• Phen@lemmy.eco.br
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    1 year ago

    The best thing about lemmy is that it brings back things like this that I often thought about and really wanted to find again to be able to fill the gaps in my memory, but couldn’t remember enough about it to be able to find on Google.

    Its not the first time it happens to me. Anyway, thanks op. I had given up hope on finding this one again.

    • Prethoryn Overmind@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This is what Reddit used to do for me. The weirdest thing Reddit ever did was give me the name of an insect that for years I tried to Google when I would see it and I have legitimately only ever seen the bug 3 times in my 28 years of life. They are so small, so infrequent, and so rare that I thought for years I wasn’t even seeing an I sect but just a fuzz from a dandelion once it changes.

      I mean for actual fucking years I could not find the regular name, the slang name (usually changes based on dialect, or even the scientific name. The amount of times I searched for “white fuzzy bug” or “white floating bug.” No matter the combination. I even would tell people, “I remember seeing this bug and I have seen it so rarely I don’t even know if it is real.” And most of my friends would say, “yeah never seen it.” And then that one friend would say, “dude me too.” And then one fucking day I open Reddit and God dammit if I didn’t believe it someone gave me the name. Actual years of feeling insane and thinking those little fuckers were a sign of something higher because of how fragile and cute they are and Reddit not only gives me the name, confirms I am sane but enlightens me on the little bastards they actually are.

      I am from West Virginia and if you made it this far well by God if you have seen one then I swear on mother nature you aren’t insane and we are in this together.

      EDIT: A better site and image

      Woolly Aphid

    • Karyoplasma
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      1 year ago

      Isn’t “of a thousand anus” a dative construct, so the plural should be “anis”?

        • Karyoplasma
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          1 year ago

          Fun little tidbit: the word “loanword” itself is a sub-type of a loanword, a calque, which is a word-by-word translation from a word in a different language. It was brought to English from the German “Lehnwort”.

        • barsoap@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Loans generally follow the grammar of the host language. English has a plural, it doesn’t have a dative.

          Well, a dative marked by morphology, that is, outside of “him/her/whom”, instead it’s done by word order. Take “The smith gave the miller the hammer”, “the miller” is dative, “the hammer” is accusative, you can’t say “The smith gave the hammer the miller”.

          Also “of a thousand ani” is genitive, marking of that is done with “of” or “'s”.

          As to plural form: English has a gazillion of those: Caboose, cabeese (yay Ablaut!), box, boxen, etc. Some Latin doesn’t hurt.

          • Karyoplasma
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            1 year ago

            Then the correct plural is “anorum” in this case.