Tag: English

One or three?

While reading through Matt Damon Wikipedia entry on the subject of Jimmy Kimmel, I scrolled further down to his Matt’s personal life, where I found the following sentence:

From 2001 to 2003, he dated Odessa Whitmire, a former personal assistant of Billy Bob Thornton and Ben Affleck.

I know, I know all those jokes about Matt and Ben are getting pretty old now.  But still, the question popped up in my head: is it a single person, as in Odessa Whitmire, who used to work as personal assistant for Billy Bob Thornton and Ben Affleck, or are these three different people, as in Odessa Whitmire, Billy Bob Thornton’s personal assistant, and Ben Affleck?

Before anyone assumes anything, I have to say that:

  1. I don’t care who dates who – that’s their own business.
  2. I have great respect for Matt Daemon, based on many of his movies (I am re-watching the Bourne trilogy at least once a month) and many of his appearances on TV (live shows, talk shows, YouTube interviews, etc).
  3. I have great respect for all those people who made the Wikipedia what it is today.

The above quote looked funny to me probably only because I am not a native English speaker.  That’s all.  Enough with disclaimers – you can now tare me apart and flame me into oblivion.

Dupsorry – an apologetic shortcut

I just came up with a word. It’s mostly used as a phrase, but I think it can be worded.  Dupsorry.  And I define it as an apology for a possible duplicate.   For example, when you share a bookmark twice, or tell the joke you already told.  It’s good to use it when you are not sure if you’ve just created a duplicate.  Just in case.  Enjoy!

Beautifully worded

Slashdot is well-known for the quality of discussions.  Minus, of course, trolling anonymous cowards.  Here is a quote from the comment to give you the sense of how clear some Slashdot users can express themselves:

Did you actually try to develop anything for Symbian?
Well, I did. And let me tell you this: Windows APIs, complete with their haphazard organization and historical baggage, lunatic bugs and arcane undocumented extensions are an example of Reason and Logic, when compared to this positive 10 day old vomit which is Symbian. Any ole Linux API is like an Extatic Symphony of Cosimic Joy, Eternal Purity and All-Encompassing Sanity, next to this 10 day old vomit which is Symbian.

I would have a lot of hard times, if somebody asked me to translate this to another language…

Vacation vs. vocation

My co-worker and I were composing an email today. He was writing and I was watching over. When I pointed out to him that he wanted to write “vacation” instead of “vocation”, he argued that if the word was wrong, the spellchecker would have underlined it in red. Since I was 99.9% sure that I was right, I aked him to double check.

It turned out that both “vacation” and “vocation” are legitimate words. But what surprised me was that their meanings were almost opposite.

“Vacation” has to do with resting and spending the time nicely. “Vocation” has to do with hard work. If you don’t believe me, check the definitions in the dictionary. Here are the words in Dictionary.com : vacation and vocation.

P.S.: And I was right.

Solid food

Yesterday, when I wrote about Maxim’s first food I of course meant his first solid food. It’s just that I didn’t know that solid food is called solid food in English. The direct translation from Russian is “solid” indeed, but when I was writing the post, I wasn’t sure that I could the word “solid” to describe food. And I was too lazy to check in the dictionary. Today, when I was replying to a comment for that post, I noticed the Google Adsense banner which was promoting some “solid food” website. I checked the site, double checked in the dictionary, and it was indeed – “solid” food.

Either I am being too smart or too stupid. I don’t know.

P.S.: Maxim seems to really enjoy his new diet.