did the mince and dice thing…still the quest… like for tree why… or say chop down the tree and cut off its branch …why is it also cut down a tree and chop off its branch.
Better to work on getting the kids to grasp and accept the concept that generally, spoken language is not machine code.
Insofar as there are rules and definitions, they are imperfect, and they are derived, not necessarily prescriptive. If it sounds right, that’s often enough for it to be right.
In your tree example, you can see why it makes sense - using the same word repeatedly in a sentence often sounds awkward, so we tend to use synonyms, even if they are imprecise.
(Although it is sometimes done deliberately for emphasis - e.g. “we’re going to be tough - tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”)
Interesting. In a professional kitchen, terms for cutting things up are actually quite well-defined
https://le-fermier.com/2015/08/07/back-to-basics-5-formal-vegetable-cuts/
ETA partly ninja’d by Mangetout
It still sounds like this is ESL school, which brings in different issues. Or perhaps a school for kids with psych issues who’re real big on extreme precision even if that’s an inappropriate expectation.
At any rate …
Perhaps try an analogy to food: Taste some soup. Add some salt. Taste again. Take a different bowl of the same soup. Add pepper. Taste that. All three are the same soup but all three taste a little different.
Chop and cut are different seasonings of the same idea, to separate something into parts. Chop implies greater violence and lesser precision. Chopping is necessarily noisy. Chop is also more “flavorful” and cut is more bland and generic.
The reason you can cut or chop a tree then chop or cut a branch is all about which parts of the process the speaker wants to make more flavorful. Just like all three soups are tasty, just not in the exact same way.
Love it! When we work together in the kitchen, one of us is cooking, the other is helping. My gf, cooking, once asked me to dice an onion. Checking my work, she said she wanted a smaller dice. I argued that would be a fine-dice or maybe a mince. The discussion never got heated, but we still have a difference of opinion over the dice/fine dice/mince thing.
I’ll show her the article. (When she isn’t holding a knife)
thanks everyone for all your time and help.
Chop is a subset of cut. Slice is a subset of cut.
Blessed are the cheesemakers.
Chop me off a piece of cheese, will ya please?