I really like the expression "that you have just made shoot of."
I answered the pier question years ago: You walk towards the shore and keep going.
Anyway, what's wrong with "bleeding edge"? It kind of grates but I don't see "doesn't make sense".
Per wiki, the bleeding edge is beyond the cutting edge and the leading edge, in the place where bold, new, unproven, and possibly (but not necessarily) worthless or counterproductive technologies are being tested.
Oh, right, TFA, one should R them. And one has. But one forgets.
The German language is fully logical and has no awkward idioms, I suppose.
The German noun declensions are especially logical, with four sets of rules and about a hundred exceptions.
One expects Germans to produce crisp phrases with no ambiguities and extraneous words or so.
I believe that it has long ago been established that every word in German other than Zug and Schlag is extraneous.
Isn't the point of a long walk off a short pier that you fall in the water and drown?
11: I had always understood that to be the case. I don't see where the confusion comes from.
Also, the point of shooting fish in a barrel is that it's easy because the fish can't get away. The German guy makes some good points about how this doesn't really make sense in the current context, but it presumably dates from a period when plastic bags were not readily available but barrels and guns were.
And don't even get me started on "bleeding edge."
Also, the point of shooting fish in a barrel is that it's easy because the fish can't get away.
And yet the Mythbusters managed to milk an entire episode from testing whether or not it was, in fact, easy to shoot fish in a barrel.
(Of course, the episode ended with them blowing the barrel up entirely.)
Isn't the point of a long walk off a short pier that you fall in the water and drown?
You can't keep walking, though. See here.
19: It's like you've never even seen a Looney Toon.
4
"bleeding edge" refers to the pain likely to be incurred when attempting to adopt technology which is beyond the state of the art.
4 gave me the heebie-geebies, which brings the thread full circle, since heebie wrote the original post. "Ben" is a pseudonym for heebie, right? I don't remember seeing it here before.
Apparently the shock-wave from the bullet is sufficient to kill the fish. You don't even need to hit the fish:
http://mythbustersresults.com/episode91
I think the mythbusters guys were kind of pussies for not wanting to shoot live fish. I mean, would they go fishing? it's not as though killing fish is an activity human go out of their way to avoid.
there's a pretty limpid pond on my friend sacha's farm in VA where the fish swim right up to the shore (it drops off fast). I've often though you could get up on a ladder and shoot a good number of fish with a shotgun. (you'd only get one go, obviously). I never bothered to get around to it.
Shooting fish with a bow and arrow is a standard practice. There's no particular reason to use a rifle or shotgun but it wouldn't be hard, except that shotgun pellets wouldn't penetrate as well and rifle bullets might ricochet around. Also there's be a big mess every time.
Carp are especially important to bowfishers, because they're big and fat and not protected by law (and also tasty, God damn you all -- eat your carp!).
God damn you all -- eat your carp!
Emerson is a Polish mother on Christmas Eve?
I've watched a guy shoot carp with an arrow. Tons of fun for everybody except maybe 5% of the carp involved.
Is carp the Polish lutefisk or gefiltefish? Lutefisk and gefiltefish really hard to eat. Poles are lucky. Gefiltefish looks too much like 50-year-old embalmed specimens from a HS science classroom.
There's breaded and fried carp served with horseradish. There's also 'Jewish carp' which isn't anything any (non Polish) Jew I've spoken with seems to have heard of: Carp gently simmered with a few spices, almonds and raisins in a minimal amount of water, then then allowed to gel in its cooking fluid and served room temperature. Very, very good when done well.
I assume "bleeding edge" is just buggered up "leading edge" in the same way that "hone in on" is buggered up "home in on." "Bleeding" has the additional attraction of being all macho and tough-guy dick-wavey.
Up to a certain point, I'd be willing to eat the Christmas carp for the reluctant members of the teraz kurwa my family.
"hone in on" is buggered up "home in on."
Lies.
Also the rest of the comment is wrong, in that "bleeding edge" was an intentional pun originally[citation needed].
33: I'll concede "hone in on" if you'll stand with me on pronouncing "primer" as actually spelled rather than as if it was spelled "primmer." This has been driving me up the wall lately.
nosflow is assuming that "long walk" denotes "walking over a long distance." That is of course what it would mean in almost all normal circumstances, but "long" could alternatively mean "conveying one over a long distance." A walk that begins at the start of said short pier, and ends in the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns, is certainly a long one, and even if the transit is not entirely by the mode of walking, walking is both principal and sufficient, making the words meet.
I almost got carp this Christmas. Ealing, being heavily en-Poled, has a few Polish delis that had a load of fresh carp in for Christmas.
Not unconnected to this, they drained our pond in early December and they had a full-time security guard (!) on the holding tank where they put the carp while the lake was dry, to stop carp-theft.
That's the kind of expensive measure you have to take when you live in a place where fish can't legally buy a handgun.
I had assumed that bleeding edge came from the printing world. A full bleed is when you print all the way to the edge of the paper, with no white-space border. Though technically, you're not actually printing full to the edge (which would make a big mess in your press), you're cutting the paper after it has been printed to create an "edge bleed".
Our [communal for the small group of houses/flats that share it] pond isn't that big, but apparently has a little over 200 carp in it. There's a heron sits and watches it most days, so I assume it's getting something out of it, or it wouldn't waste its time.
So, looking it up, a thinly sourced web page[1] seems to indicate that the original usage of "bleeding edge" was both a reference to and a contrast with "leading edge" (and, by implication, "cutting edge"), which is to say that one would wish to be at the leading, or cutting edge of the blade without getting cut oneself, and bleeding, putting one at the "bleeding edge". So they are referring to the same part of the blade, but differ in the relationship of the subject to that part of the blade. I'm sure this elaboration will quell nosflow's concerns.
That guy perfectly captures a certain kind of "I am so rational and everyone and everything else is not" German sensibility. While wearing DJ headphones. Awesome.
The "party pooper" video is also funny, with him making all kinds of English mistakes Germans wouldn't actually do like 'peoples' and 'punches bowl'. Also, I am now going to go around saying
I want to go to parties wis Jennifa just to make observation.
pronouncing "primer" as actually spelled rather than as if it was spelled "primmer"
The latter is clearly the act of an insane person. It's a thing that primes. It's a primer. Do these people talk about egg timmers?
On the other hand, perhaps it is a thing that makes one prim.
all kinds of English mistakes Germans wouldn't actually do
I was confused about whether he was actually getting mixed up -- "eine colleaguin"? -- or making intentional mistakes to be funny. So it's the latter?
"Primmer" is just for reading books. Otherwise (coat of paint, rifle cartridge, printer cartridge, etc.) it's "prime-er".
The only person I know who's written something called a "Primer" is also prim, so I'm going to go with 44.
Wasn't "bleeding edge" coined during the cocaine fueled dotcom euphoria when people were making up soundbite catchwords for everything? "Who moved my cheese ", "tipping point ", and a dozen others I seem to have successfully repressed.
One minute manager, X rules of extremely successful people, think outside the box, management secrets of Attila the Hun..... it's coming back to me.
45: Yeah, the latter. That Kollege/Kollegin one especially: that's a mistake English speakers would make in German and that Germans just wouldn't get mixed up. I'm guessing the guy's accent isn't actually as strong as in the videos, either.
"Primmer" is just for reading books. Otherwise (coat of paint, rifle cartridge, printer cartridge, etc.) it's "prime-er".
This is also insane.
Language is funny. Maybe "premire" will come to be used for the first layer of paint on a wall.
This is also insane.
There's a long discussion of how to pronounce 'primer' in the archives.
I'm not attached to the prim(m)er/book, primer/paint distinction, but I've certainly heard it that way (not that prim(m)ers come up often). Is it regional or something? I know we've talked about it here, but I can't remember any resolution beyond people saying it was weird.
54: It's the kind of word Garrison Keillor busts out.
There are tons of words with different pronunciations for different meanings. Often it's the noun/verb distinction. A lot of times it has to do with the time when a word came into the language with that meaning. I suspect that primer meaning textbook is a much older meaning than the ones relating to cartridges, paint, computer printing, etc.
To put it differently, anyone who is upset by every English pronunciation and spelling weirdness they come across should probably switch their life to Finnish. He coughs though the wind soughs through the rough boughs.
soughs
I realize that I don't know this one. Sounds like female pig? Or like planting grain?
He coughs though the wind soughs through the rough boughs.
In Loughborough.
48: Well before that. Mid-Seventies IIRC. It's from trying to use tech in alpha test for production purposes and suffering the wounds.
I'm going with the Scots pronunciation, then.
I've never heard anyone in the history of the world [viz my interactions with same] ever pronounce the word as 'Primmer', in any context.
57: More awesome. Poodles really are a German thing. I appreciate his expanding the realm of 'stereotypical German things to make fun of' to poodles.
re: 64
I also follow this as a general rule.
I presume the place name in 61 is pronounced "Lur"?
I was wondering if he was a German DJ making fun of himself or if it was a full-on Borat.
It tuns out he actually is German and he actually is a DJ.
It's an American vs British thing, not a regionalism within America, I think.
I'm inclined to think 'Primmer' is one of those artificial shibboleths that someone just made up. English (both American and original flavours) seems to have more than a few.
'We need a way to mark out pedants and arseholes, Geoff.'
'How about we convince people that pronouncing an ordinary word in some stupid way is a sign of education and intellect? We can add some spurious etymology; they lap that shit up.'
re: 69
Sadly not. It's pronounced 'Luffbra', or 'Luffburra'.
I always thought the pronunciation of the reading book as "primmer" was a stereotypical hoity-toity British thing to do.
So it's actually a stereotypical hoity-toity Yankee WASP thing to do, like "Hwether"?
73. Or, in certain circumstances, "Loogabarooga".
re: 74.1
Definitely not British.
'Hwether', if you mean the word whether, that's not a class marker as far as I know:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_wh
Scots English retains the 'whine'/'wine' distinction, but lots of English dialects don't.
74: It's a "schoolteachers like to play 'gotcha' with their students" thing to do, I think. Also one of those trip-kids-up-in-spelling-tests/bees things.
Checking on Google Books, most early uses of the phrases "bleeding edge" are surgical and non-figurative. Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 1861:
...that thereby the head of the child would descend and be firmly engaged in the pelvis, and the bleeding edge of the placenta compressed to a significant degree to prevent dangerous flooding till delivery could be accomplished.
First figurative use seems to be in Vicksburg: A Poem by C.A. Hobbs, 1880:
Heed not these scattering balls, and pause not here
Upon the torn and bleeding edge of war's array,
First figurative use in prose is in Pat Crowe, Aviator: Skylark Views and Letters from France, Including the Story of "Jacqueline", by James Richard Crowe, 1919:
I first became excited at seeing so many brave fellows going up to the ragged, bleeding edge of civilization...
Maybe this has been noted above, but I would say on this basis that the phrase can properly be viewed as not the furthest-forward part of the cutting action itself, but the area most severely affected by the cut - like an industry in constant creative destruction. Not precisely how it's used today, but at least it's not a malapropism for "leading edge".
73: oh. Well that's perfectly normal.
Heed not these scattering balls, and pause not here
Mouseover text?
79: I think maybe it arose independently as a sort of play (not an unintentional malapropism) on "leading edge", though; the technology-related usage seems not quite synonymous with the older examples you've found.
You people getting huffy about the two different pronunciations of primer are being silly.Perhaps its an Americanism, but you know, English spelling and pronunciation are totally messed, and the mess varies from one place to another. Like I said, shift over to Finnish. And Turkish is also supposed to have a perfectly rational spelling system.
Only etymologically does the schoolbook meaning have anything to do with the other meanings mentioned.
82: Not impossible, but I feel medical terminology might have bled over both times.
I thought the point of shooting fish in a barrel was that even if you miss the fish, you will create a hole in the barrel and the fish will die anyway when the water drains out. I am astonished that anyone thinks "oh yes, the pressure shockwave will kill them anyway, of course!"
70: His accent is far too accurate not to be German.
re: 84
Sure. I'm the last person to talk about non-standard pronunciation, and I'm a long way from being precious about grammar or pronunciation. However, 'primmer' does feel like the sort of pedant-shibboleth thing one encounters sometimes. I may well be wrong, but it seems so wildly at odds with every usage I've ever heard.
1 of the 3 US pronouncers of "primer" on Forvo uses a short 'i'.
"Primmer" doesn't follow the spelling convention, but tons of words don't.
The word isn't used a lot any more for intro texts, and I suspect that the ones most likely to use it are the ones most likely to say "primmer". I think that the word is somewhat archaic.
To go on, in my memory the "primmer" is vaguely connected to some of the legendary stuff we were taught in primary school about the Puritans, the Founding Fathers, and the pioneers. Maybe Abraham Lincoln studied a primer, or Miles Standish, or someone. So in American English it may not just be an ordinary word but part of the ideological furniture.
1683: New England Primer
The New England Primer is published and becomes the most widely used reading instruction text in American history.
I thought the point of shooting fish in a barrel was that even if you miss the fish etc
One is informed that in the Old Days, fish were transported in barrels, the barrels being full of fish, with the result that you basically guaranteed to hit at least one.
"Primmer" is definitely a US only usage, and, says Moby, not universal there. Not even obsolete British - I used a Greek primer with a teacher born in about 1890 and he said "prime -er".
93: In any given barrel, you should expect to find either no fish or that the barrel is full of fish. If either of those conditions don't apply, you should expect that the barrel is in the process of being emptied or filled. The set of barrels for which none of these conditions apply is probably too small for study by quantitative methods.
Technically, we should say "Shooting fish in a barrel full of fish" to make it clear that you can't just go to any old barrel and start shooting fish. That's where you get breach of promise lawsuits.
Maybe the idea is really that you get in a barrel and get tossed in a lake, and you shoot the fish while in the barrel.
Shooting fish while going over Niagara Falls in a barrel is no mean feat.
Well that was just some bullshit timing right there.
But don't get in a barrel full of fish and then shoot the fish.
If you had a fish cannon, you could shoot fish into the barrel.
The barrel is technically part of the fish-shooting canon.
It's more of a mortar than a cannon, really. Rifling isn't something that works for that ammo.
It's like shooting fish in a barrel of fun.
What did the fish ever do to us, anyway?
Someone should tell the German guy about the proverbial barrel of monkeys.
In case no one has linked to it, this guy also has a great video about Rock Paper Scissors. The "Happy as a clam" one is good too.
Roll out the barrel, we'll have a barrel of fun...
The German version of the song has nothing to do with barrels.
The Rock Paper Scissors is even more "I am so rational and everyone and everything else is not."
109: Is he a Crooked Timber commenter?
101: A friend once had a job working with a bird cannon. His firm was studying impacts on aircraft windshields and jet engines. They even once tried (he said) a frozen turkey. Those are deadly, get the hell away from anyone using those as ammo.
With God as my witness, I thought a frozen turkey could fly.
In the course of reading the discussion of `shooting fish in a barrel', I have become convinced that, re: `bleeding edge', the parting of the flesh is being envisaged as effected not by contact with the leading edge of the blade, but by a shock wave in front of the leading edge. The edge of the region defined by the shock-wave is the bleeding edge. I'm sure no-one will disagree with this fine interpretation. Also, in the case of the bleeding edge of technology, the bleeding is caused by future-shock.
I saw "home in on" in a newspaper story today. A story published back in the 60s or 70s.
Sure, it wasn't until 1980 that the "hone in on" variant was observed.
"You are now origami swan or somesing" is great.
It's more of a mortar than a cannon, really. Rifling isn't something that works for that ammo.
It's fin-stabilised.
I saw "home in on" in a newspaper story today. A story published back in the 60s or 70s.
Homing in on things is pretty old: w.r.t. pigeons, among other things.
117: Not sure if we did n-grams when we discussed this before. Widespread use of "Home in on" is pretty recent as well. The pattern is interesting.
Flula in Germany very much makes me want to return. I don't think we'll make it this year, which will make for a gap of ~2.5 years or more.
