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May 26

Hyphenated gerunds

Which phrase is correct: "came a-runnin'" or "came a runnin'" or "came arunnin'"? And, where can I find more information about phrases like those? Thanks. --MZMcBride 00:13, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Came a-runnin'", though I can't tell you exactly why; I've seen constructs like this enough to know that this is correct. (The apostrophe I can explain, as it indicates the dropped ending "g".) My sense is that the hyphen keeps this non-standard formation "at arms length", as it were. +ILike2BeAnonymous 05:01, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1), "Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary", gives aringing as an example of the use of prefix a-, so there is no hard rule that a hyphen be inserted. But putting in a hyphen is definitely more common. --Lambiam ^Talk 05:19, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for your responses. Cheers. --MZMcBride 05:22, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The hyphen is more-or-less optional. I wouldn't use a space, though. The apostrophe is to show that [n] is used instead of [ŋ] in an unstressed place; all these features are from Scottish English. --Kjoonlee 19:49, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's not really a gerund, is it? Isn't it a supine? Adam Bishop 13:03, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is a- + a present participle. The historical origin of a-, a reduced form of the preposition on, shows that (also historically) the grammatical function of the present participle is a (verbal) noun. In English, the present participle used as a verbal noun is called a gerund, as in "Bob loves swimming". The infinitive can also be used as a verbal noun in English, as in "Bob loves to swim", and then is called a supine. This is a somewhat arbitrary reuse of ill-fitting terms from Latin grammar, but gerund seems to be the conventional term of choice here. --Lambiam ^Talk 14:19, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I do not like that analysis, Lambiam.

The old Germanic participle apparently had -nd, and the gerund had -ng (modern standard German -end vs -ung). In English a phrase containing a gerund, on —ing (later a-—ing), took over the function of the participle, so that today we say the participle has -ing; but this doesn't mean that form was a participle – it wouldn't have been used as an adjective. It is a- + gerund. To those of us whose dialect has forgotten that form and turned -ing into a true participle, it looks like a- + participle, but I say it's wrong to analyze it that way, like it would be wrong to say the word consul comes from the Latin for "minor diplomat". —Tamfang 08:27, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, please replace throughout "a/the present participle" by "what we now call a/the present participle", if that makes you more happy. --Lambiam ^Talk 21:19, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Aid'e Memoir or Aid d' Memoir?

Can someone, please explain or tell me what's the correct U.S.-ENGLISH spelling for and pronounciation for the word or phrase: Aid'e Memoir or Aid d' Memoir? ....Please, remember I need to know the United States (American English), form.

It's French, so it doesn't matter what sort of English you're using. The spelling is "aide-mémoire" (you might write "aide-memoire" if accents aren't available). See here. --Anonymous, May 26, 2007, 01:23 (UTC).

Since it's in most English dictionaries, most people would consider "aide-mémoire" an English word now, with a French etymology. - Nunh-huh 01:33, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New Oxford American Dictionary has "aide-memoire |ˈād memˈwär| noun ( pl. aides-memoires or aides-memoire pronunc. same)," if that helps. Cheers. --MZMcBride 02:03, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Since it's now accepted as a word in the English language, we drop the accent over the e (same for cafe, latte etc). JackofOz 03:29, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In Canada, perhaps because we are supposed to be bilingual, the words User:JackofOz uses as examples, we spell the way he suggests, with no accents; however, we usually pronounce them as if the accents were still there. In England and in Australia, I heard "caff" for "cafe"; even in English-speaking Canada, it is still always pronounced "caffay". Bielle 06:38, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh indeed, the pronunciation doesn't usually change. "Caff" is encountered here, but only as an informal colloquial shortening - nobody would believe it's spelled that way. On pronunciation changes, some uninformed people say "coo de grah" for coup de grace, assuming (I assume) it somehow rhymes with pate de foie gras, but they'd still spell it "grace". JackofOz 07:39, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Funnily enough :), in the English mispronunciation of aide-memoire, I usually hear /ˈeɪdmɛmˈwɑr/ instead of the original /ɛdmeɪmwaʁ/, so the first two vowels got swapped. The accent aigu is useful as an aide-mémoire of the right pronunciation. --Lambiam ^Talk 11:25, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The plural is (AFAIK) "aides-memoire" (with or without the accent). Someone correct me if I'm wrong. D aniel (‽) 11:55, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe you drop the accent over the e, but it is by no means a requirement. English words can and do have accents if the writer so chooses. --Ptcamn 12:56, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, I would usually spell it without an accent myself in English -- but the dictionary I cited above gave it only with an accent, so I went along. As we've seen, there is some disagreement on that. By the way, the literal translation of aide-mémoire would be "help-memory", where "help" is a verb, but what it means is "memory helper". French has a number of expressions constructed that way. An aircraft carrier, for example, is a porte-avions, literally "carry-airplanes". --Anonymous, May 26, 2007, 22:40 (UTC).

Other Romance languages also have such forms, e.g. chupacabras (sucks goats) = goat-sucker. —Tamfang 04:32, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think the verb form used is always the present third person singular, but can't think of an example in which it can be distinguished from the imperative. Are there any that use French -ir verbs? —Tamfang 08:29, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For future reference, if you ever see a French phrase with d'[consonant] you can be sure it's wrong (unless the consonant is h, which swings both ways). The apostrophe in French (and Italian) appears where the vowel of the particle is elided before a following vowel. Which also means, by the way, that the spelling d'Angelo reflects a pronunciation identical to Dangelo, not di Angelo. Grr. —Tamfang 04:35, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is maître d' in "Matthew informs the Maître d' that he can't be fired" followed by a consonant? :) --Lambiam ^Talk 14:31, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Irrelevant, since maître d' that is not a French phrase. :P

(The full French phrase is maître d'hôtel, as perhaps you knew.) —Tamfang 21:30, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Surname sorting of names beginning with "de"

Is there a preferred manner of sorting surnames where the names begin with "de" "del" such as Francisco de Aguirre, Pedro de Valdivia, and Rodrigo de Quiroga? Would the "de" be included as part of the sir name (ie. de Aguirre, Francisco) or as part of the given name (ie. Aguirre, Francisco de)? Bartlett's English Usage isn't clear on this. --JAXHERE | ^Talk 15:16, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I assume this is a question about indexing, not about English usage. There are different systems of indexing, but in English language books and directories d', de, and del are usually treated as part of the surname. If you look in a UK phone book you will find the de entries are all together, so that de Sousa, for example, precedes Deacon. This is a fairly standard way to do it.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 17:41, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Correct, I'm concerned about indexing, such as you would find in Category:Royal Governors of Chile. I'd be inclined to follow the phone book example, but I wanted to see if there was some specific treatment preferred in Wikipedia. --JAXHERE | ^Talk 17:55, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One weirdness of that approach is that you could end up with a phone book where almost everyone is under "D". I once read a Far Side book that had an index at the back where the heading letters "A-S" and "U-Z" were all present, but empty. Every cartoon was under "T" because they all had titles like "The one about the prehistoric poodles", "The one with Jane Goodall", etc. :) --TotoBaggins 18:24, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sort of like looking at an index of Irish language authors: virtually no names in "A-L", then a bunch of "Mac"s, a few "Ní"s (there aren't many women authors who write in Irish for some reason), then a whole slew of "Ó"s, then virtually nothing for the rest of the alphabet. —An gr 21:18, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One issue is that in Spanish, French and in Italian, the "de" component is not usually part of the surname per se. Thus, Spaniards would file Francisco de Aguirre under A for Aguirre. And we acknowledge this in our article when we refer to him as "Aguirre", not "de Aguirre". On the other hand, an English descendant of this person, say James De Aguirre, would be considered to fall under D for De Aguirre. (There are some exceptions, such as Charles De Gaulle, whose surname is not simply Gaulle but De Gaulle; likewise for Andrea De Cesaris- btw our article spells his name "de Cesaris" but I believe he spells it himself with a capital D.) Similarly for the German nobiliary particle "von". Frederica Von Stade, being an American, has the surname "Von Stade", which comes under V, but her German forebears were "XX von Stade", and they considered their surname to be Stade, not von Stade, so they would come under S. A system that I've employed privately to useful effect is to catalogue a person under the surname they were considered to have in their native country. Thus, I file Ludwig van Beethoven under B, Vincent van Gogh under G, Charles De Gaulle under D, and both Ernő Dohnányi and his grandson Christoph von Dohnanyi under D. Whether this would work for everyone is another question, but it works for me. It does require a certain level of knowledge about the persons involved, though. JackofOz 07:25, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

With respect to Wikipedia, there are some hints on this in Wikipedia:Categorization of people#Ordering names in a category. The transcluded uses of template:DEFAULTSORT illustrate how this is actually interpreted. A few examples:

Macgrath, Finian (for Finian McGrath)
Qawuqji, Fawzi (for Fawzi al-Qawuqji)
Rothschild, Edmond James de
De Ruyter, Michiel
Di Cesnola, Luigi Palma
Beethoven, Ludwig van
Van Gogh, Theo
Von Stade, Frederica
Dohnanyi, Christoph von

--Lambiam ^Talk 09:03, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Conclusion

So the current guidelines would have Francisco de Aguirre sorted as De Aguirre, Francisco , Pedro de Valdivia as De Valdivia, Pedro, and similar names in the same fashion unless they are widely known in English by their single syllable surname--JAXHERE | ^Talk 16:20, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Valdivia is three or four syllables, but WKWYM. —Tamfang 00:45, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, I meant single word surname --JAXHERE | ^Talk 14:15, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unconclusion

I though this was pretty well concluded but I'd like other users who are familiar with this theme to take a look at ~~User talk:Rbraunwa#Sorting of surnames which begin with "de"~~ the next subsction (below) which is a discussion that prompted me to place this inquiry in the first place. (Perhaps it should have been moved over here, but it wasn't). Your comments please ... --JAXHERE | ^Talk 14:36, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Parallel discussion transferred from Rbraunwa user page

Jaxhere and I have also being having this discussion. There are some relevant arguments and examples I would like to add here. I was just going to transfer my arguments, but since this was a discussion, with postings responding to each other, I think it's better to transfer the whole works. Sorry if it's long, but I think there are some good points here, not all of them previously discussed on this page.

I don't agree with the reversion you made to Alonso de Ribera, and I had the intention of correcting the sorting of all articles I could find which don't include the "de" as part of the surname. The fact that it is commonly used, as in the category you cite, doesn't make it correct. I've put in an inquiry to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language to see if there is any existing convention or preference. To further support my position, I just checked in the Chilean Telephone Directory and see that all surnames with da, dal, de, de la, del are sorted with the preposition as part of the surname. It might be different in Mexico but, in the end we need to be guided by English rules, not Spanish ones since this is an English publication. I have, at hand, an old edition of a Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia in which articles such as De Soto, Hernando and De Vries, Hugo are in the "D's", but in some cases such as De Kalb, Barron there is a cross-reference to an article in another location (Kalb, Johann). There is no cosistency, but the tendency is to include the "de" as the beginning of the surname unless the person is well known without it. In Chile, Pedro de Valdivia -- I think -- is more likely to be associated with de Valdivia, rather than Valdivia. --JAXHERE | ^Talk 15:53, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Jaxhere. Thanks for your message. There is a policy on this somewhere, but I'll have to hunt for it. It says basically that for individuals who are already known in English by a particular variant of their name (de Soto is a good example), the English Wikipedia article should follow that usage. For individuals who are not well-known among English speakers, the article should follow the subject's own usage. This latter proviso would cover most of the historial cases of "de" in Spanish names, I think. There was a debate about this at the Vasco da Gama article awhile back, and there they applied the second part of the rule rather than the first. That one surprised me, but I didn't follow all the details of the debate. I am also surprised about the Chilean phone book information. I haven't looked at Mexican phone books, but I have never (literally) seen a Spanish name containing "de" alphabetized under that particle in encyclopedias or historical works. Also, my unscientific impression about the current state at Wikipedia is that it overwhelmingly follows the rules I paraphrased above. --Rbraunwa 16:17, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. This is not the policy I was looking for, but it's also relevant: "Where known, use terminology that subjects use for themselves (self-identification). This can mean using the term an individual uses for himself or herself, or using the term a group most widely uses for itself. This includes referring to transgender individuals according to the names and pronouns they use to identify themselves." (Wikipedia:MOS#Identity). I'm still looking for the other policy.

Rbraunwa, I've looked over the links you've provided and several others which seem to relate to the topic but most of these are dealing with the naming of articles, not the sorting of them in a category or list. If we were to follow the accepted practice of naming articles about people, the article about Alonso de Ribera would be in the "A's", not the "D's" or "R's". My concern here is the position of the name in a list, such as the Governors of Chile that you referred to. In a relatively short list, such as the one you mentioned, the order doesn't make a lot of difference, but we have to be aware of the fact that some of these names might be included in very long lists where the sequence becomes important. In the absence of a clear policy, I'd be inclined to follow the example used by the phone books in the US. --JAXHERE | ^Talk 17:46, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Jaxhere,

There is a problem with using the names and alphabetization of immigrants as a model for the names and alphabetization of historical figures. (The two things are closely related, since a person is alphabetized under his/her last name. The name has to be determined before the alphabetization can be done. Our disagreement is really about the names.) If we applied the U.S. phonebook rule to Polish names, the following names of historical figures are incorrect in Wikipedia because Polish immigrants to the U.S. have overwhelmingly dropped the diacritics: Bolesław Bierut, Ignacy Daszyński, Jarosław Kaczyński, Jędrzej Moraczewski. The same thing applies to Spanish names in Wikipedia (accents and eñes are retained for historical figures), even though some descendants of immigrants to the U.S. have dropped them (Lee Trevino for instance).

Another problem with the phonebook example is this. The link is to a U.S. national listing of telephone numbers. Searching for names beginning with "de " returns "more than 300" entries. That still leaves open the possibility that the overwhelming majority of names of this type are alphabetized under the other system. It would be impossible to check that.

A better model is other English-language encyclopedias. I have tried to assemble some links here that show how Britannica alphabetizes names, and also how various on-line encyclopedias do it. Most of these links are to index pages, because for most of these encyclopedias the article itself gives no clue to the alphabetization (as is also the case in Wikipedia).

Britannica print, Britannica CD and Britannica Online:

Siloé, Gil de, Cervantes, Miguel de, Carranza, Bartolomé de, Godoy, Manuel de, Unamuno, Miguel de, Mendoza, Antonio de, Cueva, Juan de la. Not even Soto, Hernando de is an exception.

1911 Britannica:

Juan de Mena, Pedro de Mena, Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza (alphabetized under "M"), Miguel de Cervantes de Saavedra. Hernando de Soto is not an exception. Notice the absence of "de" entries here and here.

The Canadian Encyclopedia Online:

Bodega y Quadra, Juan Francisco de la, Fuca, Juan de.

Catholic Encyclopedia:

Alcedo, Antonio de, Añazco, Pedro de, Abieto, Ignacio de, Azara, Féliz de, Balbuena, Bernardo de. De Soto, Hernando is an exception, but notice the total absence of other Spanish surnames beginning with "de". (There are three or four French ones, however.)

Jewish Encyclopedia:

I was going to check this one too, but the site has been down the last two days. It will have to wait.

Nuttall Encyclopædia of General Knowledge:

Alarcon y Mendoza, Juan Ruiz de, Alava, Ricardo de, Almagro, Diego d', Alvarado, Pedro de. Except for De Soto, there are no Spanish names under "de" (index).

Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography:

Benalcazar, Sebastian De, Acosta, Jose De, Tejada, Miguel Lerdo De (alphabetized under "T"), Balboa, Vasco Nunez De, Mendoza, Andres Hurtado De (alphabetized under "M"), Ocampo, Gonzalo De. Again, notice the absence of "de" entries here and here. Soto, Fernando De is not an exception.

Biographical Dictionary of the Organ

Aceves y Lozano, Rafael de, Alvorado, Dioge (Diogo) de, Aranda, Luis de, Araujo, Pedro de. No names of Spanish origin are alphabetized under "de" (here, here or here).

The same rules seem generally to apply to Portuguese, French and Italian names, although that is outside my area of expertise.

Add to this the current usage in English Wikipedia, where a large majority of these articles are alphabetized under the substantive name, not under the particle. In short, alphabetizing names under the particle "de" (at least from Spanish) is simply not standard English usage. The situation is not that different from "John Doe, Count of X" (or "conde de X"), which would clearly be alphabetized under "X" (or perhaps "Doe"), never under "of" or "de".

--Rbraunwa 13:57, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Rbraunwa, from the inquiry which I mentioned above at the reference desk, finally came the Wikipedia guideline which resolves this discussion:

People with multiple-word last names: sorting is done on the entire last name as usually used in English, in normal order and not (for example) according to the Dutch system that puts some words like "van", "vanden", "van der", etc... after the rest of the last name. Example: [[Category:A.C. Milan players|Van Basten, Marco]] (don't forget to capitalize the first letter of the last name in this case)
Exceptions:
Note that some people are typically called this way in English, for example: Beethoven, [[Category:Classical era composers|Beethoven, Ludwig van]]; similarly: Montesquieu, [[Category:Enlightenment philosophers|Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, Baron de]]

This is from: Wikipedia:Categorization of people#Ordering names in a category and I think the lengthy discussion you mentioned but counldn't remember where you'd seen it is on the talk page for this subject. So, will you go along with the sorting order of Alonso de Ribera as De Ribera, Alonso, or would you like to try to get a new consensus on the existing guideline?

No, Jaxhere, I'm afraid I still don't agree. The guideline applies to "the entire last name as usually used in English". That's the rule that gives "De Soto" instead of "Soto", and I have no problem with that. But there is no form of "Alonso de Ribera" "as usually used in English". Hardly any English speakers would know who he was. It's simply not the case that "de Rivera" is his last name as usually used in English. And standard English usage is overwhelmingly in favor of "Rivera", as the examples above show. It's not possible to argue either that "de Rivera" is usual in English for this individual, nor that it is the usual rule that applies to all individuals with this type of name.

Ribera does not have a large presence on the Internet, but here are a few links to English publications that alphabetize his name under "Ribera": from Juana the Mad, from Discourses of Empire, from Hispanic American Essays, from The History of Chile and from Blood and Silver: Piracy in the Americas. I could find no publication that alphabetized this name under "de".

There is another analogy as well. At one time, there were English names that correspond almost exactly to this form, for example, Anselm of Canterbury, Adelard of Bath, William of Ware. These individuals are alphabetized in one of two ways — under the personal name (like the first two examples), or under the place name (like the third example), but never under "of [place name]". Persumably that was the case at the time, and it is certainly the case now, in Wikipedia and other reference works. Many non-English speakers whose names were translated into English (William of Ockham, for example), are handled the same way. He is never alphabetized under "of Ockham". [My mistake: William of Ockham was English. He wrote in Latin, but I don't know the Latin variant of his name. A non-English example would be Rainald of Dassel.]

The situation may be different in Dutch, I can't say. But from Spanish and probably from other Romance languages, English usage is very clear.

--Rbraunwa 18:31, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You make some strong points, Rbraunwa, but due to the guideline and the points raised in Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language#Surname sorting of names beginning with "de" I'm not convinced. I've asked participants of that discussion to review your points here but I'd suggest that if you have any further thoughts you move them over to that discussion. I don't think we're doing much good holding our own private discussion to determine a broad concern. JAXHERE | ^Talk 14:45, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Jaxhere, I'll move my arguments over there. I would have posted there before, but I didn't know about the ongoing discussion. --Rbraunwa 14:50, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It may be true that hardly any English speakers would know who Alonso de Ribera was, but that is not quite the point. Would knowledgeable native English speakers, writing about this person in English, refer to him as "governor Ribera" or "governor de Ribera"? In the first case, apparently his "entire last name" is taken to be "Ribera", in the second case "de Ribera". I don't think you would be able to find an instance of "governor de Ribera", or if you did it would very likely also be quite apparent from the rest of the writing that the author is not knowledgeable about the subject. Conversely, you expect to see "governor De Graaff", not "governor Graaff". Of course, things are not always so clearcut as with these extremes; although "governor Neve" may be the most common usage, there are plenty of references to "governor de Neve", including our own article on Pueblo de Los Angeles and Zanja Madre. --Lambiam ^Talk 22:02, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bokmal and Nynorsk (2)

Are Bokmal and Nynorsk mutually intelligible? Heegoop, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

According to our article Norwegian language:

Spoken Norwegian forms a continuum of local and regional variants that are all mutually intelligible.

The emphasis here on Spoken is because Bokmål and Nynorsk are two official forms of written Norwegian — roughly corresponding to extremes in the continuum. The mutual intelligibility of these extremes is not 100%, but is hard to test because all Norwegians get exposed to both. Without the continuum and the political situation, the two would naturally be considered different languages. --Lambiam ^Talk 23:36, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How long has it been done?

How old are the current sexual connotations of the verb do? Neon Merlin 23:34, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly as old as the verb itself, which may harken back to Proto-Indo European. And don't forget the unmistakable connotations of the pronoun it! --Lambiam ^Talk 23:40, 26 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

But you don't only "do it", you also "do someone", which I doubt is very old. —An gr 05:43, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And then there are perverts who do the laundry... So perhaps the intended question is: how old is this specific current idiom? It is used several times in the lyrics of the hip hop song "I Used to Love H.E.R.", released in 1994. It may have originated as hip hop slang. --Lambiam ^Talk 06:36, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This neither goes back to Proto-Indo-European (cognates in other languages don't have this meaning), nor did it originate in hip hop slang. It seems to be at least a century old.

not that I care two straws now who he does it with
— James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)'

--Ptcamn 08:45, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are two different idioms here of undoubtedly different ages. One, illustrated by the Ulysees quote above, is "to do it", which is probably quite old, though I'd be reluctant to put it to Proto-Germanic or Proto-Indo-European without evidence. (The German equivalent is es treiben, with the verb cognate to "drive", although es tun would probably be easily understood.) The second idiom is "to do someone" (as if Joyce had written, "not that I care two straws now whom he does"), which is probably younger and may have originated in hip hop slang. There's a definite difference in register between the two, at least for me: "Did you do it with her?" is far less vulgar than "Did you do her?". Perhaps if NeonMerlin is still reading this, he could tell us which of the two idioms he meant (although I suspect either way he isn't going to get a much more definite answer than "I dunno"). —An gr 10:15, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I furthermore think that in the older idiom to do it, it is really the word it, used as a euphemism for carnal knowledge, that carries the weight of sexual connotation, while to do is, well, to do whatever it is that is being done. Or does the verb to get also have a sexual connotation? In French you can say le faire avec, and faire, like to do, comes from PIE base *dhe-.[1] --Lambiam ^Talk 10:40, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't the difference between the two ("to do it" and "to do [someone]") the difference between transitive and intransitive, technically speaking? Which if so, brings up the question of which is more intransigent, the transitive or the intransitive ... +ILike2BeAnonymous 20:28, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Both uses are transitive. --Lambiam ^Talk 21:24, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What IL2BA is groping for is the difference between direct object and indirect object: to do someone vs to do to someone. —Tamfang 21:35, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, yes, just so. And "groping": nice touch. +ILike2BeAnonymous 21:54, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I dimly remember that in Lord of the Flies one boy threatens another that if he doesn't watch himself someone is likely to "do you," which I took to mean violence. —Tamfang 21:35, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Note that that book equated sex and violence. (But you didn't really have to worry until they started sharpening a stick at both ends.) StuRat 07:45, 29 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The OED gives the following earliest attestations for certain particular meanings of 'do':

To hoax, cheat swindle, overreach - from 1641
(slang)To beat up, defeat - from 1780
to arrest, seize, catch hold of - from 1784
(euphem) To copulate (with), Phr to do it used colloq. in the same sense - from 1913

--ColinFine 23:33, 27 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Add to that list, do her (as opposed to do it or do absolutely), first OED citation is 1959. While actual cognate usages from PIE may not exist, many current European vernaculars have similar expressions. Is French Je voudrais me la faire (or Italian farmela) younger than 1959 & derivative? One wants to know. Wareh 18:41, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]