Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 June 6

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June 6

BB in Nitzinger’s "Texas Blues"

What’s a BB or B-B in the song Texas Blues presented in April '72 by John Nitzinger in Puerto Rico during the festival Mar y Sol (Album)? To be heared on Youtube og0R6HLCzws (?t=6m9s). As far as I’ve researched: "Mama, if you put your brain on a razor blade it'd look like a BB rollin’ down a four lane highway – (the) girl’s not too sharp"? Quoted by Terry Moore in "Strangers in Paradise" No. 6, July 1995. BB coudn’t be a Blackberry, not yet invented, and far from rolling (–:) PS. I like Blackberries, both of them. – Fritz Jörn (talk) 08:09, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

BB gun Fgf10 (talk) 09:26, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

This, although it does not explain "rollin' down". --Askedonty (talk) 09:30, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Wiktionary says BB can stand for "battleship". 'BB' is a hull classification symbol for a battleship. Contact Basemetal here 10:49, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Erm what? It clearly refers to a BB pellet. Do you see a battleship or a bed and breakfast rolling down? Fgf10 (talk) 11:30, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

This is poetry, man. The girl may not be too sharp, but a brain that'd be to a razor blade what a BB pellet is to a four-lane highway, what size would it be? Even vital functions couldn't be carried out. There's no way this can be taken literally. There's poetic license one way or the other. I prefer to give the girl the benefit of the doubt. Contact Basemetal here 11:49, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

When I was a kid, the saying with regard to a stupid person was that the brain in his or her skull rolled around "like a BB in a boxcar". This is clearly an even more exaggerated version. Deor (talk) 11:53, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Ok, seems like me, or two of us have to sharpen their view on the BB Gun article: BB_gun History, although, nonetheless, a battleship would do. Does anyone, like me, see in the boxcar version the similarity or rather the possible link with the Danish Prinsessen paa Ærten ? --Askedonty (talk) 12:55, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Yeah. Probably in the original (Swedish?) version of the story they stuck her brain under those mattresses. Contact Basemetal here 17:15, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

It's a serious possibility. And so regarding the song, we can assume the princess tale is giving the scale while the narrative is building upon the boxcar theme. Then the tiny ball would be rolling down only erratically if it's a highway while most of the time it would rebound and bounce. If it was the ball that was viewed on the razor blade, its erratic behavior would not be perceptible, too tiny; while the magnifier (the girl), is not so sharp. --Askedonty (talk) 17:25, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Finally while the erratic pellet is lost into infinity some of us will not know about the boxcar fun and some others will not want to take things according to it, for example if the lady is viewed as obstinate instead of mindless. Or there is no disagreement to be considered and it is only stated that thinking the image of one's own brain left on a razor blade is absurd only as much as any of the possible sorts of BB's rolling down highways: either impossible, or futile. --Askedonty (talk) 08:38, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

I agree with BB pellet. Hull classifications are only used in the US Navy until they assign a name to the class of ship, like Virginia class, plus on various paperwork. I don't see anyone, even sailors, saying "That's a new BB" when referring to a battleship. And it would be B&B for a bread and breakfast, not BB. StuRat (talk) 12:48, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

I always understood that the "BB" in "BB gun" stands for ball bearing, which seem to have been invented in Wales in 1794, according to our article. Alansplodge (talk) 17:18, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds like a reasonable explanation of the origin. StuRat (talk) 19:23, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes. That makes sense. --Askedonty (talk) 19:40, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

This is one of those things that sounds reasonable, but isn't actually true. At least not according to our BB gun article, which explains that BB was the designation of a certain size of shot, at the time nominally 0.180 inches, now slightly smaller. --Trovatore (talk) 19:57, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

True, but people not too knowledgeable about hunting in America ( look for BB in Shotgun shell ) can have made of it BB stands for bearings, even possibly arguing for precedence. What makes sense to me in the current context is that ball bearings can make for much heavier balls than 0.180 shotgun balls and that new kind of weight is what's needed to make the boxcar situation ( described by Deor above ) "scalably" portable in Nitzinger's scheme. Bearing balls are of various size and they can be felt and I imagine, weighting like stones. --Askedonty (talk) 21:55, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

I stand corrected on the ball bearing issue, several sources on the net suggest that there were various sizes of ball shot for shotguns called "B", "BB" and "BBB". See The Secret History of Balls by Josh Chetwynd. Alansplodge (talk) 12:54, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Enter your MC card in the ATM machine and when requested type your pin number

I like to have more examples of such sentences. Count Iblis (talk) 19:17, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

RAS syndrome is the term for it, and has other examples. -- 160.129.138.186 (talk) 19:57, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Surely you mean "PIN number"? Martinevans123 (talk) 20:10, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

And not just any old PIN number, Martinevans123, but your own personal PIN number. μηδείς (talk) 18:57, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

If MC refers to MasterCard, then that particular one isn't necessarily redundant. MasterCard is the company. So their card could be (sounds dumb, I know) "MasterCard card' the same way it would be a "Visa card". All the other ones are dumb, though. Mingmingla (talk) 21:56, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

They should have stuck with the original name, MasterCharge, in which case MC card makes perfect sense. StuRat (talk) 12:52, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

To borrow from Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub), this kind of thing is enough to make you LOL out loud. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:00, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Please RSVP. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:42, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I am sorry, SemanticMantis, but I have a previous engagement. μηδείς (talk) 20:05, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

We have an article on U.S. states. --Amble (talk) 18:11, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

• Perhaps related. In linguistics there's the term Reduplication (see also Reduplicated plural and Reduplicative copula). It refers to a doubling of a word or part of a word. In any other context this would be just called "duplication". The re- part suggests it's not just doubled but tripled, or more, but that turns out not to be the case, so there's something tautological happening there. Interestingly, when something is actually tripled linguistically, the process is called triplication, not retriplication. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 22:20, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Irregardless of its seeming overexaggeration, the term "reduplicate" comes from the same root as "redouble" and really means "multiply".[1] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:46, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

I have wanted to found an organization called Americans Committed to Renaming Organizations with Names You Must Spell.    → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 20:24, 9 June 2015 (UTC)