IIRC, those shows were also unfailingly meticulous as to the differences between seals and sea lions.
Whales are more closely related to bony fish than are sharks, but the problem is, so are we. If there was to be a single taxonomic set of organisms that included all of the things that are currently called fish, it would have to include whales, but also elephants and dogs and so on.
But ‘fish’ isn’t such a definition - it’s more or less ‘looks like a fish’, but in more technical terms.
“Actually, it’s well, poisoning”
I always read the meme as emphasizing the exaggerated way in which the people who engage in this typically say it.
Note that I stated that they can be argued to be fish, not that they are. Other possible arguments are that the category “fish” is simply not a clade, that is, based on how closely related the members are; or that the clade exists, but is not a useful category; or that the clade exists and is a useful category, but should not be called “fish”.
I skip “spicy” altogether for that type of description and use something like “well-spiced” or “heavily spiced” or “aromatically spiced.”
In terms of the other spiciness, I have the categories of hot pepper/capsaicin spice, mustard/brassica spice (mustard, horseradish, radish, wasabi) and peppercorn/piper spiciness. I’m sure there’s others I’m forgetting, but those are the three categories I most often deal with. They are all different types of spicy. I tend to think of mustards/brassicas as “sharp” more than anything, and black pepper is, well, peppery. It’s hot pepper spice that is my default “spicy.”
False. Acid is from Proto-Indo-European *h₂éḱ-eh₁ye-ti (“to be sharp”), eh₁-stative of Proto-Indo-European *h₂eḱ- (“sharp”).
Sour is from Proto-Indo-European *súHros (“sour”). Completely different.
I admit I am guilty of saying “That vehicle isn’t an SUV, it’s a crossover”. Personally, I think that’s an important distinction, because I think there’s some misdirected hate towards crossovers, because people are just lumping them in with old-school SUVs (which I think did deserve the hate they got). But other people obviously don’t think that distinction matters.
Like Jordan Peele as Neil deGrasse Tyson:
Okay, on that we agree.
“Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is a reconstructed language. There are no direct written or spoken records of PIE.” Acid can be shown to come directly from the latin “acidus”. , altho certainly there can be earlier roots.
Sour-
sour - Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
From Middle English sour , from Old English sūr (“sour”), from Proto-West Germanic *sūr , from Proto-Germanic *sūraz (“sour”), from Proto-Indo-European *súHros (“sour”).
Not that trying to go back to Proto-Indo-European is necessarily wrong mind you. It is a reasonable hypothesis, that many language experts like. Just unproven.
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family.[1] No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language, and it is the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. The majority of linguistic work during the 19th century was devoted to the reconstruction of PIE and its daughter languages, and many of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction (such as the comparative method) were developed as a result.[2]
Are you suggesting that a proper reconstruction of a proto language might find that ‘sour’ and ‘acid’ are cognates?
It’s as well established as anything in the science of linguistics, so please don’t spread any linguistic pseudoscience around here or you WILL get so busted.
Nope.
The cite i gave disagrees.
Here is another-
The debate hinges on fundamental questions. If PIE existed, what evidence supports it? How do linguists reconstruct a language never recorded? Can shared features among Indo-European languages only be explained by a common source, or are alternative explanations viable? Beyond linguistics, does archaeology provide corroboration, or does it complicate the picture? These questions are not merely academic—they touch on identity, history, and the reliability of scientific methods applied to the past.
and
PIE was based on many fanciful assumptions. From a logical point of view, its proponents forgot that it is not enough to show that a reconstructed (and imagined) PIE, A, leads to languages B, C, and D, but that the derivation excludes all other reconstructed languages. One must be able to exclude reconstructions such as L*=> C => B => D or M* => D => C => B and any number of permuations thereof.*
This simply cannot be done, and so the PIE reconstruction is simply worthless, and just one of any number of similar reconstructions one can develop.
In retrospect, we cannot say that the labors of the linguists who created it were no worse than that of the scholiasts in the Middle Ages who determined how many angels can be accommodated on the tip of a pin. Because of the wars and violence that PIE has engendered, it should be compared to the similarly sloppy reasoning that led Europe, over the course of a century and a half, to try 80,000 people for witchcraft, half of whom were executed, and often burned alive.
But note i did say-
So, I am not calling it wrong. Still it is an unproven hypothesis.
Well, some Canada Geese live in Canada, which makes them Canadian geese, along with the other species of goose which live there. Of course they migrate. Wily boogers.
Anybody can cite pseudoscience. That don’t impress me much.
But the claim was that the words ‘acid’ and ‘sour’ were related. If PIE is right that that claim is wrong - and if PIE is wrong, the original claim is completely unsupported as well.
Sure. However, I am not saying PIE is wrong. I am just saying it is a unproven hypothesis. That point about the two words being unrelated may be completely correct- the known recent entomology of the words seems to indicate that the two words are not related. “Acidus” vs “sur”.
But take the White Hole hypothesis - unproven. But interesting. That does not mean you can prove something by postulating a White Hole. Wikipedia does indeed go back to PIE for Sour. So, a strong maybe.
And casting doubt on a popular but unproven hypothesis is exactly what science is about. For example- Phlogiston.
There’s no evidence at all that the words are related. Only if PIE-recontruction is wrong and some other reconstruction (that there’s absolutely no evidence for) is true and that reconstruction has the words related would the words be related. So anyone claiming that the words are related is making that claim based on no evidence- regardless of whether PIE existed or not
I have no issues with these statements.
Thsnk you