Bisected in two

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Paul Brians - 05 Jan 2009 18:19 GMT

I just heard an NPR reporter say that Israel had "bisected Gaza in
two," which struck me as absurdly redundant. I went looking for other
examples using Google and found plenty, but some of them don't bother
me as much where the "two" is followed by a noun. For instance from a
ballet review: "Space has been rearranged, at one point, bisected in
two lines, at another, on the diagonal."

But it seems to me this should be "bisected into two lines." Arggh.
That still seems redundant to me. Or am I being too fussy? I'm not
sure I understand what the writer really means. Parallel lines?
Contiguous lines? Rotating lines? Does that matter?
http://www.dancephotooftheday.com/v1/features.cfm/913/addListing.cfm

It seems to me if you're going to indicate a split in two with some
other word or phrase later in your sentence the verb to use is "split"
or "divide" rather than "bisect."

Paul Brians

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Peter Duncanson (BrE) - 05 Jan 2009 19:23 GMT

>I just heard an NPR reporter say that Israel had "bisected Gaza in
>two," which struck me as absurdly redundant. I went looking for other
[quoted text clipped - 12 lines]
>other word or phrase later in your sentence the verb to use is "split"
>or "divide" rather than "bisect."

Referring to the bisection of Gaza one reporter on the TV News channel _Al
Jazeera English_ said that Gaza had been "dissected".

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Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)

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Paul Wolff - 05 Jan 2009 20:18 GMT

>On Mon, 5 Jan 2009 10:19:27 -0800 (PST), Paul Brians <paulbrians@gmail.com>
>wrote:
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>Referring to the bisection of Gaza one reporter on the TV News channel _Al
>Jazeera English_ said that Gaza had been "dissected".

And that's often pronounced as di-sected, hedging the speaker's bets.

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Paul

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Peter Duncanson (BrE) - 05 Jan 2009 20:59 GMT

>>On Mon, 5 Jan 2009 10:19:27 -0800 (PST), Paul Brians <paulbrians@gmail.com>
>>wrote:
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
>>
>And that's often pronounced as di-sected, hedging the speaker's bets.

Yes. I should have said that that was how it was pronounced.

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Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)

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Mark Brader - 05 Jan 2009 22:12 GMT

Peter Duncanson:

>> Referring to the bisection of Gaza one reporter on the TV News channel _Al
>> Jazeera English_ said that Gaza had been "dissected".

Paul Wolff:

> And that's often pronounced as di-sected, hedging the speaker's bets.

Hedging? As far as I'm concerned the long I is the normal pronunciation,
even though the spelling suggests "diss-sected" with a short I.

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Mark Brader, Toronto | An actual human would feel guilt in this situation.
msb@vex.net | -- Scott Adams: Dilbert

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Paul Wolff - 05 Jan 2009 23:30 GMT

>Peter Duncanson:
>>> Referring to the bisection of Gaza one reporter on the TV News channel _Al
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
>Hedging? As far as I'm concerned the long I is the normal pronunciation,
>even though the spelling suggests "diss-sected" with a short I.

I've yet to be convinced that what is frequent should be called normal,
or if it should, that what is normal is right. Consider the egos of
politicians.

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Paul
(I know: the plural of ego is nos. It would be a real coup de post if the
adjectival form of nos was normal, but it isn't)

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John O'Flaherty - 05 Jan 2009 19:32 GMT

>I just heard an NPR reporter say that Israel had "bisected Gaza in
>two," which struck me as absurdly redundant. I went looking for other
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>Contiguous lines? Rotating lines? Does that matter?
>http://www.dancephotooftheday.com/v1/features.cfm/913/addListing.cfm

"Bisected in/into two lines" doesn't make sense either way, from the
point of view of geometry. Maybe "lines" in dance means lines of
dancers.

>It seems to me if you're going to indicate a split in two with some
>other word or phrase later in your sentence the verb to use is "split"
>or "divide" rather than "bisect."

Yes, or "section", or "transect".

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John

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R H Draney - 05 Jan 2009 19:38 GMT

Paul Brians filted:

>It seems to me if you're going to indicate a split in two with some
>other word or phrase later in your sentence the verb to use is "split"
>or "divide" rather than "bisect."

Anyone who writes that way should have his head decapitated....r

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Peter Duncanson (BrE) - 05 Jan 2009 19:52 GMT

>Paul Brians filted:
>>
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>
>Anyone who writes that way should have his head decapitated....r

That's just a slice off the top, OK?

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Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)

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Prai Jei - 05 Jan 2009 22:08 GMT

Paul Brians set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time
continuum:

> I just heard an NPR reporter say that Israel had "bisected Gaza in
> two," which struck me as absurdly redundant. I went looking for other
> examples using Google and found plenty, but some of them don't bother
> me as much where the "two" is followed by a noun. For instance from a
> ballet review: "Space has been rearranged, at one point, bisected in
> two lines, at another, on the diagonal."

They'll be pairing them off into threes next.

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Mark Brader - 05 Jan 2009 22:22 GMT

Paul Brians:

> I just heard an NPR reporter say that Israel had "bisected Gaza in
> two," which struck me as absurdly redundant.

It strikes me as the normal sort of redundancy that people use for
emphasis, rather than absurd.

> I went looking for other
> examples using Google and found plenty, but some of them don't bother
> me as much where the "two" is followed by a noun. For instance from a
> ballet review: "Space has been rearranged, at one point, bisected in
> two lines, at another, on the diagonal."

Eep!

> But it seems to me this should be "bisected into two lines." Arggh.

That might better express the intent, if you have the intent right.

> That still seems redundant to me. Or am I being too fussy? I'm not
> sure I understand what the writer really means.

I certainly don't. Really I think it's just a case of someone throwing
around some mathematical words that they don't really understand.

> It seems to me if you're going to indicate a split in two with some
> other word or phrase later in your sentence the verb to use is "split"
> or "divide" rather than "bisect."

In math, a geometrical figure is bisected if it is divided not just
into two parts, but two equal parts. Usually the term is used for
line segments (otherwise called lines, but meaning the kind that join
two specific endpoints, not the kind that extend to infinity) or angles.
If it was applied to a figure in two or three dimensions, I would
expect it to specifically mean a division into two congruent parts,
especially along an axis of symmetry -- unless used with some qualifier
as in "bisecting the area within the (irregular) curve".

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Mark Brader "Well, it's not in MY interest -- and I represent
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Iain - 05 Jan 2009 22:29 GMT

> I just heard an NPR reporter say that Israel had "bisected Gaza in
> two," which struck me as absurdly redundant.

Well yes, but so is 'don't do that'.

--Iain

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Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2009

Bisected in two