Domain: m-w.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to m-w.com.
Comments · 2,532
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Re:Transparent Windows: learn from Apple's Mistake
I've heard it pronounced both ways, and both Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=niche and Merriam-Webster online verified that they are both correct. http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/niche will even give you a pronounciation in audio form to verify that it's pronounced both ways, along with the phonetic spelling of the word, also both ways.
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Re:Contrary to Common Assumptions?
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Re:Contrary to Common Assumptions?
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Re:embedded in this message (not surprisingly)
...Do you know what contrite means?...Yes.
..., None of the paragraphs I read had the air or regret or sorrow.For the record, contrite doesn't mean regret or sorrow.
..., A person who works at MS is telling it the way he sees it and you call it a puff-piece...Well, as you point out later, An employees view of their company (good or bad) is not (by definition) objective. I'm going to stick with my subjective opinion the article was a puff-piece. You're welcome to your opinion.
..., I can see your mind will not be bent by any opinion other than your own, but I've never let that stop me before...,You seem to have the same capacity for "sight" as others who resort to ad hominem in lieu of debate.
Thank you Mr. Obvious.
You're welcome, Mr. Ad Hominem.
Many of them [companies trying to "make money"] will do it any way they can (overpricing, creative bookkeeping, screwing the customer, screwing the competition, breaking the law, etc.). MS may not be the cleanest company out there, but they are far from the dirtiest.
I never cease to be amazed at the capacity for rationalization. Rationale 1: anthromorphize the company, make it some kind of "them", and nobody need accept ethical blame or responsibility.; and Rationale 2: My company isn't as bad as some other companies.
Unethical behavior is unethical behavior, period. The fact that MS may be able to point to another company and claim that company to be dirtier changes nothing about Microsoft's behavior, period.
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Re:If they are bought out
Did you do that on purpose? Or did you mean inconvenience?
Either way, I got a chuckle out of it. -
Re:If they are bought out
Did you do that on purpose? Or did you mean inconvenience?
Either way, I got a chuckle out of it. -
Re:Battery life in the MacBooks?
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Re:The question....
Censorship doesn't have to come from the government. This is a popular fallacy.
See Merriam-Webster. -
Re:You're mistaken...Like all appeals to authority, it depends on who you appeal to.
Merriam Websters:
censorship Noun 1 a : the institution, system, or practice of censoring
censor Transitive Verb to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionableAmerican Heritage:
censorship Noun: 1. The act, process, or practice of censoring.
censor Transitive Verb: To examine and expurgate.Oxford English Dictionary: [subscription required]
censorship n. 2. a. The office or function of a censor; official supervision.
censor n. 2. a. One who exercises official or officious supervision over morals and conduct.
censor v. trans. To act as censor to -
Re:You're mistaken...Like all appeals to authority, it depends on who you appeal to.
Merriam Websters:
censorship Noun 1 a : the institution, system, or practice of censoring
censor Transitive Verb to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionableAmerican Heritage:
censorship Noun: 1. The act, process, or practice of censoring.
censor Transitive Verb: To examine and expurgate.Oxford English Dictionary: [subscription required]
censorship n. 2. a. The office or function of a censor; official supervision.
censor n. 2. a. One who exercises official or officious supervision over morals and conduct.
censor v. trans. To act as censor to -
Re:IE and Firefox only for nowfrom Merriam-Webster Online
One entry found for anyways.
Main Entry: anyways
Pronunciation: -"wAz
Function: adverb
1 a archaic : ANYWISE b dialect : to any degree at all
2 chiefly dialect : ANYHOW, ANYWAY -
Re:You have to fight..
"The deliverables are due this Friday."
Deliverable is an adjective and not a noun according to the Merriam-Webster Online dictionary. Business types frequently put an -able, -ly, or -s at the end of the misused words. Maybe English grammar should be taught to all business students?
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/deliverable
Check this out for some more fun.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0%2C1697%2C136 1717%2C00.asp -
Re:Missing the pointThe thing about gimmicks is that they only remain gimmicks until they become the accepted norm.
Things such as shoulder buttons (which I remember Sega fans back in the day calling a gimmick), the rumble pack (which every single controller uses now for some reason) all being called gimmicks.
Everyone complains that the Revmote is a gimmick, without bothering to look up what gimmick actually means. To whit:
1 a : a mechanical device for secretly and dishonestly controlling gambling apparatus b : an ingenious or novel mechanical device (from http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/gimmick).Let us also remember that TV's were considered a gimmick, so were remote controls. Power windows in cars. And the Atari 2600 was considered a gimmick, for that matter. Saying something is a gimmick doesn't inherently make it bad. It's only bad if it fails.
Looks to me like the DPad (or control pad as Sony & Microsoft call it now), Shoulder Buttons, Analog Thumbsticks, Rumble Packs and Z-Targetting have all done pretty well for themselves.
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Re:Please use a different adjective.
Ah yes, the true meaning of the word gay...
You mean happy, and excited right?
Or did you mean Bright? Lively?
Those are the top two definitions for gay according to Merriam-Webster according to http://m-w.com/dictionary/gay -
Re:Completely WRONG direction to take.
I think that disagreeing with someone is a perfectly good reason to mod someone down. In fact, when it comes down to it, that's the only criterion you can really have.
Really not! You can find the information to be unrealiable, you undo an 'informative' moderation. Or you notice a redundent post, you cull the posts. Stuff like that.
Trying to silence the voices of those you don't agree with isn't a perfectly good way to use moderation points.
Being modded down is criticism, not censorship.
No, THIS is criticism.
Modding down someone into the noise of the crowd IS censorship. You're trying to make it as hard as possible for people to get to the comment you disagree with by hiding it in a bunch of idiotic trolls, flameguerillas and spams..
Yeah, when I mod down a troll, I act as censor (2nd def.). I'm fine with that, not everythng that is said deserves to be heard... unless you want to. -
Re:Grammar nazi a quote?
I'm mildly curious, why is this funny? Did the article have the sic originally, and it got removed later?
Or is assure:
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/assure
somehow being used incorrectly here? -
Re:GPL?
And capitalism is by definition not a system, it is liberty.
Wikipedia, Thesaurus.com , Merriam-webster and Encarta all disagree. -
Re:Quickest way to Jump the SharkThe opposite of nadir is zenith.
Well, according to Mirriam Webster the 2nd definition of nadir means "the lowest point."
I'm afraid GP is correct in his usage.
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Re:Cash cow?
You made that word up didn't you? Come on, admit it
:D
Please tell me you weren't serious about this... have you honestly not heard of the word prophylactic? -
Re:Ugh
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Advocatus DiaboliThis kind of humor is really low and suggests that you (and others) think that rape (and sexually-transmitted diseases) is just punishment for something. There are thousands of people in prison who have committed no violence against anyone, stolen nothing, and they are raped.
Nope. Not just as in justice; perhaps effective. I merely hope that any others considering a course of action with widely distributed externalized marginal disutility would consider the risk of disproportionate consquent highly-personal internalized disutility a disinducement, and find the prospect of such risk becoming manifest such nicely ironic. Unfortunately, sociopaths don't consider consequences well.
I also note that the undeserved suffering of one group who have done nothing does not logically imply anything about the suffering of another group who have done something.
No, I am not a nice person; I'm far too pragmatic in my socio-political outlook. It's going to get me killed someday.
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Advocatus DiaboliThis kind of humor is really low and suggests that you (and others) think that rape (and sexually-transmitted diseases) is just punishment for something. There are thousands of people in prison who have committed no violence against anyone, stolen nothing, and they are raped.
Nope. Not just as in justice; perhaps effective. I merely hope that any others considering a course of action with widely distributed externalized marginal disutility would consider the risk of disproportionate consquent highly-personal internalized disutility a disinducement, and find the prospect of such risk becoming manifest such nicely ironic. Unfortunately, sociopaths don't consider consequences well.
I also note that the undeserved suffering of one group who have done nothing does not logically imply anything about the suffering of another group who have done something.
No, I am not a nice person; I'm far too pragmatic in my socio-political outlook. It's going to get me killed someday.
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It's an evil european ploy to destroy america!
"State sponsored piracy!" I like it. It has a nice ring to it.
The French have a history of using corsairs ; ) -
Re:Sudu or Root?
Oh, quiet you. It is perfectly acceptable to use plural pronouns as indefinite singular pronouns and has been for centuries.
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Re:ARG!!
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Re:Again so what?"Ubermensch" doesn't translate as "superman". It doesn't.
Yawn. So your hypothesis is that its illegitimate to use the prefix 'super' as a translation for the german prefix "uber"? Or perhaps your gripe is that Mensch could be translated as "Humans". Too bad the word "man" can mean an individual human.
overman, superman, overhuman, superhuman. All basically the same concept, so are legitimate German-English translations. Coined in 1903, Shaw's translation is the one with the most precedent.
Personally, I think you should move on to your next bit of schtick and tell us that JFK proclaimed he was a jelly doughnut.
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Re:So what?What did you hope to demonstrate by your post?
Just a bit of fun at the expense of a person who doesn't realize that the common English prefix "super" is derived from the latin word "super", meaning "over". :) -
Re: your sig
So... of your three references, the first can't spell genitive, the first and second don't mention "its" vs "it's", and the third agrees with the poster you're criticising... perhaps not very convincing
;-) -
Re:Discrimination
Pride in one's race is not racism. At least not according to m-w.com. Please explain.
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Re:ANYTHING has to be better...
With that kind of "lateral thinking", it's obvious that Ekiga stands for "telekinesis gathering".
Or maybe both names suck. I doubt the average office worker would pick up on the "cel" thing, especially since a cel is something completely different than a cell. Maybe Excel is an animation package? Why didn't they call it Excell to be more clear? Of course given how bad spelling is nowadays, maybe nobody would notice. -
Re:Don't noun that verb
Don't noun that verb
"Noun" is not a verb either.
http://m-w.com/dictionary/noun -
Re:dynamicness
If you're going to publish something for hundreds of thousands of people to read, why not use a dictionary?
Similarly, if hundreds of thousands of people might read your comments, why come off like a twit? You could've just as easily said, "The correct term is dynamism," and your response would've been graceful and elegant instead of smug.
Furthermore, this particular word is difficult in that if one goes through the trouble of looking up the word "dynamic" in an online dictionary, the response doesn't give you a clue regarding the formation of its abstract noun. (And surely you're not suggesting that people carry paper dictionaries with them every time they log on to a computer? It might reduce misspellings but it's hardly practical.) Which is probably one of the reasons why, in a perusal of the online world, you'll find such terms as *dyamicalness, *dynamicity, dynamicism (a real word, but inappropriate), along with *dynamicness. And if someone uses Google to look up a candidate-word, *dynamicalness, the response will be misleading:
Did you mean: dynamicness .
I suppose one of the saving graces of Windows Live is that it gives you no such unhelpful hints. -
That's "dynamism".
I'm not sure if that's the dynamicness (is that a word?)
The word you're looking for is dynamism; a dynamic or expansionist quality.
And, yes, I'm an English Major. -
Re:Gun Laws
Why don't you read a fucking dictionary, moron:
1 a : to govern or direct according to rule b (1) : to bring under the control of law or constituted authority (2) : to make regulations for or concerning
2 : to bring order, method, or uniformity to
3 : to fix or adjust the time, amount, degree, or rate of
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/regulate
(hint: it's not that hard to understand what words mean) -
Re:Don't switch to VB.Net - Switch to C#Here is a nickel kid, buy yourself a dictionary.
symanticly => semantically
it's => its
becuase => because
sence => sense -
Re:a recent survey of pension policyholders
It's an hotel or boarding house.
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Re:It's a shame
Thank you for the insightful post. Indeed, a better definition for "law" might be "a punishment affixed to a choice".
How about we use a phrase that already exists? penal code -
Re:Do we have evidence that Intel coerced...
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Re:Bah."Transporting" is the relevant word.
A controlled fall is not transportation.
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Re:Less known or Lesserknown ?
Merriam-Webster (click lesser[2,adverb]) uses "lesser-known" as an example of how to use "lesser".
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Re:Tax Instant Refund Scam; Loan, not Refund
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Re:Tax Instant Refund Scam; Loan, not Refund
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Re:new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ?
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/stealing
Definitions 1, 1a, 1b, 1c, and 1d.
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/property
Definitions 2b and 2c.
I hope you have enough command of the English language to make it unnecessary to define a "thing."
I'm tired of people proudly justifying morally bankrupt actions based on wordplay. I've played along, but no more. It's people like my parent poster who are making life hard on the people who want to do the right thing.
What they are doing is stealing. -
Re:new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ?
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/stealing
Definitions 1, 1a, 1b, 1c, and 1d.
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/property
Definitions 2b and 2c.
I hope you have enough command of the English language to make it unnecessary to define a "thing."
I'm tired of people proudly justifying morally bankrupt actions based on wordplay. I've played along, but no more. It's people like my parent poster who are making life hard on the people who want to do the right thing.
What they are doing is stealing. -
Re:AOL 11.0! Now with Spellcheck QXZ-3000!
And you spell "joke" J-O-K-E. If you're unfamiliar with this concept, let me help you.
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Re:Route around that censorship.There is no supression of information, simply a refusal to share with you.
That's a mighty fine line you're walking there... are you sure the sentance above doesn't look sort of silly?
Don't get me wrong; I think I understand exactly what you're trying to say... but I'm not sure even google agrees entirely with your narrow definition of censorship. Censorship is a broad term, and if you're going to make specific statements about it, it's best to qualify it to mean what you expect it to mean. If I do a Google define on censor, I get
ban: forbid the public distribution of ( a movie or a newspaper)
The user has banned the public distribution of this movie in the U.S.
If I look up the same word in the good ol' Merriam-Webster, I get :
Function: noun 1 a : the institution, system, or practice of censoring
with "censoring" linked to
to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable
While you may argue that I could get it somewhere else ( if it were offered somewhere else, which is another matter all together ), the simple truth is that the user censored their copy in the U.S. It's not government censorship, it's not official censorship in any obvious manner, but to argue that it's not censorship as you do is to argue the very definition of the word censorship. Yes, it is censorship when a publisher decides not to publish information for whatever reason. No, censorship as such is not necessarily evil, but does almost always limit the free flow of information, by definition. Yes, the origin of the word has to do with government ( the Roman government, according to my sources ) suppressing information systematically, but... wasn't the google user's ( and in particular, Google's ) suppre... uh, sorry, refusal to share information... at least somewhat systematic ?
See, it's all a matter of definition, and unless you're saying "government censorship", instead of "censorship", then... sorry, it looks like this is censorship, even if just by a Google user with Google's help.
And no, I did not mean to imply, nor did I imply, that this was government censorship... although the reclassification without justification of public record as described in the story certainly is censorship by any definition... again, another matter.
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Re:Route around that censorship.There is no supression of information, simply a refusal to share with you.
That's a mighty fine line you're walking there... are you sure the sentance above doesn't look sort of silly?
Don't get me wrong; I think I understand exactly what you're trying to say... but I'm not sure even google agrees entirely with your narrow definition of censorship. Censorship is a broad term, and if you're going to make specific statements about it, it's best to qualify it to mean what you expect it to mean. If I do a Google define on censor, I get
ban: forbid the public distribution of ( a movie or a newspaper)
The user has banned the public distribution of this movie in the U.S.
If I look up the same word in the good ol' Merriam-Webster, I get :
Function: noun 1 a : the institution, system, or practice of censoring
with "censoring" linked to
to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable
While you may argue that I could get it somewhere else ( if it were offered somewhere else, which is another matter all together ), the simple truth is that the user censored their copy in the U.S. It's not government censorship, it's not official censorship in any obvious manner, but to argue that it's not censorship as you do is to argue the very definition of the word censorship. Yes, it is censorship when a publisher decides not to publish information for whatever reason. No, censorship as such is not necessarily evil, but does almost always limit the free flow of information, by definition. Yes, the origin of the word has to do with government ( the Roman government, according to my sources ) suppressing information systematically, but... wasn't the google user's ( and in particular, Google's ) suppre... uh, sorry, refusal to share information... at least somewhat systematic ?
See, it's all a matter of definition, and unless you're saying "government censorship", instead of "censorship", then... sorry, it looks like this is censorship, even if just by a Google user with Google's help.
And no, I did not mean to imply, nor did I imply, that this was government censorship... although the reclassification without justification of public record as described in the story certainly is censorship by any definition... again, another matter.
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Re:OT speeling
http://m-w.com/dictionary/generalise http://m-w.com/dictionary/patronise I hate to inform you that you aren't always right. We descend from britain not your screwed over country.
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Re:OT speeling
http://m-w.com/dictionary/generalise http://m-w.com/dictionary/patronise I hate to inform you that you aren't always right. We descend from britain not your screwed over country.
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Re:So we're just not telling them the right stuff?Such niggardly use of language should be stopped.
I do not think that word means what you think it means.