B.J
James Murray, aka the original guy behind the oxford english dictionary, being pretty damn tolerant for 1895
an interesting linguistics find! so I'm reading this text from 1908 and it keeps referencing "hp" in the context of "not being at full hp" "applying your full hp to a task" etc
and I'm like....... okay that is a perfectly normal way to describe energy and reads totally clear to me, but I KNOW you don't mean hit points/health points which is the first place my brain goes, so what are YOU using hp to mean
and it's not explained in-text, which means it was common enough to not warrant explanation to the 1908 audience, so gotta look elsewhere
horsepower. turns out it's horsepower.
and I'm absolutely FASCINATED that a commonly used initialism from 1908 now stands for something different AND YET the contextual meaning is still the same to a 21st-century reader
I could hand this guy my nintendo switch and he'd be like, ah yes I understand, this ''''pokemon'''' loses horsepower throughout the fight
language is amazing
excerpts from a book I’ll never write