[tlhIngan Hol] New words

SuStel sustel at trimboli.name
Tue Jul 28 09:54:23 PDT 2020


On 7/28/2020 12:38 PM, Lieven L. Litaer wrote:
> Am 28.07.2020 um 18:05 schrieb SuStel:
>> /Shiny/ refers to being bright with reflected light,
>> but that light doesn't have to form an image. Here's an example of a
>> shiny rock in which you can see no image:
>
> And I assume that rock is not considered glossy, because it's not smooth?

Right.


>> not required. Here's an example of a glossy bowl in which you can
>> clearly see a reflection, but /shiny/ would definitely not be the first
>> word I reached for to describe the bowl:
>
> Hm. Difficult. I would have said it's shiny, but I'm not a native
> English speaker...

As I said, it's not the first word I would reach for. If someone called 
it shiny, I wouldn't say "No it's not." It has a certain amount of shine 
to it, but that quality is not predominant.


>> And here's an example of an obsidian ball which clearly shows
>> reflections, but which I certainly wouldn't call shiny:
>
> From your explanations, it seems to me that shiny always includes some
> brightness, right? The surface of a desert might be shiny because
> crystals reflect the sun somehow, but it's certainly not smooth, no
> glossy, right?

You've got it.


> Still, there is a lot of overlap...

Yes. Because being glossy and being shiny share the characteristic of 
reflecting light. The two words are not mutually exclusive. Some things 
that are glossy are also shiny, and some things that are shiny are also 
glossy. Some things can reflect light and still not be called shiny 
because their shine isn't bright. I would not, for instance, call a 
bathroom mirror shiny under most circumstances because it does not seem 
bright due to reflected light. All I see is a reflected image. But if I 
were looking at the mirror nearly edge-on and the ambient sunlight were 
reflecting off it, I might call it shiny.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name




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