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Discussion Groups / British English / March 2010linguistic question: 'e' ending + 'able' suffix
Hello, how can I call in English a thing which e.g. "cannot be closed"? Uncloseable or unclosable? Are they any rules for leaving or throwing away the final letter E while adding the -able suffix? Btw. unclos(e)able or inclos(e)able? PS. English is not my mother tongue, but I want to harm it as little as possible. thanks in advance, MR >Hello, >how can I call in English a thing which e.g. "cannot be closed"? [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] >thanks in advance, >MR Both US and UK dictionaries show "closeable" with no mention of "closable". There's a verb "inclose", but it's a variant spelling of "enclose", so "uncloseable" and "incloseable" would have entirely different meanings. Questions like yours can be answered properly only by reference to a good dictionary. There are pairs like "judgement" and "judgment" that are shown as alternatives in both US and UK dictionaries, but in the UK dictionary there's a note saying that "judgment" is "the usual form in legal use". In my writing I make it a practice to include the "e" when adding "-able", but if I'm writing something that I want to be as acceptable as possible, I will sometimes look up a word of that type in a dictionary if I'm not certain of the customary spelling. You would be well-advised to own a really good dictionary and to spend time browsing it--thinking up a lot of words ending in "-able" to see if there's a pattern. In choosing your dictionary, you should decide whether you want to prefer British or American usage, because there are differences between the two. And you may sometimes even find differences between two American dictionaries or between two British dictionaries. > On Thu, 4 Mar 2010 01:43:48 -0800 (PST), Marteno Rodia ><marteno_rodia@o2.pl> wrote: [quoted text clipped - 14 lines] > Both US and UK dictionaries show "closeable" with no mention of > "closable". Not true. Closable is in the Concise OED. [snip] > You would be well-advised to own a really good dictionary and to spend > time browsing it--thinking up a lot of words ending in "-able" to see > if there's a pattern. In choosing your dictionary, you should decide > whether you want to prefer British or American usage, because there > are differences between the two. Considering the group you would do better to make it a British dictionary.  SignatureAndy Leighton => andyl@azaal.plus.com "The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials" - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ >> You would be well-advised to own a really good dictionary and to spend >> time browsing it--thinking up a lot of words ending in "-able" to see [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] >Considering the group you would do better to make it a British >dictionary. And a good British dictionary, such as the Concise OED, will note US spellings where they differ from British ones. SignatureJohn Hall "Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing." Sir Ralph Richardson (1902-83) > Andy Leighton => an...@azaal.plus.com > "The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials" > - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ What are the "sheep dog trials"? (I'm in a part of the world where there are neither sheep nor sheep dogs.) >> Andy Leighton => an...@azaal.plus.com >> "The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials" [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] >(I'm in a part of the world where there are neither sheep nor sheep >dogs.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheepdog_trial A Sheepdog trial (also herding test or simply dog trial) is a competitive dog sport in which herding dog breeds move sheep around a field, fences, gates, or enclosures as directed by their handlers. Such events are particularly associated with hill farming areas, where sheep range widely on largely unfenced land. These trials are popular in the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, Chile, Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and other farming nations. On TV in the UK: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Man_and_His_Dog One Man and His Dog (1976 to present) is a television series in the United Kingdom featuring sheepdog trials, SignaturePeter Duncanson, UK (in uk.culture.language.english) >>> Andy Leighton => an...@azaal.plus.com >>> "The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials" [quoted text clipped - 19 lines] > One Man and His Dog (1976 to present) is a television series in the > United Kingdom featuring sheepdog trials, This is a rival sheepdog trial TV show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3e6Evt21oQ (The presenter has a Scottish accent.) SignaturePeter Duncanson, UK (in uk.culture.language.english) >> On Thu, 4 Mar 2010 01:43:48 -0800 (PST), Marteno Rodia >><marteno_rodia@o2.pl> wrote: [quoted text clipped - 16 lines] > >Not true. Closable is in the Concise OED. Which edition? I see now that it is in the _COD Eighth Edition_, and "closeable" is not, so far as I've found anyway. But I also see now that in the more modern _New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary_, there is "closable" with variant "closeable". And it is true that _Merriam-Webster's Unabridged Dictionary_ also has "closable" with variant "closeable". I apologize for putting out bad information. About "inconsolable", Marteno--in view of his original question--should find it interesting that there is no "unconsolable". However, at sometime in the past forty years, I have opined in AUE that since "un-" is a productive English prefix, there's nothing wrong with our writing "unconsolable", even though it is not in dictionaries. The meaning is perfectly clear and it obeys carefully the formation of negatives with "un-". The distinguished John Lawler posted at that time to agree with me. (I wonder if he still would.) But now there's a counter-argument to that, illustrated by my recent observation that "unclose" and "inclose" have entirely different meanings, implying that "uncloseable" and "incloseable" would have quite different meanings. So we have to be careful when forming "un-" words as equivalents to "in-" words. By the way, I am startled to see that a full-text search of the _Oxford English Dictionary_ finds no occurrences of words starting with any of "closa", "closea", "unclosa", or "unclosea". >[snip] > [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] >Considering the group you would do better to make it a British >dictionary. And, if you don't mind spending a few more pounds, a _Shorter Oxford_ is greatly superior to a _Concise Oxford_. I have the _New Shorter Oxford_ (on disk), vintage about 1993, and there has been at least one later edition since then. About the _Shorter Oxford_s, it's important to know that they are not abridgements of the _Oxford English Dictionary_. The latter is for the most part made up of material that hasn't been brought up-to-date since it was first written over 100 years ago. In contrast, the preface to the _New Shorter Oxford_ emphasizes that it is not simply an abridgement of the _OED_, and that every entry has been reviewed and updated where necessary. I assume a similar statement could be made about later _Shorter Oxford_s, although I haven't had an opportunity to see any later edition. SignatureBob Cunningham, aka Sydney Sorenson, Southern California, USofA, WAmE. > [...] the >preface to the _New Shorter Oxford_ emphasizes that it > is not simply an abridgement of the _OED_, and that every entry > has been reviewed and updated where necessary. I shouldn't have written "that every entry has been reviewed and updated where necessary". It's ambiguous. "Where necessary" can be take to apply to both "reviewed" and "updated", while my intent was to apply it only to the second one. I could better have written "that every entry has been reviewed and where necessary updated". The actual words in the Preface to the _NSOED_ (in the hardback version) are Every entry has been written afresh, taking into account the linguistic evidence of the Dictionary Department's extensive quotation files and computer databases. SignatureBob Cunningham | "He whom the gods love dies young, while WAmE | he is in health, has his senses and his | judgments sound." --Titus Maccius Plautus At 16:31:49 on Fri, 5 Mar 2010, Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@earthlink.net> wrote in <6h83p5lefv362ftoqah9tf2m180m7bfqdv@4ax.com>: >I shouldn't have written "that every entry has been reviewed and >updated where necessary". It's ambiguous. "Where necessary" can be >take to apply to both "reviewed" and "updated", while my intent was to >apply it only to the second one. I could better have written "that >every entry has been reviewed and where necessary updated". Your second version still has an air of not-quite-right about it. This kind of situation - a subsidiary parenthesis - calls for commas (or brackets, or dashes)[0]. "...that every entry has been reviewed and, where necessary, updated" is totally unambiguous. [0] How many self-references can you spot? SignatureMolly Mockford Nature loves variety. Unfortunately, society hates it. (Milton Diamond Ph.D.) (My Reply-To address *is* valid, though may not remain so for ever.) >At 16:31:49 on Fri, 5 Mar 2010, Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@earthlink.net> >wrote in <6h83p5lefv362ftoqah9tf2m180m7bfqdv@4ax.com>: [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] >brackets, or dashes)[0]. "...that every entry has been reviewed and, >where necessary, updated" is totally unambiguous. I think either with or without the commas would be okay, but if you want to emphasize the "where necessary", as I did, it's better unparenthesized. I find it interesting to compare "Every entry has been updated where necessary" and "Every entry has been, where necessary, updated". They both say about the same thing, but a comma before "where" in the first one would make it seem like an incidental afterthought, while absence of the comma gives "where necessary" the emphasis that's probably intended. I think a strict follower of the "rules" would be more likely to put the commas in the second one than to put the comma in the first one. >[0] How many self-references can you spot? Sorry, your intended meaning with that question escapes me. What's an example of a "self-reference" that I might have spotted if I had known what a self-reference was? SignatureBob Cunningham, Southern California, USA. Western American English At 10:26:14 on Fri, 19 Mar 2010, Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@earthlink.net> wrote in <m1c7q5d7l8s2gih3sodsui222gprf439st@4ax.com>: >I think either with or without the commas would be okay, but if you >want to emphasize the "where necessary", as I did, it's better [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > "Every entry has been updated where necessary" and > "Every entry has been, where necessary, updated". But I was comparing: "Every entry has been reviewed and updated where necessary" "Every entry has been reviewed, and updated where necessary" "Every entry has been reviewed and, where necessary, updated" >>[0] How many self-references can you spot? > >Sorry, your intended meaning with that question escapes me. What's an >example of a "self-reference" that I might have spotted if I had known >what a self-reference was? Just a very small joke about my own employment of more than one type of parenthetical punctuation in my post. Don't worry about it! SignatureMolly Mockford Nature loves variety. Unfortunately, society hates it. (Milton Diamond Ph.D.) (My Reply-To address *is* valid, though may not remain so for ever.) >At 10:26:14 on Fri, 19 Mar 2010, Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@earthlink.net> >wrote in <m1c7q5d7l8s2gih3sodsui222gprf439st@4ax.com>: [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] >"Every entry has been reviewed, and updated where necessary" >"Every entry has been reviewed and, where necessary, updated" And when it became my turn to compare, I found it interesting to compare tangentially and to discuss the reason I felt the comparison to be apropos "Every entry has been updated where necessary" and "Every entry has been, where necessary, updated". Molly chose to omit my discussion of my reason for the comparison, but any reader who's curious enough can read it at Google Groups. >>>[0] How many self-references can you spot? >> [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] >Just a very small joke about my own employment of more than one type of >parenthetical punctuation in my post. Don't worry about it! I will worry about what I choose to worry about. How does using more than one parenthesis notation get to be a "self-reference"? _The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary_ has self-'reference n. reference to oneself or itself, spec. (Philos.) in certain paradoxes, propositions, or statements M19. I can see where you could be construed to be alluding to something you had done, but I see nowhere that you referred to yourself, or to some "itself" pertaining to some "it", which would be necessary to satisfy _NSOED_'s definition of "self-reference". SignatureBob Cunningham, Southern California, USA. Western American English At 16:50:07 on Sat, 20 Mar 2010, Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@earthlink.net> wrote in <j1maq5lihqphutfcrv4iimfvkhdae6n0a3@4ax.com>: >Molly chose to omit my discussion of my reason for the comparison, but >any reader who's curious enough can read it at Google Groups. It is standard practice in Usenet to trim quotes to the minimum necessity to give reference. Readers are always capable of looking back through the thread if they have forgotten the discussion which preceded any given post. >>Just a very small joke about my own employment of more than one type of >>parenthetical punctuation in my post. Don't worry about it! > >I will worry about what I choose to worry about. That is, of course, your privilege. I will in future avoid cheerful or light-hearted remarks in replies which I may make to one of your posts. SignatureMolly Mockford Nature loves variety. Unfortunately, society hates it. (Milton Diamond Ph.D.) (My Reply-To address *is* valid, though may not remain so for ever.) >At 16:50:07 on Sat, 20 Mar 2010, Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@earthlink.net> >wrote in <j1maq5lihqphutfcrv4iimfvkhdae6n0a3@4ax.com>: [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] >through the thread if they have forgotten the discussion which preceded >any given post. To each his own, but I consider it a little rude to quote a portion of what someone has written, while the portion that makes it make more sense is omitted. Few readers will bother to look for earlier postings. Most will simply assume that the person quoted incompletely has made a rather inane remark and will let it go at that. But I suppose it's quite possible you didn't even try to understand my reason for making the comparison. That supposition seems to be in accord with your reply. Anyway, it remains true that you seem to not understand the difference between parenthesizing a phrase or leaving it unparenthesized if it's more necessary to the sense of the statement than parenthesizing would imply. SignatureBob Cunningham, Southern California, USA. Western American English > On Fri, 05 Mar 2010 04:08:27 -0600, Andy Leighton ><andyl@azaal.plus.com> wrote: [quoted text clipped - 21 lines] > > Which edition? I see now that it is in the _COD Eighth Edition_, Yep I have the Eighth Edition near my desk. >>> You would be well-advised to own a really good dictionary and to spend >>> time browsing it--thinking up a lot of words ending in "-able" to see [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > Oxford_ (on disk), vintage about 1993, and there has been at least one > later edition since then. For everyday use I prefer a Chambers. I don't have a SOED - not enough room on my shelves. Although I have a library not far (about 5 minutes walk) from me where I can access one - plus online access to OED Online via the library. SignatureAndy Leighton => andyl@azaal.plus.com "The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials" - Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_ >> On Fri, 05 Mar 2010 04:08:27 -0600, Andy Leighton >><andyl@azaal.plus.com> wrote: [quoted text clipped - 23 lines] > >Yep I have the Eighth Edition near my desk. The Eighth Edition is particularly useful for seeing how English people used to talk. It follows traditional Received Pronunciation, while _NSOED_, and--I think--later _COD_s, follow more modern speech. The only difference I know of for sure is the pronunciation of terminal "y" in words like "pretty" and "city". Traditional RP pronounced it like the "i" in "sit", while modern British speech seems to pronounce it for the most part like "e" in "bean". There may be other differences that I haven't come across. >>>> You would be well-advised to own a really good dictionary and to spend >>>> time browsing it--thinking up a lot of words ending in "-able" to see [quoted text clipped - 11 lines] > >For everyday use I prefer a Chambers. I have Chambers 1993, and I like it a lot. However, I greatly dislike their way of putting a lot of things in run-ons that would be more useful as separate entries. For what it's worth, I didn't find "closable", "closeable", "unclosable", or "uncloseable" in my _Chambers_. >I don't have a SOED - not enough room on my shelves. But it's available on CD, and that uses very little shelf room. I have _NSOED_ on CD, and I think now and then about getting the CD for a later edition of _SOED_. >Although I have a library not far (about 5 minutes >walk) from me where I can access one - plus online access to OED Online >via the library. I have online _OED_ the same way, but I wish there weren't so much of it that hasn't been updated since it was written over a hundred years ago. It's really only useful for its historical data. Any definition of a modern word that you can find in _OED_ you can also find in an updated version in an _SOED_. Only the historical examples are much diminished. At 15:56:13 on Fri, 5 Mar 2010, Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@earthlink.net> wrote in <4463p5p4flocbkg09fvn6cerc6vbeqo7s0@4ax.com>: >About "inconsolable", Marteno--in view of his original >question--should find it interesting that there is no "unconsolable". Plus, "inconsolable" has the stress on the second syllable, whereas "unconsolable", if it existed, would have the stress on the third syllable. >But now there's a counter-argument to that, illustrated by my recent >observation that "unclose" and "inclose" have entirely different >meanings, implying that "uncloseable" and "incloseable" would have >quite different meanings. And while "incloseable" would be stressed on the second syllable, "uncloseable" would, I think, have an equal stress on the first and second syllables, as if it were "un-closeable". SignatureMolly Mockford Nature loves variety. Unfortunately, society hates it. (Milton Diamond Ph.D.) (My Reply-To address *is* valid, though may not remain so for ever.) >At 15:56:13 on Fri, 5 Mar 2010, Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@earthlink.net> >wrote in <4463p5p4flocbkg09fvn6cerc6vbeqo7s0@4ax.com>: [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > >Plus, "inconsolable" has the stress on the second syllable, But _The New Shorter Oxford_ shows it only on the third syllable: inconsolable /Ink<schwa>n"s<schwa>Ul<schwa>b(<schwa>)l/ a. as does the 1993 _Chambers Dictionary_. A Merriam-Webster dictionary also has the stress on the third syllable. You can hear it at http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/audio.pl?incons15=inconsolable And, for what it's worth, I would pronounce it only with third-syllable stress. > whereas > "unconsolable", if it existed, would have the stress on the third > syllable. >>But now there's a counter-argument to that, illustrated by my recent >>observation that "unclose" and "inclose" have entirely different [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] >"uncloseable" would, I think, have an equal stress on the first and >second syllables, as if it were "un-closeable". That seems right to me. SignatureBob Cunningham, Southern California, USA. Western American English > PS. English is not my mother tongue, but I want to harm it as little > as possible. > thanks in advance, > MR Yeah. I guess the English are quite capable of harming the language themselves, there's no need for us foreigners to intervene. |
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