Spyke
lemmy.world

On the right is Two Pair, but you should know that it still gets trumped by Three of a Kind.

18
Katana314reply
lemmy.world

I remember one time that I got a flush of scissors, and then my dad beat me for clogging the toilet.

4

That would just be one pair of scissors while this is clearly two pairs of scissors

3

I teach ESL, and this kinda shit in the English language drives me nuts. It's impossible to explain. Just gotta know it. The worst is when you're asking questions. "What's this?" for single things. "What are these?" for multiples. HTF do you explain that you have to know to ask "What are these?" when you're asking about pants or scissors. They're literally asking what those things are. It's bizarre.

13
Bluewingreply
lemmy.world

Just blame the French for things like this. Your students will be like "Oh that explains it" and move on to the next nonsensical thing they need to learn.

Every language has it's "you just gotta know" moments. Like German. Not too hard until you start getting into technical reading and speech. Just how many words can you glue together? And why?

7
qarbonereply
lemmy.world

It is impossible to intuit, but you just introduce "pair of pants" as the singular article. Thus, two pants are "two pairs of pants."

7

Which is fine for more advanced students, but for kids whose vocabulary and grammar are already very limited, it confuses things a lot.

2
AA5Breply
lemmy.world

Bring a pair of kitchen scissors, and awe them by separating the halves

2
lemmy.world

Why is a pair of scissors separated in halves? Shouldn't a pair of scissors be separated into 2 unit scissor?

EDIT: so you would have 2 half pair of scissors? A pair of half pair of scissors?

2

Apparently this oddity has a term

pants is an example of a plurale tantum—a word only ever used in its plural form

But I don’t see anything makings sense of it

2

Mind was blown when I was learning about an xray-based microfabrication technique. Where the x-rays are known to scise (to cut) polymer molecules.

It took me several years to realize that scissors are tools that scise things. They are prolific scise-ers.

8
lemmy.world

From the recent Tom Scott upload I learned a group of ferrets are called "a business". We need more silly names to refer to multiple items. The layered parody of a pair of a pair of scissors is indeed tickling my silly bone.

11
Sylvartasreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

And a group of velvet worms is called "a cuddle". Idk who comes up with these but I like them.

5
squarereply
lemmy.zip

I'm not a meme guy. I've never posted nor stolen a meme. I'm tempted to make this my first.

2

Are you saying the anthropomorphic duck has an anthropomorphic dick?

1
lemmy.world

One time my grandmother gave me two pears. She said, "Here's your two pears". I said, "This is just one pair" and we went back forth a bit before she got it.

8

Pairs of scissors, obviously.

Which 4, or 17, or 249, or 17843368 etc would also reasonably be called.

9

Last i checked though scissors don't have a species attribute so I think we're good.

1

If there’s a boy pair of scissors there, and a girl pair of scissors there, then it’s a brace of pairs of scissors.

Obv.

English is very straightforward.

5

The correct name for a group of scissors is a circumcision. That is a circumcision of scissors.

You are welcome.

1

Seen many threads of people arguing over this, except for two pairs of pants. And it's just mind boggling how people can't figure out that it's "two pairs".

1