4 ms·

When it comes to semantics there needs to be a clear separation between common and technical terms. I once had someone try to argue can't use the word bison an

When it comes to semantics there needs to be a clear separation between common and technical terms. I once had someone try to argue can't use the word bison and buffalo interchangeably when sharing buffalo puns. Bison is an old latin word for "wild ox". Buffalo is an old greek word also meaning wild ox. They've been used interchangeably for as long as greek and latin have been spoken together. Some scientist coming along and naming some animal a "Bison bison" doesn't overwrite thousands of years of history.

lou1306 4y ago
Or in the words of Moby Dick's Ishmael, "I take the good old fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me".
- blenderdt 4y ago
  But that assumes Jonah's fish was a whale. But we don't know. But it might have been a whale: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/12/whale-mouth-lobster-diver-humpback-cape-cod https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/12/whale-mouth-...
  - LudwigNagasena 4y ago
    It also misses the fact that Jonah didn’t speak modern English and so he couldn’t talk about “fish”.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  But as QI fans know, There's no such thing as a fish https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Such_Thing_as_a_Fish https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Such_Thing_as_a_Fish > For example, a salmon is more closely related to a camel than it is to a hagfish
SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
> can't use the word bison and buffalo interchangeably when sharing buffalo puns. Well, there is a difference. (put on accent) Yer can't wash yer hands in a buffalo.
onionisafruit 4y ago
Some of us take buffalo puns seriously. If a child of mine misnamed a buffalo for a cheap pun, I would only have two words for him, “bye son”.
- tomcam 4y ago
  I’m going to ask you to leave now, Dad
- 2-718-281-828 4y ago
  or "die son"? okay, that joke is a bit too hybrid, maybe
Symmetry 4y ago
Yes, if one of my friends called a Bradley a tank that's close enough and I wouldn't bother to correct them. But if a reporter calls a Bradley a tank that shows that they're missing some basic "military 101" knowledge and it'll influence how much I trust what they're saying.
- dogma1138 4y ago
  Both the Bradley and the Abrams are AFVs, the issue is that most people aren’t familiar with the term AFV and they think that anything with armor and a gun is a tank. As far as the AFV totem pole goes then the “Tank” sits on top it’s designed to pretty much fight and kill everything else on the battlefield. The MBT is an evolution of the Tank concept the reason why most nations don’t have multiple tank classes today is that modern technology allows one to build a highly mobile, heavily armored vehicle with just about the biggest gun around. Whilst historically at least during the first 5-6 or so decades of the “Tank” you had to make compromises which lead to wider range of “Tank” classes.
  - Retric 4y ago
    The real issue is half of the original Mark 1 tanks only had machine guns and they where all lightly armored. It’s primary role was fighting infantry as a mobile machine gun platform, and so the AFV is just another tank. If anything an M1 Abrams is further from the initial definition than an AFV. People want to fit their idea of a “tank” based on a small subset of them while ignore things like flame tanks which spits on the narrow definitions.
    - dogma1138 4y ago
      AFV encompasses everything from armored combat engineering vehicles to tanks.
      - Retric 4y ago
        And? The Mark IX, was ‘carrier’ tank Aka an APC. One was even considered an amphibious tank via flotation tanks and bilge pumps. Various examples of radio tanks existed who’s job was communication a role which any modern AFV with a two way radio can fulfill. The Renault FT was considered a French tank and looks closer to modern designs though with a machine gun rather than anything heavier. Except again a huge number of variants was created to fit a range of roles including laying cable.
adrian_b 4y ago
No, "bison" is not an old Latin word. "Bison" appears only in a few late authors of the Roman Empire, as a Germanic loanword, corresponding to the modern German word "Wisent". One of the few occurrences of the word "bison" in Latin appears in Pliny the Elder. He wrote that in Germany there are 2 kinds of wild oxen, "bisontes et uros", i.e. the European wood bison and the aurochs. There is no doubt from the description from Pliny that "bison" was applied specifically to the European wood bison and not to any other kind of wild ox. The word "bison" is also appropriate for its close relative, the North-American bison. Pliny the Elder adds there that "quibus ... volgus bubalorum nomen imponit", i.e. the ignorant masses call both kinds of wild oxen as buffaloes, even if the buffalo is a different kind of wild ox "which is native to Africa". Pliny was right that the 3 kinds of wild oxen, European bison, aurochs and African buffalo have very different appearances and can be confused only by someone who has not seen them previously, so for each of them, their proper name should be used, not the name of an only distantly-related species. Most early European colonists of America belonged to what Pliny called "volgus", i.e. uneducated people, who were not familiar with the already extinct, or mostly extinct, aurochs and bison, so they have also applied the less appropriate word "buffalo" to the American bison, in the same way as many Romans called the European bison as "buffalo". The use of inappropriate words for naming unfamiliar animals encountered in the New World has been frequent, e.g. the jaguar had been frequently named as "tiger" in the past in some places of South-America. In conclusion "bison" and "buffalo" have not been used interchangeably in Ancient Rome and Greece. Only the word "buffalo" was known by most ancient Greeks and Romans. After the Roman Empire expanded in the North until Germany, some Romans learned the word "bison" from some Germanic tribes, and the word was applied correctly to the European bison, by those who knew the word. So there was no interchangeability. Either one used "buffalo" for all wild oxen, when no other word was known, or one used the correct word for each kind of wild ox.
- jrumbut 4y ago
  > Pliny the Elder adds there that "quibus ... volgus bubalorum nomen imponit", i.e. the ignorant masses call both kinds of wild oxen as buffaloes, even if the buffalo is a different kind of wild ox "which is native to Africa". Your argument that bison is not an old Latin word and they weren't used interchangeably is somewhat weakened by this ancient Roman source, writing almost 400 years before the end of the western empire, that says they were used interchangeably.
EdwardDiego 4y ago
To be fair, there was a large amount of discussion of the great slaughter of buffalo in the USA, complete with pictures of pyramids of skulls, in my history books as a kid. Of course, now we know that they're bison, not buffalo, but it was obvious that people at the time called them buffalo.
rawgabbit 4y ago
With semantics, I believe there are three types of definitions: descriptive, classification schemes, and functional requirements. Descriptive: It looks like a water tank carrier. No, it looks like a tractor. Nomenclature and classification: In the interwar period, the British built infantry tanks like the Matilda and cruiser tanks like the Cruiser I. Functional: Tanker tactics, after much experimentation, coalesced into two categories. Heavy tanks for shock action to break through enemy lines. Lighter tanks operating in a wolf pack formation would exploit the break through and destroy rear depots and cut off the enemy's lines of communication.

lou1306 4y ago

Or in the words of Moby Dick's Ishmael, "I take the good old fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me".

blenderdt 4y ago
But that assumes Jonah's fish was a whale. But we don't know. But it might have been a whale: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/12/whale-mouth-lobster-diver-humpback-cape-cod https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/12/whale-mouth-...
- LudwigNagasena 4y ago
  It also misses the fact that Jonah didn’t speak modern English and so he couldn’t talk about “fish”.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
But as QI fans know, There's no such thing as a fish https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Such_Thing_as_a_Fish https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Such_Thing_as_a_Fish > For example, a salmon is more closely related to a camel than it is to a hagfish

SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago

> can't use the word bison and buffalo interchangeably when sharing buffalo puns. Well, there is a difference. (put on accent) Yer can't wash yer hands in a buffalo.

onionisafruit 4y ago

Some of us take buffalo puns seriously. If a child of mine misnamed a buffalo for a cheap pun, I would only have two words for him, “bye son”.

tomcam 4y ago
I’m going to ask you to leave now, Dad
2-718-281-828 4y ago
or "die son"? okay, that joke is a bit too hybrid, maybe

Symmetry 4y ago

Yes, if one of my friends called a Bradley a tank that's close enough and I wouldn't bother to correct them. But if a reporter calls a Bradley a tank that shows that they're missing some basic "military 101" knowledge and it'll influence how much I trust what they're saying.

dogma1138 4y ago
Both the Bradley and the Abrams are AFVs, the issue is that most people aren’t familiar with the term AFV and they think that anything with armor and a gun is a tank. As far as the AFV totem pole goes then the “Tank” sits on top it’s designed to pretty much fight and kill everything else on the battlefield. The MBT is an evolution of the Tank concept the reason why most nations don’t have multiple tank classes today is that modern technology allows one to build a highly mobile, heavily armored vehicle with just about the biggest gun around. Whilst historically at least during the first 5-6 or so decades of the “Tank” you had to make compromises which lead to wider range of “Tank” classes.
- Retric 4y ago
  The real issue is half of the original Mark 1 tanks only had machine guns and they where all lightly armored. It’s primary role was fighting infantry as a mobile machine gun platform, and so the AFV is just another tank. If anything an M1 Abrams is further from the initial definition than an AFV. People want to fit their idea of a “tank” based on a small subset of them while ignore things like flame tanks which spits on the narrow definitions.
  - dogma1138 4y ago
    AFV encompasses everything from armored combat engineering vehicles to tanks.
    - Retric 4y ago
      And? The Mark IX, was ‘carrier’ tank Aka an APC. One was even considered an amphibious tank via flotation tanks and bilge pumps. Various examples of radio tanks existed who’s job was communication a role which any modern AFV with a two way radio can fulfill. The Renault FT was considered a French tank and looks closer to modern designs though with a machine gun rather than anything heavier. Except again a huge number of variants was created to fit a range of roles including laying cable.

adrian_b 4y ago

No, "bison" is not an old Latin word. "Bison" appears only in a few late authors of the Roman Empire, as a Germanic loanword, corresponding to the modern German word "Wisent". One of the few occurrences of the word "bison" in Latin appears in Pliny the Elder. He wrote that in Germany there are 2 kinds of wild oxen, "bisontes et uros", i.e. the European wood bison and the aurochs. There is no doubt from the description from Pliny that "bison" was applied specifically to the European wood bison and not to any other kind of wild ox. The word "bison" is also appropriate for its close relative, the North-American bison. Pliny the Elder adds there that "quibus ... volgus bubalorum nomen imponit", i.e. the ignorant masses call both kinds of wild oxen as buffaloes, even if the buffalo is a different kind of wild ox "which is native to Africa". Pliny was right that the 3 kinds of wild oxen, European bison, aurochs and African buffalo have very different appearances and can be confused only by someone who has not seen them previously, so for each of them, their proper name should be used, not the name of an only distantly-related species. Most early European colonists of America belonged to what Pliny called "volgus", i.e. uneducated people, who were not familiar with the already extinct, or mostly extinct, aurochs and bison, so they have also applied the less appropriate word "buffalo" to the American bison, in the same way as many Romans called the European bison as "buffalo". The use of inappropriate words for naming unfamiliar animals encountered in the New World has been frequent, e.g. the jaguar had been frequently named as "tiger" in the past in some places of South-America. In conclusion "bison" and "buffalo" have not been used interchangeably in Ancient Rome and Greece. Only the word "buffalo" was known by most ancient Greeks and Romans. After the Roman Empire expanded in the North until Germany, some Romans learned the word "bison" from some Germanic tribes, and the word was applied correctly to the European bison, by those who knew the word. So there was no interchangeability. Either one used "buffalo" for all wild oxen, when no other word was known, or one used the correct word for each kind of wild ox.

jrumbut 4y ago
> Pliny the Elder adds there that "quibus ... volgus bubalorum nomen imponit", i.e. the ignorant masses call both kinds of wild oxen as buffaloes, even if the buffalo is a different kind of wild ox "which is native to Africa". Your argument that bison is not an old Latin word and they weren't used interchangeably is somewhat weakened by this ancient Roman source, writing almost 400 years before the end of the western empire, that says they were used interchangeably.

EdwardDiego 4y ago

To be fair, there was a large amount of discussion of the great slaughter of buffalo in the USA, complete with pictures of pyramids of skulls, in my history books as a kid. Of course, now we know that they're bison, not buffalo, but it was obvious that people at the time called them buffalo.

rawgabbit 4y ago

With semantics, I believe there are three types of definitions: descriptive, classification schemes, and functional requirements. Descriptive: It looks like a water tank carrier. No, it looks like a tractor. Nomenclature and classification: In the interwar period, the British built infantry tanks like the Matilda and cruiser tanks like the Cruiser I. Functional: Tanker tactics, after much experimentation, coalesced into two categories. Heavy tanks for shock action to break through enemy lines. Lighter tanks operating in a wolf pack formation would exploit the break through and destroy rear depots and cut off the enemy's lines of communication.