idiomaddict

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago

He wary of the cherry

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I don’t really think “milk customized for a calf” makes much of a difference for the point OP was making. Sorry, if this was kind of a waste of time, I just love that milk changes composition based on the baby’s situation and then got really interested in the linguistic limits of “design.”

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

That feels much more formal to me. Definitely not incorrect, but not how I’d explain it casually to someone.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (4 children)

How would you phrase it? (Honest question)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (6 children)

I don’t know what their cognitive processes are, but it seems unlikely they do. It still sounds perfectly normal to me to say the following:

“Spider webs are designed to be safe for the spider, but still trap as much potential prey as possible.”

Does that really hit your ear (eye) wrong?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (8 children)

That’s debatable, I feel like spiders design their webs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (10 children)

The mother designs it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (12 children)

Milk is actually designed! It’s super cool

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Struck is simple past, stricken is the past participle. It’s the same pattern as “write, wrote, written.” Striked through is not “right” here, but at the same time, it’s a totally valid way to say it in various dialects, so that’s right enough for most purposes. In my dialect, workers might have “striked,” but that’s also nonstandard.

Just a regular linguist, which means I’m obligated to make it really clear that prescriptivism is bullshit, but does really simplify things for non native speakers

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