Exceptions are made to the adjective-order rules for emphasis, or contrast with previously-mentioned things. One can imagine a dialog “Bring me that big rubber ball.” <Brings over a blue ball> “No, I meant the red big rubber ball.”.
It’s commonly called a contronym. I don’t think I can be convinced that it is, though, as substituting its opposite “figuratively” changes the meaning of the sentence and the point of using the word, which is to intensify.
Which sites this source:
This is always how it sounded to me; not as a contronym or auto-antonym, but as a hyperbolic intensifier. Swapping in “figuratively” just doesn’t maintain the same connotation.
Maybe “contronym” can mean two different things?
I’m fairly sure I’ve seen the order violated for emphasis of a specific attribute in poetry and fiction too, although I can’t bring to mind a specific example.
For some reason that reminds me of another English pattern - the use of a repeated word to indicate the archetypal version of the word:
“Gimme a beer.”
“Dark, or light?”
“Light.”
“Regular light, or light light?”
Not a real-world example, but in the book Andrea Vernon and the Superhero Industrial Complex, there’s a superhero called “Captain Well Actually”.
Anything you say to him, he comes back with “well, actually, it’s…”. And whatever his correction is, he’s right. They leverage it to figure out how to defeat the aliens or whatever the enemy was. “I know, we can throw water balloons at them!” “Well, actually, that wouldn’t work, we’d need to fill them with Seven Up” (not a real quote from the book, but you get the gist).
It’s not “Daylight SavingS Time,” but “Daylight Saving Time.” If you are quoting US Code, then it’s properly the latter. The former is a common name is pretty much coeval with the “official name.”
They’re not “saber-toothed tigers,” but “saber-toothed cats,” as they are not “tigers.” “Tiger” for this critter has been used for pretty much as long as “cat.” Anyway, even the “official names” of critters aren’t always technically correct: Giant pandas aren’t ‘pandas.’ Clouded and snow leopards aren’t members of the leopard family. Musk oxen are ovine, not bovine. Etc.
(And I’m obviously using the word ‘family’ not in the Linnaean sense.)
And Daylight Saving Time is what you switch to in the spring when you turn your clocks forward, not what you switch to in the fall when you turn your clocks back. If you hate how it suddenly starts getting dark an hour earlier in the fall, what you hate is Standard Time.
And arguably, they’re not even cats, since “cats” are sometimes defined as having retractable claws, which smilodons lack.
Did you mean to say that giant pandas aren’t bears, or is this a deeper rabbit hole than I thought?
“Zoological facts they don’t want you to know!”
The giant panda is a bear (family Ursidae) but the red panda is in a completely different family (Ailuridae). So one could say that one of them “isn’t a panda” but it’s sort of an arbitrary choice of which one. The red panda was described to Western science earlier than the giant panda.
Maybe.
I agree w your point that switching to Standard is the reason for the change.
But if your objection is not to when it gets dark, but rather the abrupt change, then that objection is founded in the entire concept of DST: namely changing clocks in big lumps to adjust for the seasons. So IMO it’s fair to say the fall change back to Standard time is a direct consequence of DST existing and I therefore blame DST for it.
Lots of people are apparently utterly flummoxed by these changes. In every thread about DST, the majority position seems to be “I don’t care which, but the switch just kills me. I’m sick and sleep-deprived for a month or two after each change.” I personally find that personal circumstance and line of thinking unfathomable, but I’m not most people.
In fact, the red panda was originally just called ‘panda.’ It wasn’t until naturalists decided that “particolor bears” weren’t bears at all, but more closely related to raccoons, as (red) pandas were thought at the time to be procyonids. So the particolor bear became the giant panda and the panda became the red (or lesser) panda. It took 100 years or so to realize that red pandas weren’t procyonids and that giant pandas were in fact bears.
The “well, actually” part comes into play when one starts asking DST objectors how they want to fix the system:
To see how widespread this misapprehension is, look at coverage of California’s Proposition 7, which easily passed in 2018. The Los Angeles Times described the measure as “ending daylight saving time”; CBS called it “the first step of abolishing” DST. That is incorrect, as these outlets would’ve known if they’d read the proposition, which is titled the Permanent Daylight Saving Time Measure. As that name indicates, the measure permits the state Legislature to implement year-round DST by a two-thirds vote after obtaining federal approval. The media’s inability to articulate the proposition’s purpose may have led to voter bewilderment, as illustrated in the CBS article, which features a California resident who asserts: “I don’t like Daylight Saving Time. It disrupts me every fall.” Given that DST begins in the spring , this Californian probably meant to assail Standard Time but inadvertently contributed to anti-DST fervor.
I think what is meant is that the California resident simply doesn’t like changing the clocks, which is attributed to something in their mind vaguely called “Daylight Saving Time.” Not much thought has actually been put into whether it’s DST or ST they prefer, just they don’t like changing clocks and DST is associated with it.
Zactly. “DST” means 2 different but related things:
- the clock setting used in much of the USA during summer
AND also - the fact clocks are changed at all in either direction
Without asking each individual which meaning they take, you can’t say anything useful about their opinions.
Time pedantism sometimes is totally irrelevant, and other times it is critically important.
I’m sure someplace there is an “Ummm, acktually,” about the differences between UTC, GMT, and Zulu time. Probably only when someone gets it wrong (“London is in UTC,” “No, the time in London is UTC, London is in GMT!”)
Other times the pedantry might matter. If somebody sends me an invitation to arrive at an event on 20 June 1900 MST, does it start at 7pm or 6pm? Are they just trying to look cool with MST, when they really meant MDT, or is it some computer generated thing that means UTC-7 (MST), and I should adjust for my local time on June 20, which will be UTC-6 (MDT).
Fortunately that doesn’t occur very often, and it’s much more common someone typos am/pm, if they’re going to make a mistake.
I do host international events, and I create the calendar with a fixed time zone. That means when people look at my events in their local calendar, the events may start at 3am. I get a question or two about this every year, to which I just have to say, “jet lag.”
True, they are not that closely related to the red Panda, but which came first? Now Ailuropoda melanoleuca are classed as a type of Bear.
Good point.
wiki- The snow leopard (Panthera uncia ) is a species of large cat in the genus Panthera of the family Felidae. along with- Leopards- sometimes called panthers. But indeed, there are other Non Panthera cats like Species that are not part of Panthera also called “panthers”. The clouded leopard Neofelis nebulosa Is not part of panthera, true.