Up Front: What's the Big Idea?
116 Responses
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BenWilson, in reply to
Collective noun of dildi: a parliament.
Owls already took that one. Also - clutch is taken by eggs, and hand is taken by cards.
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If not "hand", then a "fistful" of dildos has a certain ring to it.
But clearly there's no rule against duplicate collectives, otherwise "hand" couldn't be used for both cards and bananas. -
Ian Dalziel, in reply to
group grokking...
already took that one.
I don't believe there is exclusive use by animals or objects:
A clutch can be eggs, chicks or people;
one can have a flock of birds, parishioners and goats;
a pack of wolves, cards and lies;
a bunch keys, crooks and grapes;
a host of sparrows, daffodils and reasons... -
Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Sergioing ahead!
a “fistful” of dildos has a certain ring to it.
I'm liking "For a few dildos more" as well
;- )yrs
the Leone Arranger -
Owls already took that one.
Yeah I know but do politicians deserve to be associated with wise owls?
how about a battery of dildos?
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linger, in reply to
Good suggestion, though “battery” has another meaning that’s very unfortunate in that context.
N.B. as electric power storage unit, it already is a collective
(literally, a battery of cells). -
BenWilson, in reply to
Yes, that's enough groksucking from me. It's really against the spirit of the English language to insist on any rules at all.
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Plenty of collective noun suggestions, but no definitive answer on the plural. You people are no help at all.
Anyway, if we're going for collective nouns, I'd prefer something evocatively old-school. Perhaps a slattern of dildos, or a bawdyhouse.
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Jump down turn around
pick a pecker dildoes? -
maybe I'll just throw in the dowel...
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linger, in reply to
no definitive answer on the plural
There are only two standard English plural spellings possible: dildos or dildoes. However, in practice there is some variation between these spellings, partly because there is considerable variation in which spelling has been decided on as “standard” in parallel cases; partly because many dictionaries have been reluctant to include the word at all; and partly because the word has appeared very rarely in print (and especially rarely in plural form).
In cases where the stem ends with a double vowel letter, no variation is possible: only the -os plural is recognised as standard, e.g. radios, studios.
For some stems ending in consonant letter + o, variation between -os and -oes forms is attested and both variants are officially recognised as standard: e.g. dingo(e)s, mango(e)s, mosquito(e)s, volcano(e)s.
In a few other cases, only the -oes variant is recognised as standard, e.g. potatoes, tomatoes.
In yet other cases, only the -os variant is recognised as standard: e.g. quangos.
But there’s little obvious system behind these choices, as seen by comparing mango(e)s with quangos.
Most dictionary entries seem to place dildo in the last set, with only the plural dildos listed as standard. In fact the form dildoes is also attested, but it is less frequent. For example, the 520-million-word Corpus of Contemporary American English contains 50 tokens of dildos, compared to 4 of dildoes. (I have excluded some uses of DILDOS as a seemingly unrelated acronym.)
In the over-2-billion-word Corpus of Global Web-Based English, the preference is even starker: there are 195 dildos compared to 11 dildoes. -
You have to include the original source ....
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linger, in reply to
That’s fairly early (ca. 1964), but not the “original”: this pun had already been used in some form for decades, as discussed by the linguist Arnold Zwicky here. The earliest similar example he cites is from L. Baum, in The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904):
“Still, you must surrender!” exclaimed the General, fiercely. “We are revolting!”
“You don’t look it,” said the Guardian, gazing from one to another, admiringly. -
Jammy Handwrecks...
As dildonic dilettantes we have achieved a closed loop - dildo derives from diletto (delight) - so before things get out of hand, let the feedback commence!and I note that didoes are mischievous deeds - have we been sold a pump?
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We've become Twitter.
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A friend suggests "phalanx" as the correct collective noun
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A thwack of dildi?
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also suggested elsewhere "an engorgement"
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Side-stepping the dildo problem, big ideas - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-manifesto-poll-voters-back-policies-jeremy-corbyn-latest-a7731536.html?cmpid=facebook-post and then http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-party-highest-poll-rating-start-election-campaign-general-election-2017-jeremy-corbyn-a7734866.html
Why is this so hard for 'third way' advocates to see? -
BenWilson, in reply to
Why is this so hard for ‘third way’ advocates to see?
That's some British thing, right? I guess the main problem is that policy and positioning only seem to have quite a small influence on the way people vote.
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Rich Lock, in reply to
Why is this so hard for 'third way' advocates to see?
My prediction is that low turnout will be the deciding factor in this election. There was a general election in May 2015, the Euro Ref in 2016, and local council elections earlier this month, so the general public are being asked to turn out four times in just over two years - there's ballot fatigue. There's also a fair amount of 'pox on it all' apathy at the moment - the last Labour administration did itself no favours by effectively ignoring the protests and concerns of it's base. Both Momentum and the tories recognise this - Momentum appear to be concentrating on voter registration as a tactic, while the tories are banking on their base turning out anyway, so they're running the most boring campaign possible to help stoke the apathy amongst those who might not vote for them, plus concentrating on playing the man rather than debating the policies.
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Rich Lock, in reply to
My thanks to you, kind internet stranger. At last I can sleep at night.
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
policy and positioning only seem to have quite a small influence on the way people vote.
Yeah. People vote for big ideas, not policy papers. Big ideas well-expressed that arouse emotion. Sadly it's mostly negative emotions that seem to work at the moment - esp fear. What conservative and neoliberal politics seem able to deliver is a worse future. It's usually wrapped up in glossy brochures, but when you unwrap it, it's small and crappy and usually breaks :(
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BenWilson, in reply to
People vote for big ideas, not policy papers.
Not sure about that either. Could you give an example of a big idea that people vote for? My understanding is that voting is mostly kinda tribal and demographically driven. Couple of years ago I set some data mining software ripping on the way people vote based on their opinions. Guess what the number one difference between Labour and NZF voters was? NZF voters were less likely to trust internet banking. I took that to be a proxy for demographics (which I had not fed into the covariates being explored). Opinion wise it was pretty difficult to tell them apart from Labour voters.
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Sacha, in reply to
Could you give an example of a big idea that people vote for?
"Yes We Can"
"Make Amerka Great Again"
"Brighter Future"
"Lotto is our best hope"
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