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Mircea Neacsu wrote: "favorite file"
Which illustrates the ambiguity: Is your "favorite file" the one you would prefer over other files, or a file of your favorites (e.g. URLs, lovers or whatever)?
In this case, you could of course "favorites file" for the second alternative, but even if you can, maybe you don't do that. I have seen lots of such cases where I had to guess from context what the meaning is. The less ambiguity, the better. (Except when the very purpose of the statement is to play with the language!)
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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Appears locale specific. Am not finding such a word in Windows in India (English).
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Interesting. Mine is Win 11 Pro, 23H2 English(US)
Mircea
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Mine is Win 11 Home Edition, 22H2. This is also English, but not US English; mostly UK-English customized to India.
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Must have been created by the same people who have made terms like "Your Spend" and "The Ask". Both of these words are verbs but Marketing people have corrupted and bastardized them into nouns. I rail against them in meetings. You have a question not an ask, asking is what you do with a question.
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
I’m begging you for the benefit of everyone, don’t be STUPID.
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Along with the word tasked which was entirely made up.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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Comes the revolution, Marketing/Advertising folk should be first up against the wall, "for the cold blooded murder of the English tongue".
I'm half-joking, but only half.
Professor Higgins captured it nicely : "Why can't the English teach their children how to speak? Norwegians learn Norwegian, the Greeks are taught their Greek....."
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MarkTJohnson wrote: You have a question not an ask
I've not heard it used in place of 'question' but rather a short version of asking a favor. "Hey, man, I've got a big ask of you. Would you mind < doing some favor >?"
There are no solutions, only trade-offs. - Thomas Sowell
A day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes)
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That should be a request, not an ask.
This IS the hill I will die on.
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
I’m begging you for the benefit of everyone, don’t be STUPID.
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Preachin' to the choir.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs. - Thomas Sowell
A day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes)
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A request is the second time around.
First you go out on a quest. If you fail, then you request (if resources allow).
On the serious side:
I love to play with language. When I was the dad of a teenager, she picked it up, and we were twisting words around, breaking words into pieces and putting the pieces together in new and surprising ways (like the one above), and using words and grammar rules in new ways. One example: Celery was often referred to as "shop" in our family. (A bakery is where you bake things, a sellery is where you sell things.) We had hundreds of such twists, but most of them are not translatable to English.
The girl grew up to become very language conscious, both in terms of vocabulary and grammar. The language play stimulated her, and often, together we dug into the historical background, the etymology, of both terms and grammar.
So I am certainly not negative to neither verbing nor nouning - as long as you are aware when you are using it humorously. It will make you realize that both are very common without being used in a humorous way. It will educate you in your language.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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I do like the "shop" thing.
When I was in college for my Computer Science degree, I had one professor who would always come into the room and draw a line on the chalkboard. He would then say, "Now, I can remark."
My daughter once noted after something bad had happened several times after we had served chicken for dinner that we must have a "Poultrygeist" in house.
When I agree with one of my kids I will text Potassium. Short for K. Which is short for OK. Which is short for okay.
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
I’m begging you for the benefit of everyone, don’t be STUPID.
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Did you mean
“Potassium is long for K”
Try 19 next time.
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MarkTJohnson wrote: You have a question not an ask, asking is what you do with a question.
A question assigns some quest to you, doesn't it? 
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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As was said in Calvin and Hobbes, "Verbing nouns weirds the language."
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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Cannot argue with Oxford so, case closed. Maybe someone should send a memo to Merriam-Wesbster that is my go to reference.
Mircea
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Mircea Neacsu wrote: Maybe someone should send a memo to Merriam-Wesbster that is my go to reference.
Agreed - mine too.
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David O'Neil wrote: Brevity often coincides with clarity
But when it doesn't...
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Especially as a non-native English speaker, I will say that it often doesn't!
I do not get used to it! I learned 50 years ago that in US newspaper headlines, "and" is written as "," (no matter how much empty space there is at the end of the line), but it still gives me chills. In technical media/literature, you too frequently read articles that use an insane amount of abbreviations, often rather obscure ones, without explaining a single one of them. And then you come across those going to the other extreme, not only expanding the abbreviation in a parenthesis, but doing it on every single use of it throughout the article, and also expanding (at every use) abbreviations so familiar to everyone that we no longer think of it as an abbreviation - such as FM, DAB, TV, DVD, USD, UTC, Basic and Fortran.
If you think brevity coincides with clarity, you should start programming in APL 
That is not just a joke: Conciseness may work well in a tribal language (such as the APL programmer tribe), but you should be aware when you move outside the tribe, and know how to handle that. Sticking to your tribal language is rarely the best alternative. Ignoring well known terms in the non-tribal language is not a good alternative, either.
Any professional should have a period as an instructor, teaching a non-tribal audience his profession, to discover what is easily understood and what is not. Too many professionals think the solution is to teach the tribal language to the non-tribal society; usually it is not. The solution is for the professional to learn to speak in a non-tribal language. That includes avoiding tribal abbreviations and tribalisms such as verbings and nouning. Yes, that is frequently an element of tribal language. An example: I had a motor that wouldn't work, and mentioned to a friend of mine that I suspected that the fuse was blown. His immediate response: "Ya ohmed it, didn't ya?"
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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You speak like a true USAtian!
I guess that you really are joking. In case you are not: Have you heard about HD Radio? That is the US "Certainly Invented Here" attempt to create a US alternative to the international digital radio standard adopted by Europe, Australia, a lot of Asian countries and a few African ones.
If you read and article where "DAB" comes up, it must be because you are interested in broadcasting, not limited to the US of A (where DAB probably would not come up). In that context, DAB is as fundamental as AM and FM.
Asking "What is DAB" is like if you had asked "What is GSM" at the time when four different "Certainly Invented Here" mobile phone standards where fighting to kill each other in the US. They did, and the NIH GSM system took over. US authorities tried to avoid the same to happen with the three (or was it four?) competing digital FM radio replacements. So before they had all killed each other, FCC declared HD Radio as the winner based on battle points. HD Radio did not have enough going for it to make it an overnight success, and from what I have been told (I haven't visited USA for quite a few years), HD Radio can be described as 'marginalized' in the US radio market of today. So maybe you are not much aware of HDR.
Even though NIH, DAB was considered in the USA, although reluctantly. However, channels at the outer end of the DAB frequency spectrum was so close to frequencies used by US Armed Forces that there was a theoretical possibility that a badly tuned broadcast transmitter could cause interference with military communication. Of course it would have been possible to declare the DAB band to not go that high (in fact, some European countries do!), sacrificing a small fraction of the total capacity. More important: It was a good excuse for rejecting the international standard, replacing it with something Certainly Invented Here.
From a technical point of view, HD Radio is somewhat closer to DRM, rather than DAB. DRM is the primary radio technology in India. If you haven't heard of DAB, I assume that DRM is even more unfamiliar. DRM shares a lot of technological elements with DAB (so making a combined DAB/DRM receiver is quite simple), but some lower layers differ: DAB multiplexes a great number (typically 12-20) of audio channels on a single transmitter, requiring a coordination of the sources or those channels. DRM transmits from a single audio channel up to four, so it is much better suited for an independent 'husband-and-wife'-type radio station. DRM can (re)use an existing FM or AM transmitter. The 'single source' and (to a limited degree) reuse of old transmitters is a trait shared by HDR. But DRM is another NIH international standard, so I guess it is not a viable alternative in the US.
(One trait that HDR does not share: DAB and DRM can extend the coverage by adding transmitters on the same frequency. There is no need to allocate another frequency to a station, no matter how many transmitters it needs to cover its area.)
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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trønderen wrote: I do not get used to it! ... In technical media/literature, you too frequently read articles that use an insane amount of abbreviations, often rather obscure ones, without explaining a single one of them.
And then you violate your own desire:
trønderen wrote: If you read and article where "DAB" comes up, it must be because you are interested in broadcasting, not limited to the US of A (where DAB probably would not come up).
I, in the USA, have never heard 'DAB' before, and I've heard a lot of acronyms. I'm guessing it means 'Digital Audio Broadcast.' And then you violate your desire a couple more times: 'DRM,' 'NIH' - no clue what those are, although DRM is almost always Digital Rights Management in our news, but obviously not per your usage.
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler” - the best expansion of 'brevity's meaning, as I see it.
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David O'Neil wrote: I, in the USA, have never heard 'DAB' before
Have you heard of FM? AM? HDR? If you never had any interest at all in radio, I guess all of those are unfamiliar - as well as DAB.
I guess that it is related to 'NIH' - no clue what those are From inside the US of A, you may not know how the rest of the world view USA self confidence. That any technology "Not Invented Here" has no value, is of no interest to the US of A. I honestly thought that USAtians generally knew the term, and I deliberately used "Certainly Invented Here" as somewhat ironic reminder of the NIH attitude, expecting "Not Invented Here" to be well known. When you prove me wrong, that sort of makes my point even stronger
I did use DAB and DRM without de-abbreviation, as I used FM and AM without de-abbreviation. That fits into my line of argument: These are everyday, general concepts. If I mention an LP (if you are old enough to remember those ), I need not expand it to "Long Play" to make you ponder "How long?", or the 10" EP discs, "Extended Play", making you ponder in which way they are "extended", or how much. I guess that it Europe, maybe half the population couldn't provide the de-abbreviation of DAB without hesitation, just like only a small fraction in the Western world knows the de-abbreviation of DVD. They are technology names. If you never heard names of the technology, you never heard of the technology.
After reading my post, you were certainly not in doubt that DAB and DRM are names of different digital broadcasting technologies. Sure, DRM is also the name of other technologies. If the context doesn't give you a clue, you may look it up in Wikipedia: Currently it lists no less than 23 different de-abbreviations of DRM. My previous post didn't give any hints towards 22 of them, but did suggest a digital radio broadcasting standard named DRM, didn't it? If I had referred to a radio standard named "Charles", would it have made a big difference for your understanding? Would it have been easier or more difficult to accept it as a technology name?
OK, I will admit it openly: I deliberately used "DAB" and "DRM" without de-abbreviation to tease the "Not Invented Here" readers. In Europe, Australia and many countries in Asia and Africa, DAB is as well known today as FM is. ("AM" is fading; few Norwegian youth would know what an AM radio is, and might ask me to de-abbreviate and explain that!) You do not point out that I use "HDR" as an abbreviation of "HD Radio", and you do not ask me to de-abbreviate the "HD" part, so maybe you are among the relatively few, if I understand it right, who actually own a HD Radio.
A couple entries up in this thread, I referred to "tribal language". I guess that your post illustrates it clearly. "Not Invented Here" is a tribal language term used in most of the world but USA to describe how USA relates to non-US technology, and we cannot assume that USAtians are familiar with the the term. "DAB" and "DRM" are tribal language terms commonly understood in Europe, Australia, large parts of Asia and parts of Africa - but again, USAtians are not part of the tribe; they need to have the names explained. They may be unable to grab it from context. It may take more than an explanation; a deconstruction of the name may be required as well.
I did not refer to common basic technologies of DAB and DRM (such as OFDM modulation, or (x)HE-AAC sound compression - but you might ignore those terms; I will not de-abbreviate them for you). As a casual listener they are insignificant. That is another deliberate choice I made: You ought to know DAB and DRM as names of digital radio technologies, just like Europeans and other non-USAtians do. I use them freely, as names. OFDM and xHE-AAC are not intended for a non-technical audience, so I avoided referring to those.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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Concisely! 
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