"David Richerby" wrote in message
...
Chess One wrote:
[Incidentally, 'rationally' means to measure or proportion

No, it means `based on reason'. The OED gives no evidence of the word
ever having commonly used to mean `measure or proportion'.


from [L.]; ratio]

Yes, from the Latin `ratio', meaning `reason' or `computation'.
Subsequently, the word `ratio' in English has come to mean the
proportion of two numbers. But English is not Latin: the Latin
meaning of a word is nothing more than a hint as to the English
meaning of the same sequence of letters.

I'm sorry for this verbal entanglement, but your offer constitutes a
tautology, or circular reference; to use a word as part of its own
definition, since reason also has the same stem~ from 'ratio': Which does
have the meaning 'in relationship or inter-proportion' which is common
speech here in the States and not the slightest bit obscure, according to my
foot-thick Websters, and also I have a 2-foot thick version.

If you like you can take the, inter-alia, word RATE, [OF. /rate/, from [L.]
rata pars, thence skipping Englisc, became A. N.] which has the same, yet
more explicit, sense of the /part/ [pars] to the whole or to other part.

In fact it may amaze you to learn that it is currently English usage here in
America to use the word RATE as a proportion of part to the whole,
expecially expressed as a percentage. How is it where you are - would this
usage be understood or thought obscure, and as you suggest, laughable? Isn't
it a trope to laugh at the rates- what seems reasonable about them?

The difficulty in accepting cant, or changed meanings, is if they are less
expressive than the word they supercede, and indifferently distinguished
from, in this case, 'logic' or what is a linear sequenced, what then can
their extant stems~ such as relationship or unchanged sense as in rate,
mean? They do not mean 'reasoned', the new synonym, they still mean the same
as they ever did. How do you refer to the previous meaning of any word if
you insist on a new one?

Why don't you try consulting a dictionary from time to time? Talking
with people would be so much easier if you used the same definitions
as the rest of us.

A fair argument for Eubonics, and for gangsta-talk of teenage boys, dude! Or
should I say "mo'fa"?

Though I can't admit that measure means logical, nor part-to-whole does
either - in or out of mathematics, nor that 'relationship' has to do with
logical propositions or with reasoning grin, but between-parts. If one is
to talk cant or submit to slang as proper use, then what is the name for
words that have changed populist meanings? How do you refer to the
previously used words - since they are now taboo in case we upset the
sensibilities of teenage gangstas?

What you write may be fair enough in the mathematics world, since presumably
you accept any and all parsing of quadratic equations from 7 year olds,
because it is common practice and there are more 7 years olds than
mathematicians.

As it is, you're apt to spend a great deal of time
trying to convince us that it's a good idea to eat arsenic and then
you find that we're disagreeing with you because we do not use the
word `arsenic' to refer to some variety of chocolate eclair.

How interesting. It reminds me, to ratiocinate, of another poster here who
last year compared other posters to Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini, then
defended his choices of these fascist mass-murders, as the nearest analogy
for his disagreements with other posters that his mind was then capable of
expressing in his mother-tongue.

Phil Innes


Dave.

--
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