this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
157 points (94.4% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26996 readers
1281 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Jerb322@lemmy.world 45 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

"Making ends meet" i use to think it was, "Making ends meat" like all you can afford is the cut of bits off of undesirable meat. I never saw it written down before, and now I feel dumb.

[–] lazylion_ca@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I had only ever see trebuchet written, i had never heard it spoken. So young me thought it was pronounced tray-bucket. I was in my 40s before i finally heard someone discussing catapult vs trebuchet and realized it was french.

[–] charlytune@mander.xyz 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well guess who's pronouncing it tray bucket from now on

(It's me)

[–] nei7jc@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks for clarifying

[–] fubo@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

First, you get an ogre to bend a tree down to the ground. Then you fasten a bucket to the top of the tree, and put a rock in the bucket. Then you tell the ogre to let the tree loose, and the rock flies out and smashes your enemy's castle.

This is the invention of the tree-bucket.

[–] Silentiea@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's actually more of an onager-style catapult, not a trebuchet style one.

[–] fubo@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

If it doesn't use real Asiatic wild ass, it's not an onager, it's just a sparkling mangonel.

[–] gibmiser@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Wow you are my spirit brother. I did the same and was relentlessly mocked by friends playing Age of Empires

[–] ThisIsNotHim@sopuli.xyz 13 points 1 year ago

That's a wonderful eggcorn.

I was watching a video talking about how eggcorns are an unusual category of error because they require intelligence and creativity to make. The argument was that the process goes like this:

A new word or phrase is heard, but not understood. The brain makes sense of it using existing vocabulary that has sounds that are close enough. This is accompanied an explanation for why those specific words make sense in this new context.

For example: the original eggcorn was a mishearing of acorn. Egg because it's roughly egg shaped, and corn is sometimes used to describe small objects similar to how grain can be.

All this to say, it's maybe not something to feel dumb about. Your brain did something neat.

[–] EmoDuck@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It actually refers to tying a napkin around your neck before eating. You had to "make the ends meet" before you could eat

[–] Num10ck@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

hmm might want to update wikipedia with that because they say unknown etymology.

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/make_ends_meet