[python-committers] English 'precise' is only an adjective, not a verb.
Antoine Pitrou
solipsis at pitrou.net
Tue Apr 26 00:06:34 CEST 2011
Le lundi 25 avril 2011 à 15:44 -0400, Terry Reedy a écrit :
> > Alexander's changesets are part of that, since he didn't precise where
>
> For the benefit of people who are not native-English speakers and who
> wish to write literate English: The English word 'precise' is only an
> adjective, and not a verb, so the above does not work as an English
> sentence.
>
> This mistake, which I have seen before, has an understandable reason.
> 'Precise' is derived (borrowed) from the French "pre'cis" which is at
> least a verb and noun. "Pre'cis" comes from the Latin 'praecisus' and
> 'praecidere'. Spanish has the same verb in the form 'precisar'. So
> native Romance speakers have a tendency to over-generalize the usage of
> this restricted English cognate. English speakers learning other
> languages so the same sort of thing. The closest English verbs to
> "pre'cis" are 'abstract', 'summarize', and 'specify'.
Thanks. "Specify" would do the trick :)
Regards
Antoine.
More information about the python-committers
mailing list