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Joined: Aug 2006
Posts: 5
stranger
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stranger
Joined: Aug 2006
Posts: 5 |
Today's quote, "Like a horny sightless woman on a blind date, she begins to knead her heavy friendship-ring-laden fingers into my face. 'Leptorrhine nose ... kumquat-headed ...'", contains a pleonasm.
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Joined: Jun 2008
Posts: 9,957 Likes: 3
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2008
Posts: 9,957 Likes: 3 |
----please, draw me a sheep----
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Joined: Dec 2006
Posts: 956
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Dec 2006
Posts: 956 |
Well spotted 
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
Well spotted Dunno. Leptorhine is an adjective and lepto- is a combining form. You can't really say "Like a horny sightless woman on a blind date, she begins to knead her heavy friendship-ring-laden fingers into my face. 'Leptorrhine ... kumquat-headed ...'" or "... friendship-ring-laden fingers into my face. 'Lepto nose ... kumquat-headed ...'" As for instances of ATM without the machine or PIN without the number, sure you'll run into those in the wild. They don't make ATM machine or PIN number wrong even if context makes it clear what you're talking about without the machine or number. Even with context there can be confusion. Teller at the bank, helping a confused customer with his ATM card: "Do you have your PIN?" Customer: "Yes ma'am. Rat cheer in mah pocket. It's a BIC."
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Rat Ahem. That should be raht. Rat is pronounced ray-ut.
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
I'm spelling using SWE conventions. If I'd meant it to be pronounced ray-ut I'd've spelled it ray-ut.
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
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and if I'd've meant PIN to be pronounced 'pen'.. well, I didn't, because it's just not, here.
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
The argument that there's other ways of saying it without confusion so the way you're saying it is wrong is a non-starter. There's always other ways of saying it.
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Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,290
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,290 |
Nobody has said yet what exactly is wrong with redundancy. It seems useful to me. Sometimes its inflectional concord between words (which is a requirement of some languages and its absence would signal a grammatical error); sometimes it's for rhetorical effect (and we're all for that where and when appropriate); sometimes it's to avoid ambiguity (which seems a good thing, too); and sometimes it's something which annoys a select group of speakers (who usually seem wrong about other aspects of language, so I'd say it's something to do with them and not the language)..
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
This subject came up in the context of pilotless drones back almost 4 years ago on Language Log. They do a pretty good job of discussing the nature of modification.
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