A thing I learned today

[Sportin' Life]

Though I've owned a Mac forever, I have just learned you can right click on a Mac by pressing Control while you click. It truly is embarrassing to have found this out after, well. maybe 1.5-2 decades.

It took me almost as long to learn that one. Another thing I learned is that you can just plug in a non-mac mouse with a right clicker and it works just like on a PC.

[Aine]

Could Firehazard have written 'learned' with a t at the end? i.e 'learnt'

It's an irregular verb. This means you can do what you like with it. It's not fussy.

The irregulars are defiantly quirky. Thousands of verbs monotonously take the -ed suffix for their past tense forms, but ring mutates to rang, not ringed, catch becomes caught, hit doesn't do anything, and go is replaced by an entirely different word, went (a usurping of the old past tense of to wend, which itself once followed the pattern we see in send-sent and bend-bent). No wonder irregular verbs are banned in "rationally designed" languages like Esperanto and Orwell's Newspeak -- and why recently a woman in search of a nonconformist soul-mate wrote a personal ad that began, "Are you an irregular verb?"

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/ ... dfall.html (Why I Like Irregular Verbs) You might enjoy this, Soulfinger.

[soulfinger]

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2000_03_landfall.html (Why I Like Irregular Verbs) You might enjoy this, Soulfinger.

I enjoyed it right up until the last line; wherein he over-dignified snuck. Snuck is not an irregular verb. Sneak - sneaked. How complicated is that? Snuck's not even a word.

[Aine]

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2000_03_landfall.html (Why I Like Irregular Verbs) You might enjoy this, Soulfinger.

I enjoyed it right up until the last line; wherein he over-dignified snuck. Snuck is not an irregular verb. Sneak - sneaked. How complicated is that? Snuck's not even a word.

About as complicated as leak-luck or peek-puck.

[firehazard]

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2000_03_landfall.html (Why I Like Irregular Verbs) You might enjoy this, Soulfinger.

Nice article, though I might take issue with the writer's opening assessment that there are precisely 180 irregular verbs in English. And wonder who counted them. And what day of the week it was... All seems a bit exact.

[soulfinger]

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2000_03_landfall.html (Why I Like Irregular Verbs) You might enjoy this, Soulfinger.

Nice article, though I might take issue with the writer's opening assessment that there are precisely 180 irregular verbs in English. And wonder who counted them. And what day of the week it was... All seems a bit exact.

Careful, those irregulars are dangerous. Wiki says: Irregular warfare involves avoiding large-scale combats and focusing on small, stealthy, hit and run engagements.

[Sportin' Life]

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2000_03_landfall.html (Why I Like Irregular Verbs) You might enjoy this, Soulfinger.

Nice article, though I might take issue with the writer's opening assessment that there are precisely 180 irregular verbs in English. And wonder who counted them. And what day of the week it was... All seems a bit exact.

I'll bet you nuthin' he forgot shit, shat, has shat.

[Aine]

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2000_03_landfall.html (Why I Like Irregular Verbs) You might enjoy this, Soulfinger.

Nice article, though I might take issue with the writer's opening assessment that there are precisely 180 irregular verbs in English. And wonder who counted them. And what day of the week it was... All seems a bit exact.

I'll bet you nuthin' he forgot shit, shat, has shat.

That makes me smile. My late mother, always the perfect lady (well, she occasionally said damn, but that was about it,) couldn't help but smile ever so slightly when one of her children would use shat. A fond memory. Silly the things we remember.

[firehazard]

Careful, those irregulars are dangerous. Wiki says: Irregular warfare involves avoiding large-scale combats and focusing on small, stealthy, hit and run engagements.

So true. Today I am pinned down by a guerrilla force of preterites on one side and what appears to be a raiding party of deponents on the other. Tricky blighters.

[Aine]

Careful, those irregulars are dangerous. Wiki says: Irregular warfare involves avoiding large-scale combats and focusing on small, stealthy, hit and run engagements.

So true. Today I am pinned down by a guerrilla force of preterites on one side and what appears to be a raiding party of deponents on the other. Tricky blighters.

Ah....so my beginner's Latin failed me.

I have just learned, sort of, what a deponent is. Can one sprinkle that word around at meetings and parties?

[firehazard]

I have just learned, sort of, what a deponent is. Can one sprinkle that word around at meetings and parties?

Depends on the sort of party, I'd guess. But I'd be careful with those pesky deponents. Try sprinkling them too liberally and they're liable to jump up and bite you in the gerundives.

Today I learned that when someone says that it's colder outside than it looks, they are probably right. And one probably should put on one's jacket before going out. Which is something that I think my mother has been trying to teach me for nigh on half a century.

[Sandyfromvancouver]

No way to evade the task: I learned that those leaves I raked onto the garden last fall provided a wonderful environment for weeds to flourish, and that while said leaves may eventually become one with the earth, they look like hell in the meantime, er, in the springtime. I raked and weeded for hours this morning in the rain. Just, ah, scraped the surface.

[old barney greyheron]

A thing I learnt ten days ago...it's a BAD idea to headbutt a mirror when you have bare feet...<blushes>

[Sandyfromvancouver]

A thing I learnt ten days ago...

The title.

it's a BAD idea to headbutt a mirror when you have bare feet...<blushes>

The first sentence of Barney's illustrious collection of rollicking short stories.

But as life imitates art, how're the feet, Barney?

[old barney greyheron]

Er...scarred, but working sort of okay...bit like meself.