On 2/23/06, Mike McCarty <mike.mccarty@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Thumbs are digits, but they are not fingers. Toes are also > digits. But if you ask someone "How many fingers do you have?", > the answer is ten. In aggregate, thumbs are fingers, but > individually, they are not. Some aspects of English are pretty > confusing. Like to discuss uniplurals? Or words which have > two different forms for the plural, but with different meanings? > How about verbs which have different conjugations depending > on what the object of the action is? How about words which > are their own antonyms? (That's one of my favorite categories.) > > > By the way, if you hold one hand in front of the other, you can hold > > up ten fingers with only eight gaps between them! > > Heck, I can hold up my fingers with *no* gaps between them! Beat that! > > Mike I doubt that you can do it with no gaps. I though about it, but there will be microscopic gaps that you could not avoid. I figured that in a discussion with Mike McCarty, I had better be as accurate as possible. So, the idea that the thumb is not a finger is specific to the English language. Indeed, in Hebrew it is a finger- as are the toes! So while English speakers have 8 fingers, Hebrew speakers have 20. > How about words which are their own antonyms? > I'd love to see some examples. I love word games- and this may be valuable. In an attempt to keep this On Topic, are there any computer (or linux) related ones? Dotan
