Archive for the ‘Prototype semantics’ Category

A new address

September 22, 2019

noun address: 1 the particulars of the place where someone lives or an organization is situated: they exchanged addresses and agreed to keep in touch. … (NOAD, with some degree of vagueness)

No, not for me, for my department, and in fact for the whole university. From the Stanford Report on 9/18/19:

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Serra Mall will be renamed Jane Stanford Way and become the university’s official address on Oct. 7, honoring the university’s co-founder and implementing a proposal that came out of a review of campus historical names.

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Posted in Lexical semantics, My life, Names, Prototype semantics, Semantics, Stanford | Leave a Comment »

holibolups

October 28, 2018

From Jeff Shaumeyer on Facebook, this plush Xmas Peep (an XChick?):

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A holibolup, a holiday/symbol mashup.

Horrified reader: I find the idea of a Christmas peep offensive. Next we’ll have werewolves with Valentines, groundhogs with Easter baskets, and leprechauns with sparklers. Where does it end??

Jeff: It doesn’t! What great ideas!

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Posted in Holidays, Prototype semantics, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »

Sticks and cubes

July 4, 2018

It’s all about measuring butter. I said to Kim (who was preparing for a grocery run tomorrow) that I could use a stick of butter for cooking, and she was surprised: “I thought you’d say cube, not stick.” Me: “I don’t think I’ve ever said cube of butter in my life. It sounds weird to me.” So of course we went searching, and found considerable confusion.

Quite a few people asked what cubes of butter were; that means they’d somehow come in contact with the usage. They got two very confident, but very different, answers:

cube-1: a synonym of stick, where stick is as in this NOAD definition (essentialy the same as OED3’s):

noun stick: US a quarter-pound [4-oz.] rectangular block of butter or margarine.

cube-2: a quarter-stick of butter, hence (at least roughtly) a 1-oz. cube of butter

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Posted in Categorization and Labeling, Language and food, Lexical semantics, Prototype semantics, Semantics | 12 Comments »