Timeline for "To Obscure" Word
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
5 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Oct 20, 2014 at 12:14 | vote | accept | Jonathan Mee | ||
| Oct 17, 2014 at 18:37 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @Marthaª: Oftentimes in the written form we use a hyphen to force the target of the attributive noun. So it's obvious with the dodo-killing of the sailors we mean the killing of dodos done by the sailors (quite apart from the fact that we probably wouldn't expect dodos to kill sailors! :). So arguably in the absence of a hyphen you might incline to the alternative reading regardless of context. But mostly I think the basic form is inherently ambiguous without context, punctuation, or intonation to guide the audience/reader. | |
| Oct 17, 2014 at 17:45 | comment | added | Marthaª | I agree that I would interpret "the tree obscuration of the smoke" as the trees hiding the smoke, not the other way around. | |
| Oct 17, 2014 at 17:17 | history | edited | FumbleFingers | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 266 characters in body
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| Oct 17, 2014 at 17:08 | history | answered | FumbleFingers | CC BY-SA 3.0 |