Restarting an Unused HO Engine

Wolf, why should I redefine a word simply because others do? It's not necessary except to them. Thus, THEY moved the goalposts here. Not me.

There's no need when the word is clearly defined and I used it as it was intended rather than changing it to win an argument. Which is why I simply stand fast instead of being led around by the ignorati.

Somebody said you were uncharacteristically riled up over this. Is that so or is this a genuine civil discussion?

-- Ray

As nature intended?

Is that the Depends(tm) brand? LOL

-- Ray

Because very few words have only one meaning. A good writer/reader recognises this, and adapts his writing/reading accordingly.

A word may be clearly defined by some group of technical users, but outside that group it will be used for other meanings. Which is exactly what happened in this case. You didn't or wouldn't realise that, and assumed people were using the word as you understood it (even though it's clear that even among the experts it has at least two meanings. I checked.) When people explained what they meant by the word, you accused them of misusing it and/or changing its meaning.

You just have trouble accepting that words have multiple meanings. I don't know why.

I'm not as riled up as I was, but I am impatient with your unwillingness to accept that this was not an argument about what some things were, but about what words were used to describe those things. IOW, a semantic one.

Trouble is, you can't win a semantic argument. The best you can do is explain, as carefully as you can, just what meanings you ascribe to words, and which of those meanings you intended. There are _no_ "correct" meanings of words, and I mean _none_. There are only meanings understood within specific contexts. And even within specific contexts, a word may have several meanings, eg "gauge" in engineering has at least four different meanings.

And keep in mind that over time, people use words for more and different meanings than the original ones. That's what's happened to "denatured", and it happened for the most obvious of reasons: as soon as you sell the stuff, you have to differentiate between the several varieties of denatured alcohol, or else people won't get what they want. The non-technical meaning has overwhelmed the technical one (which is a common fate of technical termns, BTW). So it shouldn't surprise you that your use of its technical meaning caused confusion. You insistence that you were using the word correctly, and everyone else was wrong or stupid, of course caused irritation and annoyance.

You can't tell people they're stupid for using a word in well-understood sense and expect them to love you.

cheers, wolf k.

When someone says "that's not what the word means" when the context is clear, or when you have explained the sense it is being used, they are arguing for the sake of it and have already lost.

Because it means they understand what you are trying to communicate. At which point it is unclear why they are arguing.

Many controversial newsgroups including leading edge scientific ones which shouldn't be, see too much of this.

Wolf, the fact is that nearly all "off the shelf" alcohols are denatured by law. At one time you had to have a prescription to buy the pure stuff. Any way that you look at it, denaturing has only one definition. Just because there is more than one way to denature alcohol is a spurious argument. It does nothing more than attempt to change the goalposts so my detractors can feel they've somehow won something. It's a game I don't play. Words do have meaning. We sort of agreed on that when we adopted the use of a dictionary.

-- Ray

It's a means of attempting to manipulate an outcome. The words denaturing or denatured have clear meaning to most people.

-- Ray

True, in the technical sense. But that's not how most people understand and use the word.

No, it doesn't. That's what you can't get through your head. The "definition" of a word is simply what people mean by it. That's all.

You miss the point. For most people it's irrelevant - all they care about is getting the stuff they paid for. So they use a technical term in a non-technical sense - happens all the time. So what?

You are too focussed on winning an argument, instead of clarifying what's being said. You're quite right that "denature" as a generic technical term refers any one of a variety of ways of making ethanol and other alcohols etc unpalatable, noxious, noisome, disgusting odoriferous, ... take your pick.

But by the second or third post it was clear that people were using the term to refer to ethanol + methanol (+ other things, depending). Yet you persisted in claiming that "denatured alcohol" could/should not refer only to this one type of denatured alcohol. Which is a nonsensical claim, since people not only could, but did, so use it. Without confusion, I might add.

HTH wolf k.

And they were incorrect but desperately trying to win a point. Their argument was irrelevant.

-- Ray

No, they were not incorrect. That's the way the term is used by most people in everyday life, in some parts of the world, eg, when buying the stuff at a hardware store. Maybe not in your part of the world, but so what?

And they weren't trying to win a point. They were explaining what they meant.

That's what you can't (or won't) accept: Different people, different contexts, different countries, different situations -- all these affect how people use words.

That is a fact of the way language works. Or, if you prefer, of the way people use language.

Live with it.

Or expect repeated run-ins with people who use words differently than you do. Most of those people are not as patient as I am.

Now I intend to sip a single malt while watching Inspector Lewis solve a dastardly crime.

G'night.

wolf k.

I've lived all but the last 10 years in America. Denatured alcohol does not have two meanings. End of story. Now go ahead and get cross with me if you wish.

-- Ray

This thread certain has gotten long. I finally got around to using the denatured alcohol on the engines wheels, and it worked very well. Lots of grime. I'm now just into cleaning up other matters with the layout before I put it up for sale. My next post, soon, will be related to that topic.