59 Matching Annotations
  1. Sep 2024
  2. Jun 2024
    1. The most important nontechnical use of 'disprefer' (for me) is to say that among a sea of choices to which I am largely indifferent, there is some choice that is particularly my least favourite—I may not have any legal, moral, or other objection to it, I just don't like it. I wouldn't say I use this all the time, but I certainly use it regularly when it's appropriate.
    1. Not preferring is not the opposite of preferring, but rather the absence of preferring.

      Referring to how "dis-" might imply it's the opposite.

      I can see their point,which I think is that "To favor or prefer (something) less than the alternatives." simply makes it not your maximum preference (so in that sense, it would merely be the absence of the state of being the maximum), not necessarily your minimum (least favorite) rated/preferred choice.

      But I think it can actually mean the opposite of preferring. To me, to disprefer something is nearly the same as if you show a distaste for something.

  3. Apr 2024
  4. Oct 2023
    1. transitive verb

      It's hard for me to see the difference between the transitive and intransitive forms of this verb.

      Is that the transitive form can/must be used with a noun following it, like "presume something", while the intransitive form cannot be followed by a noun, but can (and often is) followed by a prepositional phrase, "presume that something"? Pretty subtle difference, but I guess it's there...

    1. There are certainly cases where you can use dependency and cannot use dependence: for example "The UK's overseas dependencies", or "This software releases has dependencies on Unix and Java". So if the dependent things are discrete and countable, it should definitely be "dependency".
  5. Jun 2023
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  16. Jul 2020
    1. source | edit | rollback | link

      I can see (here) another reason people might incorrectly spell the verb roll back as "rollback": because they are including it in a list of other single-word words separated only by spaces. If one were to include the space in "roll back" as it should have, then it would "break" this meaningful-whitespace design/layout.

  17. Jun 2020
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  20. Jun 2017
  21. www.matthewedavis.net www.matthewedavis.net