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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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A conversation with someone the other day made me wonder: when we say something like, 'Your self-confidence comes from within you', why isn't its opposite, 'Your self-confidence comes from without you'?
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Pooh-Bah
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And why do I have no problem using "without" in Jackie's example if I leave out the "you"?
Self-confidence comes from within. Self-confidence comes from without.
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Pooh-Bah
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<<and why do I have no>>
My guess is that it's because "without" is more commonly used to connote "not together with" than "outside," whereas "within" has not parallel connotation -- at least, not that I'm aware of.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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And why do I have no problem using "without" in Jackie's example if I leave out the "you"?
Because "without" is understood to refer to "you" when they are together. Without as a place is old and seldom used but I do remember reading about something or someone being "without the house" in a very old novel. ?Jane Austin? or some such.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I asked Bingley about this, and he said about the same thing as you did, insel: that without has pretty much come to mean 'not accompanied by'; which I knew, of course, but.
It would be so nice and logical, wouldn't it, if without you was the opposite of within you? Dag nab changes, anyway [only half-joking e]; anybody know when this one took place?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Have you seen this J? without
O.E. wiğutan, lit. "against the outside," see with + out. Used since late M.E. as a conjunction, short for without that.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=without&searchmode=term
[dai gression] asks where friend Bing is just now? you're missed, mate [/dai gression]
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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<<would be so nice and logical>>
Bring it back, Jackie; bring it back.
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I used to work with a Scotsman who consistently used 'outwith' instead of 'without' - and in one of those lovely Scots accents as well (I'm a sucker for Gaelic accents)! Ah, nostalgia!!!
Anyone else have experience of this?
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newbie
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When should one use "self-confidence" instead of "confidence"? "Self-confidence" comes up often in the commendation letters I type at work, as in "You exhibit admirable self-confidence," and I always wonder why we don't simply say, "You exhibit admirable confidence." Of course, then I start to wonder exactly when exhibiting confidence would not be admirable. *sigh* I do not have the confidence (or is it self-confidence?) to address this question.
saranita
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Carpal Tunnel
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I'd say that self-confidence is just what it says: confidence in one's self. Confidence all by its lonesome merely implies confidence in some specific thing. I might feel confident in my ability to handle a remote shoot, but when it comes to setting the thing up, I'm a hopeless mass of quivering flesh. No self-confidence.
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Pooh-Bah
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I agree with Faldage. Would only add that to say that used in, "[He] is confident" as a stand-alone sentence, it is something close to "self-confident," and something archaic like "My, but he's confident," implies something else again.
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