.
    - The advantage to them comprises factors such as repeat sales, better volume, better revenue, diversification of income streams, and so on.
      - Bonus points to them if they secretly rig the thing to need slightly more service than it should have needed. Bonus points to you if you recognize the threat that such a thing might happen and yet nonetheless roll the dice, live your life, and spin the wheel anyway. Bonus points to them if they refrain from screwing you quite hard enough to chase you off and give you a good horror story to tell. That's in both their own interest and your own, a win-win.
        PS: all makes and models
reference class·ʷᵖ
- Simpson's paradox
  - enough for now
specification curve analysis | multiverse analysis (syn)
- Not to be confused with traditional multivariate analysis (MVA).
  - Apparently a helpful aspect of multiverse analysis is that it helps disabuse the human urge to find pseudo-signal in noise (that is, to find pseudo-signal in noise; fuck that noise).
    - Depending on their existing financial conflicts of interest, some humans will refuse to believe the disabusal; but that's OK, because if 1 in 20 does that, the other 19 can laugh together at the 20th, which may tend to level things out in the end, eventually.
Panhard layout | Panhard system
- form factor
  - The Panhard layout panned out.
    - The Panhard layout is not to be confused with a panhead layout.
      - Thus say the diehard Panhard fans and panhead-heads. They dine at diners upon pan-fried and deep-fried spreads, and the bread is not hard, nor is the living.
        A panhead does not have an oil pan. But its rocker covers are pan enough that no one can accuse it of panlessness, and they get hot as a frying pan. Some covers are hotter than others and some rockers are coverer than others.
        This fuckaround is part fuck-all and part fuck-em-all.
        PS: Panning out involves washing stuff out, but panning out is making it and washing out is the opposite.
machine perfusion
- This is an example of a topic where you can't bring yourself up to speed just by skimming the Wikipedia article, because the Wikipedia article has a combination of problems: out of date, inadequately focused (e.g., giant boatloads of expert detail about old history, deficiency of recent practical big picture for medical layperson readers). One feels glad to be reading (and supporting) good science reporting, which brings one up to speed nicely in a practically minded way that can't be gotten via other methods. No matter how imperfect (and underfunded) it may be, it's a hell of a candle against an otherwise pathetic ocean of darkness. Today I learned about how the current state of practice has been changing since several specific FDA device approvals in 2019 and 2021. The disconcerting thing is an aspect of unknown unknowns for the general public: most of them won't be reading a news article like this one, and that fact is combined with the fact that many would also assume that the Wikipedia article gives an adequate clue about its topic (which it doesn't, but it is such a firehose of lore that a reader could be forgiven for thinking that they could inform themselves usefully by delving into it ). What it does give is a firehose of too much information (including boatloads from 20-50 years ago) and a lack of forest for the trees as far as any medical layperson reader is concerned. I say this not picking on whoever entered the boatloads — not at all: the boatloads aren't wrong, they're just not what a general encyclopedia needs; and they don't even need to be removed (deleted), whereas what's needed instead is that the practical/clinical big picture be provided too. I could well imagine improving the article myself, but let's get real: I'll spend my free time (a finite resource) on other things (combinations of improving WT or WP in spots here or there, reading things, learning things, entertaining myself a bit, and living my offline life), and there's just not enough of the resource to make the dent that needs to be made. But because almost no one bothers to help build WP, the ratio is hopelessly skewed — the ambient ignorance is just a stormfront of wind that only a scattered few people are spitting or pissing into.
  - None of this is news, and I shouldn't have bothered to take the time to type it out, but typing it out is also a form of spitting or pissing into the void and cursing the darkness.
    - One oughtn't be too proud of laughing at the pointlessness of another man's spitting or pissing; If one wants to look into meaninglessness, one can certainly do so without much trouble (and some have even less trouble than others); but the caveat is that when you do, it looks back, in an eyeless way.
      - I thought about not even saving this thread here, but fuck it, I'm pissing on the void by pissing into it. (Does that constitute raging against the lack of a machine? Nonmachine mthrfkrs want to know.)
        PS: Does voiding on the void by voiding into it void the warranty?
global capability center
- Just another open compound noun with accompanying acronym that is already widespread in the business world despite having not existed until recently as far as almost anyone knew about
  - The thing about those nowadays (in today's IT era) is how thick and fast they come
  - In the attested usage, GCCs include particular campuses by particular corporations and also metro regions, with a region viewed as single GCC
    - Related: particular campuses by particular corporations can likewise be centers of excellence; thus, GCCs can be COEs
  - Update, some months later: collocational associations of ingroups and sociolects: a person who speaks of a global capability centre has a nonrandom probability of also being one who speaks of an offshore financial centre (OFC), an international financial centre (IFC), or a regional financial centre (RFC).^hypernym
neuropathic pain | neurogenic pain·^
- neuropathic neuralgia·^ as a subclass of neuralgia/neurodynia
  - When people say that neuralgia is "not to be confused with" neuropathic pain, they make the pedagogic mistake of ignoring (failing to acknowledge) variable coinstantiation: some neuralgia is neuropathic neuralgia, and (by the same token) some neuropathic pain is neuralgic in distribution.
model collapse
- The most obvious hypernym is GIGO, even before beginning to devote any thought.
  - More specifically, if you eat shit, then take a shit, then eat the shit, then take another shit, then eat it again, you're probably not helping yourself, nor anyone else; in fact, quite the opposite.
    - But you don't have to take my word for it.
numbered list | bulleted list
- ordered list·ʷᵖ <ol> | unordered list·ʷᵖ <ul>
  - respectively
    - SoP versus lexicalization: I don't know what others may judge, but I must say that ever since I boned up on HTML, 25+ years ago, in my mind the lexicalized status is real.
backslash = reversed virgule
- As more than one eminently citable RS agrees (I was just reading one today); plus reverse solidus too.
  - As for whether I ever bother further with this one regarding Wiktionary's mainspace, well, we'll see.
    - PS: some months later: old camper-special cigarette-typewriter red-brown so-and-so (lol fu2) holds slant line as its preferred synonym of virgule. It's of its time, and its time was a different time.^ One pithy summary of the line of thought that I was having about it today is that "back then, they couldn't google shit and neither could you." This fact influenced their writing from several directions at once. That's kind of like what they call a coin with two sides, except that both sides have the same vector (↓), rather than being yin and yang, which takes us to (→) something more like heads I win, tails you lose. Lol fu2, life seems to be full of those. Maybe the seeming is biased, but then again maybe the fabric is biased too. Could be both; a THING_NOT_FOUND can be two things, just like a man can be two things, or can carry one. Oh well, gotta go; old no-eyes just snuffed out a cig and reminded me that a sassy-redaction-plus-lol-fu2 loop can sometimes be laced with asleepishness in a nonsomnolent way. It's kind of like choke damp in the respect that even though you can neither see nor smell it, it'll gitcha. (Well, maybe some people can smell it, but you can't; handwave not-you.)
      - PS: hypersynonymy is old hat, but ain't no hypersynonymy quite as hypersynonymous as midcentury-modern hypersynonymy. Keep bangin that typewriter while I go empty the ashtray. We're gonna write letters to dozens of folks in dozens of cities to ask them what they call things. Either that or dial the operator to place a long distance call, and she might ask us to press pound.
primary research = original research
- As more than one eminently citable RS agrees (I was just reading one today); but …
  - Among these two synonymous open compound nouns, even though Wiktionary enters the one, you aren't allowed to enter the other into Wiktionary using {{synonym of}}, which the WT history logs warn you about when you make a move to do so, because …
    - Every institution has its sillinesses, including Wiktionary, and that's OK; there's no sense feeling bad about that fact or trying to change it; Wiktionary still shows the world many a thing that the world is missing in its other reference works so far, even if there are some things that those works are not allowed to show Wiktionary about itself.
biological atlases
- cell atlas
  - cell atlases
    - including one particular one with the temerity to claim to be "The" one for humans, "the" Human Cell Atlas
- protein atlas
  - protein atlases
    - including one particular one with the temerity to claim to be "The" one for humans, "the" Human Protein Atlas
computer models (whether as solid models or not; whether as digital twins or not):
- implicit model | explicit model
  - implicit models | explicit models
    - implicit modeling | explicit modeling
      - comparing vector definition with raster definition seems useful here by way of analogy, as does comparing parametric programming with nonparametric; multiple layers of analogy; implicit modeling and explicit modeling both can involve vectors, but in a different way of application
- foundation model·ʷᵖ
  - foundation models
local indistinguishability
- … which has flavors in aperiodic tilings and in quantum error correction
applied epistemology
- Apparently if you ask a general semanticist, this collocation amounts to more than just a sum of parts naming the epistemologic instance of the theme of applied science, being instead (more specifically) a lexicalized synonym of general semantics.
  - Or so I have read (lol).
    - To an outsider such as myself, this notion sounds kinda presumptuous (and even appropriative/confiscatory) on the face of it, but for now I'll reserve judgment and keep reading.
hot models
- hot models — just plain SoP
- hot models — climate models that run too hot to be trusted to a high degree (whereas instead they are respected and consulted but also duly deweighted versus others)

Glossary augmenter subsets

Orientation

Upshots
- Some glossaries are more augmented than others.
Corollaries
- A caveat to others (anyone else who might land here): an augmenter is a type of auxiliary, not the main event. Stay grounded regarding attending (and attending to) main events. For example, do not fail to be consulting good reference works, including their glossaries, as appropriate. Do not forget that googling shit and skimming the top few results, as well as consuming content from Wikipedia and Wiktionary, is necessary but not sufficient in life.
- Another: some glossaries have glossaries.^·ⓘ·ⓘ That's what the booty people call bootstrapping. Such a glossary (of a glossary) could be called a metaglossary, if life were fair and humans were wise, but it's not and they're not so it's not; that's what the it people call it being what it is.

List population

As follows

Grammar

clause
- meronyms:^:14-15 head • complement • adjunct
  - … where hyponyms under adjunct are:^:14-15
    - modifier^{(contextually hyponymous: AdjP, AdvP, PP, NP, subordinate clause)} • supplement
      - … where hyponyms under supplement may possibly be limited to solely one: supplementary relative clause
        (… where "possibly" = in accord with how defined by this cited location^:14-15)
  - PS: In this context, what is the distinction between complement and argument? Well: provisionally:
    - If a subject and a complement can both be an argument, then … what (come back to this later; what about S-V-O; what about VP as containing O ; etc)
    - But here is another issue though: the layers of (1) semantic argument versus (2) syntactic complement. The way CamGEL 2002^ uses the terms argument and complement may be different from what Wiktionary currently defines at argument#English:_linguistics. This is a project for later (as are countless other things that almost no nonmachine mthrfr on Earth can bother to be arsed about).
relative clauses
- introduced by relative pronouns, not subordinators, even though sometimes that difference is represented by a zero
  - integrated relative clauses • supplementary relative clauses
    - This is the distinction that was traditionally usually called:
      - restrictive aka defining relative clauses • nonrestrictive aka appositive relative clauses
        restrictive relative clause (defining relative clause) • non-restrictive relative clause (non-defining relative clause)
by-phrase
- The optional phrase in a passive clause that specifies the agent, when an agent both exists and isn't irrelevant. In passive clauses, the subject is not the agent but rather the patient, whereas in active clauses, the subject is the agent.
long passive
- A passive clause that includes a by-phrase and thus specifies the agent.
passive (n)
- A construction in which the subject is not the agent but rather the patient; this name for it (passive) qualifies as a nominalized adjective and has both noncount and count senses. The passive (n) is not to be called the *passive voice on penalty of death lol; which is to say that passive (n) is a whole-ass noun all by itself, and let's all be grown-ass adults about it.
  - Hyponyms: short passive, long passive
    - Often a mention of a passive (n) refers to a passive clause, but one can speak of a passive VP — a passive (adj) VP — that is part of a passive clause.
short passive
- A passive clause that omits any by-phrase and thus doesn't specify any agent.
  - Reasons for the omission/nonspecification include: the agent is irrelevant; the agent is unknown; the speaker wants to avoid focusing on, or revealing, the agent's identity; the patient is the point of (the focus of) the utterance, and making it the subject duly foregrounds that focus; no agent exists; the utterance is casual, unpremeditated, and unbelabored (rather than edited or re-edited).
    - Interestingly, though, one of the reasons for using a long passive is that ending the sentence with the agent can foreground the focus on the agent's identity.^:104-105 This is quite contrastive versus the theme of using a short passive to downplay the agent's identity and to downplay the (conscious) thought of agency at all.
to-infinitive
- The form of an infinitive with the particle to at the front.
  - Coordinate term: bare infinitive
preposition stranding
- It is worth stating (for teaching and learning purposes, i.e., didaction including autodidaction) that linguistics uses this term and holds it in good standing (i.e., stranding is held in good standing), whereas preposition stranding alias p-stranding is the entire phenomenon of strandability comprising both strandables and unstrandables. This is worth belaboring because the word's denotation does not equal solely the misguided myth about preposition stranding, by itself, but this fact can be known only idiomatically, not etymonically.

Simple but accurate

General notes

Anyone who thinks that any particular one of these isn't accurate enough should prove it wrong by improving upon it.
Anyone who thinks that any particular one of these isn't simple enough may be simple.
—
Everything in this section will necessarily be either class 0 or class 1 on the Bierceness scale.
- It is interesting to ponder the idea that what might tip some of these items from 0 into 1 is the simplicity itself; and that fact says something about some human flaws that academia, being a human affair, grapples with.

List population

When I say codex, you say book. Ready? codex! book!
- Slightly more specifically, a codex is archetypically a book of a certain form factor and as opposed to a scroll.
  - Such codices were once big business. If you were making or buying codices, you were the shit.
mycoderma
- TLDR: fungusy skin and/or slimy skin (for example, slimy hide)
induction and the problem of induction
- Induction is the derivation of general principles from specific instances, and it is the use of past experience as a guide to predict future occurrences. The problem of induction is that even though induction is necessary and practical for various uses (because it often succeeds in making valid predictions), it can sometimes be incorrect and there is no particularly strong basis on which confidence in its future success in any particular case can be built.
  - Nearby thoughts:
    - Past results are no guarantee of future performance.
metamethod
- A metamethod (countable) is a theme or principle of methodology (countable); metamethod (uncountable) is methodology itself (uncountable).

Overheard

Some things are heard more overly than others. The list below includes earworms. (You can consider this a trigger warning to whatever extent you're not triggered by the concepts of (1) the giving of trigger warnings and (2) the calling of them by that name (the more triggery of the synonyms).)

sleep out 🌕
- time makes fools of us all^
Δ
- Some bell rings just keep on ringing.
  - ringing in the ears | earworm | ringworm
    - Lol gtfo
overheard | overboard
- aboard | overboard
  - It's OK to take something on board, as long as you don't go overboard.
    - Lol ok dad. (Are you bored yet?)
      - PS: Just in case you're not (already), you will be now:
        It's OK to take something on board, as long as you don't take it too far — from the port ɡʌnəl to the starboard ɡʌnəl works, but any farther is overboard.
how-to
- what part of etc
But you lied, I know you're lyin', baby
- Too many lies have been told, baby
- You'll never do it again, you tell yourself over and over and over
- But you're wrong, dead wrong, babe, yeah
meh you know what I'm talkin about
- here all week and available for bookings
For the neuromodulation armamentarium:
- ℞. sig: Use this product responsibly and do not exceed the maximum dosage.
  - PS: Some uses are off-label uses, and some off-label uses are further off the label than others.
- ^PS: Here's one for the mirror:
  - ☧ | ℞
    - Do not adjust your set; this is not a kerning issue (nor a KoЯning one).
      - Christ is the prescription?
        Take two communion host wafers and call me in the morning?
        Lol all in good fun
This one's for my Cornish friend. They tell me that 1994 was 30 years ago, but part of me doesn't believe it.
- He pulls a drag and smiles, and admits that the snicker writes itself. Back then I too didn't know the chances. Nowadays I borrow his gear if I'm going underground.
Some mondegreens are subtler than others. The subtlest ones are the ones that are most plausible as being possibly an accurate transcription.
- Many sets of lyrics that are plastered across the internet contain more of these subtle mondegreens than people realize. They are propagated and amplified by carelessness — an inability to pay adequate attention.
  - The trouble with identifying and confirming them is more than just their plausibility; it comes also from such factors as which version (performance) was being transcribed (e.g., an expurgated one or otherwise, any given live version versus an album version), whether the authors themselves later decided to revise a certain lyric, and so on.
    - There's one that I could always swear that I had noticed, but I couldn't prove it, or even be sure that I was right. But tonight I heard a different performance that I hadn't heard before, and now I'm confident that I was right.
      - Often it is the semantics that lead the way toward the logical answer — not the phonetics alone. This particular instance is a case in point. It hinges on what it means for the hurt inside to be fading, and why (or how) that is true: it is the same mediating variable — an additional variable, an additional parameter — that allows one to say, I'm done. And that is in fact what the speaker of these lyrics says in the chorus, as is sufficiently (differentiably) audible in this performance.
        To me it's always been apparent that the degree to which he is done caring is the reason why he is here to stay. Admittedly (1) my interpretation could be off and (2) anyone's interpretation (even an author's own) is only a parametric Rorschach blot anyway. Still, some interpretations are less off than others. Anyhow: done.
    - Another: missiles | their souls
      - Lol it's quite obvious what the correct transcription is … obvious to the point that one feels sorry for the morons who couldn't tell
        PS: peace sells… but who's buying?
down into the ground
- throw it down
  - that's when I'm insane
Having been on the hook for too long, I at least needed to put a new worm on it; and I was newly reminded of a parametric polarity reversal that I knew but had sometime forgotten to foreground while fishing; thus —
- in the shipyard,
  - cutting → welding
    - severing 🎛️ joining
    - burning away 🎛️ building up
      - cleaving 🎛️ cleaving
        🎛️
        in the garden ⬛️ in chains
        PS: Nearly forgot to note that part of this thought chain was actually about the hook itself, and the isometric exercises and parametric exercises that one can do while hanging on it: Mr hookman (god love im), while in that avatar, instantiated a torchboy: proud of having burnt the veil and of being able to, he made a bit too much of that ability: any clown can burn a hole in something (or be encouraged to), and parametricity's artifactuality is itself not a hole that is surprising (nor bragworthy). To Mr hookman's credit, he sees both the artifactuality's presence and its unsurprisingness, on one level; but I don't believe that he sees it on the next, because if he had, you would be able to see it in his eyes. If one wants to look into meaninglessness, one can certainly do so without much trouble (and some have even less trouble than others); but the caveat is that when you do, it looks back, in an eyeless way. To complain about constructed or found meaning is somewhat like cursing a bridge's existence while one is using it to cross the sound: it is unsound. And some sounds are even less sound than others. Anyone can look a gift bridge in the girders, but they usually shouldn't. A joyride on the bay: one should be so lucky. And if not, what else were you gonna do today anyway? The opposite? The game of seeing shapes in clouds or constellations among stars is its own reward, even though one knows what a cloud or a star really is (i.e., neither a rabbit nor a duck). When your eyes are holes that burn holes in things, you should be careful where you point them and for how long at once. And perhaps wear shades in public — even in the shade.
        PS: A recapitulation flavor: Any clown can tie hands, but they're for shaking, and I sure don't mind a change.
        PS2: Not unrelated (along a set of fractional distillation columns): What is making LLMs of some use to humans (rather than no use) is the degree to which the pluripotency can be filtered down to only the helpful output bits. That degree is being worked on (feverishly) via various models with various layers (or buckets). I heartily agree (and can attest) that having enough buckets (and still columns) really helps with getting to normal when the baseline state is pluripotency. A recapitulation flavor: the more yes-buts one is balancing (the butterier the batter), the bigger and better the butter churn·ʷᵖ must be or become. The biggest trick of all is making it look easy by hiding the tailings. No one's impressed if they see a mountain of tailings behind you when you hand them a single gem, but some are impressed if all they see is a gem-dispensing vending machine. By that same token (on another channel), I could move this particular page (herein) to another bucket, but to date I have been finding it optimal to keep it here (doing so beats the other options so far).
Regarding what song lyrics are about: often they don't entirely stay about what they started about — neither in the writing instance nor in the parsing instances (write once, read many) — and that's OK; it is the norm of the environment. In fact they are parametric exercises — some of the best ones that humans are capable of. This case is a case in point. In motion control there are dwell commands — parameters that can be assigned varying values. In your parsing control, learn to use the dwell parameter maturely. Dwells don't last forever. How much is enough is answered by a context-sensitive evaluation. During your parsing control, it is OK both (1) to encounter artifactuality and to sit with it and explore it, and (2) to let it go after a time. The time value is programmable, because some materials are tougher than others.
- Memories are just where you leave them
  Drag the waters, till the depths give up their dead
  What did you expect to find?
  Was it something you left behind?
  Don't you remember anything I said when I said —
  - * * *
- PS: Old no-eyes snickers: You call that a memory? Some memories are more persistent than others; he wanted me to jot here the following addenda:
  - Some worms are wormer than others
  - Some wee hours are weer than others
  - Dragging the bottom is never the only maritime concern; there are plenty of fish in the sea as well, and catch and release is sometimes all you need. Super-cat can advise on fishing spots; and box cat is the oldest hand around when it comes to the parametricity-infused flavor of lyrics.
    - PS: To an old hand, it's old hat, so you won't be seeing him among those who needed to come back hat in hand when they couldn't make head or tail of a tricky one.
  - Some tools are dweller than others; and heat and blades both have their effects, including their quirks.
An outing down the block (milk run)
Where do you expect us to go when the bombs fall?
Some covers are coverer than others; some songs are better in the cover than they ever were in the original. I'm able to detect why this one was earworming me for a while in the summer of 23. It's specific to my own current events.
- I'm tired of living like a blind man … and this is how you remind me of what I really am
  - Old no-eyes snickers: You call that a blind man?
You learnt that creed in Foolsborough; you'll recant in Gallowsberg, if you do n't look out.
not today, not today
No one can go back and make a new beginning, but anyone can start now and make a new ending.
ay, the dumb, she pains me in the heart

Bell rings

This list is not exhaustive, but it is documentative, for dept 27; /ps/: carpet cleaning fee is extra. Also, keep in mind that dins are a dime a dozen, whereas echoes get noticed. (Old no-eyes snickers: you call that noticing?)

A maxim: You don't get any rings if you're not swingin any ropes.

rds
- Did meredith call rds by lowercase because lowercase was in the air at the time? (Probably.) Did rds ask to be called thus? (Probably not.) Or was it that he acquiesced to it? (Probably yes.) If yes, how comfortable with it was he, versus merely "OK enough"? Why do I care? (Just give me a hot minute and I won't, probably.) Had rds seen HJS?
  - So many questions, but no way to ask them. In the bell game, you don't ring the bell, the bell rings you.
J. Nutt
- It was MDCCIV and J. Nutt was busting forth with The Storm and A Tub.
  - It was MDCCIV and J. Nutt was busting forth with The Storm and A Tub.
    - Some pisser felt the need to impress it upon me just now.
      - What else is it about these Nutts that these pissers would have me learn more about? We shall see.
HJS
- Yesterday I went back to where I'd dodged the stream. I had to dodge a puddle on my way in.
  - I really should keep at least slightly better track of who tries to ring my bell. I can't even remember the yeoman's name now. I gave him a chance to ring me up again, but somehow I wasn't surprised that he didn't. I wonder if the point of my earlier near-miss was not so much about him as about the general concept of how bell rings do or don't happen and the nature of ignoring the ones that aren't for me. Anyway, he can always ring me up again later if he likes: years from now, even. I'll recognize him if he does.
    - Funny how much didn't ring yesterday, while the rain was ringing on the roof. One that did make a point of doing so, though, was HJS, who sat facing outward but in an out-of-the-way spot, or, perhaps, in an out-of-the-way spot but facing outward. Maybe somebody told him that the theme of his sales pitch (which is of an era) is one that I have a soft spot for. (I also checked the underside of the roof for a soft spot and was glad I didn't find one.) I took another look at his somewhat younger one-legged cousin Gale, but once again, as before, not quite for me. Maybe another time. Young Gale was a machine, even to a fault (it takes one to know one), and probably even today's Gale still is. Maybe another time; time makes fools of us all. The chief problem with today's Gale is like the assmonger said: you can't afford it, honey. Yeah no, you're right, I can't, hon. Maybe someday. But then, who even knows what the future holds. They keep saying that all this artificial incompetence isn't going to stay incompetent forever. Sigh.
      - I guess the rain gave me ideas, because I tried the plumbing this time. I was glad to find that it works.
        PS: Some months later: I was rummaging through some things when I realized that I was conflating two Gales: I had already snapped up the last of the unitary Gales (and had already forgotten), and was (twice) passing over an incomplete composite Gale. If anyone would have the last of the unitary Gales, it would be User:Quercus solaris, and so it is. The same is true of HJS and rds as well. Some bell rings are admittedly probably random, but some others seem more on the nose.
floridness^
- The Augustinians kept a mission bell at their mission. You have to play it just right. (Be cool, dork.) You might use Laplacean methods to decide where the negative space should lie. At any rate, I'm probably but half-done (more or less), and perhaps in the end that genre can't be botched anyway, although the closest you can get is to go off half-cocked.^ Something about valleys where a coin cannot be flipped and valleys where one already has been: you'll not be cocking up the genre. These, too, are needle grooves, of a sort.
  - PS: There are no bay leaves in Bell seasoning unless it's the special great house blend.
bottom gear
- I finally gave in to old bitumen boy once I read that he'd been summoned by bells, but I couldn't get out of bottom gear with it tonight. I'll try again later.
  - I really should be in bed already, but he got me thinking about a dartboard round, so I had a go.
    - Flora Rose and Martha Van Rensselaer made an appearance.
yeomanry
- This article is adjacent to Arnold at Constable & Company, who is not to be confused with Arnold Constable & Company.
  - Some carpet pisser really pissed hurriedly onto the bell (or at least tried to aim for it), and no less than Mr ——— was standing by (in doubled force), which seemed interesting even though his cardinal urination instance was in a different building (whose plumbing may or may not be better; I ended up not checking, just narrowly). I almost caught some yeoman's work (in midstream clean-catch fashion no less), but I balked at the water damage without thinking twice and then the last moment was over. Sometimes it pays to think twice (but sometimes it doesn't); carpet pissers take the piss at my expense because I don't know whether I should think twice or not unless I think twice to decide. But I do my best to keep learning to work the bin lids (and the toilet lids as well); normies think it's easy because they can't even keep track anyway. That, too, is a needle groove.
    - I hereby apologize to any pissers who may have tried to take the piss but missed only because I narrowly dodged the stream. (Which is different from trying to take a piss but failing because of other narrowness.) At least I even consciously realized in retrospect what I'd sidestepped; and that's probably enough in this line of work (yeoman's work), which is almost to say that it's close enough for government work. (That one dials in at nearsyn.) Speaking of enough, this is.
Mark Vonnegut on parametrically defined identities:
- 2010, Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So: A Memoir, Random House, page 54:
  When I went to Harvard Medical School, some of my teammates jokingly asked if I’d have to change sides. I was and am anything but ashamed of getting into and going to Harvard, but I found myself shuffling and explaining unnecessarily that it was the only medical school that took me, which was true. It confuses people who didn’t go to Harvard when you try to avoid mentioning it or qualify it. And since you don’t have to do it with people who did go there, all the shucking and jiving you do has to be mostly for yourself. / The other day a patient told me that he had gotten into what was a very good college. “It’s not Harvard,” he said. “Harvard’s not Harvard either,” I answered.
- 2010, Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So: A Memoir, Random House, page 57:
  I got to be almost fourteen before I was diagnosed as having 20/300 vision. My mother asked why I hadn’t complained about things being blurry. “Blurry compared to what?”
- 2010, Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So: A Memoir, Random House, page 116:
  While I was still in the hospital I had to sign something about my disability insurance. “Too bad it doesn’t really insure against disability,” I thought.
Mark Vonnegut on various other things:
- Really there are a bunch that are candidates for being here. Here is one that rang a little louder, at least when I happened to be nearby:
  - 2010, Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So: A Memoir, Random House, page 183:
    The best parents are poor people who have a little bit of money and rich people who have had a little bit of poverty.
Cross-pollination
- Vonnegut 2010:201 and Pullum 2024:144 both mention the theme that poor ability to spell standardly shouldn't be held against a body but probably will be anyway. I happened to read those pages both on the same day. Don't worry, I accept that coincidences are shite. I accept it but I note them anyway because I find them mildly amusing.
Pullum on pedants:
- 2024, Geoffrey K. Pullum, The Truth About English Grammar, Polity Press, →ISBN, page 96:
  For people who would rather face a plague of locusts than permit an avoidable ambiguity, this is like having their underwear twisted. You may think we should say to such people, “Get a life.” By all means tell them that. I’m neither making these rules up nor trying to enforce them; my job in this book is to point out to you what seems to be the current state of the language and its speakers."
- PS: Note to shelf: I know damn well that I ought to refrain from improving Wiktionary, but a slight hitch in that git-out is that doing so is entirely too useful to my own PKM. I also know damn well that I am far from alone in this theme (i.e., the theme that incrementally improving WP, WT, and their relateds, one tidbit at a time here or there hastily, serves one's own PKM purposes well enough that the notion of fully abandoning it feels annoying). Just imagine being so dim a dimbulb that one could not even imagine feeling this feeling.
stupors
- A.L. on rustically soporific shit especially after midnight
  - after a long dry spell, ding ding ding (or is it more ding dong?)
    - who you callin ding dong?^
      - PS: Some weeks later: A funny thing about this one is that it is a rare example of when my degree of redaction thwarts even me (i.e., my own later self). I had to go dig up the referent lol. Don't you just love when that happens? What a turkey. The peacock–turkeycock axis is one thing, but the turkey–silly goose axis is another. Anyhow, all this turkey talk is making me hungry. But all this soporific shit is making me sleepy too. Lastly, I'm also a bit thirsty, and tonight I don't mind if I do.
        This has been a special holiday edition of Bell rings, brought to you by handwave etc
Δ
- What does it mean to you?
  For me, it's something I just do
  - PS: puppetmastering is parametrized rope-pulling.
    - PPS: You know what are some things that we tie ropes to. Nuff said? Frayed knot. Lol stfu ♥
      - PPPS: Lmao — if you loop the playback on this one, YT's algorithm serves you a PSA about seeking help for MDD. Lmao stfu YT ♥. You call that MDD? Heh, mthrfking amateurs. Go put on your asbestos, visor, and respirator and then get back to me.
        PPPPS: Having sampled various performances, and having doomlooped the album version for a higher count of continuous cycle repetitions than any non-PPE'd operator ever voluntarily would, I have reached several interesting conclusions: (1) although I appreciate all the performances, the album version is my favorite, for a neuromodulatory reason tied into the following one: (2) as a piece of art, it is fucking perfect. The whole thought train on that point involves genre considerations and also the removal of them (including assertions and counterassertions), extending even into the very heart of the distinction of as a piece of art versus otherwise. The bottom line is that this is a special object.
annoyed | mock-annoyed
- You know what they say about carpets: Stanley Steemer gets carpets cleaner. An old tan 60/120 had something to say about the Stanleys and their steamers recently (as well as Locomobile), and a somewhat less tan 30/120 had something to say about mock-annoyance. Speaking of loco (what have you heard?), the carpet pissers also mentioned some things in loco parentis recently.
I don't always idly skim the recent changes log, but when I do, the carpet pissers have a laugh (and perhaps also sometimes take the piss).
- PS: chainfall operation is parametrized rope-pulling.
2010, Neal Stephenson, “Atoms of cognition: metaphysics in the Royal Society, 1715–2010”, in Bill Bryson, editor, Seeing Further: The Story of Science and the Royal Society, Mariner Books, →ISBN, page 62:
He corresponded so heavily that scholars are still sorting through his unpublished papers. In his philosophy he practised an ecumenicism that in a lesser mind would strike us as suspicious or even craven. Leibniz seems never to have met a philosopher or a theologian he didn’t like, and his metaphysics developed out of an effort to harmonise the ancient thinking of (both) Plato and Aristotle with tenets of Christian and Jewish theology and with the ‘mechanical philosophy’ the Royal Society had been created to champion. It is impossible to know precisely what he was thinking without perusing his vast legacy of papers. In effect, Leibniz’s philosophy ceased to exist at the moment he died. Since then, anyone who has wanted to know it has first had to reconstruct it, which is only possible for forensically inclined scholars, fluent in Latin, French and German, and well versed in the history of Western philosophy, Christian theology and Enlightenment science.
No time really to scribble this here, but just a sketch for now.
- Skimming Rhodes 2007 , How to Write. Planning on probably not reading the whole thing, but keep running into bell rings while skimming, so I haven't stopped yet. First there was the fact that he touched on both map–territory relations ("maps always simplify") and time-binding ("books know no hierarchy and abolish space and time" through to "three thousand years") on the first 2 pages, which made me sit up and take notice, in a random "there-is-mathematical-proof-that-coincidences-mean-nothing-anyway" kind of way. I know it means nothing and I'm not hung up on general semantics per se, but I get a kick out of a passing coincidence when I see one. As already established elsewhere herein, humans shouldn't start things that they can't finish along the lines of "nothing-your-attention-was-idly-caught-by-actually-matters"-type things. As we move through Luis W. Alvarez's night shift work on page 16, the bell is ringing some more. What's being talked about here isn't different·^*·†·‡ from my Cornish friend's shifts underground, which are always night shifts in the respect that it's always dark down the shaft.
There was an interesting bell ring with Pace concerning blueprints (same day, after I'd already invoked them independently), but I'm a bit annoyed with him because (1) I think he whiffed it regarding brief introductory exposition and (2) someone in his academic field (of all people) has no good-enough excuse for whiffing it to quite such a degree.
- PS: I'm miffed because he whiffed.
The bellish analogue of dry powder? Speaking of both dry powder and dry powder, roadbuilders have business to attend to.
STAND FAST: And PS: Perhaps don't overthink it.
- PPS: Old no-eyes snickers: you call that fast? Box cat would like to remind you that you can outfast everyone when you try. Please promise you'll try, or at least try to try.
The dartboard strikes again (or is stricken again). More than one other dictionary backs me up. Fuck moronicness and fuck any morons who object to that truism.
Wholly unrelated to my minor sensewise cot-to-syn augmentation in the mainspace earlier today (halfpennyworth, pennyworth, tuppence worth), but oddly happening on the same day (because that's how bell rings work), Bell just brought up with me the fact that some pennyworths are worthier than others. "Never had there been such a pennyworth," he said, of a performance from a jukebox that, for the circumstances, time of day, and present company (that's 3 parameters), was too loud and took too long to shut up. While speaking of the machine he naturally didn't call it a jukebox, as no one yet did at that time. It wasn't a Nickelodeon, either, but it was a box that played recorded music for coins. In the time and place under discussion (that's 2 parameters), it cost a penny.
- Sometimes you've got to cough up a coin (in a nonexpectorant way) for the bell to ring (in a nonexpected way). Machines that sell merchandise for coins long predate their current English-language name. Some carpet-pisser felt the need to bring it to my attention.
Watching a squirrel in one of her energetic sessions of midmorning physical activity, I see that she provides an exemplar of, and a lesson in, maintaining carefulness without twisting the parametric dial into fearfulness. She knows how to do calisthenics and acrobatics without falling, and she makes it look effortless. The reason she's so impressive when she's in this mode (which is her parametric flavor of beast mode, as she's a squirrelly little beast) is that you don't see her pausing to recalculate or judge or think or rethink, to take just a moment before proceeding. Squirrels are people too, in their squirrelly way. Other examples of people who are talented regarding carefulness without fearfulness include surgeons and pilots. I think probably most of us are OK about it at least within our own spheres (e.g., vocations, avocations), but we can be impressed and envious when we see someone else doing it in a sphere where we ourselves definitely aren't skilled and experienced and perhaps aren't talented either (or at least definitely aren't as talented). At any rate, the squirrel out my window doesn't realize that she has a sports fan watching who appreciatively considers her a star athlete. Her footprint in the snow is an autograph, for now, until it disappears.
Five to noon is noonish, a "cot: syn-ish" instance on the dial, and garage cat wears a bell on her collar. When I heard her, I checked the sync, because I didn't get where I am by not checking syncs on things. 11:55, just as she said. Time to try.
- PS: Some tries are tryer than others.
  - PPS: Some themes are more widely instantiable and more practically significant than others. Which is to say, some themes are themer than others, much as some tree branches are limber than others.·^🍒 The juiciness of the productivity emerges upon analysis, and analysis can then stand back and savor the synthesis (as holism makes the wheels go round). The mycelium that my brain is sniffing at here (like a good hog sniffs at a prize truffle) is not a different object from the underlying reason why all crustaceans, it is said, lean toward becoming eventually increasingly crablike. The fact that my gut can sense this identity indirectly is interesting, as is the mycology of the gut, or that of plants (mycorrhizal, mycelial, endophytic, and otherwise). The largest organisms on earth, it is said, are mycelial fungi, and more specifically, certain ones that are even mycelier than others. And mycorrhizae can be hard to kill, for the same reason that an extensive underground dumpster fire (e.g.) is hard to snuff (not speaking of sniffing, although seeming to, and its presence can be smelled, it is said, depending on precisely where and when one's nose happens to be): the flame greedily persists in exploring a burning coal vein wherever it leads, which is not entirely different from a bronchial tree cast (as boiling off some parameters isn't the same as boiling them all off, although the more one boils, the differenter something becomes, even as it simultaneously becomes samer with others). This is interesting because although on one level it is quite false that everything just is what it is, on another (higher) (parametric) level, it is the very truest kind of true. (And after all, the most incomparable kind of incomparability is the nondichotomous kind, which becomes less senseless when viewed from a next-higher parametric level. Try flipping those channels back and forth and see what you can see.) But the great difference (which low-level thinking is oblivious to) is that some things are thinger than others, whereas those others are thingier. The challenge is climbing through the branches without being totally oblivious to the ramifications of each tree, although it is true that a mycorrhizal being is not always interested in, nor essentially defined by, the differentiated identities of its constituent parts (just as a tree squirrel doesn't always care which tree's branch he is on from moment to moment, and whether it is the same tree as the branch next to him that he just jumped off of; different tree, same canopy).
    - PPPS: Is it possible to speak of a thing that should not be (albeit unspeakable) if it is the truest truth that on an ultimately parametric level everything (the thingest thing) just is what it is? You'd have to ask a philosopher, someone much more philosopher than I, a mere mushroom hunter. Perhaps it depends on what the meaning of should is, or what the meaning of is is (or should be). As for me, I have trouble thinking in 4D, but it seems motionless to me, so far as I can tell so far.
      - A recapitulation flavor: when someone has misunderstood the true nature of something, there is more to say, as disabusal; and when someone has understood the true nature of something, there is nothing more to say, as what has been said is enough.
Today is a 390 sort of day: K390, M390, 390 c.i.d., 390 members and counting (counting off).
- Now, time for some sunshine.
  - Update some days later: The sun was nice. Some 390s may top out at 130, but this particular 390 tapped out at 626, which is a sedate enough number, in a sedany way. I know that there is some more juice in those veins, but the type of tap that I was using tapped out, and I'm satiated until I might think of another hook, which may be never (unless some hook or other brings me back, which hooks tend to do reliably).
On the same day: a chance to buy a vintage slide rule without the instructions, and later, a chance to buy a vintage set of slide rule instructions without the slide rule.
- This is why I love the bell game. Time to go meet up with a rope-puller.
  - PS: I didn't buy either one, because not every ring that I can hear is for me.
    - PPS: Other rings today: 1946 to backstop 1976; the dartboard yields bioplastic polysemy. (The dartboard isn't a ouija board, despite what some may have heard. Parameters on parameters.)
Some firsthand recollections from the earliest years of car carrier trailers and of antifreeze.
- This is why I love the bell game. Time to go meet up with a rope-puller.
  - Some rope-pullers are earwig bouncers. A few earwigs slide by.
From Elbert Hubbard, in passing:
- "Emerson loved the good more than he abhorred evil. Carlyle abhorred evil more than he loved the good. If you should by chance find anything in this book you do not especially like, it is not at all wise to focus your memory on that, to the exclusion of all else—bless my soul!"
- Even though I recognize that the following one is platitudinous, I kind of needed it at the moment anyway, so I consider it excused.
  - "Genius is only the power of making continuous efforts. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success. As the tide goes clear out, so it comes clear in. In business, sometimes, prospects may seem darkest when really they are on the turn. A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose."
    - PS: We won't make too much of it, though, as extreme fetishization of carrying the message to Garcia can lead to parameter derangement of the types involving setting people up to fail and then blaming them for the failure, irrationally expecting a deus ex machina in real life, the ends justifying the means, plausible deniability of atrocities (in the civilian-control-of-the-military domain), and so on. On the other hand, there are appropriate places in life for the theme of make it happen/do your job, for basic-ass aspects, as anyone will have recognized when they've had to teach someone how to wipe their own ass (e.g., GIYF for basic-ass prerequisite how-to ; RTFM for domain-specific facts ; etc). As with many parametric environments in life, there are appropriate parameter values and then there are deranged ones.
drip gas
- chain-yanking is parametrized rope-pulling; dual-use?
  - Later: In this model, chain-yanking is either synonymous with or coordinate to dartboarding, depending on who is slicing the salami and how far up the tree they've climbed (for lookdown purposes). Deciding how much to explain herein is likewise a charcuterie-slicing exercise, but one must at least serve oneself (before serving others), and tip-of-the-tongue is not my favorite cut.
Classifiability of orders of magnitude of bullshitting
- Qualitatively different effects
  - Spiers E, 2023-11-24
    - Some lies are liar than others; some leugens are more legion than others
coup de théâtre
- so
sawback | sawlike
- soy como una roca, palabras no me tocan
open country, within a gradation of landscape types, tied to political geography in any of various nuanced ways — orienteering-adjacent
- tentative subclassification: one of those ones that says, no, you're hearing, but you're not listening, so I'll repeat, this time with emphasis
drayloads
- tentative subclassification: drays don't load themselves, you know
  - the gist mill encounters parametric collapse by virtue of its shaker tables' separative action: the odd-size stones are gone and the ones that remain are all similar in size;
    - so it is that machines and drudges can collapse to unity upon downshifting of parametric levels
      - But after all, to be fair, that's what put the robota in robot to begin with, and some nonmachines are more machine than others
        /ps/: drudges dredge the dreck or sludge; drudges pull sledges
    - at sorting § Physical:
      - "Shaker table" redirects here. For tables made by Shakers, see Shaker furniture.
        That'll sort em out. But speaking of Shakers:
        Shakers | Quakers
        Shared parameters: peculiar trembling for Godly reasons; thrift and clean living; sturdy plain furniture
        Shaker | maker —— furnituremaker > chairmaker, tablemaker
various tones predating this record
- handwave etc

People about whom Wikipedia articles exist and whose quotes I have added as citations in Wiktionary

After this population had risen to many dozens, it occurred to me to start a list, for my own amusement and that of the rude bell-ringers whose racket I enjoy.

I will finish gathering more of them later. Below is a start. Some who often acted in concert are listed here in concert.

There may be one or two who are duly credited at their quote but who I do not care to honor separately here: this spot is mine, and certain jerks aren't invited.

As for what the meanings or importances of this list's population are: It's not about my having read deeply from any particular one of these authors, although I have read deeply from a few of them. Rather, it is about two spheres of relevance: (1) bibliographic quality and variety of Wiktionary citation populations, and (2) urinary shenanigans and carpet cleaning, in various nonurinary, carpetless ways.

Besides the ones entered so far below, there have been dozens of others too, and their addition here is forthcoming, if the spirit moves me; but whether and how much I give a shit is subject to fluctuations, tho.

Steve Almond (born 1966), American short-story writer, essayist, and book author
John Ash (c. 1724-1779), English Baptist minister and dictionary author
Bill Bryson (born 1951), American-British author and science popularizer
Jesse Buel (1778-1839), American newspaper publisher, agricultural reformer, and politician
James Burke (born 1936), British broadcaster, science historian, and author
Nicole Chung (born 1981), American writer and editor
Dalton Conley (born 1969), American sociologist
J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur (1735-1813), French-American author, diplomat, and farmer
Donald Fagen (born 1948), American singer-songwriter and musician
James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851), American writer
Samuel Cowan (1835-1914), Scottish historian, antiquarian, biographer, publisher, and journalist
Charles L. Dana (1852–1935), American neurologist
Daniel Defoe (c. 1660-1731), English writer, merchant, journalist, and gadfly
Astrid Ensslin (fl. 21st c.), digital humanities scholar and games researcher
George Ewart Evans (1909-1988), Welsh-English schoolteacher, writer, and folklorist
John P. Forrester (1949-2015), British historian and philosopher of science and medicine
Eleanor J. Gibson (1910-2002), American psychologist and academic
William Least Heat-Moon (born 1939), American author, travel writer, and historian
Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915), American writer and philosopher
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), U.S. Founding Father and U.S. President from 1801 to 1809
Robert Kanigel (born 1946), American biographer and science writer
Frederick Wilfrid Lancaster (1933-2013), British-American information scientist
Armin Otto Leuschner (1868-1953), American astronomer and educator
John McWhorter (born 1965), American linguist and academic
Herman Melville (1819-1891), American writer and poet
Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), English writer, diarist, and politician
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), American writer and literary critic
Geoffrey K. Pullum (born 1945), British linguist
William Robinson (1838–1935), Irish practical gardener and journalist
Flora Rose (1874-1959) and Martha Van Rensselaer (1864-1932), American educators in home economics and nutrition
Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), British novelist, writing as Jedediah Cleishbotham
George F. Shrady Sr. (1830-1907), American physician and medical journal editor
J.L.W. Thudichum (1829-1901), German-born biochemist and physician working in Britain
Frederick Treves (1853-1923), British surgeon, anatomy instructor, and author
Mark Vonnegut (born 1947), American physician and author
Noah Webster (1758-1843), American lexicographer and author
Thomas Chatterton Williams (born 1981), American cultural critic and author
John Younger (1785-1860), Scottish shoemaker, angler, and author
Carl Zimmer (born 1966), American popular science writer, blogger, columnist, and journalist

Various other interesting authors whose quotes I have cited in Wiktionary and who do not (yet) have Wikipedia articles (nonexhaustive list):

David Brandon (born 20th c, fl 21st c),
Edward MacNeal (born 1925), American manager, consultant, science popularizer, and author

Various other interesting authors whose quotes I haven't yet cited in Wiktionary, who have Wikipedia articles, and who I really ought to add representation of in Wiktionary (nonexhaustive list):

John Allen Paulos (born 1945), American mathematician, educator, science popularizer, and author

Reverse bell rings

pseudocode pseudoprayer 870

let composite_deity = Q186350+Q1141210+Q58646537;
while where = this_universe, let Q1141210 = Q302, and let Q58646537 = Q37302, and let (Q186350 ≠ Q6674 = (cosmocrat − Q6674);
if I = dead < next-awake, then
- let The Lord = subsume(my(soul));
  - else I = Q76557(Q1367), where
    - Q1367 = Q5452918;
QED OR lol

thin

thin on the ground
thin on the ground
so thin on the ground
not that hard
not that hard
none of this is all that hard
and yet
and yet
and yet

afterparty

1 It doesn't matter that I'm parametrically removed by degrees: I have a Cornish friend who sees to that.
2 Lol all-y'all's loss, not mine — it can't be: there's a file not found where I was supposed to be. Lol else goto 2.

afterafterparty

3 Nothing is safe from parametrization; and one man's curse is another man's blessing.°Δ

Latent contronymy

Orientation

More than once I have been combing over the list of senses of a polysemous word (usually while down the shaft, on my way to a destination regarding some parametric details) and I spot one that is a parametric counterpart to another in a way approaching or crossing a diametric pole, and an eyeless alert goes off: latent contronymy, that is, an instance of contronymy that gets little attention from most humans — a degree insufficient from some viewpoints (in a viewless way). I really ought to start scribbling the instances here when I encounter them, because I find that I can't remember them later off the top of my head. I know that it has happened at least two or three times. Even if it has been only two or three (not more), it would be worth having an index here. How many times in daily life do we fail to index something because we don't have any relevant (i.e., the right sort of) index cards (as it were) right at hand, right at our fingertips? Indexing gets easier the more index cards one has, and the more one can rapidly index them (meta-indexing?).
- PS: word senses creep over ages, and blah blah blah things tend to carry the seeds of their own destruction blah blah handwave yawn

List population

one that probably ought to make the cut, but I won't tag it for now
- terre-tenant seems to span the same range as do the lessee–lessor axis and the renter–landlord axis.
  - landholder, terre-tenant, ground-possessor, soil-haver
    - the ancient tension: when it comes to property, the relationship between to have and to hold and to own has certain predictable vibrations. Thus aphorisms such as "possession is nine-tenths of the law".
one that does not make the cut
- outwear would come close to counting here, with senses of "outlast" and "wear out", but it has a few problems:
  - Its "wear out" sense is borderline catachresis-only in nature: the idea that it ever isn't a catachresis is dubious.
  - The "outlast" and "wear out" pair is not quite the same as a full-180° pair of "be durable" and "be undurable", although it is close (in the neighborhood).
namesakes and eponyms
- shared parameter: being either entity A, after which entity B is named (←), or entity B, which is named after entity A (→)
  - what a country
unravel·^📅 — it makes the grade here, per this diff; to unravel is either to solve a problem or to create one, to fix something or to break it, contextually.
- Captain Obvious continues, obliviously:
  - Taking something apart, or something coming apart,^{(since I was young handwave etc)} is either a good thing or a bad thing, inversely according to whether said thing itself is either bad or good (which is to say, judged to be bad or good, from a viewpoint, within a context).
    - Aren't you glad that I unraveled this puzzle so as to keep our equanimity from unraveling? Lol
      - Of all the things to be oblivious to, the obvious ones are not the best ones.
apropos either counts here or almost does, in my book, because incidental shit isn't supposed to be relevant, archetypically.
exemplar as the original being copied or as a copy — this one was ripe so I picked it.
- PS: months later: goto handwave etc.
specifically offers an instance of this theme, but I will let that instance lie for now (more later perhaps; or perhaps not).
toe the line flirts with contronymy without quite slipping into it: one sense (the main one) focuses on the outcome of staying within the line whereas another sense (a less established one) focuses on teetering and wobbling upon it and awaiting the outcome (→)
- Update, a few days later: well I'll be: it just occurred to me to (idly) check whether or not the entry is categorized under English contranyms, and yes, it already is, which is to say, it already has been by someone other than me. I suppose that my assessment of "not quite" could be retracted, but no, I stand by it (because both senses involve not crossing the line), and yet I'm not going to decategorize it either, because life is full of duality and interrater indeterminacy and if that category includes heavy flirtation as well as dead-center hits then all the better for the use cases of most people (and/or machines, and/or nonmachines who are somewhat more machine than others) who consult it.

Novel words or just novelty words?

Gramistan

English

Etymology

Blend of 'Gram (“Instagram”) +‎ -i- +‎ -stan

Proper noun

Gramistan

The nation of Instagram junkies envisioned as a nation-state and country (a stan).
Cheap but flashy — that'll play great in Gramistan, regardless of whether it'll succeed financially.

grasslighting

English

Etymology

Blend of grass +‎ gaslighting

Noun

grasslighting (uncountable)

Gaslighting in a way that pretends that the recipient's reaction is unwarranted because they need to touch grass.
Stop grasslighting me — I'm not a shut-in; you were just being a jerk.
Gaslighting in a way that pretends that the recipient's reaction is unwarranted because they must be high, or in a way that pretends that the recipient did something that they didn't do but that they misremember because they were high when they did it.
Stop grasslighting me — I haven't been high in weeks and I wasn't even at the party that you're talking about.
Gaslighting in a way that pretends that the recipient is mistaken in believing that the gaslighter was smoking grass, despite clear evidence that they were.
Stop grasslighting me — it reeks in here and I've seen the bong that you think is so well hidden.

profucktion

English

Etymology

Blend of pro(duction) +‎ fuck +‎ tion

Noun

profucktion (uncountable)

Fucked up production.
Just another batch of high-quality profucktion — yet more fuckuppery from our profucktion department.

Stanistan

English

Etymology

Blend of stan +‎ -i- +‎ -stan

Proper noun

Stanistan

A nation of deranged superfans envisioned as a nation-state and country (a stan).
The rowdy audience; the groundlings; the mosh pit inhabitants; the superfans queuing a mile deep.
That shit may fly out there in Stanistan, but no one gets in here without a backstage pass.

Certain coincidences among anagrams

old-timer • timelord
- evoked theme: masters of the hourglass; lots and lots of time^
  - PS: Is a timelord slumlord anything like a time mold slime mold?
    - slumlordial primordial … but it's not like the landowners are rent-seekers or anything like that, tho … right?
carbon steel • Eastern Bloc
- evoked theme: gigantomaniac steelworks run by kombinat ("but we will bury you in the glorious future of socialism, tho … right?")
sharecrop • horsecrap
- evoked theme: economic models that invite horseshit ("but it's not like the landowners are rent-seekers or anything like that, tho … right?")

The essay on SoP approach: Quercus solaris edition

Various contributors to Wiktionary have one (i.e., an essay on this topic). Here will be yet another. It's like they say: Opinions are like arseholes: everyone's got one, but no one has the right to force anyone else to kiss theirs or wallow in it.

In fact mine might be an array that gets developed over time: under this plan, each building lot will have its own structure under construction, with a blueprint in mind guiding that flavor. The various structures on several land lots will share some common features, such as the same model of bathroom countertops and so on. TBD.

Right off the bat I'll start dumping some themes on the ground to be picked up and cut to size and installed later. This is still just a construction site so far.

Draft

Anyone who uses various scientific and technical dictionaries of English to a heavy degree will realize that their CFI rulesets allow for many open compound nouns that are obviously semantic nodes (ontologic nodes) in the mental models of initiates (experts in the particular field).
- A large and important class of examples: in medicine, the established names of disease entities and their types and subtypes. And their established synonyms (including deprecated ones). All the major medical dictionaries include such terms, as well they should. Whether each such term is an open compound or not is a triviality in that context and thus has not the slightest to do with inclusion or exclusion criteria.
For Wiktionary to refuse to do that for some large percentage of them because they're "not idiomatic enough" to count as idioms per se is not inherently an invalid choice, but it is a choice. The alternative is not inherently wrong either.
- This is why those who defend that choice should not try to defend it with the flawed argument that "that's what a dictionary is, as opposed to an encyclopedia." No, that is one model or version of what a dictionary is. It's a choice, no more nor less.
  - It is a choice that can be appropriate for a general-purpose dictionary, because otherwise such a dictionary could be formidably vast, and in the days of print-only, that mattered a lot. Regardless of era (now versus past), it represents a conspicuous/objectionable failure for any technical dictionary that aims to be adequate. As for general dictionaries, a question for an online general dictionary in the 21st century is why being vast is necessarily a problem per se. I argue that it is not.
  - I sometimes suspect that people who think that that argument is convincing or sound are ones who have never actually used scientific and technical dictionaries of English heavily; they don't even realize that not all dictionaries follow the model that they assume is the only one for dictionaries.
  - Also, the same people are often ignorant of which open compound nouns are indisputably semantic nodes in a given field, anyway, so you'll see them discussing them as if they were nothing more than SoP per se, tossing around their arguments about the details trying to convince others, while meanwhile others who see the arguments can be thinking to themselves, "it's not a question, dude, it's just a fact in that field."
For people who are annoyed with Wiktionary's current stance (i.e., whatever its precise current stance happens to be at any given moment over the years, per Wiktionary:SOP and Wiktionary:Idioms that survived RFD), it is important to remember that Wiktionary is but an instantiation of a theme, and there's no law against other instantiations existing if other people are willing to do the work of building them. Perhaps think of Wiktionary as a burger joint: for times when you don't want burgers, you're free to go to another restaurant; and you can even establish one of your own to serve that need (although of course establishing a restaurant is not trivial, so you have to want it). And you can still go to Wiktionary too, whenever you feel like a nice burger. Neither option is wrong.
- Further on this same line of thought: Wiktionary will remain quite useful and valuable even if it is somewhat hobbled regarding this particular aspect (among many aspects). Wiktionary will continue to show other dictionaries examples of gaps in their own lexicographic coverage that they ought to fill. Wiktionary will continue to show many examples of what can be achieved at Wiktionary or a place like it — regardless of whether most humans don't bother to help build such things.
Wiktionary at least allows for translation hub entries, which is a saving grace that might keep it from being too silly (by allowing for recognizing at least the semantic node station, per se, of certain open compound nouns that are semantic nodes/ontologic nodes that would otherwise be barred from Wiktionary).^ But the threshold levels set for THub CFI may preclude a lot of them, though, if they're quite strict.
- I've decided not to worry or care about scrutinizing those threshold levels, because of the burger-joint point. Thus, I realize that there are many scientific and technical terms (including many that are commonly used in any given field) that Wiktionary will simply never enter, under anything like its current CFI regarding SoPness. There's no sense feeling bad about that fact or trying to change it. As Merriam-Webster says, " no dictionary of English, however good it may be, can provide all of the information about the English language that one might wish to have at one time or another." Their main point in that discussion is that things such as whole-clause intonation and word order will never be properly and wholly covered by a dictionary. But their point also applies even to lexical inclusion criteria as well. And for that aspect, one wants multiple dictionaries of various kinds: e.g., general, science, chemistry, physics, biology, medical, engineering, military, abbreviations, abbreviations within a certain field, idioms, biography, geography, reverse, visual; thematically indexed thesauri, alphabetic thesauri, nondiscriminating thesauri, discriminating thesauri.
  - So if you need a competent medical dictionary (for example), just pony up for MW Medical or Stedman's or Dorland's or Taber's. If you think that one like those should be free to end-users, you can try building one, using MediaWiki; but just keep in mind that there's a reason why such things aren't free — someone (in fact a team of someones) has to spend a lot of time building it and keeping it updated over time. Also, the average person on the average occasion just needs a plate or two of nice food, which they are looking to be served without their having to go gather the ingredients themselves and do the cooking and do the dishes themselves. There's a reason why restaurants are not things that everyone creates. (And the ones who do establish and maintain them need to amortize the expense by serving many customers one plate at a time, times many times.) Nonetheless, a variety of restaurants (rather than solely one) is necessary too.

Clips: top

#* {{quote-journal |en |year= |last= |first= |last2= |first2= |last3= |first3= |authorlink= |title= |journal= |volume= |issue= |pages= |url= |pmid= |pmcid= |doi= |passage=}}

#* {{quote-book |en |year= |last= |first= |last2= |first2= |last3= |first3= |authorlink= |title= |edition= |series= |volume= |publisher= |pages= |isbn= |url= |doi= |passage=}}

Primers or reminders

A reminder: consciously reassess the countability parameter when backfilling missing senses of nouns; ~ tilde ± {{lb|en|uncountable|countable}}

linksto:FOO insource:/\BAR/

… which (when necessary) can be narrowed by …

linksto:FOO insource:/\id=BAR/

linksto:FOO insource:/\id:BAR/

linksto:FOO insource:/\:_BAR/

linksto:FOO insource:/\: BAR/

# {{senseid|en|internet}} {{lb|en|internet}}
→{{l|en|foo|id=internet}}
→{{l|en|foo<id:internet>|foo}} — this markup does not work
→{{l|en|foo#English:_internet}} — this markup works fine, but some users prefer the first above; thus, from now on, I plan to use that instead (thus achieving preemptive placation)
→] — for id-specific links when l or m are not used
→] — this markup does not work
→#: {{cot|en|foo|id1=internet|bar|id2=internet}} — this markup works correctly
→#: {{cot|en|foo<id:internet>|bar<id:internet>}} — this markup works correctly and is arguably cleaner than the alternative (above) because revision of a list of such items does not require manual renumbering (and is less likely to be corrupted by anyone's sloppy failure to carry out the manual renumbering when they revise an entry )
→{{ws|en|]}} — this markup works correctly
→{{ws|en|foo<id:internet>}} — this markup does not work correctly but would be nice if it did because it would be slightly cleaner than the alternative above

Example resultant URL: https://en.wiktionary.orghttps://dictious.com/en/fragment#English:_internet
FYI: Template:senseid

Options for link target precision at WP include (1) ] (which resolves to Foo § Section, because any heading element gets its own anchor automagically) and (2) putting {{anchor|Bar}} inside the wikitext at the desired spot, which a link written as ] will resolve to. Thus, you can link from WT to WP using (1) ] or (2) ] if you create the anchor inside the WP page.

{{q|blah}} — not to be confused with #: {{lb|en|blah}}; postpositive; optimal versus ''(blah)''; q→qualifier. Relatedly: Use {{tl|gl}} for glosses that define; but synonyms are synonyms, not glosses, so do not use parens for them at all (rather, either commas or bullets).

{{etymid|en|foobar}} (link to that id instead of to ] (definitely) and perhaps also instead of to ] ; regarding the latter "perhaps" notion, also recall that linking to senseid is powerful )

#: {{syn|en|}}

#: {{nearsyn|en|}}

#: {{ant|en|}}

#: {{hyper|en|}}

#: {{hypo|en|}}

#: {{mer|en|}}

#: {{hol|en|}}

#: {{troponyms|en|}}

#: {{cot|en|}}

UPDATE—Don't do this; just use H3 H4 etc with prefatory "sense" labels.
Was: #: ''Derived terms:'' {{l|en|}}

UPDATE—Don't do this; just use H3 H4 etc with prefatory "sense" labels.
Was: #: ''Related terms:'' {{l|en|}} )]

#: {{hol|en|}}

#: {{mer|en|}}

#: {{troponyms|en|}}

UPDATE—Don't do this; just use H3 H4 etc with prefatory "sense" labels.
Was: #: ''See also:'' {{l|en|}}

====Synonyms====
* {{l|en|}}
====Antonyms====
* {{l|en|}}
====Hypernyms====
* {{l|en|}}
====Hyponyms====
* {{l|en|}}
====Meronyms====
* {{l|en|}}
====Holonyms====
* {{l|en|}}
====Troponyms====
* {{l|en|}}
====Coordinate terms====
* {{l|en|}}
====Derived terms====
* {{l|en|}}
====Related terms====
* {{l|en|}}
====Translations====
Etc
====See also====
* {{l|en|}}

Clips: etym and pron

===Etymology===
, from {{confix|en|||}}.
From {{w|international scientific vocabulary}}, reflecting New Latin {{w|classical compound|combining forms}}: {{confix|en|}}.
From {{w|international scientific vocabulary}}, reflecting a New Latin {{w|classical compound|combining form}}, from ANCIENTlexeme; more at {{m|en|ANCIENTlexeme#Etymology|ANCIENTlexeme § Etymology}}.

===Pronunciation===
* {{IPA|en|ˈSTɹESSEDˌunstɹessed|,|-ALT|a=GA}}
* {{IPA|en|ˈˌ|,|-ALT|a=GA}}
a———e———i———o———u ā———ē———ī———ō———ū eɪ——i———aɪ——oʊ——u eɪ——iː———aɪ——oʊ——uː ————————————————ju ă———ĕ———ĭ———ŏ———ŭ æ———ɛ———ɪ———ɒ———ʊ ————————————————ʌ ————————————————ə ————————————————ɨ zh———dzh———sh———tsh ʒ————d͡ʒ————ʃ—————t͡ʃ thin———this theta——eth θ——————ð

References

^ Musser, George (2024 March 19) “A Truly Intelligent Machine. ”, in Scientific American‎, volume 330, number 4, →DOI, archived from the original on 2024-04-11, pages 31-36
^ Twain, Mark (1906) “William Dean Howells”, in Harper's Monthly Magazine‎, volume 113, number 674, page 221
^ Suffolk Accent — The Back'us Boy, recited by Tom Veasy, on YouTube. Accessed 2023-04-24.
^ Suffolk dictionary on TWTD site. Accessed 2023-04-24.
^ Rye, Walter (1895) A Glossary of Words Used in East Anglia, Founded on That of Forby, With Numerous Corrections and Additions‎, London: English Dialect Society
^ Wilkins, Alex (2024 June 15) “Confusion over what 'equals' means”, in New Scientist
^ Matthews 2024-02-13
^ Jennings, Rebecca (2024 February 7) “Against trendbait: TikTok has seen a bizarre (and annoying) explosion of language as creators rush to coin terms. (Earlier headline: Tiktok is full of tryhard slang)”, in Vox‎, retrieved 2024-02-07
^ Murtagh, Jack (2024-01-18) “Math Explains Why Your Friends Are More Popular Than You”, in Scientific American, →DOI
^ Alcorn, Ted (2024 April 2) “”, in New York Times‎, retrieved 2024-04-02
^ Hoel, Erik (2024 March 29) “A.I.-Generated Garbage Is Polluting Our Culture. ”, in New York Times‎, retrieved 2024-03-29
↑ ^12.0 ^12.1 ^12.2 ^12.3 Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2024) The Truth About English Grammar, Polity Press, →ISBN
^ Merriam-Webster (2003) Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed edition, Merriam-Webster, page 28a

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|🔴|
|🟡|
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[Musser-2024-03-19-1] Musser, George (2024 March 19) “A Truly Intelligent Machine. ”, in Scientific American‎, volume 330, number 4, →DOI, archived from the original on 2024-04-11, pages 31-36

[Twain-1906-2] Twain, Mark (1906) “William Dean Howells”, in Harper's Monthly Magazine‎, volume 113, number 674, page 221

[Tom-Veasy-2021-02-03-3] Suffolk Accent — The Back'us Boy, recited by Tom Veasy, on YouTube. Accessed 2023-04-24.

[TWTD-Suffolk-dictionary-4] Suffolk dictionary on TWTD site. Accessed 2023-04-24.

[Rye-1895-5] Rye, Walter (1895) A Glossary of Words Used in East Anglia, Founded on That of Forby, With Numerous Corrections and Additions‎, London: English Dialect Society

[Wilkins-on-equals-2024-06-15-6] Wilkins, Alex (2024 June 15) “Confusion over what 'equals' means”, in New Scientist

[Matthews-2024-02-13-7] Matthews 2024-02-13

[Jennings-2024-02-07-8] Jennings, Rebecca (2024 February 7) “Against trendbait: TikTok has seen a bizarre (and annoying) explosion of language as creators rush to coin terms. (Earlier headline: Tiktok is full of tryhard slang)”, in Vox‎, retrieved 2024-02-07

[Murtagh-2024-01-18-9] Murtagh, Jack (2024-01-18) “Math Explains Why Your Friends Are More Popular Than You”, in Scientific American, →DOI

[Alcorn-NYT-2024-04-02-10] Alcorn, Ted (2024 April 2) “”, in New York Times‎, retrieved 2024-04-02

[Hoel-NYT-2024-03-29-11] Hoel, Erik (2024 March 29) “A.I.-Generated Garbage Is Polluting Our Culture. ”, in New York Times‎, retrieved 2024-03-29

[Pullum-2024-12] 12.0 ^12.1 ^12.2 ^12.3 Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2024) The Truth About English Grammar, Polity Press, →ISBN

[MWCD11-p28a-13] Merriam-Webster (2003) Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed edition, Merriam-Webster, page 28a

Links

Salients

About

Why am I here?

What is my nature?

Shortlisted toward oughta

Loop closers

At sea with no one at the helm

Fun with litotes

Topics worth a word

Sense mapping

Valid insights but sacrificed to terseness

Context

Explanation

Corollaries

Main list population

Population composed by others

Glancing blows

Indirect fire

The standard amount of polysemic flexibility in natural language

Parameterization funhouse mirrors

Reflection subclass pearl 10

Selected collocations flirting with lexicalization

Glossary augmenter subsets

Grammar

Simple but accurate

Overheard

Bell rings

People about whom Wikipedia articles exist and whose quotes I have added as citations in Wiktionary

Reverse bell rings

pseudocode pseudoprayer 870

thin

afterparty

afterafterparty

Latent contronymy

Novel words or just novelty words?

Gramistan

English

Etymology

Proper noun

grasslighting

English

Etymology

Noun

profucktion

English

Etymology

Noun

Stanistan

English

Etymology

Proper noun

Certain coincidences among anagrams

The essay on SoP approach: Quercus solaris edition

See also

Clips: top

Primers or reminders

Clips: etym and pron

References

Wikious

Boobota

Sagapedia