It’s not unreasonable to infer from by the time I was done reading the comment I knew what the word meant and even had a rough sense of when I would want to use “soi-disant” as opposed to “so-called” or “self-proclaimed” that thomblake didn’t interrupt his reading of the comment to go perform some other task (e.g., looking the word up on google).
I mean, if someone said about an essay that by the time they were done reading it they had a deep understanding of quantum mechanics, I would probably infer that the essay explained quantum mechanics, even though they might mean they started reading it in 2009, put it down unfinished to go study QM for three years, then found the unfinished essay (which was in fact about gardenias) and finished reading it.
I did not deduce it from context—I looked it up. Using the Internet.
It’s the obvious thing to do if it’s after 1998.
Somehow in your comment it seemed like you meant you’d figured it our yourself...rereading it, I don’t know why I thought that.
It’s not unreasonable to infer from by the time I was done reading the comment I knew what the word meant and even had a rough sense of when I would want to use “soi-disant” as opposed to “so-called” or “self-proclaimed” that thomblake didn’t interrupt his reading of the comment to go perform some other task (e.g., looking the word up on google).
I mean, if someone said about an essay that by the time they were done reading it they had a deep understanding of quantum mechanics, I would probably infer that the essay explained quantum mechanics, even though they might mean they started reading it in 2009, put it down unfinished to go study QM for three years, then found the unfinished essay (which was in fact about gardenias) and finished reading it.