We should probably just use those phrases directly then, rather than excluding possible readers without adding any informational content.
Nonsense. More words is better. Nuance is good. Words are trivially easy to look up.
I didn’t ask what the word meant, because 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”.
Agreed that more words are better–more possible information can be conveyed. However, it sounds like you’re better than the average reader at grasping the meaning of words from context. (Knowing French, I can guess what ‘soi-disant’ means...having no idea, I don’t know if I would have deduced it from the context of just that one comment.)
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.
Nonsense. More words is better. Nuance is good. Words are trivially easy to look up.
I didn’t ask what the word meant, because 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”.
What is the additional nuance in “soi-disant” that’s not in “self-described”?
Agreed that more words are better–more possible information can be conveyed. However, it sounds like you’re better than the average reader at grasping the meaning of words from context. (Knowing French, I can guess what ‘soi-disant’ means...having no idea, I don’t know if I would have deduced it from the context of just that one comment.)
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.