Fixed is the absence of broke

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

When my kids were quite young and full of all those questions parents get asked, somehow the questions got around to death and cold and other hard to define things.

I tried to explain that many terms are defined as the absence of some quality that their opposite terms have. As in “death” is the absence of “life.” Or that “cold” is the absence of “heat.”

We batted around a few other such concepts and that how to define one of the pair you really only needed to define one of them and then use the “absence of” idea to define the other.

One of the kids came up with the thread title and it struck me then and strikes me now as as legitimate a pair of definitions as those more heady ones we’d been discussing.

This sort of thing ever crop up for you?

Got any real goodies to add?

2

Broke is the absence of coin.

3

Ignorance is the absence of Straight Dope.

Who, me? A suck-up??

4

I could have used “broken” in the title but tried instead to remain true to the way the kid said it.

Light is the absence of dark.
Well is the absence of sick.
Happy itao sad.
Good itao bad.
Ugly itao pretty

Just to get a few more out there.

5

Naw, I disagree with the last one. if you’re not pretty, you’re plain. Ugly takes some doing.

6

Fixed is what we did to our boy cat.

Therefore, Fixed is the absence of…ooooo ouch that hurts even thinking about it!

7

When something is broken it is "out of order’.

So when it is fixed it is “out of chaos”.

8

Sober is the absence of drunk.

9

On a philosophical note, would you define things as <thing> is the absence of <normal condition>? The reason I ask this is because I found myself thinking that perhaps some of your definitions are / could be backward, such as:

Dark being the absence of light (rather that the other way around),
Sick being AO well
Sad being AO happy

That’s how I usually think of them.

10

Perfectly legit as far as the notion goes. But the humorous aspect works better if the “normal condition” is the absence of its counterpart.

More exotic examples:

Educated is the absence of ignorant
Wealth is the absence of poor
Dirty is the absence of clean
Full is the absence of empty

Carry on. This is more for laughs that philosophical verities.

11

Benevolence is the absence of malice.

12

Dressed is the abscense of nakedness.

–IDB

13

Well, since we’re going for humor instead of philosophy:

Humor / Horror section: IDB, everyone is naked under their clothes.

And Sad is the Absence of Beer.

14

When I was a kid, I marked the light switches in our house ‘not off’ and ‘not on’. :slight_smile:

15

Sunspace, you’ve helped me remember a couple of other things that were not quite the “absence of” sort of thing.

The idea was for idiot lights on the dashboard.

One would be the gas gauge which would have two indicators: “Full” and “Not Full.”

The other was a flashing “Battery Dead.”

16

flight is the absence of earth