Hence why I said you wouldn’t miss it outside a vehicle.
Emphasis added. I would. And so would most regular Americans. I know it’s popular on this MB to stake out some obscure position for pedantic reasons, but it’s ludicrous to think that most Americans would see a footpath and think of it as a road.
It certainly is. :rolleyes:
[QUOTE=John Mace;]
[…] it’s ludicrous to think that most Americans would see a footpath and think of it as a road.
[/QUOTE]
But is it “ludicrous” to think that most Americans would read a sentence like “There have been roads there for as long as there have been people” and not immediately understand the appropriate sense of “road” in this context? I don’t think it is.
Actually, John, in this case I think that pedantic obscurantist was you, when Chronos made the above-quoted perfectly reasonable statement and you gratuitously snarked his entirely justifiable use of the word “road”.
Holy Mother of God, all I said was that you’d have to use a rather loose definition of the word “road” to make that work. What’s so snarky about that? A loose definition-- i.e., one that most Americans would not use, unlike the Old English definition you offered. Seriously, though, anyone interested in further debate on this, I’ll be happy to continue… in one of the debate forums.
Which, given that most Americans are perfectly familiar with the appropriate meaning of the word “road” in a pre-modern context, was rather pointlessly pedantic of you.
You’re right, what you did was more gratuitous nitpicking than gratuitous snarking, and I hereby substitute the former term for the latter in my criticism.
[QUOTE=John Mace]
A loose definition-- i.e., one that most Americans would not use, unlike the Old English definition you offered.
[/QUOTE]
No, you’re still mixing up “definition” and “etymology”. I gave the appropriate modern definition of the word “road” in the sense that Chronos was using it—i.e., “designated pathway for people to travel on”, which IMO most Americans are perfectly capable of understanding in the appropriate context—and threw in its Old English etymology as background information. If I had known including the etymology would confuse you so, I would have left it out.
Aside from that whole semantic debate, I’m not sure there were even footpaths for as long as there were humans in the area. Remember that the first inhabitants would have been nomadic, hunter/gatherers living in a dessert environment. Nomads in that type of area wouldn’t necessarily have established paths of migrations, but might navigate their travels by landmarks. I think it would be more accurate to say that we really don’t know exactly what existing in the area “for as long as there have been people” there. That is, if the assumption is that whoever lived there would have a similar reason to call that bird a “roadrunner” in whatever language the spoke. I’m assuming that’s why Chronos brought up what he did, but if that isn’t so, perhaps he can explain what he meant.
The ancient Celts had a trackway from modern Canterbury through modern Westminster in London to modern St. Albans. Under the Romans the route was extended to Channel and passed through Londinium so the route became a Roman road. Under the Saxons the route was extended into Wales and given a name that has been modernized as Watling Street even though much of the route goes through rural countryside rather than urban settlements.
Maybe the roadrunners used to be streetrunners? English is too complicated to know for sure.
As Colibri notes, that is correct - Chaparral refers specifically to a type of shrubland which occurs in California and Baja California. But the term is commonly used for a wide variety of other shrub/scrub lands as well. Even by such sources as this Arizona edu ag extension page talking about “Arizona’s Interior Chaparral”:
Not to mention all the “Chaparral” this and that names for things in Az.
They probably needn’t have imported the term. It might already have been getting applied to the kind of desert scrublands the roadrunners were running through, correctly or incorrectly.
“camino” originates from a way or path or trail you walk (caminar: to walk), in both the literal and figurative senses, but by the time modern Spanish came along it extended to roads and streets and generally the overland way between any two points.
(“Por el polvoriento camino de Córdoba a Sevilla” - Along the dusty way from Cordoba to Seville ; “los caminos de Dios” - the paths of God)
As in “avocado” vs. “alligator pear”, “roadrunner” vs. “Chaparral cock” or “ground cuckoo” would be a very elegant adoption of a derivation/translation of a loanword over a quite awkward English construction.