From: "Peter Clark" <peter-clark@...>
> > Words are certainly needed for the temperature perfect to humans, not so
> > hot that you sweat, not so cold that you freeze or need to put on more
> > clothes, that then make you sweat...
>
> It's not one word, but two will still do: "Room temperature."
Generally
> understoood here to be approximately 72 F, or 22 C. Note that it cannot (in
> my idiolect, at least) be used to refer to other temperatures:
> *It's hot in here, the room temperature must be 50 C!"
> So even though you may be in a very hot or cold room, room temperature
only
> refers to a comfortable temperature level.
But as a drawback it only refers to rooms. And also, this temperature seems to
be different outdoors than it does indoors...
In my idiolect though "room temperature" simply means "not refrigerated/frozen".
> On Thursday 28 November 2002 04:05 am, Muke Tever wrote:
> > A neutral and/or a positive word for "smell" that isn't too high-flung
> > (closest general-purpose one I can think of is "aroma" which is really too
> > much).
> >
> > A word for the smell of food (like "nidor"...)
> Agreed--positive smell words are generally lacking. Although I use
"aroma"
> for nice smelling food. Here's what M-W says:
> "SMELL implies solely the sensation without suggestion of quality or
> character <an odd smell permeated the room>. SCENT applies to the
> characteristic smell given off by a substance, an animal, or a plant <the
> scent of lilacs>. ODOR may imply a stronger or more readily distinguished
> scent or it may be equivalent to SMELL <a cheese with a strong odor>. AROMA
> suggests a somewhat penetrating usually pleasant odor <the aroma of freshly
> ground coffee>."
Hmm, I'd like to kick the dictionary for that. "You smell nice" (or with other
adverb) can give the impression of a qualified smell, but by itself is entirely
negative:
You smell.
Something smells.
> I believe that Elgin's point was that there are concepts that are
*difficult*
> to explain in English that are vitally necessary *to women*--because those
> concepts lack lexical items, women are at a severe disadvantage.
Well,
--and here I remember the other word I really wanted to see in English: A word
to fill in this analogy: look/see : person-seeing :: X : object-being-seen.
The closest word I know of is "look" itself, or "seem" but they have the wrong
semantic shading: "it looks/seems blue" implies that it actually isn't, or that
one can't tell whether it is or not; "appear" is just as bad and could also
imply that it had just come out of nowhere.
*Muke!
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