That’s a different case, because Americans also use the word “tuition” to mean, well, tuition. The word has one and only one meaning to us, and that’s “the money you pay to go to school” (well, realistically, “about half the money you pay to go to school”, with the rest going under other labels so the school can advertise low tuition while still soaking the students). An American would stare blankly at your use of the word to mean “form of instruction”. This is in contrast to, say, corkscrews, which everyone recognizes as devices, even if we don’t usually call them that.
My favorite pair of examples are related: “Carbon” to mean “carbon dioxide”, and the even shorter “Carbs” to mean “carbohydrates”. When we speak of “carbon emissions”, we don’t mean dump trucks full of graphite leaving a factory, not even if it’s a graphite processing factory. And everything we eat contains carbon, so there’s no reason that carbohydrates should be singled out for the name “carbs”.
There’s a sort-of related linguistic evolution, where the “adjective + noun” phrase gets shortened to just the adjective. The best example is “short pants” becoming “shorts”. Less common, “pearly whites” for “pearly white teeth”.
Yes, in common parlance, but as you’re surely aware, the difference between the mass of the carbon atoms in CO2 and the mass of the CO2 molecules is very different, and this has led to some very inaccurate numbers being bandied about when people mistake the two terms for technical synonyms, since both mass measurements are commonly used in speaking of atmospheric carbon.
Of course when we speak of emissions in general terms, “carbon” and “CO2” are more or less synonymous and I do this all the time, although there are other sources of atmospheric carbon. But they’re not the same at all when speaking of specific quantities of mass.
“Device” also has a particular meaning in medicalese, particularly for insurance purposes.
I guess the word “instrument” is somewhat similar – it’s often used as shorthand for “musical instrument”.
I suppose most of these will turn out to be the shortening of an adjective-noun phrase (defining a subset of the category referred to by the noun) to just the noun.
Yes, but our dictionaries still give the actual meaning of the word before the widely used meaning:
[QUOTE=Merriam-Webster]
tuition
1 archaic : custody, guardianship
2 : the act or profession of teaching : instruction <pursued his studies under private tuition>
3 : the price of or payment for instruction
[/QUOTE]
In that case, the dictionaries are outdated and no longer accurate, because the dictionary is the only place you’ll find that usage on this side of the Pond.
Either word can be the one that’s dropped. A “jigsaw puzzle”, for instance, can be referred to by either word. If I say “I’ve been working on a jigsaw for the past few days”, nobody will think I’m repairing a woodworking tool with a reciprocating blade under tension.
My least favorite current trend involves the use of “because”. They follow it with a single word, as in “because terrorism”. They don’t put an “of” in there and they don’t follow it with anything else. True linguistic laziness.
Yep, that movie is what made me look up the term some time ago. I quite liked the movie and I’ve recalled the word ever since. It helps that I have a fascination with the themes of recursion, fractals, parts being stand-ins for the whole, etc.
It’s also one of those concepts that you start to see everywhere once you are familiar with it. As an esoteric example from the industry I’m in, LVDS refers to an interface standard between graphics chips and LCD panels. However, LVDS stands for “low-voltage differential signalling”, which is really just one small element of the whole standard (FPD-Link), and a standardized thing of its own right. However, FPD-Link is the most common implementation of LVDS, and so the latter has become synonymous for the former.
A bit of a weird example but it really does point to synecdoche being a very common trend in language.
At no either time of year in the West are so many major holidays crammed together. Christmas, Hannukah, New Years, and Kwanzaa all appear days apart from one another. In the US we often lump Thanksgiving time in there as well being just a month ahead and being celebrated similarly (get with family and enjoy/appreciate what you have). So it’s fair to call it “the holidays” when it’s functionally one extended holiday season that lasts around a month.
The other holidays are dissimilar in the way they are celebrated and spread out a bit more chronologically.
I’d also like to point out, in defense of American slang, that we don’t call one device a “telly” while ignoring telephones, telegraphs, telegrams, telescopes… Heck just look at this page:
That has my vote! Just further proof that there’s always a way to avoid awkward usage of the possessive personal pronoun with elegant re-crafting of language. “Plant your asses so we can get started” works, too.
Never heard the puzzle referred to as only a “jigsaw.” If you told me that you’ve been working on a jigsaw, I would think you’ve been either repairing or using a woodworking tool.
According to the English professors at Ball State University, it’s not plural. I wrote “everyone…their” twice on my first essay in English 102. That got me a failing grade. I never made that mistake again.
