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October 16

What style of Chinese character is this?

My girlfriend recently downloaded an app called "Seal Script" to my phone so I can look up old versions of characters. I looked up the characters for "Great Sage Equaling Heaven", and this is the result.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/1024x768q90/924/VEdi8K.jpg

The app calls this style "sharp" but that doesn't help unless I know the actual Chinese name. Can someone please point me in the right direction? Thank you in advance.

--Ghostexorcist (talk) 04:31, 16 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly can't tell one seal script from another, Ghostexorcist; but this has labels for the scripts. Does it help at all? --ColinFine (talk) 13:07, 17 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The "heaven" character in that graphic doesn't closely resemble File:天-seal.svg or File:天-bigseal.svg (though certainly closer to the former)... AnonMoos (talk) 15:59, 17 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you both. I'm still not quite sure what the style is. I'll just assume there are subtle variations of seal script. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 17:58, 18 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

October 20

Term for thinking negatively about the past

We have:

Optimistic: thinking positively about the future
Pessimistic: thinking negatively about the future
Nostalgic: thinking positively about the past

But do we have a word for thinking negatively about the past?? Georgia guy (talk) 23:24, 20 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Quora claims there isn't an exact antonym.[1] They mention "unsentimental", which had crossed my mind also. The origin of "nostalgia" may be enlightening.[2] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:10, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I always say people should plan not just for the future, but also for the past, to give them the best chance of having had the past they want to have had. This eliminates the need for thinking about the past in any way other than positively or nostalgically. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:59, 21 October 2018 (UTC) [reply]
- In contrast to Will Rogers' comment, "Thinks ain't the way they used to be - and never was!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:10, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Neither optimism nor pessimism are paradigma applicable to the future alone.
A pessimist, analysing the Big Bang, will conclude that the construct will collapse in a nanosecond. Of course, they will be correct.
An optimist, analysing the Big Bang, will conclude that sentient life will evolve billions of years later. Of course, they will be incorrect.
A nostalgist, analysing the Big Bang, may recall matters unrelated to cosmology.

--Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 16:55, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thinking negatively about one's own past: remorse, regret, repentance. Mikenorton (talk) 17:36, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Brooding. --Khajidha (talk) 17:37, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Haunted. (and Happy Halloween:)) - Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:45, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Urban Dictionary comes to mind here, I'm afraid. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:06, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

October 22

Pandar

Rupert Brooke's poem "Mummy" (or "Mummia") starts with these words:

As those of old drank mummia

To fire their limbs of lead,

Making dead kings of Africa

Stand pandar to their bed; ...

I have no idea what the word pandar means, or what "Making dead kings of Africa stand pandar to their bed" means. Google has been zero help on this occasion. Can anyone shed light on this? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 02:45, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Your best bet might be to write to the webmaster and see if they have a clue. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:55, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

wikt:pandar has as a definition "A person who furthers the illicit love-affairs of others; a pimp or procurer, especially when male." as a definition which makes some sort of sense. It’s marked as obsolete, but Brooke was writing 100 years ago and making classical allusions, so of course he was using obsolete and archaic language.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 02:57, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A pandar is a person who furthers the illicit love-affairs of others; a pimp or procurer. Mummia is an aphrodisiac prepared with mummified human flesh (mummy), so I think that "they stand pandar" means that the Egyptian pharaohs are acting as procurers. —Stephen (talk) 05:47, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, John and Stephen. I did of course check wiktionary, but came up with nothing. Weird. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 07:54, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It seems (according to the OED) to be a variant of 'pander', which is still used today in the verbal sense, and in pandering to someone's whims or desires. The etymology is from Pandarus, 'a Trojan archer who is said to have procured for Troilus the love and good graces of Chryseis (or Cressida).' AndrewWTaylor (talk) 06:43, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The modern English word which is still sometimes used in that meaning (especially in legal terminology) is "panderer"... AnonMoos (talk) 13:36, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Murian

OK, here's another weird word from Rupert Brooke: murian.

He wrote to his ex-inamorata Noel Olivier in February 1913: You … can't in the dizziest heights of murian imagination, picture the life of glitter and gaiety I lead".

It is definitely not in Wiktionary. There's this: The murian shall infect all kine, And measles will destroy the swine. This tells me that murian is a leprosy of swine, but I can't see how that's relevant to Brooke's usage of the word. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:06, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think murian is an adjectival form of "mouse". You missed off the start of that sentence which begins "But you, poor brown mouse" which to me confirms it. The second quote also to me suggests the author is blaming mice.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 08:37, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Again, it may be Brooke showing off his classical education. Muridae, the mouse family is named from the Latin for mouse, mus. But being Latin the adjectival form might well be "murian".--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 08:40, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Murrain is the disease. Murine is the adjective for mouse (like ovine and bovine), according to the OED. Murex, however, is the genus of snails that were used to make the dye for Tyrian purple, so could it relate to that? Mikenorton (talk) 09:10, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Murine is probably what I was thinking of. Pretty sure that’s what is meant by the Brooke quote, from context. Maybe an archaic or classical variant of it, but the same meaning of the adjective for mouse. I had not heard of Murrain, but that makes sense for the second quote which looks quite old so it could be an older spelling or a mis-spelling from when English spelling was less set in stone.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 09:57, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This all makes a lot of sense. Thanks. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:30, 23 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

October 23

Questions about the Cyrillic alphabet

Why are there special letters for soft vowels that differ from those for hard vowels?? (Example: A looks like an A; Ya looks like a backwards R)
Why was the Cyrillic I derived from eta as opposed to iota??
How did the letter Zhe get its alphabetization??
Why is there a special letter for the super-affricate shch?? (For curiosity, do any languages using the Latin alphabet use a single letter for a super-affricate??) Georgia guy (talk) 01:30, 23 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Many articles we have on Cyrillic letters describe their history. For just one example, based on your first question, I found Ya (Cyrillic), which describes how the character evolved over time. If you go to the Wikipedia article titled Cyrillic script, and look around the middle of the article, there's a large table with clickable links for each Cyrillic letter. I would start there to help you research the answers to your questions, and if THAT is unsatisfactory, then I would use the sources and references for those articles as the next place to look. --Jayron 32 12:23, 23 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Georgia_guy -- remember that the Cyrillic alphabet was originally devised for Old Church Slavonic, not for Russian. In fact, letters derived from both Greek Eta and Greek Iota existed in spelling Russian until the Iota letter was abolished soon after the Bolsheviks took power (see Reforms of Russian orthography). Letters for y-preceded vowels were the way that was chosen to write the palatalized or "soft" consonants which were a basic part of the phonology of Slavic languages... AnonMoos (talk) 19:22, 23 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Irregardless and the like

Whether or not irregardless is a solecism, it's interesting. I think that most native speakers of English would regard the prefix as superfluous, and yet the result sounds natural and is easy to understand for most of us. I've occasionally noticed similar affixation elsewhere, though offhand I can't come up with examples. Is there a term in lexical semantics for this kind of thing? ("This kind of thing" meaning, I suppose, something like: "affixation by analogy for semantic effect, (ir)regardless of the fact that the desired meaning is already there;" though this perhaps could be improved.) More.coffy (talk) 02:08, 23 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Irregardless is used as a synonym for regardless, but it's actually an antonym. How deeply do you want to get into this? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:26, 23 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(antonym) Do you mean as a synonym for "not without regard for"? I can't imagine anyone using it in this sense and expecting to be understood. Jmar67 (talk) 19:34, 23 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm saying "irregardless" is used as a synonym for "regardless", but as a word it doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:12, 23 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Our page on pleonasm gives this as an example of morphemic pleonasm. Is that what you mean? Beware however: that section cites no sources and the phrase morphemic pleonasm isn't one I remember having heard before. --Antiquary (talk) 21:21, 23 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Can "decide" mean "determine"?

When the word is to mean "find out" or "calculate".

So, if there is a party and everyone would need exactly one cookie, could the procedure be:

"First, decide how many people will attend the party" or would it be (much) better to say: "First, determine how many people will attend the party"

Joepnl (talk) 00:17, 24 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 113: / Line 113: @@
 :::I'm saying "irregardless" is used as a synonym for "regardless", but as a word it doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. ←[[User:Baseball Bugs|Baseball Bugs]] <sup>''[[User talk:Baseball Bugs|What's up, Doc?]]''</sup> [[Special:Contributions/Baseball_Bugs|carrots]]→ 20:12, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
 :Our page on [[pleonasm]] gives this as an example of [[Pleonasm#Morphemic pleonasm|morphemic pleonasm]].  Is that what you mean?  Beware however: that section cites no sources and the phrase ''morphemic pleonasm'' isn't one I remember having heard before. --[[User:Antiquary|Antiquary]] ([[User talk:Antiquary|talk]]) 21:21, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
+== Can "decide" mean "determine"? ==
+When the word is to mean "find out" or "calculate".
+So, if there is a party and everyone would need exactly one cookie, could the procedure be:
+"First, decide how many people will attend the party" or would it be (much) better to say:
+"First, determine how many people will attend the party"
+[[User:Joepnl|Joepnl]] ([[User talk:Joepnl|talk]]) 00:17, 24 October 2018 (UTC)