Jamie wants big boom!
When England’s glasshouses (which we call greenhouses) became popular during the eighteenth century, one devoted to growing grapes was called a vinery. One used for pineapples was called a pinery. One used for both was a vinery-pinery. (Or possibly a pinery-vinery. I’ve found evidence of both.)
In German, a knife is neuter, a fork is feminine and a spoon is masculine.
I somehow missed this recent story.
Actually, the courts or regulatory agencies will decide what the law means. The sponsoring senator’s intention likely bears very little weight.
The law specifies whipped cream chargers. The media was at fault for spreading disinformation.
So if the dish ran away with the spoon, what pronouns would they prefer?
Striktly speaking, it is the words that have gender, not the things the words denote: it is a purely grammatical thing and has nothing to do with biological sex. This can be difficult to grasp for people who speak languages that have no gendered pronouns, like English*. So it happens that there are even things, denoted by different words, that have different genders, depending on which word you choose to use. Die Eisenbahn (femenine) and der Zug (masculine) are both trains**. Actually the train has no gender at all, but the word that expresses the concept of a train can have one or the other.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the difference between sex and gender. If people only knew this we could be spared a lot of fruitless, vitriolic debates. No chance, I know…
Now you got me looking for three synonims for the same concept, one female (die), one male (der) and one neuter (das) to make my point even clearer. Can’t think of one right now, but I bet they exist. Perhaps @EinsteinsHund or @Treppenwitz have an idea?
* Apart from he/she/it, but not for objects like spoons (the/der), forks (the/die) or knives (the/das).
** Die Eisenbahn can also mean the train company. And der Zug can mean so many things that Mark Twain used this word to mock the German language. Still both words are commonly used for a simple train.
I’m sure that I knew such an example, but I can’t come up with one right off the bat. Now I will spend the rest of the night thinking about one…
ETA: a rather construed example: der Weg, die Strecke, das Wegstück. All mean track or route.
Same problem here. I’ll wait…
Look above for my edit. 
A bit construed, indeed, but correct. 
There must be better ones, but if that is enough for you to sleep easier, I’ll accept it.
Don’t worry, I’m a night owl anyway…
I guess it depends on whether you calculate using length or volume.
Sorry to post a video but there was a lot in this video that I didn’t know before today:
A sampling of facts:
- You can measure a plant’s relative health by how much sugar it has in its sap. The value you’re looking for is unrelated to the plant species.
- For much the same reason that people don’t have insects taking bites out of our skin, healthy plants don’t either. Garden and farm plants that have insect issues are in an environment that has made them unhealthy - e.g. poor light, bad genetics, small containers, pesticides killing beneficial bacteria, etc.
- Healthy food tastes better. It has more sugar and more flavor.
Nitpick: misinformation.
Disinformation is misinformation intentionally and maliciously disseminated to further the speaker’s agenda. So unless the media were purposefully trying to harm either whipped cream makers or the sponsor of the bill, rather than just misunderstanding it and being sloppy, it was misinformation.
Today I learned India is considered part of Asia.
Which continent did you think it was in?
That’s continental drift for you.
Heck if I know. Need to brush up on my geography. 