Wiley’s Dictionary has an insufficient listing of prefixes. Specifically, it only gets as far as “uni”, and has nothing for “bi” (or “tri”, etc.)
Yes, I think what James P said is all there is to this. Although I thought they called it a “wheel” rather than a unicycle, or any kind of cycle for that matter.
I think that this comic makes sense only if Peter (and
possibly Thor) believe that the dictionary is prescriptivist
rather than descriptivist.
” I thought they called it a ‘wheel’ rather than a unicycle, or any kind of cycle for that matter.”
A wheel and a unicycle are different. A unicycle has a seat, and a wheel doesn’t.
Prefixes and suffixes tend towards prescriptivism, I think.
For example, the only fully descriptivist suffix I can think of, off the top of my head, is “-gate” meaning “scandal”.
I would not be surprised to find quite a few popularly-created
prefixes and suffixes, but the only other one to come readily to
mind is -burger.
@ Arthur – How about “Mc” (for “mass produced”, with an implied connotation of “cheap”).
P.S. For example, there’s a chain of “fitness studios” in Germany called “McFit”.
@Kilby: There’s also the stationery chain McPaper. The non-food discounter Mäc Geiz (Geiz meaning stinginess or miserliness) probably counts, too. It’s the same phonetically, but helps them avoid upsetting a certain global fast food chain.
I’m more interested in seeing how BC tracks the way the pronunciation of “cycle” goes from sigh-cul to sick-el when you add wheels.
“I’m more interested in seeing how BC tracks the way the pronunciation of ‘cycle’ goes from sigh-cul to sick-el when you add wheels.”
I get this one. Since all they had was a unicycle before, creating the two wheeled unicycle makes them add a prefix to the existing name, instead of inventing a name from scratch.
Arthur@ 1:18 am: My guess is that most internet/computer related prefixes and suffixes were popularly created: e.g. as in cyberbullying, cyberterrorist, e-book, etc. . .
The few infixes, or near-infixes, that we have in English are also probably popularly created. For example, . . . Hm, not sure about the moderation here, never mind.
When you say “popularly created”, which side are you putting professional editors on?
Now, American editors aren’t as strict as, say, the French Culture Ministry, but they keep out a lot of informal word usage from finding their way into print.
I think the comment is fair whether it’s prescriptivist or descriptivist. It just depends on which one of them is coming up with the “bi-” prefix. “Please create a prefix for the concept of ‘two'”, or “I have just created the prefix ‘bi-‘; please add it in” are both reasonable interpretations of the request.
I want to know why they call people who ride bikes “cyclists” and people who ride motorcycles “bikers”.
MiB: I’d like to know why *we* call people who ride bicycles
“bikers” and people who ride motorcycles “bikers”. Regardless of
logic, at least they make the distinction.
The really funny thing is, people who ride tricycles are “bikers”, too.
The people who ride bicycles through the Back Bay refer to themselves as “cyclists.” I suppose “cyclist” is to “biker” as “violinist” is to “fiddler”.
Shouldn’t people pedaling tricycles be called trikers? ::-)
Well, according to one online article, “we” call bicycle riders cyclists and motorcycle riders bikers is because those are the terms they themselves use for their respective groups. Cyclists ride bicycles while bikers ride motorbikes. Each term is probably over a century old.
“Cyclists” tend to suggest a more genteel nature that their ruffian motorized counterparts. For many years biker gangs were mobs to fear and avoid at all costs.
Stray thought: Why is it motorcyclists RIDE their bikes but never DRIVE them?
@ Grawlix – German balloonists are very insistent that they drive their balloons (“fahren“), rather than “flying” (“fliegen“) or “riding” (“reiten“) in them.
@Kilby: I’d quibble with that. Reiten is strictly for being on an animal. Fahren encompasses all other senses that ride has in English. It’s what passengers in cars, buses, and trains do. For that matter, it’s what cyclists do, too. There’s a general sense of conveyance in the word.
Germany also has a history with dirigibles that the rest of the world, for the most part, doesn’t. The American experience is, well, der Hindenburg’s 2 minutes of infamy, and, for those old enough, overhead views of sports venues courtesy of Goodyear. We never really had airships.
Hot-air balloonists have more control over their vehicles than most people assume. Yes, they are going to go in the direction the prevailing winds take them, but those winds can be different at different altitudes, and the balloonist has some ability to control altitude. Still, I’m fairly sure a search of Youtube for “balloon hits electric wires” will present evidence of some out-of-control flight.
Locally, we have an annual hot-air balloon event where a “hare” balloon takes off and travels for a bit, then lands. A group of “hound” balloons follow and the one that puts a marker closest to the hare is the winner. The general track is largely controlled by the conditions of the day.
FWIW, the US Navy did use a large amount of blimps during WWII, built by Goodyear.
@ DemetriosX – I included “reiten” only because of the English word “ride”, not because it would come into consideration for a German balloon. The word that raises red flags is “fliegen“: using it in the presence of a German balloonist tends to provoke a three-paragraph explanation about why “fahren” is the “correct” word.
P.P.S. @ Bill – If only for the sake of properly highlighting the HTML links, please try out a different template!
The blimp hangar at Tillamook, Oregon still exists, and now houses an air museum. I’ve never been in, though I’ve seen it from the highway many times. But no actual blimps in it for 70 years, I think. Goodyear’s airship, at sporting events. And since Oregon has neither a MLB nor an NFL team, sightings were very rare since we’d only see it en route from someplace else to another someplace else. Since the NFL has figured out how to hang a camera over the field without a blimp, we don’t even hear about Goodyear’s any more, though I imagine if they’re still flying it, it ought to be easily visible in the places where it IS actually flying.
“P.S. @ Grawlix – There was recently a very expensive blimp tethered on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, but it ripped loose and crashed in Pennsylvania in 2015.”
So it traveled through space and time?
“So it traveled through space and time?”
Ripples from the Philadelphia Experiment.
Regarding American zeppelins, I can’t believe nobody remembers the Shenandoah, Akron and Macon.
Husband missed the exit to get off the parkway and we got off at the next one. The first exit would have taken us onto a main road. The second one ends up running more or less parallel to the first one, fairly close to it, with a small airport between them. As we got off the parkway we saw in front of us the Met Life blimp with Snoopy pictured on it, right in front of us – parked at the south (and quiet) end of the airport. Quite a sight to see a balloon that close up.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Wiley’s Dictionary has an insufficient listing of prefixes. Specifically, it only gets as far as “uni”, and has nothing for “bi” (or “tri”, etc.)
Yes, I think what James P said is all there is to this. Although I thought they called it a “wheel” rather than a unicycle, or any kind of cycle for that matter.
I think that this comic makes sense only if Peter (and
possibly Thor) believe that the dictionary is prescriptivist
rather than descriptivist.
” I thought they called it a ‘wheel’ rather than a unicycle, or any kind of cycle for that matter.”
A wheel and a unicycle are different. A unicycle has a seat, and a wheel doesn’t.
Prefixes and suffixes tend towards prescriptivism, I think.
For example, the only fully descriptivist suffix I can think of, off the top of my head, is “-gate” meaning “scandal”.
I would not be surprised to find quite a few popularly-created
prefixes and suffixes, but the only other one to come readily to
mind is -burger.
@ Arthur – How about “Mc” (for “mass produced”, with an implied connotation of “cheap”).
P.S. For example, there’s a chain of “fitness studios” in Germany called “McFit”.
@Kilby: There’s also the stationery chain McPaper. The non-food discounter Mäc Geiz (Geiz meaning stinginess or miserliness) probably counts, too. It’s the same phonetically, but helps them avoid upsetting a certain global fast food chain.
I’m more interested in seeing how BC tracks the way the pronunciation of “cycle” goes from sigh-cul to sick-el when you add wheels.
“I’m more interested in seeing how BC tracks the way the pronunciation of ‘cycle’ goes from sigh-cul to sick-el when you add wheels.”
It’s cyclical.
@ Kilby – There’s also the fiction BBC international crime series called McMafia http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05pksm8 , called Mc because of the franchising nature of some criminal enterprises rather than mass production or cheapness. Based on a non-fiction book of the same name by Misha Glenny https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/apr/06/society
I get this one. Since all they had was a unicycle before, creating the two wheeled unicycle makes them add a prefix to the existing name, instead of inventing a name from scratch.
Arthur@ 1:18 am: My guess is that most internet/computer related prefixes and suffixes were popularly created: e.g. as in cyberbullying, cyberterrorist, e-book, etc. . .
The few infixes, or near-infixes, that we have in English are also probably popularly created. For example, . . . Hm, not sure about the moderation here, never mind.
When you say “popularly created”, which side are you putting professional editors on?
Now, American editors aren’t as strict as, say, the French Culture Ministry, but they keep out a lot of informal word usage from finding their way into print.
I think the comment is fair whether it’s prescriptivist or descriptivist. It just depends on which one of them is coming up with the “bi-” prefix. “Please create a prefix for the concept of ‘two'”, or “I have just created the prefix ‘bi-‘; please add it in” are both reasonable interpretations of the request.
I want to know why they call people who ride bikes “cyclists” and people who ride motorcycles “bikers”.
MiB: I’d like to know why *we* call people who ride bicycles
“bikers” and people who ride motorcycles “bikers”. Regardless of
logic, at least they make the distinction.
The really funny thing is, people who ride tricycles are “bikers”, too.
The people who ride bicycles through the Back Bay refer to themselves as “cyclists.” I suppose “cyclist” is to “biker” as “violinist” is to “fiddler”.
Shouldn’t people pedaling tricycles be called trikers? ::-)
Well, according to one online article, “we” call bicycle riders cyclists and motorcycle riders bikers is because those are the terms they themselves use for their respective groups. Cyclists ride bicycles while bikers ride motorbikes. Each term is probably over a century old.
“Cyclists” tend to suggest a more genteel nature that their ruffian motorized counterparts. For many years biker gangs were mobs to fear and avoid at all costs.
Stray thought: Why is it motorcyclists RIDE their bikes but never DRIVE them?
@ Grawlix – German balloonists are very insistent that they drive their balloons (“fahren“), rather than “flying” (“fliegen“) or “riding” (“reiten“) in them.
@Kilby: I’d quibble with that. Reiten is strictly for being on an animal. Fahren encompasses all other senses that ride has in English. It’s what passengers in cars, buses, and trains do. For that matter, it’s what cyclists do, too. There’s a general sense of conveyance in the word.
Germany also has a history with dirigibles that the rest of the world, for the most part, doesn’t. The American experience is, well, der Hindenburg’s 2 minutes of infamy, and, for those old enough, overhead views of sports venues courtesy of Goodyear. We never really had airships.
Hot-air balloonists have more control over their vehicles than most people assume. Yes, they are going to go in the direction the prevailing winds take them, but those winds can be different at different altitudes, and the balloonist has some ability to control altitude. Still, I’m fairly sure a search of Youtube for “balloon hits electric wires” will present evidence of some out-of-control flight.
Locally, we have an annual hot-air balloon event where a “hare” balloon takes off and travels for a bit, then lands. A group of “hound” balloons follow and the one that puts a marker closest to the hare is the winner. The general track is largely controlled by the conditions of the day.
FWIW, the US Navy did use a large amount of blimps during WWII, built by Goodyear.
@ DemetriosX – I included “reiten” only because of the English word “ride”, not because it would come into consideration for a German balloon. The word that raises red flags is “fliegen“: using it in the presence of a German balloonist tends to provoke a three-paragraph explanation about why “fahren” is the “correct” word.
P.S. @ Grawlix – There was recently a very expensive blimp tethered on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, but it ripped loose and crashed in Pennsylvania in 2015.
P.P.S. @ Bill – If only for the sake of properly highlighting the HTML links, please try out a different template!
The blimp hangar at Tillamook, Oregon still exists, and now houses an air museum. I’ve never been in, though I’ve seen it from the highway many times. But no actual blimps in it for 70 years, I think. Goodyear’s airship, at sporting events. And since Oregon has neither a MLB nor an NFL team, sightings were very rare since we’d only see it en route from someplace else to another someplace else. Since the NFL has figured out how to hang a camera over the field without a blimp, we don’t even hear about Goodyear’s any more, though I imagine if they’re still flying it, it ought to be easily visible in the places where it IS actually flying.
“P.S. @ Grawlix – There was recently a very expensive blimp tethered on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, but it ripped loose and crashed in Pennsylvania in 2015.”
So it traveled through space and time?
“So it traveled through space and time?”
Ripples from the Philadelphia Experiment.
Regarding American zeppelins, I can’t believe nobody remembers the Shenandoah, Akron and Macon.
Husband missed the exit to get off the parkway and we got off at the next one. The first exit would have taken us onto a main road. The second one ends up running more or less parallel to the first one, fairly close to it, with a small airport between them. As we got off the parkway we saw in front of us the Met Life blimp with Snoopy pictured on it, right in front of us – parked at the south (and quiet) end of the airport. Quite a sight to see a balloon that close up.