Misuse of words – driving me crackers!

12pm is 12hrs after noon

On that logic, 9 A.M. would be 9 hours before noon, which would be what normal people call 3 A.M. It’s not 12 hours after noon, it’s twelve o’clock, post meridian, which is noon. This is because everyone has agreed on that convention. 12 A.M. is midnight because everyone has agreed that that’s what it means.

How is it that we’re 5 pages in and no one has mentioned that essential is being completely misused these days?

I’m going to bring back up the musical one since no one’s commented.The musical scale has seven notes then the pattern repeats. Calling it an octave brings about all sorts of complications since subsequent scales only have seven i.e. a three octave scale only has 22 notes not 24 also the 13th is the same note as the 6th but an “octave” higher.

Except there are 12 notes in an Octave in western music, or between octave intervals……. You are perhaps confusing Octave with Scale (or they are) The Octave is the distance between harmonic intervals, so yes, in a three Octave scale there are three tonic notes (Doh) because, traditionally and for the sake of our ears, we always want to resolve the scale on a tonic note. There are many different scales, and each one can be subdivided into modes depending on the relationship between the root, (tonic) the third, the fifth, and then the inclusion or omission of various notes in between . So for example a blues scale is based on a pentatonic scale (root, second, third, fifth and sixth notes of the major scale) but to that scale we add one or more chromatic notes to change the mode, so a major blues scale is root, second, flat third, third, fifth and sixth. A minor blues adds in a flat fifth to the minor pentatonic scale to give 1-b3-4-b5-5-b7. In many ways, the resolution from the 7th to the octave tonic determines the feel of the scale.

The important thing for a pianist is to recognise that there is an octave interval every twelve keys, with the 13th key being an octave above the root. The success of a guitarist depends on knowing where the tonic of the key is to be found, and learning the shape of the boxes or positions to be played, depending on the mode of the scale in use.

On that logic, 9 A.M. would be 9 hours before noon, which would be what normal people call 3 A.M.

Fair point.

It’s not 12 hours after noon, it’s twelve o’clock, post meridian, which is noon.

Noon can’t be post meridian any more than it can be ante meridian. I’ll agree that 12:05pm is 5 min after noon, but 12 noon can’t be am or pm.

This is because everyone has agreed on that convention. 12 A.M. is midnight because everyone has agreed that that’s what it means.

I didn’t know that, as a member of ‘everyone’, so it’s not true.

as a member of ‘everyone’,

Didn’t you get the memo? Your membership has been rescinded. That’s why there’s not an ‘E’ next to your name.

I didn’t know that, as a member of ‘everyone’, so it’s not true.

There’s a qualifying test for membership, keeps the riff-raff out.

Insane.

Quad bike for a vehicle with 4 wheels.

Quad bike for a vehicle with 4 wheels.

So you’re denying this should be considered a bicycle?

https://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/driver-of-flintstonemobile-charged-gets-day-in-court.html

‘Incredulous’ is often used to add a bit of sophistication but its misapplication very amusingly does quite the reverse.

Have we done yourself/myself yet?

Have we done yourself/myself yet?

I’m doing it now.

12am might mean midnight…but which midnight? Always better to use 23:59 or 00:01

Eg meet you at 12am on Tuesday…does that mean the midnight between Monday and Tuesday or the midnight between Tuesday and Wednesday…people get very confused on this point and tend to attack the enemy 24hrs before or after you would expect.

Stick to 23:59 Zulu

“Epicentre”…when you mean “centre”

Eg meet you at 12am on Tuesday…does that mean the midnight between Monday and Tuesday or the midnight between Tuesday and Wednesday

A.M. on Tuesday means the morning before noon on Tuesday. The midnight between Tuesday and Wednesday is A.M. on Wednesday.

To add to this we have the confusion between :
British Isles, United kingdom, great Britain, Britain and england. Add Hibernia and Alba to that and even residents of these isles rarely get it right

[…Britain and england…] even residents of these isles rarely get it right

Now I’m convinced you’re doing this on purpose. I mean, I know you love your adopted country; but last I looked most others were still graced with capitalisation.

Have you never heard England being used as a synonym for Great Britain? I have. I have been asked while abroad ” all english passport holders……….” Its less common that it used to be but still happens

Errmmm- do do realise this is not meant as a serious thread don’t you? I mean I have not actually been fact checking the stuff I have been spouting and have already been shot down in flames several times

Ha! Yes! Just got that misuse of “essential”. Well done dangeryourbrain.

Probably already been covered bit there seems to be confusion between bought and brought. “I brought a bike for £500”. No, you bought a bike. You may have brought it home after you bought it though.

12am might mean midnight…but which midnight? Always better to use 23:59 or 00:01

Eg meet you at 12am on Tuesday…does that mean the midnight between Monday and Tuesday or the midnight between Tuesday and Wednesday…

My thinking here is that the literal noon / midnight is only relevant for an infinitesimally short period of time (on an analogue system) – ie, the instant that it hits midnight it’s then no longer midnight, it’s after that. So 12am on Tuesday is as you’ve passed from Monday into Tuesday. It’s like trying to define the corners on a circle.

Have you never heard England being used as a synonym for Great Britain? I have.

Many years ago I once heard an American tourist ask a lad from Scotlandshire, “so whereabouts in England is Scotland?”

Flaunting and flouting. For example; “the cyclists were flaunting the law by riding two abreast”. They were weren’t they, but that’s not what you actually meant was it.

Black headed gulls have brown heads
Black backed gulls have black wings not backs

Their heads might be very dark brown when seen up close, or through binoculars, but seen from a distance, as they would have been when they were named, their heads are, to all intents and purposes, black.
Black-backed gulls have black backs, or at least a very dark grey, when they’re perched and seen from a distance; in flight, if seen from above, their flight feathers extend far enough across their body to look as though their entire back is black.
By the way, Which Tyler led the Pedants Revolt.
Here you go, teej, a photo of a black-backed gull in flight – care to tell the class what colour its back is?

And to a casual observer, seen from a distance of more than ten feet, what colour would you say this bird’s head is, when compared to its wing-tip feathers?

“I brought a bike for £500”. No, you bought a bike. You may have brought it home after you bought it though.

Ah you’re wrong there. They brought it.

The guy they sold it to bought it but they definitely brought it [to the point of sale] for 500 quid.

And to a casual observer, seen from a distance of more than ten feet, what colour would you say this bird’s head is, when compared to its wing-tip feathers?

Much more importantly, its water proofing is crap for a sea bird.

Count zero – and what about herring gulls and their diet? Common gulls and their rarity?

Anyway – IIRC the female black headed gull does not have even a brown head

the whole thing is a ruddy fib!

While we’re on the subject, seagull…

Common gulls and their rarity?

I thought you lived in Edinburgh, you can’t tell me you’ve not seen swarms of common gulls up town? One is often bedecked in a veil? Throwing up in gutters? No?

Anyhow, why hasn’t binners turned this into another thread about pies?

colournoise
While we’re on the subject, seagull…

And this is why you should never just skip to the last page of a thread…

Is there a misusable word for that?

why not refer to them as Mews?

Because that would cause all sorts of confusion; the place where falconers keep their birds when not hunting is called a mews, and there are mews houses in many cities.

meet you at 12am on Tuesday…does that mean the midnight between Monday and Tuesday or the midnight between Tuesday and Wednesday

It’s the 12 o’clock before noon on Tuesday, so between Monday & Tuesday.

its water proofing is crap for a sea bird

But it’s not as much of a sea bird as some, and cormorants & shags have worse waterproofing, which is beneficial to the way they feed.

I’m sure Petard never meant a wide mouthed canon.

No, those are either a mortar or a bombard, both used in siege warfare. Hence bombardment or bombarded.

The relevance is these are things that ‘bug’ TJ

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Anyway – IIRC the female black headed gull does not have even a brown head

Both sexes have dark hoods, both gradually recede to a dark spot on the side of the head out of breeding season. Like many birds, both sexes are similarly coloured, bulls and corvids in particular.
I did cheat a bit with that photo, it was a Mediterranean Gull, but they’re becoming a fairly common breeding resident now, like Little Egrets, Great White Egrets, Glossy Ibis, so getting them mixed in with our own black-headed gulls will make it a moot point…

I am going to sue under the trades descriptions act! Not as described. Grey backed Gulls and sometimes brown headed gulls!

Right. Thats it. Where is my kris. Its time to be run amok!

Oystercatchers don’t catch oysters

But it’s not as much of a sea bird as some, and cormorants & shags have worse waterproofing, which is beneficial to the way they feed.

Nah, the one in that photo is only IP44 rated, it’d be full of water in moments and unable to fly, anything less waterproof than that would just sink and drown.

Errmmm- do do realise this is not meant as a serious thread don’t you?

yep, I’m not completely* stupid.

* some stupid, fo’sure.

and there are mews houses in many cities.

Y’know, I don’t think even TJ would confuse the two…

“I was sitting minding my own business, eating some chips on the prom, when this row of nicely restored semi detached cottages with a cobbled lane came out of no-where, squawking it’s head off, and nabbed a great handful…It was chased off by a rural semi and a block of flats…”

I don’t think even TJ would confuse the two…

There’s another one.

Would when you clearly mean could. He couldn’t confuse them, he clearly would,just to be country contrary.

🙂

Infamy infamy you have all got it in for me!