The Captain’s Log

Pontifications of The Great and Terrible Captain Cucamunga.

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Wed, 27 Mar 2024 14:12:34 EDT

Hopeless Versus Hapless

Hopeless…
…is an adjective that means without hope. When applied to people, hopeless means that the person does not have confidence in a future positive outcome or that the person’s hope in a positive outcome is naive. When applied to tasks, hopeless means that task has little chance of being completed successfully. When applied to situations, hopeless means that the situation is destined to degrade into a worse one.
Hapless…
…is an adjective that means unfortunate, which is to say luckless. Hap is an Old Norse word for fortune or chance. Hapless means without hap. Happy has a similar derivation and means the opposite.

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 13:41:05 EDT

Escalope and Scallop

Escalope
An escalope is a piece of boneless meat that has been thinned by pounding, rolling, or butterflying, coated with breadcrumbs or flour, and fried. Escalope is French. Schnitzel is equivalent German word.
Scallop 1
Scallop, the meat item, is an escalope. Scallop is an anglicized version of the French word. In English, scallop has been generalized to describe any food item that is sliced thin, such as scalloped potatoes.
Scallop 2
Scallop in the sense of an edible bivalve mollusk also derives from the French word. The French word is thought to derive from a Germanic source. Scallop appears to be related to the old Norse word skalpr, which means sheath, and the Middle Dutch word schelpe, which means shell.

Mon, 25 Mar 2024 10:11:40 EDT

How do you pronounce asphalt?

Brits say ass-falt with an unvoiced s.

Americans say as-falt with a voiced s.

Canadians say ash-falt. What’s up with that?

Fri, 22 Mar 2024 17:01:24 EDT

Consider This Sentence

The following sentence appears in The Toronto Star on its website. “Several gunmen burst into a large concert hall on the edge of Moscow on Friday and sprayed visitors with automatic gunfire, killing at least 40 and injuring 100 others in an attack that came just days after President Vladimir Putin cemented his grip on the country in a highly orchestrated electoral landslide.”

Run-on. I would remove the reference to Putin and the rigged election unless there were credible information linking the attack to the election.

My rewrite: “On Friday, several gunmen burst into a large concert hall on the edge of Moscow and sprayed the audience with automatic gunfire. At least 40 people were killed and at least 100 injured. The identity of the attackers and their motivation are unknown.”

Update March 23rd: BBC News reports that at least 115 people were killed and more than 140 were injured. ISIS-K has claimed responsibility for the attack. Four men have been arrested.

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