| Re: adjective form of decade |
Posted via Supernews, ht .. |
| Douglas Sederberg (vornoffREMOVE@sonic.net) |
2004/05/26 21:07 |
Path: news.nzbot.com!not-for-mail
From: Douglas Sederberg <vornoffREMOVE@sonic.net>
Newsgroups: alt.languages.english
Subject: Re: adjective form of decade
Date: Wed, 26 May 2004 20:07:09 -0700
Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com
Message-ID: <260520042007093252%vornoffREMOVE@sonic.net>
References: <10amn05fml2m8ff@corp.supernews.com> <40b49d90$0$19642$626a14ce@news.free.fr> <c92p2r$ids$2@news-reader1.wanadoo.fr>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-transfer-encoding: 8bit
User-Agent: Thoth/1.5.7 (Carbon/OS X)
X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com
Lines: 27
Xref: news.nzbot.com alt.languages.english:316
In article <c92p2r$ids$2@news-reader1.wanadoo.fr>, John of Aix
<j.murphy@nospamlibertysurf.fr> wrote:
> 40b49d90$0$19642$626a14ce@news.free.fr...
> >
> > > I are a engineer.
> > >
> > > Is there an adjective form of the word decade? I want to describe
> > > something that happens only once in ten years.
> >
> > "Decennial" is the word you need.
> > Remember that "decade" implies 10 *days* not 10 years
> > though many people seem to propagate the ill use :D)
>
> In French a decade is ten days strictly speaking and
> a decan ten years, the exact opposite of English. The French are right as
> 'decade' comes from decadi (ten days) in Latin and decan from 'decanni'
>
I don't think it's a matter of right or wrong, just who uses what, and
can the society you live in understand what you're saying. If I go up
to anyone in the USA and say it's been a decade since I've seen my
father, they are all going to think I haven't seen him in 10 years, not
10 days.
Plus, I thought the questioner was asking what 'decade' meant in
English, not in French.
|
|
|