From The Frumentary by William King (1699)[0]:

  U’s conversation ’s equal to his wine,  
  You sup with W, whene’er you dine:  
  X, Y, and Z, hating to be confin’d,  
  Ramble to the next Eating-house they find;...   
  And Per Se And alone, as Poets use...

See also an elaborate classroom game described in the Documents of the Board of Education of the City of New York (1861)[1]: "One [student] represents &—called ‘And per se and’—as being appended to the alphabet, but not belonging to it....The merriment of this pastime turns upon the endeavor of An’ per s’and to take precedence of Z, and so get fairly into the alphabet..."

[0] A 1781 printing: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101068156031&vi...

[1] https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433075984876&vi...

These are great. Did you just know about these already or did you research them just now? If the latter, how did you find these in such short order?

Always impressed by people who can find primary sources for things quickly!

In this case I just did a full-text search of HathiTrust's catalog for "and per se and" (quotes of course are part of the query in this case). These are two results of many.

Not just a fisherman, but a teacher. Gracias!

The contractors in that joke are for the CEO's kitchen reno:

> ...complicated global factors like [one], [two], and my desire for a marble kitchen island with a waterfall edge. As we all know, our competitors are relentless. Even as we speak, they’re [one], [two], and booking the best contractors in the Bay Area for the next eighteen months.

Ah that makes sense!

The author is a really clever writer. It's a short text but it's packed with little details like that, and shows a great understanding of the tech enterprise domain.

Home button on a keyboard, tap the top of the screen on iOS, and I believe Android implements something similar.

I agree with the other commenter here. If a text-only article follows the tenets of some version of 'minimalist' design, I should be able to read it comfortably on my phone. Straight to reader mode for me.

I tried it on my desktop, where it was better. But I still wouldn't call it 'minimalist.' Again, it's just an article, but the background image draws my eyes away from the text. The top and sidebars do too, but to a lesser extent.

That's fine, but it's not minimalism. If I hear that an article on the web has been presented in a minimalist style I'm going to click on it assuming that once I start in on the article that's all I'm going to notice.

Home-button is a good trick to know about but I wish there was an easy way to jump between the top and the location I came from to get back. It seems back-button does not do that on my browser at least.

Since browser's don't do it there could be a side-ribbon that had a TOP-button and then a BACK-button. I think that would be useful on sites like HN.

Words are only ever added to the OED after a period of use.

Before performant made it into the OED as an adjective, the nominal form was listed as a "nonce-word" only and didn't merit its own entry; it was kept under performance. It was never widespread in any dialect, unlike modern performant.

-Ant/-ent is not reserved for nouns anyway. There are informants, inhabitants, defendants, and many others, of course, but they can be ignorant, hesitant, pleasant, constant, tolerant, conversant, triumphant, significant, vigilant, dominant, compliant, adamant, reluctant, elegant...

Some of the second group fall into both categories, adjective and noun. Frequently the one form came later than the other. Add performant to that long list.

This wouldn't really be pro/rel, not as it's implemented in European football anyway. It's a single league where entry into the lucrative year-end tournament is partly based on long-term (3- or 5-year) performance, whereas now it is only short-term (1-year).

So pro/rel. I think Mexico’s soccer league has a multi year relegation system like this already.

This image from Streetview, taken about halfway across the bridge, shows the scale well, I think: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.439515,-79.9004771,3a,75y,99...

> Is it supposed to sound like the end of "turquoise?"

Yes, though some speakers use an S rather than a Z sound (think "choice").

I have only heard these pronunciations from British speakers.

Even weirder than I thought.

I look forward to hearing that from Zoomer college students any time soon then.

I can say I have heard this from native speakers, but I can't pull up any YouTube links right now. I suspect I've heard it from people who don't always go by the spelling pronunciation, in the same way many people who insert a T sound into often don't always do so. (I include myself in the "variable often" group.)

For what it's worth the Oxford English Dictionary lists /ˈtɔːtɔɪs/ ("TAW-toice") and /'tɔːtɔɪz/ ("TAW-toiz") as alternate pronunciations in British English. This appears to be the result of a revision made to the entry sometime after 1989. (The public-facing revision history is not very precise.)

> An-th-ony (with TH from "the")

Out of curiosity, is it definitely the voiced TH from "the," rather than the unvoiced TH from "thing?"

In the US the spelling pronunciation of Anthony is by far the more common (at least in my experience), but I've never heard it with a voiced TH.

I think they must have meant the unvoiced "th" from "thing" not the voiced "th from "the". I've only ever heard "Anþony". I can't imagine any native English speaker saying "Anðony" unless they're drunk or otherwise slurring their speech significantly.

> "Please list the most important things that give meaning to your life"

The actual English-language version[0]:

> ...What about your life do you currently find meaningful, fulfilling or satisfying? What keeps you going and why?

So respondents in English were not prompted to list more than one item. What is not marked for plurality.

Unfortunately I've only been able to turn out the English-language prompts for this study.

As far as Korean goes, it might not require speakers to mark (certain) nouns for plurality, but there are of course common ways to do so when desired. There is a particle (들), and there are various modifiers that could be translated to e.g. some, several, many, a few, one or more... The difference is that if you use these modifiers, you don't (as in English et al.) have to make the noun "agree" in number. Roughly speaking, one or more thing would be fine.

[0]: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/11/18/what-makes-lif... (under "How we did this")