I don't consider it any more improper than the word "pyrotechnic", which means "Fire technique". Pyrotechnics does not always involve explosive components. Whirling around flaming sticks like at a hawaiian party also qualifies.
The difference is that "pyrotechnic" is used that way by people other than you. (Or, at the least, it is in common enough use that I have heard many other people use it, while your use of "gastropod" is one I have
never heard before.)
I provided a purely linguistic rationale, that you have not very effectively countered, but still expect a recantation on.
I hardly think that I've "not very effectively countered" it. The simple fact is, "gastropod" does
not and
never has meant "crawls around," and the method you used to create that meaning is quite flawed, to the point where anything that generates acid would be considered oxygen...not to mention that your useage is more easily applied to snakes than flesh balls (since snakes have actual stomachs). No matter how I've phrased it, that's what I meant.
I asserted that the method of use was not the method you ascribed to it, which is the source of the error in your argument.
Oh?
Compare: Asserting that a certain shade of deep blue is "Cobalt blue", when the pigment does not contain cobalt. The pedant will assert that calling it cobalt blue is erroneous, and be partially correct. His insistence that the person calling the cobalt free pigment "Cobalt blue" cease doing so, because it causes confusion, is completely missing the point that "Cobalt blue" is a color descriptor, not a descriptor of its composition.
The difference is, "cobalt blue" is in common use. And it doesn't really have a different meaning.
In this case, I was referring to a fictional creature that has only one major body organ composed entirely of muscle, which is able to contract much the same way a mollusc's "Foot" does, as being a gastropod, referring explicitly to the descriptive nature of the word, and not any specific meaning found in biological jargon.
No, it really doesn't.
A. A flesh ball's "foot," as you insist on calling it, is more like the body of a cnidarian than any part of a mollusk of any kind, in part because the flesh ball is its own separate creature. In addition, a flesh ball could
never be considered
any kind of mollusk, because it lacks vital characteristics that gastropods and other mollusks have, such as mantles, sense organs, shells, ganglia, tissue layers, or, you know,
organs.
B. Last I checked, "foot" typically applied to a separate organ which was used to move, not a whole body. Heck, by your logic, a worm could be considered a foot.
Essentially, you are being this guy:
There's an xkcd for everyone and -thing, isn't there?
and I grow weary of your insistence.
And I of yours.
I am willing to agree that the use is unusual, and even unexpected. I still hold however that it is not functionally nor technically wrong to use it in that fashion, as I can find no argument against it other than an appeal to authority logical fallacy.
EG, "No scientist uses that word that way, therefor your use of that word in that fashion is incorrect."
Unless you can come up with something that does not revolve around a false precondition as an argument, I will not recant, and you are simply wasting everyone's time trying to force the issue.
...We're talking about words.
Specifically, scientific, taxonomic words.
When the subject in discussion is a human construct, then an appeal to an authority is not a fallacy if the authority in question is an authority because of his mastery of the field which defined and invented that construct. It would be like arguing that an "automobile" is anything that moves entirely on its own and ignoring the testimony of engineers and mechanics, or debating the use of the term "habeus corpus" and ignoring lawyers.
True, but when the words used by the scientist are chosen explicitly because of their descriptive meaning, that argument falls apart. EG, the word "echinoderm" was chosen explicitly because of how it describes the appearance of sea urchins.
No other reason.
In this case, the scientist is doing exactly what you just lambasted; redefining words to suit his own purposes, without accepting criticism for doing so outside his own specialty.
However, now that the word has been invented, it has a meaning, so you can't arbitrarily assign a new one to it and expect people to agree with you.
Much like the candybar example I used previously.
Which one was that, again? The one where all candy bars were chocolate and therefore no non-chocolate bars could be considered candy bars?
The one that was riddled with logical holes because inhabitants of that world would be more justified in not calling non-chocolate bars candy bars than we would be in not calling dogs "perros"?
(taxonomy is far older than Darwin. Darwin's major contribution was to show that one animal slowly becomes another over time, and that as such, many creatures that look dissimilar are in fact related. This was not accepted well by the biologists of the time, because it redefined how creatures were classified, as well as called into question certain religious beliefs. Because the biologists had already invested a considerable amount of effort into creating their own lexicon, after Darwin, (and later, genetic testing), the definitions were simply changed to keep the names intact. This is why "mammal" no longer means what it used to mean as a descriptive adjective, and now means something completely different, which requires insider knowledge. [nowhere in the etymological chain is a 4 chambered heart, and being endothermic even close to described.] Essentially, rather than rename everything to suit their new conventions, they simply chose to redefine a whole lot of words to suit those conventions, and did so of their own volition, and thus have established jargon in its truest sense. Jargon is defined as words that are incomprehensible to most people-- in this case, the "correct" usage being demanded here is exactly that; usage that defies any contextual clues about its meaning through established and still widely used prefix and suffix use, and ultimately sounding like complete gibberish outside of their collective bubble. If, in 100 years time, "american english" ceases to be used as a primary language and becomes "dead", then the very mal-appropriation of "candybar" I conjectured would be a dead ringer fit. The specious argument of "We created that word by shoehorning words together!(therefor it means whatever we want it to mean!)" does not whisk away the origins of those words, nor does it whisk away the reality that native speakers of that dead language also created and used neologisms as well. (Compare, "I Say that a "Toothtickler" is a species of caterpillar, and that it has nothing to do whatsoever with tickling teeth! Nobody was around to tell me that is wrong, so therefor I am right!") This is further damned by their own neologisms being in the same character as those used by the native speakers in antiquity. "Pyrotechnica" being a good example. The argument that "Nobody uses that language anymore, so it's OK for us to misuse it as we see fit" is fundamentally faulted, and reeks of hubris. The assertion that I am using these words incorrectly is therefor a serious intellectual sin, because the definition being demanded under all circumstances was itself created through abusing and misusing language-- albeit, a dead one, chosen specifically so that nobody could object-- and is thus guilty of exactly the same "crime" it seeks to correct, making it a hypocrisy. (EG, "We stole that word first! It means what WE SAY it means!")
Explain how this is relevant. And maybe use a magical device called the Enter key a bit more often.
Are you saying that because scientists can change the definition of words to suit new paradigms, anyone can use any word to mean anything? Because that makes no logical sense.
OK, pointless conversation is pointless. Even if one of you is conclusively proven wrong, it doesn't really change anything of value but the term we use to describe a magic meatball.
We're discussing linguistics, not taxonomy.
And while it
is pointless, I kinda already typed several piecewise responses...
Unless someone wants to talk about some method of reproduction, this thread is now (once again) about raw-modifiable courtship rituals.
No objections here.
I actually mentioned the notion I had about goblins (with a single "great goblin" that has a harem, whether they are male or female) because of the oddly gender-blind way in which DF generally works. A "take-what-you-want-by-force" society in fantasy always tends to be male-dominated with males gathering a hoard of females like slaves that are basically never shown at all in most fantasy, since it completely wouldn't do to have characters you might find in a pitiable or sympathetic position among the race you're supposed to hate.
Having occasional female goblins that are like amazon queens sitting there equal to the male warlords because they just plain demonstrate the combat prowess to accumulate male lackeys by force of arms without any sort of gender discrimination - just pure judgment of military might is kind of the thing that makes DF a bit different.
Just to point out, there is a (semi-)logical reason as to why polygamy is so much more common than polyandry: A man can have more kids with more wives, but a woman has the same cap on kids regardless of the number of husbands she has. Relatedly, in many species males are larger and stronger than females (both because they are more "expendable" for mating purposes, meaning they get volunteered for dangerous things like hunting, and for competition with other males), which gives them an advantage in the kinds of competitions many earlier cultures may have used to determine their leader, as well as less...formal ways of gaining power (it's easier for a big guy to bash in the old leader's head than it is for a smaller woman to do so).
So...yeah. Matriarchies are probably a good idea, but I doubt that they'd be 50-50 with patriarchies.
Especially if we eventually have human cultures with gender segregation, it would be amusing to see Goblins say that even if you call their ethics "evil", theirs are at least "fair". The rules are clear, might makes right, and that's really how all your hypocritical social structures are formed in the first place - the people at the top are just the children of the people who had the might to enforce their social stratification in the first place. (At which point they go back to torturing the weak for fun because, hey, they're the strong, and they have that right.)
Agreed.
-snip-
This stuff sounds neat, but I don't know if it should be part of the Standard Goblin Package.
Goblin society would be thus stratified into a pecking order of combat prowess with a few top goblins and a chain of command of mid goblins controlling sub-entourages of lesser goblins.
This could have an effect on all of goblin society, as well, as it would mean that the top goblins would be the ones choosing what the lesser goblins were doing, and could basically force the lesser goblins to care for their own offspring (if they were female higher-ranking goblins) while they could focus on their own political games. (With orders to be tough on them, but not to actually kill them. If they abused the children out of frustration for having to take care of them, then it would just toughen the goblin up, anyway. It's like naming a boy "Sue".) Politics and family would basically be the same thing.
While that does sound good and gobliny, there's other ways goblins could do that as well.
Elves, likewise, I'm not sure would be marrying in exactly the same sense, either, since I see them as even more a bunch of happy communists than even the dwarves are.
Rather than throwing their children off on a subordinate, they'd have some communal daycare, and druid-assigned jobs/castes and an otherwise fairly free love atmosphere. (Since apparently, princesses can have relations with goblins without even her supposed mate getting mad about anything as much as the fact that she favored a goblin more than him, when he thought of himself as such a great lover.)
I see elves as having cultural elements more commonly associated with great apes of various sorts, but perhaps pacified a tad. So...free love, perhaps, creches, probably no.
