On Tuesday 03 April 2012 15:09:50 Pierre Frenkiel wrote: > On Tue, 3 Apr 2012, Kelly Clowers wrote: > > They are not wrong per say, but only the first definition you mention > > (anatomy) is in widespread use these days (which is why it said > > "chiefly"). > > Is that specific to American English, or is it also true for > British English, Canadian English, ...?
It is certainly true for English English. It would simply not be used in teh way that you used it. > Paul's statement was much more stronger: > this is the wrong word in English to describe the relation between > Squeeze and Lenny. Maybe OK in some other European language, but not > in English. I agree with Paul. It is simply not acceptable in practice. > > If you say "posterior" people's first thought will be "ass". > > but in the given sentence, posterior is clearly an adjective? Which yet again, is not a correct usage in modern idiom of that word. > > That happens all the time with dictionary-based translations, by > > the way. It can be very hard to tell if a definition is really used > > much in practice. > > Then, for people whose native language is not English, in some cases > the only way to find the right word seems to be try and error. Or accept the word of educated native speakers. > Note that the WordReference English Thesaurus © 2012 gave the most > common meaning for posterior in second place, and that it was nowhere > mentioned that the time related meaning was deprecated. It isn't deprecated because no-one would use it in the first place. > Is there a > dictionnary where this kind of information would be available? > > > In general there is a tendency in modern American English to > > use rather simple words or descriptive phrases made of simple > > words rather than a single very precise but less well known word. > > Again, is that specific to American English? No. Though the English are a bit prone to being pretentious. I was taught at school that where an Anglo-Saxon word applied, it should be used in preference to a Latin one. (In "Latin" I am including French.) Lisi -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201204031538.03889.lisi.re...@gmail.com
