Hi,

I tripped over this quote in a cognitive science paper ([1]):

When sensory inputs are constant, a well-tuned perceptual prediction system will adhere to the old adage about weather forecasting – “tomorrow will be the same as today” – and will be correct in this prediction.

What they're trying to say is clear enough, but calling the quote an "adage about weather forecasting" feels a bit off. Do you recognise it as an adage, or maybe part of one?

Thanks!

- 2A02:560:4DA3:CC00:7C32:C059:4EDE:A463 (talk) 14:46, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In searching for the expression, I found a teacher's guide for an environment curriculum saying, "In predicting weather, predicting that tomorrow will be the same as today is known as a persistence forecast, and it is generally correct more than half the time." By searching Google Books for the expression plus the word persistence, I found a bunch of things about weather forecasting that contain the expression and explain ways of refining a prediction beyond the persistence approach, such as this. So it does appear that it's an "adage" familiar in the weather-forecasting community. Deor (talk) 16:06, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, okay. Meteorology's null hypothesis, basically. That makes plenty of sense. Thanks!

- 2A02:560:4DA3:CC00:7C32:C059:4EDE:A463 (talk) 20:23, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

S! is apparently used as a contraction of the word Saint in this map: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/COCHRANE%281825%29_p1.038_THE_EASTERN_PART_OF_SIBERIA.jpg
You can find it in the Kamchatka peninsula (S! Peter & S! Pauls). It is the first time I see a shortening like this. Do you have any information about it? Thank you! 195.62.160.60 (talk) 15:19, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That may be S^t with a full stop under the t rather than following the abbreviation. Deor (talk) 15:36, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) It's notS! butS^ṭ, using a superscript "t" with a dot underneath as to signifySt. for "saint". Bazza 7 (talk) 15:37, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There are a few cases where the number 0 is routinely pronounced as "oh", as if it were the letter O. Phone numbers and postal codes are the most obvious examples: .... 4036 is usually said "four oh three six". Even in those cases, we might say "zero" rather than "oh" if we want to ensure it's not misheard as "eight".

But there's a new one creeping in: "Carlton is now oh and 3 for the first time since 2019". This means that Carlton has lost the first 3 matches of the season and its running tally is 0-3. I've heard this a few times now.

Where else do we ever refer to the single number 0 as oh? 1 minus 1 = oh? Nope. Even in other sporting results, such as the current score in a particular match, it's "13-nil", never "13-oh".

Or am I just not keeping up with long-overdue "improvements" of our glorious language?-- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:23, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@JackofOz: just a note that "nil" is uncommon in American English. We might say "thirteen-zero", "thirteen-zip", or even "thirteen-oh". --Trovatore (talk) 02:11, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think this "oh" is common in more contexts than you're admitting, Jack. In the Who's song "905", the lyrics are "My name is nine-oh-five ...". (There used to be a chain of liquor stores in my area with the same name—from the address of the original location, as I recall—and it was always called nine-oh-five.) The obsolete Boeing aircraft was always a seven-oh-seven. James Bond is Agent Double-oh-seven, not nought-nought-seven or zero-zero-seven. And here in the United States all the baseball sportscasters, in addition to usages like "oh and three" or "seven and oh" for a team's record, also use "oh and two" and "three and oh" for balls-and-strikes counts and "He was oh for four today" if a batter has no hits in four at-bats. It seems rather common to me and probably based on whatever is euphonious and understandable in the context. Deor (talk) 20:03, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The article itself doesn't go into much detail, but the talk page of our article OO gauge has a couple of interesting threads relating to this: see Talk:OO gauge#Double Oh or Double Zero? and Talk:OO gauge#'Pronunciation' of OO and 00. Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 20:06, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Relating to shotgun shells, 00-gauge is "double-aught" --136.56.165.118 (talk) 00:03, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Deor, I'm just waiting for the day when some commentator says "They've won oh games so far this season". That would be "euphonious and understandable in the context", and since anything is fair game these days, it's only a matter of time now. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 18:37, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Presumably, the main reason the number 0 isn't pronounced "oh" when it's on its own is to avoid confusion - with the word "oh" or the letter O or whatever. The presence of other numbers lessens this risk sufficiently that the use is deemed unproblematic. Extending this to multi-number phrases with a pattern like "[number] [conjunction] [number]" makes sense to me.

How about in arithmetic expressions? "One plus oh equals one", "two minus two equals oh"? Probably not, that could be the letter used as a variable...

- 2A02:560:4DA3:CC00:7C32:C059:4EDE:A463 (talk) 20:41, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Are house numbers in English-speaking world read as respective cardinal numbers such as number 12288 as "twelve thousand two-hundred eighty-eight" like cardinal 12,288? Or are they read just like phone numbers? --40bus (talk) 21:44, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Off the top of my head, I'd say they're conceptually numbers, not strings of digits like phone "numbers". But in practice, they're not necessarily prounounced quite the same way as regular numbers, but use the more "streamlined" patterns that are also used for years. So "1600" would be "sixteen hundred" rather than either "one six double oh" or "one thousand six hundred", "1666" would be "sixteen sixty-six", and so forth.

- 2A02:560:4DA3:CC00:7C32:C059:4EDE:A463 (talk) 22:06, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As for the UK: good question! It is so rare to have street numbers greater than three digits that I don't think there is an "official" line. The highest house number in the UK is 2679 Stratford Road, Hockley Heath: the very last numbered house in the West Midlands before you cross the county boundary into Warwickshire. (Stratford Road (i.e. Stratford-upon-Avon) is the old A34, now the A3400, which is continuously named as such all the way from the Warwickshire boundary to The Middleway, Birmingham's inner ring road, and is built up with houses, shops etc. the whole way. It is unusual for an urban road to bear the same name for such a long distance, hence the rarity of high house numbers.) At a guess, I would think it would be spoken as "two-six-seven-nine Stratford Road". Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 22:28, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Hassocks5489: what, so are houses numbered consecutively starting at 1 or something, then? In the States, four-digit numbers are common in ordinary suburbs, and five digits in urban areas. But of course they aren't consecutive and don't start at 1. Just because there's a 2904 Yew Lane doesn't mean there's a 2903 or 2905; the closest might well be 2884. And there might not be any Yew Lane house below 2316 or something.

I guess I'd subconsciously assumed that No 10 was special. Of course our closest analogy is probably 1600. --Trovatore (talk) 19:12, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Trovatore: Yes, invariably numbering starts at 1 and continues until the road name changes. It is usual, but not universal, for odd-numbered houses to be on one side and even-numbered houses to be on the opposite side, but the numbering is still consecutive. Incidentally, If a building (say, a large individual house) is demolished and new houses/shops/whatever take its place, they will typically take the number of the old building, suffixed by a letter. For example, if 11 High Street stood between 9 and 13 High Street but was demolished for 3 new houses, the latter would typically be numbered 11a, 11b and 11c High Street. You occasionally come across something like e.g. 55½ High Street, but this is unusual. Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 19:39, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It depends on where in the US, fwiw. A lot of streets in older (by US standards) cities have building numbers that start at 1 and go up to the hundreds or thousands. (And a few do also have oddities like fractional building numbers.) -- Avocado (talk) 19:54, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

But British highway numbers commonly include four digits, like the B1408 in Colchester for a random example, and I believe that would be proncouned with "fourteen oh eight" just as we North Americans would pronounce 1408 in a street address or apartment number. --142.112.221.85 (talk) 02:14, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't say "B fourteen oh eight". I normally speak each digit, except for:

• two-digit numbers ("A sixty-five")
• three-digit numbers ending in 00 ("A five hundred") and optionally those ending in 0 ("A six five oh" or "A six fifty")
• four-digit numbers ending in two or three zeros ("A one thousand", "A sixty-one hundred") but not normally those ending in one zero ("B three one four oh").

When I've talked to others about this, people have told me that they use forms like that for some roads that are local to them, particularly if they start "10" (eg "A ten eighty-four") or end with a zero ("B sixty-three forty") ColinFine (talk) 13:28, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like the general lesson here is that it doesn't take many digits til one gets to the point where there are so many options, and where the way speakers, usually subconsciously, pick one of them gets so complicated, involving competing preferences at various levels, that making firm predictions about how a particular numeric sequence is going to be pronounced by a particular speaker gets borderline impossible.

- 2A02:560:4D04:4E00:61FC:10C6:DEF1:AD8F (talk) 15:48, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For a (part of a) phone number or a postal code, I'd pronounce that as one-two-two-eight-eight. As a house number, probably twelve-two-eighty-eight. (American here.) -- Avocado (talk) 00:23, 8 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Well, as usual, there's more to this than meets the O. Er, I. Er .. Thanks, all. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:17, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved

What is the origin of the idiom "Not on your Nellie"? Is it used outside UK? Thank you. 2A00:23C7:528:1F00:F49F:6AD7:7C4C:55A1 (talk) 19:52, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The very interesting Word Histories site (a blog, but it cites its sources very well) has an article here which goes into detail about the phrase. Essentially it has 1940s rhyming slang origins, and is also used in Australia. (I'm British and am only familiar with its use here. I admit to using the phrase quite regularly myself!) Hassocks5489 (Floreat Hova!) 20:04, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It raises the question, who was Nellie Duff?  ​‑‑Lambiam 21:47, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

She was a member of the Baptist Church & a native of Owsley Co., Ky.. DuncanHill (talk) 19:05, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Really? So not Australian at all then? 2A00:23C7:52F:8B00:6420:B115:3070:8013 (talk) 21:30, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It was a joke. She was just the first (of several) Nellie Duffs I found. I doubt very much there was a real Nelly Duff intended in the phrase. DuncanHill (talk) 21:46, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm familiar with it up here in the Great White North, but then I'm an old geezer who watches a lot of old movies, including British ones. I don't recall ever hearing it "in the wild". Clarityfiend (talk) 23:14, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And what about my tintype? —Tamfang (talk) 21:18, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]