Useful words
Jan. 6th, 2010 03:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhuRecently, I've found myself reaching for Talmudic terms in conversations with friends and co-workers, because there's no good English equivalent.
nafka meenah -- the practical consequence that turns an otherwise academic distinction into a question whose answer matters. (This came up in the discussion of the wording of a rule in a game, where there was an edge case where the interpretation of the rule affected the strategy of play.)
kal va-khomer -- if you think it's important in the case we've been discussing, it's even more important in this other case that I'm about to bring up! (This came up in a discussion of turning off write access to a source code branch.)
And of course there's the classic machatunnim, who are your child's parents-in-law.
Conversely, I had to explain retconning in shul a few weeks ago when it came up in a discussion of the narrative of Judah and Tamar.
So now I'm curious: What jargon have you used in a general context because it's the most precise or concise way of explaining something?
nafka meenah -- the practical consequence that turns an otherwise academic distinction into a question whose answer matters. (This came up in the discussion of the wording of a rule in a game, where there was an edge case where the interpretation of the rule affected the strategy of play.)
kal va-khomer -- if you think it's important in the case we've been discussing, it's even more important in this other case that I'm about to bring up! (This came up in a discussion of turning off write access to a source code branch.)
And of course there's the classic machatunnim, who are your child's parents-in-law.
Conversely, I had to explain retconning in shul a few weeks ago when it came up in a discussion of the narrative of Judah and Tamar.
So now I'm curious: What jargon have you used in a general context because it's the most precise or concise way of explaining something?
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-06 08:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-06 08:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-06 08:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-06 09:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-06 09:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-06 10:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-06 11:18 pm (UTC)mary sue
retcon
deconstruct
signifier/signified
differance
pilpul
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-07 12:42 am (UTC)Also, what retconning goes on with the Judah and Tamar story?
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-07 02:53 am (UTC)I sometimes find myself using "kivyachol" (as if it were), and I have referred to some dives into undocumented source code as "exegesis".
This only happened once (so not a pattern), but I was once talking with a fellow Jewish geek about some bit of technical folklore (the architect who'd been there forever said this was why that was done originally) as "d'tanya" (it was taught in a baraita).
For non-Jewish jargon, "IFF", and I've been known to say that certain people talk like Vorlons. Oh, also "SEP field" (Someone Else's Problem), and I often talk about "consing up" a new whatever (old LISPer here), even when I'm talking about Java objects. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-07 06:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-08 02:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-08 02:08 am (UTC)