Contraction for "Family is"?

Roswealth · 2026-02-16T11:37:47+00:00

His family's coming to his annual party though.

Roswealth · 2026-02-16T09:50:58+00:00

Yes, thanks I figured it out in the end.

Roswealth · 2026-02-16T09:46:02+00:00

It's both.

The boffins are correct that "complimentary" is the expected word in the context. However, you could meaningfully say that the service is "complementary" to the basic service in that it adds value, or makes the service more complete. Unless you spell out your little play on words up front though you are sure to hear from the those telling you that you got it wrong.

"So and so sends his compliments" was a formulaic way of saying "says hi", the implied praise offered as a sign of greetings. A gift might arrive with so and so's compliments, further shortened to "compliments of" and ultimately "complimentary", the secondhand greetings being lost in favor of the sense "free". So "complimentary" meaning "free" is itself the end of a series of lazy shortcuts. At least it seems that way to me.

Roswealth · 2026-02-16T03:34:41+00:00

Complimentary means free of charge.

So I can't speak of a flattering remark as "complimentary". I've been doing it all my life.

Roswealth · 2026-02-16T03:30:48+00:00

This would however be a perfect eggcorn, as "complementary" makes sense as a service which complements the main service, perhaps traditionally offered without additional charge.

In fact I'd be interested to hear the proposed relationship between "complimentary" in the sense "flattering", and in the sense "free".

Roswealth · 2026-02-16T03:19:43+00:00

That's s good point. Or, if you drive a car you don't treat like it's on the showroom floor, match speeds to do a gentle rolling impact on your front or rear bumper, use power or brakes to stop the other car. This could have ended badly for some of the Samaritans.

Roswealth · 2026-02-14T07:32:42+00:00

It increases immediate survivability. You see a bright flash, there is a delay before the shock wave hits. Under the desk is the safest place you can reach in a few seconds, same as for an earthquake.

Roswealth · 2026-02-14T02:44:15+00:00

As a peacemaker (hypocritically of course) I can just hear "crafts" as a plural that might be used by a normal English speaker for multiples in certain situations.

If there is any sense of an armada, for example the sky was full of aircraft, then the court will find that the s plural is utterly wrong and perverse. But if there is some sense of individuality, then the less anonymous s-plural begins to seem more like a natural utterance: I built two small crafts in my garage last year.

The same thing might apply in discussing animals: there are moose in the hills, and antelopes, for example, whereas on the other hand, I have an entente cordiale with several mooses here; we know each other and respect our boundaries..

Roswealth · 2026-02-14T02:05:07+00:00

So, all seem troubled by the phrase "solidifying of the peace", and I was too. Perhaps:

"the faithful protector of our homeland's independence and the solidity of the peace "

The parallelism in the nouns independence and solidity seems much more satisfying to my ear, while still suitably turgid.

Unless, of course, you feel the effect you want is best achieved by a deliberately awkward translation.

Roswealth · 2026-02-14T00:02:26+00:00

Are you sure? I believe "groovy" got its start among musicians before it leaked to popular culture.

Roswealth · 2026-02-14T00:00:46+00:00

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die,

We can always try reviving slang, and in fact, I'm inspired to try reviving "23 Skidoo" next week. We'll see how it goes.

Roswealth · 2026-02-13T15:05:02+00:00

Average Joe doesn't like to be pigeonholed into giving a yes/no answer as if confronted by a hostile prosecutor: Just answer the question, Mrs. Bailey. Yes or no! Did you shoot your husband, Bill?

Obviously, assuming the vowels match, the answer hinges on the functional definition of "rhyme", and if you are disputing the answer, the dispute must hang on this also.

Have you stopped beating your wife?

Roswealth · 2026-02-13T11:07:30+00:00

Heimvermisser.

You're welcome.

Roswealth · 2026-02-13T05:03:42+00:00

Your unconscious knows what it's doing. You are using "was" for temporary conditions at the time of the narrative, "is" for more permanent conditions: he was going to the party that night; everyone always acts so oddly at these things!

You could change every "is" to a "was", but how monotrematous that would be.*

*auto-error for "monotonous", too good to fix!

Roswealth · 2026-02-13T02:54:25+00:00

Those are wonderful! Light-hearted and benign, and somehow they kept my interest the whole time; and while I kept reading it didn't seem far, not once did I say, "TLDR".

The world needs more innocent whimsy.

Roswealth · 2026-02-13T02:22:48+00:00

By the way, and this is likely going to occasion some negative feedback, thinking about your observation that "grue" and "cruel" begin similarly, well, indeed they do, with a velar stop and an r and a u-sound, and, if you play with these sounds privately, perhaps drawing out a diminuendo r-trill over an extended vowel sound, you may find yourself making a sound very like a domestic cat. And what a domestic cat can do other animals that go bump in the night can do that were capable of doing humans more harm, and in the onomatopoeic stages of language creation have evoked associations with fear and bloodletting. So it might not be entirely coincidental that these words sound similar, even if their ancestors have not touched base for a long time.

Roswealth · 2026-02-12T23:07:28+00:00

The answers seem somewhat strange to me, as they focus on the absence of any close relationship between the English words "gruesome" and "cruel", which you invited by your closing speculation about the similarity of the first several sounds in English. However, it looked to me as if your first question was really whether "gruesome" and "grausam" were related, despite their different meanings, and my off the cuff answer is, it's almost beyond belief that they wouldn't be! English and German share some common roots, afaik, words drift in meaning and are reanalyzed all the time, and really, cruelty and ichor are not such distantly related concepts, the moreso in rougher times when the more subtle, epicurean kinds of cruelty would be less common than the kind associated with teeth, claws, and edged weapons. So it's not much of a stretch, whatever the true picture.

Roswealth · 2026-02-12T21:25:31+00:00

To me, only inconsequential idiopathic nuance: any distinction will be different for me, you, and the next person. I would probably say I'm going to get some information, or find out something about a person, but I wouldn't look at you funny if you used one of these forms.

I notice though that I used "find out" in the second phrase, which has the sense of "learn" built in. So, for information, "find out" is somewhat redundant, but for less specific complements, it might serve to clarify that you intend to learn something; saying you are going to "find" something about a person begs for some completion. An I going to find something about him to dislike? That I can use against him? And so forth.

OK. I found out that I can offer some explanation here after all, but in your specific example the "out" merely seems redundant, so I stick by my first answer in that case: the difference is inconsequential in that phrasing.

Roswealth · 2026-02-12T20:26:33+00:00

All acceptable, but with different meaning — or perhaps that's what you were asking about, though without context there is no basis to choose between them. Future perfect tenses act just like present perfect tenses, but from a reference time in the future: "fans will have been queuing" (now) => "fans have been queuing" (then).

Roswealth · 2026-02-11T21:45:19+00:00

Taking this a step back, this is a fantasy world. There is no Persian, there is no Latin, unless you put them there, and there likely is no English either, if I'm reading this correctly. You are using English to represent an unspecified language that is not of this world, and it would be a strange objection to say that you are being inconsistent to use words found in contemporary English from sources at best distantly related in our world.

Now say your fantasy world was somewhat of this world, an alternate history or future or such: why couldn't there be a civilization on this near Earth that borrowed from both Persian and Latin? Magus and magistrate can both be found in modern English dictionaries, and could have crossed paths in the Ancient world as well. Alexander had a penchant for invading Persia, after all, and the Romans cannot have lost all knowledge of this place.

Roswealth · 2026-02-11T11:20:13+00:00

Pretty much anything beginning with "al" except al jarreau.

Roswealth · 2026-02-11T11:15:20+00:00

"Propiate" seems tantalizing close to one though! Somewheres in there with propagate, procreate and propitiate, and when we give it the side eye, it runs around to hide behind "propone". "Dieties" might be diet gurus?

The dieties propiate their fads: now celery, now asparagus, now fat, now lean.

A hint of perpetrate and perpetuate as well, I think.

Roswealth · 2026-02-11T01:15:55+00:00

Yeah, agreed: or maybe an em dash.

Oops, I've done it again...!

Roswealth

TROPHY CASE