Innovative Usage Thread

[Linguoboy]

I'm not sure what to make of this usage in a report on the recent floods in the Midwest:

The total damage is already in the hundreds of millions of dollars and is expected to climb as the flood threat remains. The views from the sky over the flooded Midwest reveal miles and miles of devastation. CBS News' DeMarco Morgan took a plane to Fremont, a town of 26,000 that is nearly isolated by the water. Volunteers with planes are helping fly in supplies.

"Fremont's landlocked and you know, they're running out of food … So I was just more than happy to help," one volunteer said.

Is he really using "landlocked" to mean "surrounded by water"? Has anyone else ever come across this?

[Travis B.]

Yes, he is using landlocked to mean "surrounded by water", and no, I've never seen this usage before.

[Zaarin]

Sounds like a malapropism to me.

[Linguoboy]

I just googled "landlocked by water" to see what I'd find and got over 2000 Ghits. Some relevant examples:

In fact, the city [Juneau] is completely landlocked by water and mountains.

Russian River rising: Guerneville completely landlocked by water.

Being landlocked by water and other natural elements, many escaped prisoners also found refuge in Maroon communities.

[Raphael]

When my Mom watches movies or TV shows and a character dies under circumstances that may or may not involve foul play, she sometimes says "Der ist gestorben worden", usually with a short pause between "gestorben" and "worden". It's a bit difficult to translate into English - the closest I could think of would be "He was died". Oddly enough, there are quite a lot of Google hits for the German phrase - I would have thought it was a personal habit of hers.

[Linguoboy]

When my Mom watches movies or TV shows and a character dies under circumstances that may or may not involve foul play, she sometimes says "Der ist gestorben worden", usually with a short pause between "gestorben" and "worden". It's a bit difficult to translate into English - the closest I could think of would be "He was died".

"He's been died" would be closer.

Oddly enough, there are quite a lot of Google hits for the German phrase - I would have thought it was a personal habit of hers.

When my nephews were just starting to learn to play video games, they frequently used "die" transitively, e.g. "I died him". FWIW, these weren't combat games, so the methods of dealing death were rather indirect, e.g. dropping meeples into water and letting them drown.

[Ryusenshi]

In French, se suicider is normally a reflexive verb: il s'est suicidé = "he committed suicide" (litt. on himself). It makes sense because, well, committing suicide means killing oneself. But you can use it, sarcastically, as a transitive verb: suicider quelqu'un means "to murder someone and make it look like a suicide". Il s'est fait suicider = litt. "he got suicided", meaning "someone assassinated him and covered it as a suicide".

It was common after 1993: former Prime Minister Pierre Bérégovoy died in weird circumstances, seemingly killing himself (he fell into a depression after losing the elections), but tons of conspiracy theories have been raised (was he planning to reveal some secrets about other politicians?).

[Moose-tache]

I remember as a child rarely using the word "kill" when playing. It just felt really... serious. Shouting "I'm gonna get you" while making a gun shape with your hands was OK, but if any grownups saw you make that gesture while shouting "I'm gonna kill you" to your peers, you might raise a few eyebrows. And killing people in games feels different anyway, like its own institution (look at how the connotations of "losing a life" change in video games). So it's possible those kids are making a grammatical stretch to avoid a much bigger semantic one.

[Vijay]

One thing I just noticed my mom saying at 5:35 here is "leave it into the oven for an hour."

[Xwtek]

In my dialect of Indonesian, it seems that possessive suffix is obligatory except for pronoun possessor. This is different from Standard Indonesian that is avoided. For example:

Buku Andi (standard)
Buku-nya Andi (my dialect)

This is from influence from Javanese language, where possessive suffix is obligatory:

Buku-ne Andi

[Vijay]

Isn't it Anda in Standard Indonesian?

[linguistcat]

How widespread is the use of guy or dude for objects as well as people? I've heard some people using it in California for at least a decade, but it wasn't common. But now I've been hearing it enough in Utah that I've started to use it myself without meaning to. Has anyone else noticed this, and if so in what places or dialects?

[Vijay]

I can't say I've ever heard of that, no.

[Kuchigakatai]

I've definitely heard people using "guy" for an object before here in Vancouver, but not utterly commonly. I haven't heard "dude" used that way though.

[linguistcat]

I've definitely heard people using "guy" for an object before here in Vancouver, but not utterly commonly. I haven't heard "dude" used that way though.

Good to know in some places there's a split

[akam chinjir]

I don't think I've heard that, though I seem to have gotten used to streamers on Twitch using "dude" as a sentence-final particle.

[Estav]

How widespread is the use of guy or dude for objects as well as people? I've heard some people using it in California for at least a decade, but it wasn't common. But now I've been hearing it enough in Utah that I've started to use it myself without meaning to. Has anyone else noticed this, and if so in what places or dialects?

Can you give some examples? Like somebody points to something and says "can you pass me that guy?" I can kind of imagine "guy" being used that way in that context, but it isn't usually used for objects in my dialect. Similarly, I'm familiar with jokingly saying that an object "lives in" a particular place, but I would still say that the expression "live in" normally implies an animate, or at least living subject in my dialect.

[Neon Fox]

I've heard it a few times in contexts where I would say "thingie" or "doodad" or the like: "Hey, while you're up, grab one of those twisty guys, would you?" But it's rare, and for me highly marked. I've never heard "dude" in such a position.

[Whimemsz]

I've heard it a few times in contexts where I would say "thingie" or "doodad" or the like: "Hey, while you're up, grab one of those twisty guys, would you?" But it's rare, and for me highly marked. I've never heard "dude" in such a position.

My experience is identical to yours

[Xwtek]

Isn't it Anda in Standard Indonesian?

Andi is male given name