by neufer » Tue Aug 27, 2019 12:22 pm
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
JohnD wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2019 9:12 pm
And, quote, "MESSENGER is one of the few things created on the Earth that has left and will never return"
If the more than fifty missions to Mars, dozen to Jupiter, score to Venus and handful to Mercury, plus comet and asteroid probes, the landers of all Apollos that touched down, and all the other uncrewed landing and crashing Moon probes, are a "few things that have left and will never return", yes. Otherwise, a bathetic hyperbole.
Most things that "leave the Earth" (e.g., arrows, baseballs, footballs, shuttlecocks, etc.) are expected to return.
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=few wrote:
<<few (adj.) Old English feawe (plural; contracted to fea) "not many, a small number; seldom, even a little," from Proto-Germanic *fawaz (source also of Old Saxon fa, Old Frisian fe, Old High German fao, Old Norse far, Danish faa). Always plural in Old English, according to OED "on the analogy of the adverbial fela," meaning "many." Phrase few and far between attested from 1660s. Unusual ironic use in quite a few "many" (1854), earlier a good few (1803).>>
bathetic (adj.) 1834, from bathos on the model of pathetic (q.v.), which, however, does not come directly from pathos, so the formation is either erroneous or humorous. Bathotic (1863, perhaps on model of chaotic) is not much better.>>
[float=left][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M84tgBZtg8Y[/youtube][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ieyV-KLaKI[/youtube][/float][quote=JohnD post_id=294749 time=1566767537 user_id=100329]
And, quote, "MESSENGER is one of the few things created on the Earth that has left and will never return"
If the more than fifty missions to Mars, dozen to Jupiter, score to Venus and handful to Mercury, plus comet and asteroid probes, the landers of all Apollos that touched down, and all the other uncrewed landing and crashing Moon probes, are a "few things that have left and will never return", yes. Otherwise, a bathetic hyperbole.[/quote]
Most things that "leave the Earth" (e.g., arrows, baseballs, footballs, shuttlecocks, etc.) are expected to return.
[quote="https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=few"]
<<few (adj.) Old English feawe (plural; contracted to fea) "not many, a small number; seldom, even a little," from Proto-Germanic *fawaz (source also of Old Saxon fa, Old Frisian fe, Old High German fao, Old Norse far, Danish faa). Always plural in Old English, according to OED "on the analogy of the adverbial fela," meaning "many." Phrase few and far between attested from 1660s. Unusual ironic use in quite a few "many" (1854), earlier a good few (1803).>>
bathetic (adj.) 1834, from bathos on the model of pathetic (q.v.), which, however, does not come directly from pathos, so the formation is either erroneous or humorous. Bathotic (1863, perhaps on model of chaotic) is not much better.>>[/quote]