Language desk
< May 21	<< Apr \| May \| Jun >>	May 23 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

May 22

Term for covering of track on vertical blinds?

In the apartment where I live, there is a balcony, and there are vertical blinds on the inside of the door that leads out. The blinds are on a track, and there is a fixture that covers that track so that it blends into the ceiling in about the location where you would expect a molding of some kind. Is there a term for that fixture? I've tried scanning the Glossary of architecture but haven't found anything that fits. Confusing Manifestation(Say hi!) 02:12, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The guy who installed our vertical blinds called them valances. Ours are simpler than the ones described in the article, resembling nothing more than one slat of the blinds turned horizontally and mounted with one edge to the ceiling. According to the article, pelmet is the British term. --174.88.135.200 (talk) 03:53, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note that while they serve the same purpose, they aren't the same. Valances are fabric coverings, while pelmets are the fixture described in the Q. StuRat (talk) 13:15, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So you say, but I expect the guy who installed them to know what they're called. He has to obtain them. --174.88.135.200 (talk) 20:26, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

See also Window valance, which seems to refer only to fabric accessories, called "pelmets" in the UK. Alansplodge (talk) 21:41, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Coving perhaps? Alansplodge (talk) 16:16, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

multiple forenames in Spanish

Quick one: if a Mexican is named José Juan N (and normally addressed as José Juan rather than as José or Juan), are his forenames written with a hyphen (as they would be in French)? —Tamfang (talk) 06:20, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've not seen it done. Our article on Spanish naming customs makes no mention of hyphenated first names either.--William Thweatt ^Talk^Contribs 07:05, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

From José Juan Barea and José Juan Figueras, it appears the answer is no. My other car is a cadr (talk) 09:19, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hyphens in general are used much less in Spanish than in English (or French, for that matter). I googled the subject, and here's one discussion.[1] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:23, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Apostrophes too, and yet [2] —Tamfang (talk) 19:28, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding French given names, when someone has a bunch of them, I'm not sure they are invariably hyphenated. In older sources I think they are but more recently they seem to have stopped doing that at least consistently. You have to distinguish this from the use of double given names (prénom composé ou prénom double; mostly having 'Jean' as first element: Jean-Pierre, Jean-Claude, Jean-Marie, etc.). Incidentally hyphenating someone's given names can lead to ambiguity because of the possible presence of double given names. For example, if someone's given names are said to be Jean-Claude-Marie, does that mean Jean, Claude and Marie or Jean-Claude and Marie? An aside: you sometimes find that some exclusively feminine names (most commonly 'Marie' but I've also seen 'Marguerite') are used for men in such cases, though never as the first given name. This is to be distinguished from the fact that there are in French names that are both masculine and feminine (prénom épicène ou prénom mixte): nowadays the only ones I can recall are Dominique, Claude, Camille but there were others in the past such as Anne (nowadays exclusively feminine) and Philippe and Antoine (nowadays exclusively masculine). Contact Basemetal here 21:53, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If someone is known by two prénoms, in French or English, in my experience they're hyphenated; if not, not (Frédéric Othon Théodore Aristidès). —Tamfang (talk) 07:14, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

For French I agree this is the more recent convention used in reference works. But I do seem to recall that in older works all the prénoms (and in French there's no distinction between first name and middle name, they're all just "prénoms" or (for Christians) "noms de baptême") are hyphenated together in a long hyphenated string that can mess up your formatting if there's a whole bunch of them and if you like, like I do, left-and-right-justified-formatting. In particular this is what I seem to recall the old edition of the "Dictionnaire des auteurs" (Laffont-Bompiani) did, but unfortunately I can't check right now. I might be recalling incorrectly. Apologies if I am. Contact Basemetal here 12:26, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of trivia questions for expert onomasticians (?) regarding French prénoms this discussion reminded me of: Has anyone ever come across a "prénom triple" in French? Am I right in thinking that 'Jean' is the traditional first element in most French "prénoms doubles" because they were at first built on the analogy of 'Jean-Baptiste' which is not really a prénom double, at least originally? (Cf. analogous Italian names, which are written w/o spaces: 'Giambattista' or 'Michelangelo'). Has anyone ever come across a 'Jean-Évangéliste' in French? (I think 'Juan Evangelista' exists in Spanish but I haven't encountered the equivalent in Italian). And finally, can anyone explain the anomaly of the French using some feminine prénoms such as 'Marie' for men? (Though never as the first prénom). Thanks. Contact Basemetal here 12:40, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In Portuguese also, boys may have a middle girls' name, which is always Mary (Nossa senhora a Virgem Maria) - thus Jose Maria Fulano. The Christian names are never hyphenated. People also have "Jesus" in their names - I knew a woman (long dead, so I can reveal it) called Erminda de Jesus Silva. As far as I know, only Spanish speakers have it as a first name - Jesus Sosa Blanco. Portuguese also have "of the saints" as a name - Armando dos Santos. This extends to things inanimate – Banco Espirito Santo is Holy Spirit Bank. The exclamation Ai Jesus! is heard - it's not the same as "Oh God", but rather an exclamation of surprise. Another difference in naming - married women add their husband's name to their own, rather than placing it before. Thus if Maria Barrantes marries Pedro Soares she may call herself Maria Barrantes Soares.

Some Portuguese names are very strange - Senhor Coelho Furtado is "Mister Stolen Rabbit". Again this extends to things inanimate – Rua do Poco dos Negros (c with the cedilha) is literally "Street of the Well of the Black Men." Mind you, there is a Black Boy Lane not a million miles away from where I am now. It's not as obscure as it sounds - it's actually a bus route. I wonder if these peccadilloes are found in any other language. 156.61.250.250 (talk) 12:51, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Why is ITMO's URL ifmo.ru[3]?

Why is ITMO's URL ifmo.ru[4]? Its English abbreviation is "ITMO" according to its own website, and its Russian abbreviation is ИТМО (И being the Cyrillic I). So where does the F in IFMO come from? My other car is a cadr (talk) 09:16, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

ИТМО stands for Институт точной механики и оптики ("Fine mechanics and optics institute"), the school's name until 1992. The F is from the (way too literal in my opinion, in terms of word order) translation of that name and its abbreviation into English (Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics) Asmrulz (talk) 09:38, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for a word...

What do you call it when you can't tell the difference between a real news article and satire like The Onion? There's got to be a word for this phenomenon, right? This all started when I read this article. Read that and tell me if you can't tell the difference between news and news satire. So, what's the word? Viriditas (talk) 09:35, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Convincing? Widneymanor (talk) 10:07, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Related: Poe's law. In German there is the noun Realsatire, when reality becomes satirical on its own. ---Sluzzelin talk 12:25, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Like when Tom Lehrer said reality had become indistinguishable from satire after Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 12:59, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I second that, when Yasser Arafat won one, too. StuRat (talk) 13:12, 22 May 2015 (UTC) [reply]

More like involuntary surreal humor (Norwegian style) than satire. For satire the humorist needs to have his tongue firmly in his cheek whereas the Norwegian Nobel Committee seem to take themselves very seriously. Contact Basemetal here 13:28, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Close, Bugs. The formal quote is Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. What was that quip about replacing talking turkey/chewing the fat/smoking the peace pipe with Indians, for eating humble pie with the Viet Cong at Paris? I read it just this past week, but I'm damned if I can find it again now. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:27, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No source ??? Shall I require you to spend the next several weeks researching this to find the source ? :-) StuRat (talk) 23:46, 22 May 2015 (UTC) [reply]

No. Now, cop this, young Harry. :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:28, 23 May 2015 (UTC) [reply]

Life imitating art. --Jayron 32 14:14, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Neurologically, it may have to do with the paracingulate sulcus [5] [6]. "Reality monitoring" seems to be a term of art in the neuro/psych domain, see Source-monitoring_error#Reality_monitoring. TV Tropes has Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:47, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

By truthiness do you mean veriditas? — Preceding unsigned comment added by medeis (talk • contribs)

This did remind me of verisimilitude, which is also relevant to the OP question. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:42, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That pun would only work if the OP's name were User:virisimilitude. μηδείς (talk) 03:38, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

gullibility. - Nunh-huh 21:58, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hunh. I always thought WP:WHAAOE, but we don't seem to have one on gullibility. -- ToE 02:43, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I would have thought that's because, as I am reliably informed, the word "gullible" is not in the dictionary. But WP is not a dictionary, so who knows. --Trovatore (talk) 04:41, 23 May 2015 (UTC) [reply]

It may not be in "the" dictionary, but it's certainly in Wiktionary, which is "a" dictionary. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:28, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hoax? 88.104.30.112 (talk) 09:31, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What's someone called who thinks that "gullible" is not in the dictionary? Widneymanor (talk) 10:44, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I always thought that 'Gullible' referred to a story about a man who was shipwrecked and spent some time on an island with really, really tiny people. "Gullible's Travels", wasn't it?

KägeTorä - (影 虎) (もしもし！)

14:31, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

He was mercilessly tied up by them too. --Modocc (talk) 14:51, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly, having fallen for their dirty tricks.

KägeTorä - (影 虎) (もしもし！)

16:21, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Seriously now, here's the page. As you see, "gullible" really isn't in the dictionary. (I was shown this page years ago by a friend whose hobby was collecting old dictionaries. Note that it does include the base verb "gull", meaning "to deceive, cheat, cozen, chouse, defraud, etc." If you don't recognize "chouse", you will find that listed on this page with the spelling "chowse".) --174.88.135.200 (talk) 18:17, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Should it not be called 'A' Universal Dictionary, and not 'An Universal Dictionary'? If they can't even get that simple thing right, then I would not trust them to organize a piss-up in a brewery. 82.35.216.24 (talk) 16:15, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe they used to pronounce it "ooniversal" back then. That would have been more in keeping with the classic pron, and if they were true pedants, that's exactly what would have attracted them. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 05:16, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]