Quote: Griff @ July 14 2008, 10:06 AM BSTI imagine "metalepsis" would be taught at University level.
Only after a few cans of Special Brew.
Need help on a line... Page 2
Man fall down funny.
I was at school in the 80's and learnt about 80% of these things...however, as this thread shows, nowadays knowing 50% and knowing how to find the rest is more usefull than knowing 90% but no idea how Google works!
Couldn't the same have been said 20 years ago about the Dictionary and The Encyclopaedia Britannica?
Yes it's the 'calculator' principle isn't it.
I once had a petrol station assistant argue with me over the price of 20 pounds worth of petrol and a pack of chewing gum. She was convinced that she must be right and it was £30.28, because...'The tills never usually wrong'
She hadn't even considered that common sense would dictate that there was a problem. The problem being of course that she was a numpty and had rung up a different pump's fuel bill!
Chewing gum online? I hope you brought enough for everybody.
No but I can *takes gum from mouth* share this if you would like.
Quote: Sofa_Matt @ July 14 2008, 11:18 AM BSTYes it's the 'calculator' principle isn't it.
Someone I know who very probably will be Germany's next Ambassador to Thatcountryoverthere once called me with a serious problem that he had with some numbers for his research paper: If something is 15% of something first and after a while it's 18%, is that a 3% increase? He couldn't tell! He was writing a f**king statistics paper! At uni!
http://www.ladyofthecake.com/mel/saddles/bssounds.htm
Half way down in case you were wondering what I was on about.
Quote: Griff @ July 14 2008, 8:26 AM BSTWikipedia tells me
Metalepsis is a figure of speech in which one thing is referenced by something else which is only remotely associated with it. Often the association works through a different figure of speech, or through a chain of cause and effect. Often metalepsis refers to the combination of several figures of speech into an altogether new one. Those base figures of speech can be literary references, resulting in a sophisticated form of allusion.
while
In rhetoric, metonymy is the use of a word for a concept or object which is associated with the concept/object originally denoted by the word.
I don't see "vocabulary" and "dictionary" being "remotely associated" in the way described for "metalepsis". It seems a straightforward substitution to me as there is a strong association between "vocabulary" and "dictionary". So I would argue it is a metonym. But thanks for introducing me to metalepsis, which I hadn't come across before.
Griff, it just so happens that I'm in the Bricklayers with Noam Chomsky and he's asked me to point out that I'm right. He said that vocabulary is merely a list of words and dictionary is a list of definitions of words so although they appear related they are actually different things with only an associative connection. He said that since vocabulary and dictionary are both derived from Medieval Latin and may have been interchangeable five hundred years ago, the usage could also be described as a redundant transposition. He told me he had a similar argument with a linguistics student thirteen years earlier and that man now drinks from a plastic beaker.
He also added that anyone who gets his information from the wikipaedia f**ks bats.
Why you guys still arguing about this? I solved it in the second post.
Listen mate, this is an argument about linguistic tropes. It has absolutely f**king nothing to do with reality, or some f**king question that was asked on a forum. Who cares what the question was? How is that important?
Quote: Sofa_Matt @ July 14 2008, 11:18 AM BSTYes it's the 'calculator' principle isn't it.
Which works fine!
I hated maths, my 11 year old is doing stuff I don't get. However, with 2 calculators costing 99p each from staples (literally, 99p each) one at my desk and one in my briefcase....i have invested tens of millions of pounds of money for clients over the last 12 years.
If Mr Wickens had told me it was that easy in 1987 i'd have probably not even bothered turning up for my GCSE 
Quote: Simon Stratton @ July 14 2008, 7:38 PM BSTWhy you guys still arguing about this? I solved it in the second post.
The post was to get help with a line...not solve a puzzle!
Griff "solved" my dilemma with his post but what followed is actually quite interesting.
Quote: Griff @ July 14 2008, 11:31 PM BSTAlso, if you type 58008 into a calculator and turn it upside-down, it spells BOOBS.
The enigma version: 7134 6315.
Quote: Finck @ July 14 2008, 11:29 AM BSTSomeone I know who very probably will be Germany's next Ambassador to Thatcountryoverthere once called me with a serious problem that he had with some numbers for his research paper: If something is 15% of something first and after a while it's 18%, is that a 3% increase? He couldn't tell! He was writing a f**king statistics paper! At uni!
Well, that isn't that stupid a question. A lot of people would say it is a 3% increase, but as you know it's actually a 20% increase.