“Ask” has had a noun form for as long as I can recall in British English. Phrases like “that’s quite a big ask” and “what’s the ask?” are commonplace IME.
Just out of curiosity, I looked it up in an American dictionary and it does have a noun form over here, as well, but it's noted as "chiefly British, informal".
Although, the term "big ask" is something I'm certain I've used before, as well as others, but more in a business/corporate context.
Or maybe I've just watched a lot of British television?
Maybe because to truly grok a person, you have to eat them [1]. I’d imagine that could hurt that person deep inside if they were alive when you started.
What’s a better noun for “abstract resource I can use to do computations on?” Because computer is too general — literally encompassing everything, or too specific — as a synonym for a PC.
I love that. It's an attempt to look smart when it really only makes you look stupid or pretentious. Or both. Do they not realize that there's already a word for that - solution?
A "solve" is common parlance in puzzling in my experience (ie puzzle hunt). Never used it in my day to day PM role though, agreed it would sound awkward.
You’re peeved by “ask” as a noun?! How the hell is “math” plural?! Why maths? The subject (singular) is math (singular). Do you study Englishes? Anthropologies? Medicines?
Mathematics are plural because it's a group of several disciplines, arithmetic and geometry today (music and astronomy used to be two other math branches in the past). It's actually an adjective that became a noun, so these four were the disciplines mathématiques, becoming simply les mathématiques later on.
At least that's why it's plural in French. I wouldn't be surprised if the English term is plural simply because it comes from French.
There are shortened forms of singular nouns that end in -s, which also end in -s. Some forms are more common in some cultures/places - "stat" vs "stats" for "statistics" comes to mind.
Yes, I'm also very peeved by "maths". And a million other things. Calling Universities "Uni". Horned-Rim glasses. A whole slew of grammatical oddities.
"mathematics" may end in "s", but that doesn't make it plural. We say "Mathematics is a science" not "Mathematics are sciences" (replace with "art/arts" if you don't belive it's a science). We also say "mathematics is a growing field", not "mathematics are growing fields". Because it's singular, the fact that it ends in "s" doesn't naturally require shortened forms of it to carry the last letter at the end. I get that in the UK people say "maths", but let's not make this out to be like one side is correct and the other is not because mathematics ends in "s". Particularly as "math" was first coined in the U.K. (much of contemporary U.S. English is an older form of contemporary British English).
In case you're interested, word creation is a pretty interesting topic in linguistics. The wikipedia page on this -- they call it "conversion" [1] -- seems like a good starting off point for someone interested in the subject.
Perhaps they use the word “advantage” specifically because it has no clearly defined meaning, so it is just a weasel word for legal purposes. Clarity is not your goal when the wrong sentence could cost a metric fuck tonne of money in court.
https://www.languagetrainers.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/201...
Looks like the 80s/90s kids that were brought up on these skits are finally taking over!