[HN Gopher] Which word begins with "y" and looks like an axe in ...
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Which word begins with "y" and looks like an axe in this picture?
(2021)
Author : flexagoon
Score : 132 points
Date : 2024-01-17 22:03 UTC (56 minutes ago)
(HTM) web link (english.stackexchange.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (english.stackexchange.com)
| DigiDigiorno wrote:
| Yeet
| rkagerer wrote:
| I'll go with poorly drawn picture of a Yo-Yo.
| saaaaaam wrote:
| Perhaps it's "Yikes! It's an axe!"
| MenhirMike wrote:
| Maybe it's Yaxche, which sounds like Axe.
| nick238 wrote:
| In Soviet Russia, yo-yo is axe.
| lolinder wrote:
| Apparently this was discussed here while the investigation was
| ongoing, and an HN user (thedrake) was responsible for finding
| the ball on alibaba:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14672359
| glimshe wrote:
| YAA - Yet Another Axe
| asdfghqwerty1 wrote:
| Yeet
| codetrotter wrote:
| Is the past tense of yeet, yate or yote, or yeeted?
| saaaaaam wrote:
| It's irregular, so it's yat.
| notpushkin wrote:
| I'd go with yeet/yet/yet, like meet (the confusion makes it
| even better). "Yotten" does look peculiar, though.
| saaaaaam wrote:
| Meet moot met mitten
|
| So it's probably yitten.
| trjordan wrote:
| Friends, please, click on the link. There's a long and
| interesting investigation that answers the question, which is
| presumably why this was posted.
| WJW wrote:
| First comment on the answer:
|
| > This is quite the most extraordinary stack exchange answer that
| I've ever seen.
|
| And I couldn't agree more. Well worth perusing if you (like me)
| usually only check the comments on HN.
| saaaaaam wrote:
| I've just read a dissertation about a plastic ball. I'm not
| sure what I think about that. It's a mixture of impressed,
| horrified and bemused...
| laborcontract wrote:
| In this case, only checking the comments on HN brings about a
| feeling of dismay at the sad state of comments on HN.
|
| People should indeed read the top answer. I assumed it ended
| after the first paragraph and only after your comment read the
| rest of it. Quite a rabbit hole and great investigation!
| primitivesuave wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree as well. The only nitpick I'd have on
| this dissertation is on the "U" - the anglicized term "U-boat"
| comes from the German word "Unterseeboot" (undersea boat). The
| first known use of the term "U-boat" is 1914, while the Germans
| and Swedish armed forces were commissioning submarines around a
| decade prior (in 1906 and 1904 respectively).
| sesm wrote:
| This is most likely the correct answer:
| https://english.stackexchange.com/a/396624
| dishsoap wrote:
| Maybe you missed the answer above it?
| donatj wrote:
| Looking at it, I suspect it is actually just a mediocre
| illustration of _yellow_ paint being squeezed out of a tube as
| one of the contents suggests.
| nomilk wrote:
| The most upvoted answer gives the explanation the ball
| manufacturer is Swedish ('axe' in Swedish starts with a 'y'), but
| other answers say it was probably manufactured in a country where
| English wasn't the first language (e.g. China) and the 'y' for
| axe was simply a typo.
|
| The evidence against the Swedish explanation is that the ball
| says c for 'cat' and d for 'dog', but in swedish the translations
| are 'katt' and 'hunn' respectively.
|
| This may be a case where the most upvoted answer is likely wrong,
| but because it was so entertaining and took so much effort, it
| was upvoted much more than the boring (but probably correct)
| answer.
| jomohke wrote:
| The most upvoted answer does track it down to a Chinese source.
| nomilk wrote:
| My mistake (I completely confess to only having skimmed the
| most upvoted answer!).
|
| > Our suspects! Hiding in China, right where our intelligence
| said they'd be. And all the other images match as well.
|
| And the lead came from HN itself!
| messe wrote:
| My thinking is that somebody who is not a native reader/writer
| of the latin alphabet, or English, confused h/y and the picture
| denotes a hatchet.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| The most upvoted answer doesn't say that it's a Swedish
| designed ball, rather that it is a Chinese knockoff where they
| moved things around and replaced some of the symbols with ones
| from books/toys for Swedish kids.
|
| Hence why the ones that match the 'official' ball make sense in
| English but the ones that don't make more sense in Swedish.
| yagkasha wrote:
| Yeoman?
| codetrotter wrote:
| > I think the manufacturer of your son's ball mixed in a Swedish
| word
|
| I found this super unconvincing at first. But they just kept
| goin. And going. And going. And the more I scrolled and the more
| I read, I started to think that they are right. And by the end I
| was fully convinced!
|
| Well worth reading.
|
| Thanks for sharing, OP!
| redcobra762 wrote:
| Why do I remember something like this resulting in the answer
| being "yeoman" as in a worker of land, also considered one who
| often chops wood?
|
| The effort given in the top answer is extraordinary, and is
| probably the real reason for the submission, so perhaps trying to
| answer the actual question is off topic...
| ChainOfFools wrote:
| Y for yellow, given that's the color of the handle and that you
| need something to be representative of the color. Even having a
| yellow square could confuse it with S for square, or having a
| banana can confuse it with B for banana. Similar problems exist
| with S for Sun, C for (a yellow) crayon etc.
|
| Also the handle is what has been drawn superimposed over the
| letter.
|
| Still, confusion with A for axe isnt any better than S for sun or
| whatever. Maybe the reasoning was that axe was semantically far
| enough away from being one of the usual standard bearers of the
| color yellow, that children would associate the letter with the
| color rather than the object?
| frostburg wrote:
| A bucket of yellow paint would be a likely choice if that were
| the case.
| vdaea wrote:
| That response went from "interesting" to "obsessive" to "cringey"
| pretty fast.
| linuxftw wrote:
| My personal theory is double translation of sorts. The item in
| question could be a 'hatchet.' Many romance languages use 'j' for
| the 'h' sound in English. Somebody somewhere was looking at
| 'jatchet.' Next, someone assumed that the j was pronounced 'y' as
| in a Germanic language (and also Semitic?). Thus, they ended up
| with 'yatchet.'
|
| Of course, 'y' is right next to 'h' on a qwerty keyboard, so it
| could just be a typo if they're going for hatchet.
| messe wrote:
| > Of course, 'y' is right next to 'h' on a qwerty keyboard, so
| it could just be a typo if they're going for hatchet.
|
| I could also potentially see somebody, not entirely comfortable
| with reading/writing latin script, mixing them up as the glyphs
| aren't entirely dissimilar.
| callumprentice wrote:
| I don't think that's an axe, I think it's a (poorly drawn) tip of
| a tube of YELLOW paint.
| CephalopodMD wrote:
| The most exhilarating true-crime citizen-sleuth detective story
| I've ever read. Eat your heart out, Serial.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Wasn't yew wood used for wooden handles in the past? It kind of
| looks like a yew-handled axe. Surprised that nobody mentioned
| that option.
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(page generated 2024-01-17 23:00 UTC)