The "I Didn't Comment in Another Thread" Thread

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I must be old, I still use it as "accomplish something nigh-impossible" - although I suppose with the implication of "using just your own resources" as well, so kind of the same meaning. The fact that "bootstrapping" has become a verb is some real linguistic drift though, and reflects that truncation effect nicely.
 

Ryujin

Legend
I recently stumbled across a show I had forgotten about that made me wonder if it was the source of that song. "One Step Beyond" was an early '60s show, similar to "The Twilight Zone", that was supposed to feature horror stories based on true events.

 

I recently stumbled across a show I had forgotten about that made me wonder if it was the source of that song. "One Step Beyond" was an early '60s show, similar to "The Twilight Zone", that was supposed to feature horror stories based on true events.

I can vouch for the radio show version. Pretty decent listen, and (like most OTR stuff) easily found on youtube and other places online.
 


RealAlHazred

Frumious Flumph (Your Grace/Your Eminence)
I'm guessing the biggest use of "bootstrap" for the past 35 years or so has been in statistics where it has been one of the two big modern tools (the other being Markov chain Monte Carlo). It gets its name for an analogy to pulling oneself up by their bootstraps (reusing the sample data).

That term gets used a lot in software testing.

For new words, I love reading Jack Vance stories. He'll throw a term on a story, and you try to gutta its meaning from context, then check the dictionary to see if it's a real word and if you got the meaning close. If it's a term he made up out of while cloth, He'll include a footnote on the page with his definition.

We fans used to joke he was going to have a footnote in the first line of his autobiography, then he went ahead and put one in the title!
 

Cadence

Legend
Supporter
For new words, I love reading Jack Vance stories. He'll throw a term on a story, and you try to gutta its meaning from context, then check the dictionary to see if it's a real word and if you got the meaning close. If it's a term he made up out of while cloth, He'll include a footnote on the page with his definition.

We fans used to joke he was going to have a footnote in the first line of his autobiography, then he went ahead and put one in the title!

Many of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe book entries on Wikipedia have a spot for the "unfamiliar word", although sometimes it is the usage that is unfamiliar and not the word.
 
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