Kombinita Socialisma Demokratio wrote:Galloism wrote:Personally I know quite a few dogs that would make better mayors than quite a few mayors.
I wish someone would change this wording to make it understandable.
In the USA, extreme patriotic people will burn the flag which they claim to revere and honour very highly, if it barely touches the ground for any reason at all. It is far sillier to do that than to officially require non-gendered language be used when/where gender is irrelevant.
Ok, I'll admit that custom is sillier.
Would you consider it silly for the wording in official documents to be changed to use a commonly used word from using an uncommonly used word which is just as understandable as the more commonly used one?
Actually "maintenance hole" is a lot less commonly used than "manhole" on our side of the pond, so they'd be changing it to an uncommonly used from a commonly used word. In fact, if you search the dictionary for "maintenance hole", it redirects to manhole (this is also true on wikipedia). It's also less understood, given manhole gives a very specific image (a hole about the size of a person, which provides access to something, typically a sewer), whereas maintenance hole is more broad, and conjures the image of some kind of hole or hatch through which maintenance can be performed (which can be hand sized or person sized).
Given, if all the government documentation changed to maintenance hole, in 50 years or so it would become the common word, but that will take time. Currently, they're moving from a commonly used word to an uncommonly used word.
"Human effort" is pretty well understood, but thought of less mathematically than manpower. If someone asked me how much manpower a particular task would take, I might say something like "2 engineers 2 weeks", whereas if they asked me how much "human effort" it would be, I'd probably have to think about what they were asking me.
Kombinita Socialisma Demokratio wrote:Galloism wrote:Honestly if you said porthole I'd probably be confused. Porthole makes me think of a ship, like the little round windows where you can look out over the sea.
And I did not remember that use of the word before I searched to see how widespread the use of it that I am accustomed to is. Dialectal differences. Older people have even more differences than I from you
("r" is rarely pronounced between two vowels by people over about 65 years old, and "stark", although uncommon, is a synonym of "strong").
See, I looked up porthole just now because I wondered if there was some definition I didn't know about.
I can't even find a definition for porthole that includes a "manhole" or "maintenance hole".
porthole noun
port·hole | \ ˈpȯrt-ˌhōl \
Definition of porthole
1 : an opening (such as a window) with a cover or closure especially in the side of a ship or aircraft
2 : a port through which to shoot
3 : PORT entry 2 sense 2
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/portholeAdmittedly, I did not consider the hole a gun or cannon would shoot through, although I've heard that too.