| Author |
Message |
Roland Hutchinson
Guest
|
| Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 10:13 pm
Post subject: Re: Metric Iron-Age shoe |
|
|
Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
| Quote: | rbaniste1@shaw.ca writes:
On Wed, 25 May 2005 20:45:56 GMT, Roland Hutchinson
my.spamtrap@verizon.net> wrote:
rbaniste1@shaw.ca wrote:
On Wed, 25 May 2005 19:51:22 +0100, Peter Duncanson
mail@peterduncanson.net> wrote:
On Wed, 25 May 2005 18:15:56 GMT, Roland Hutchinson
my.spamtrap@verizon.net> wrote:
epidemics, sometimes pandemics, and sometimes just some folks getting
sick (=BrE ill).
"Sick" works very well in BrE.
The belief that the English have only one word for the condition seems
to be deeply seated, in certain American quarters at least.
Sometimes, though, it is best to leave sleepers alone.
Well, then, what word _would_ you use in BrE to mean "sick, but I
don't mean nauseated" (=AmE sick, ill).
Why do you not use a dictionary? The FAQ asks you not to ask silly
questions, you know. Silly pronouncements tend to get stepped on.
There can be no rules about _that_, nor about what to do about
fiddle players who refuse to look things up for themselves. I put
them with the sleepers, myself.
I'm intrigued. Just what would you recommend that one (say, me) look
up in a dictionary to find out what word is used in British English to
to mean what Americans typically mean by "sick", but which will
distinguish the condition from that of nausea?
I'm good at using a dictionary to find out "What does this word mean?"
I'm not so good at using it to find "What word means this?" and even
less good at using it to find out "What's the word commonly used by
this group of speakers in this situation?"
|
Thanks Evan, for expressing in such measured tones what was also my
reaction.
I had drafted a reply that said much the same thing in a more prolix and
less temperate manner, which I for once had the good judgment not to post
immediately, and which I shall now consign to the eternal discretion of the
bit bucket.
By the way, I have checked the OED and it offers no insight whatsoever into
the question, and indeed not even a hint about American usage differing
from English. Curiouser and curiouser.
--
Roland Hutchinson Will play viola da gamba for food.
NB mail to my.spamtrap [at] verizon.net is heavily filtered to
remove spam. If your message looks like spam I may not see it.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Sara Lorimer
Guest
|
| Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 10:27 pm
Post subject: Re: Metric Iron-Age shoe |
|
|
Wood Avens wrote:
| Quote: | In casual speech I make a distinction between stomach-ache and
gut-ache. I don't know whether that's widespread or just my family,
though.
|
Then there are burst bellies. I can't remember where I read it -- a book
about pirates -- it was the term for hernias.
--
SML |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Sara Lorimer
Guest
|
| Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 10:27 pm
Post subject: Re: Metric Iron-Age shoe |
|
|
Evan Kirshenbaum <kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
| Quote: | I actually go the other way. I've been told (by doctors) that what
I've been calling simply "bad headaches" for years were probably
migraines. (I didn't actually get diagnosed as having migraines until
I wound up in the emergency room after getting freaked out by the
visual effects[1] and neck pain when I was about thirty. In that
episode I actually *didn't* have a headache.)
|
My mother is the same way. She gets the visual effects of migraines, but
not the pain. My sister gets the whole shebang.
--
SML
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
R H Draney
Guest
|
| Posted: Thu May 26, 2005 11:29 pm
Post subject: Re: Metric Iron-Age shoe |
|
|
Wood Avens filted:
| Quote: |
Still true in most of the circles I frequent, and above the age of 40
or so. Belly tends to be reserved for composites like belly-dancing
and beer-belly. I'm not quite as old as your grandmother, but belly
on its own ... well, I wouldn't use it to people I didn't know. I
probably wouldn't use it at all - it's just not part of my normal
vocabulary.
|
How about "belly up"?...granted, some sensitive souls find any such
matter-of-fact discussion of death as tasteless as others do the discussion of
lactation, but it seems the natural way to refer to the goldfish you found
floating just this morning....
By the way, a co-worker a couple of years ago objected to this expression (in
reference to a failed computer program) because he interpreted it referring to a
sexually passive posture....r |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Carl Alex Friis Nielsen
Guest
|
| Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 12:59 am
Post subject: Re: Metric Iron-Age shoe |
|
|
Roland Hutchinson skrev i meddelelsen <8u5le.9$zb.3@trndny06>...
rbaniste1@shaw.ca wrote:
| Quote: | Well, then, what word _would_ you use in BrE to mean "sick, but I don't
mean
nauseated" (=AmE sick, ill).
|
Ailing ?
Diseased ?
--------------------------------------
Carl Alex Friis Nielsen
Love Me - take me as I think I am |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Carl Alex Friis Nielsen
Guest
|
| Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 1:24 am
Post subject: Re: Metric Iron-Age shoe |
|
|
Javi skrev i meddelelsen ...
| Quote: | What is the relation between HIV and the Plague? The first is caused by
a virus, the second by a bacteria (yersinia pestis). And, supposing that
|
Actually it has become disputed whether the Plague and the Yrsenia
Pestis disease found today is really the same disease since there are
several discrepancies between the disease found in e.g. India today
and the disease described in historic documents.
| Quote: | there is a relation (which I doubt, do you have a reference?), why
should Scandinavians and Russian be more immune to HIV or the Plague
than, let's say, Indians (where the Plague is endemic) or Subsaharians,
where the HIV has developed?
|
As I said it is disputed that Yrsenia Pestis is really the Plague - and in
any
case Yrsenia Pestis is found in India today while it is not affecting the
European population in any meaningfull way, which could indicate some
resistance
preent in Europe, but not in India.
Instead of Yrsenia Pestis think of something like Smallpox if some idiot
released
it from one of the labs.
In any case the plague has probably been the heaviest evolution factor in
modern
European history. When it first arrived everybody got sick and the vast
majority
died. A few centuries later when the Plague got around the last time only
some
got sick and only very few died. It is therefore not unreasonable that the
general
ability to withstand diseases increased a lot, since those it didn't make
stronger
it killed.
We can also observe that when Europeans came to the Americas in large enough
numbers, the local populations were much more severly affected by "our"
diseases, than we were by theirs.
--------------------------------------
Carl Alex Friis Nielsen
Love Me - take me as I think I am |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Skitt
Guest
|
| Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 1:41 am
Post subject: Re: Metric Iron-Age shoe |
|
|
R H Draney wrote:
| Quote: | Wood Avens filted:
Still true in most of the circles I frequent, and above the age of 40
or so. Belly tends to be reserved for composites like belly-dancing
and beer-belly. I'm not quite as old as your grandmother, but belly
on its own ... well, I wouldn't use it to people I didn't know. I
probably wouldn't use it at all - it's just not part of my normal
vocabulary.
How about "belly up"?...granted, some sensitive souls find any such
matter-of-fact discussion of death as tasteless as others do the
discussion of lactation, but it seems the natural way to refer to the
goldfish you found floating just this morning....
|
Surely, you can belly up to the bar without thinking of death.
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
www.geocities.com/opus731/ |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Alan Jones
Guest
|
| Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 1:45 am
Post subject: Re: Metric Iron-Age shoe |
|
|
"Peter Duncanson" <mail@peterduncanson.net> wrote in message
news:8jv991ders9f229aq3pv932o8pb003qbom@4ax.com...
| Quote: | On Wed, 25 May 2005 20:45:56 GMT, Roland Hutchinson
my.spamtrap@verizon.net> wrote:
rbaniste1@shaw.ca wrote:
On Wed, 25 May 2005 19:51:22 +0100, Peter Duncanson
mail@peterduncanson.net> wrote:
On Wed, 25 May 2005 18:15:56 GMT, Roland Hutchinson
my.spamtrap@verizon.net> wrote:
epidemics, sometimes pandemics, and sometimes just some folks getting
sick (=BrE ill).
"Sick" works very well in BrE.
The belief that the English have only one word for the condition seems
to be deeply seated, in certain American quarters at least.
Sometimes, though, it is best to leave sleepers alone.
Well, then, what word _would_ you use in BrE to mean "sick, but I don't
mean
nauseated" (=AmE sick, ill).
Sick or ill.
The word "sick" is used in official contexts, as well as informally.
The minimum (by law) that an employer must pay an employee who is "off
work
sick" (absent through sickness) is called Statutory Sick Pay. There is a
webpage that explains this for employers. The words "sick" and "sickness"
are used throughout. "Illness" is used only in the phrase "illness and
disability".
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/employers/employee_sick.htm#1
A medical certificate from a doctor stating that a person is unfit for
work
is know colloquially as a "sicknote".
|
There are distinctions, though, apart from the obvious one that, in BrE
anyway, "ill" can't be used attributively: a sick child, a child who is ill.
"Ill" attributively seems to be "bad": the ill wind that nobody blows good
(some US wag on the oboe).
I rather think that in general being "ill" implies something worse and
perhaps more longlasting than being "sick". If I eat something that
disagrees with me, I may be sick (vomit) or be taken ill. The latter may
mean a call to the doctor.
Alan Jones |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Javi
Guest
|
| Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 2:04 am
Post subject: Re: Metric Iron-Age shoe |
|
|
Per Rønne wrote:
| Quote: | Javi <poziNOSPAM@hotmail.com> wrote:
Is that your conclusion, or is it explicitly stated in any of those
encyclopaedias you mention? The Britannica says nothing about a set of
diseases.
It talks about different /strains/, about some influenza types as
"animal diseases"
|
Different strains don't make different diseases: AIDS can be caused by
HIV type 1 or by HIV type 2. Some other slightly different retroviruses
cause immunodeficiency syndrome in different animals; in fact, the
strongest theory about HIV origin is that it mutated from the simian form.
| Quote: | and about the viruses mutating all the times - also
due to humans getting immune.
|
??? Do I understand what you mean? Do you suggest that the viruses
mutate due to humans getting immune to them?
| Quote: | Furthermore, not only the vira mutate. Their "game" mutate too and
through selection some populations become more immune to certain
diseases than other. Like in hiv - 16% of Scandinavians and Russians are
said to be fully immune and more than 50% partly immune. Due to a
selective pressure during the centuries of the Plague.
What is the relation between HIV and the Plague? The first is caused by
a virus, the second by a bacteria (yersinia pestis). And, supposing that
there is a relation (which I doubt, do you have a reference?), why
should Scandinavians and Russian be more immune to HIV or the Plague
than, let's say, Indians (where the Plague is endemic) or Subsaharians,
where the HIV has developed?
Well, I'm no physicians but quite a number of them believe that
Europeans and especially Scandinavians had a small number of people
immune to the Plague - an immunity acquired a long time before the
Plague. The immunity came from earlier diseases and during the Plague
city-people not immune simply died. But better to give a link:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8122-1520635,00.html
|
It is just the opinion of two scientists (Christopher Duncan and Susan
Scott, based at the University of Liverpool’s School of Biological
Sciences, it seems that they are not physicians). They have observed the
fact that about 10-15% of Europeans carry a particular genetic mutation,
known as CCR5-delta32, and remain free of the AIDS. The mutation
prevents the HIV virus from entering the cells of the immune system, and
also protect against Ebola-type viruses that produce haemorrhagic fevers.
That is the fact.
Everything else is speculation. That particular genetic mutation does
not confer protection against the plague/black death, so the speculation
must go further and try to state that the plague epidemics were not
really plague epidemics (caused by yersinia pestis), but an Ebola-like
epidemic .
In fact, Duncan and Scott even say that most of the epidemics in ancient
and earlier medieval times (in the Nile Valley from 1500 BC and in
Mesopotamia (700-450BC), Athens (430BC), the plague of Justinian (AD
541-700) and the plagues of the early Islamic empire (AD 627-744)) were
all caused by Ebola-type virus. There is no the least evidence of it, on
the contrary, the accounts of the Athens plague seems to suggest that it
was a smallpox or measle epidemic, and the plague of Justinian seems to
be the first recorded description of the bubonic plague (black death);
also there is evidence that the epidemics called the plague in the
fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth century were caused by yersinia
pestis, not a virus.
--
Javi |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Javi
Guest
|
| Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 2:04 am
Post subject: Re: Metric Iron-Age shoe |
|
|
dcw wrote:
| Quote: | In article <d72a7u$k3p$1@nsnmpen3-gest.nuria.telefonica-data.net>,
Javi <poziNOSPAM@hotmail.com> wrote:
What is the relation between HIV and the Plague? The first is caused by
a virus, the second by a bacteria (yersinia pestis).
ObAUE: the plural of "virus" is "viruses" or "viri", not "vira".
And the singular of "bacteria" is "bacterium".
|
Not necessarily; from M-W:
Main Entry: bac·te·ria
Pronunciation: bak-'tir-E-&
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -ri·as
Etymology: plural of bacterium
: a group (as a genus, species, or strain) of bacteria -- used chiefly
in nontechnical writing and in news broadcasts
usage Bacteria is regularly a plural in scientific and pedagogical use;
in speech and in journalism it is also used as a singular <caused by a
bacteria borne by certain tiny ticks -- Wall Street Journal> <more
resistant to chlorine and elevated water temperatures than other
bacterias -- Allan Bruckheim, M.D., Chicago Tribune>. This journalistic
use is found in British as well as American sources.
--
Javi |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Evan Kirshenbaum
Guest
|
| Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 2:05 am
Post subject: Re: Metric Iron-Age shoe |
|
|
R H Draney <dadoctah@spamcop.net> writes:
| Quote: | Wood Avens filted:
Still true in most of the circles I frequent, and above the age of
40 or so. Belly tends to be reserved for composites like
belly-dancing and beer-belly. I'm not quite as old as your
grandmother, but belly on its own ... well, I wouldn't use it to
people I didn't know. I probably wouldn't use it at all - it's just
not part of my normal vocabulary.
How about "belly up"?...granted, some sensitive souls find any such
matter-of-fact discussion of death as tasteless as others do the
discussion of lactation, but it seems the natural way to refer to
the goldfish you found floating just this morning....
|
Not to be confused with "belly up" as in "belly up to the bar", which
according to MWCD11 is the older of the two (1880 vs. 1939). There's
also "belly flop", "belly laugh", and "bellyache" in the sense of
complain.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |A little government and a little luck
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |are necessary in life, but only a
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |fool trusts either of them.
| P.J. O'Rourke
kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Mark Brader
Guest
|
| Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 2:51 am
Post subject: Re: Plural of "virus" redux |
|
|
Per Rønne:
| Quote: | In Danish we use "vira" when talking in plural. ...
|
Thanks.
| Quote: | And let me quote a little from a Danish-Danish dictionary {Politiken's}:
virus ['vi·rus] subst. -sen el. -set, -ser (el. virus el. vira), -serne
(el. -sene el. viraene)
==
"el." is shrt for "eller" which means "or".
|
Or rather, evidently it means either "either" or "or". Or either "or" or
"either", if you prefer.
--
Mark Brader | Either the universe works in a predictable, analyzable
Toronto | way or it works spasmodically, with miracles, action at
msb@vex.net | a distance and wishful thinking as the three fundamental
| forces. People tend to take one view or the other.
| -- Frank D. Kirschner |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Mark Brader
Guest
|
| Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 2:54 am
Post subject: Re: Plural of "virus" redux |
|
|
Mark Brader writes:
| Quote: | Or rather, evidently it means either "either" or "or". Or either "or" or
"either", if you prefer.
|
Oops, I take that back; I see how% I misread it now. But it was fun to
say that, anyway...
% - There are languages, such as French, where "either" and "or" are the
same word, and I knew that and then mistook the intent of the parentheses.
--
Mark Brader | Well, unfortunately, that is impossible, or very difficult, or
Toronto | highly inadvisable, or would require legislation--one of those.
msb@vex.net | -- Sir Humphrey ("Yes Minister", Lynn & Jay) |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Javi
Guest
|
| Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 2:57 am
Post subject: Re: Metric Iron-Age shoe |
|
|
Carl Alex Friis Nielsen wrote:
| Quote: | Javi skrev i meddelelsen ...
What is the relation between HIV and the Plague? The first is caused by
a virus, the second by a bacteria (yersinia pestis). And, supposing that
Actually it has become disputed whether the Plague and the Yrsenia
Pestis disease found today is really the same disease since there are
several discrepancies between the disease found in e.g. India today
and the disease described in historic documents.
|
Very probably Yersinia Pestis has not remained inmutable in those centuries.
Anyway, the main discrepancies seem to affect the first global epidemic,
that of the half of the fourteenth century, the one that devastated
Europe. The circumstances were specially hard: few years before most of
Europe had suffered the Great Famine, three years without harvest due to
bad weather that had already killed many people, mainly children (the
tale of Hansel and Gretel seems to be based in facts of that time), and
the survivors were in a pitiful condition. Several epidemic diseases
devastated the survivors, most likely anthrax, measles and the plague,
which account for the discrepancies in the description of *some* cases
with that form of the plague most found nowadays in India and central
Asia. By the way, the plague caused by yersinia pestis can adopt three
forms: bubonic (the most common, and so considered the "true" plague),
pneumonic and septicemic; the symptoms are different in each case, and
the mode of transmission: the pneumonic form can be transmitted from
person to person through cough droplets, unlike the bubonic form, that
is rarely transmitted from person to person, needing the flea as a vector.
| Quote: | there is a relation (which I doubt, do you have a reference?), why
should Scandinavians and Russian be more immune to HIV or the Plague
than, let's say, Indians (where the Plague is endemic) or Subsaharians,
where the HIV has developed?
As I said it is disputed that Yrsenia Pestis is really the Plague - and in
any
case Yrsenia Pestis is found in India today while it is not affecting the
European population in any meaningfull way, which could indicate some
resistance
preent in Europe, but not in India.
|
Yersinia Pestis is endemic in a rodent of India and central Asia, the
black rat, not in people. The black rat seems to have arrived to the
near East in Roman times, and to Europe around the eighth century.
Nowadays it has been replaced in cold and temperate areas by the bigger
brown rat (Rattus Norvegicus), meaning that this is the only rat in
Europe. The brown rat is not a carrier of Yersinia Pestis. This is the
explanation why we don't have anymore plague in Europe: the black rats
are not here anymore. In India and central Asia some individuals are
occasionally affected by yersinia pestis transmitted from fleas of the
black rat, but there are no epidemics, so we can infer that most people
there is immune to yersinia pestis, but some odd individual is born
without that immunity.
| Quote: | Instead of Yrsenia Pestis think of something like Smallpox if some idiot
released
it from one of the labs.
In any case the plague has probably been the heaviest evolution factor in
modern
European history.
|
I agree, adding the precedent Great Famine. The demographic change that
it caused was the main factor in the social changes that followed.
| Quote: | When it first arrived everybody got sick and the vast
majority
died. A few centuries later when the Plague got around the last time only
some
got sick and only very few died.
|
Of course, some immunity to yersinia pestis was acquired by the
population, but, anyway, in the seventeen century the English suffered
the Great Plague, three centuries (twelve generations) later than the
medieval Black Death, and many people died (I think that there also was
a plague epidemics in the late seventeenth century in Denmark), so not
so much acquired immunity.
| Quote: | It is therefore not unreasonable that the
general
ability to withstand diseases increased a lot, since those it didn't make
stronger
it killed.
|
The flaw in that reasoning is that resistance to a disease does not
confer resistance against other non-related diseases.
--
Javi |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Robin Bignall
Guest
|
| Posted: Fri May 27, 2005 3:03 am
Post subject: Re: Metric Iron-Age shoe |
|
|
On Wed, 25 May 2005 23:51:23 +0100, Peter Duncanson
<mail@peterduncanson.net> wrote:
| Quote: | On Wed, 25 May 2005 20:45:56 GMT, Roland Hutchinson
my.spamtrap@verizon.net> wrote:
rbaniste1@shaw.ca wrote:
On Wed, 25 May 2005 19:51:22 +0100, Peter Duncanson
mail@peterduncanson.net> wrote:
On Wed, 25 May 2005 18:15:56 GMT, Roland Hutchinson
my.spamtrap@verizon.net> wrote:
epidemics, sometimes pandemics, and sometimes just some folks getting
sick (=BrE ill).
"Sick" works very well in BrE.
The belief that the English have only one word for the condition seems
to be deeply seated, in certain American quarters at least.
Sometimes, though, it is best to leave sleepers alone.
Well, then, what word _would_ you use in BrE to mean "sick, but I don't mean
nauseated" (=AmE sick, ill).
Sick or ill.
The word "sick" is used in official contexts, as well as informally.
The minimum (by law) that an employer must pay an employee who is "off work
sick" (absent through sickness) is called Statutory Sick Pay. There is a
webpage that explains this for employers. The words "sick" and "sickness"
are used throughout. "Illness" is used only in the phrase "illness and
disability".
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/employers/employee_sick.htm#1
A medical certificate from a doctor stating that a person is unfit for work
is know colloquially as a "sicknote".
|
Curiously, the criteria for SSP are pretty much identical to those of
Incapacity Benefit for the first 28 weeks, and IB seems to be
replacing SSP. The IB site
http://www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk/cms.asp?Page=/Home/Customers/WorkingAgeBenefits/492
states: "Have you:
Paid NI contributions?
Been incapable of work because of sickness or disability for at least
4 days in a row including weekends and public holidays?
If YES to both, claim Incapacity Benefit."
So sickness, illness and disability have mutated into incapacity.
Possibly bureaucrats are not washing their hands frequently enough.
--
wrmst rgrds
Robin Bignall
Hertfordshire, England |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| |
FAQ
Memberlist
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in