English Idiom in Unix: Directory Recursively

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 5:36 AM, Rikishi42 <skunkworks at rikishi42.net> wrote:
> Is it [the term 'incinerate'] that widespread? I figured most people
> woul speak of burning. OK, my bad if it is.

I think it's geographic. This list covers a lot of geography; I'm in
Australia, there are quite a few Brits, and probably the bulk of posts
come from either the US or Europe. (And yes, I did deliberately fold
all of Europe down to one entity, and I did also deliberately leave
Great Britain out of that entity.)

> True, but I meant that they just use it as a name. I don't think many people
> would actually try to find out what a microwave is.

Most things work out that way. A thing gets a name based either on its
implementation or on the brand name of the first/most popular one. If
the only microwave oven ever produced had been made by Foobar Corp,
and that company were not known for anything else, then quite possibly
everyone would call them "foobar ovens".

>> Pedantic... that's another one of those academic words that need to be
>> explained to lay people, isn't it? As is academic itself, and in fact
>> "lay people". Who uses "lay people" in conversation?
>
> That (lay people) was atually a quote, from someone who actually used it in
> this thread.

"Lay person"/"lay people" is a fairly common expression, although
"laity" (which ought to mean the same thing) seems only to have
meaning in a church context (as in, the non-clergy).

Geeks tend to have larger vocabularies than non-geeks, on average;
probably akin to our love of word games and precision (two distinct
notions that bridge surprisingly often).

Chris Angelico