Author Topic: Pend  (Read 1406 times)

Morbius

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Pend
« on: June 22, 2018, 06:29:48 PM »
Pend comes up pretty frequently.  It's classified as rare, but I think there's a case for making it common.  It's certainly common to me, and so it seems to the vast majority of players.  In yesterday's standard puzzle it was played by 542 of 634 players.  In fact, it was the seventh most frequently played word in the puzzle and was played more often than most of the common words. 

Les303

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Re: Pend
« Reply #1 on: June 22, 2018, 07:37:37 PM »
G'day Morbius,

I will look very foolish ( nothing new there ) if i have got this wrong but i can imagine Alan in the background jumping to his feet, raising both arms in the air & shouting hallelujah as he reads this post because I have to disagree,  based on his simple premise that just because a word is common to regular chi players, it does not make it a common word.


Cheers Les

anona

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Re: Pend
« Reply #2 on: June 22, 2018, 08:37:17 PM »
I'm not sure I'm disagreeing with Morbius. It's just I've never actually heard or seen pend in live use. I'm quite ready for it to be my ignorance again, but I've not heard "How long will it have to pend for", "Cases like this usually pend for months", for example. I thought it was intransitive only - does it also have a transitive use? If it does, I could see it would get rather more use. ("Pending" is common, obviously.)

Morbius

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Re: Pend
« Reply #3 on: June 22, 2018, 08:57:31 PM »
Les, you're quite right to point out that just because a lot of chi players know a word, it doesn't necessarily make it common.  In this case, though, the majority is pretty overwhelming (85%) so I'd reckon that's more than just the hard core players. 

Alan has previously stated that his main criterion for a word being common is that a reasonably well-read native English speaker will have heard of it (not necessarily that they use it in everyday speech).  I'd suggest that pend meets that criterion.

pat

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Re: Pend
« Reply #4 on: June 23, 2018, 02:20:09 AM »

... i can imagine Alan in the background jumping to his feet, raising both arms in the air & shouting hallelujah as he reads this post


Somehow I can’t imagine Alan doing that over a word suggestion. Or anything else for that matter.  >:D

rogue_mother

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Re: Pend
« Reply #5 on: June 23, 2018, 02:40:30 AM »
Back in 2009, Alan had this to say about pend in TRex's very first posted topic (pend was not the original subject). Naturally TRex was shocked to see that [fill in the word] was not considered common.
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nineoaks

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Re: Pend
« Reply #6 on: June 23, 2018, 02:50:28 AM »
Can someone post an example of 'pend' used in a natural-sounding sentence? Pending, impend, depend, append, expend, etc. are commonly used, but any sentence I dream up using 'pend' by itself sounds unnatural. The success of the picnic will pend on the weather. Hmmm... I dunno.

Morbius

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Re: Pend
« Reply #7 on: June 23, 2018, 07:37:46 AM »
Alan's 2009 comments are based on usage.  I'd certainly agree that usage of the word is uncommon, but I'd contend that usage is not the sole criterion for a word being common - awareness is (according to Alan's own definition).  If 85% of players played it, then that suggests to me that the level of awareness is high.

anona

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Re: Pend
« Reply #8 on: June 23, 2018, 09:27:12 AM »
Mmm, I'm probably one of them. But the first time I just tried pend because there was a possibility of its existing when pending was so well-known (sorry, too tired to put that more elegantly). Once accepted, it was such a short and easy word that I usually remembered it when it came up again, like a number of other short words I didn't know before Chi, e.g. nori, inro. It's a bit like ired or iring, which I think are accepted as rare and I would have guessed at only because ire isn't rare.

Jacki

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Re: Pend
« Reply #9 on: June 23, 2018, 08:21:33 PM »
Well i for one keep playing pend and then get surprised when it's rare. I agree with the point that even if the word is not used commonly but the majority of the players are aware of it then that makes a case for it being common.
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