"Bees' nest"?!!! WTF!!!

[Dan Goncharoff]

If all one is concerned with is describing what some people are using,
that's fine.

If one is also interested in evaluating whether that usage is clear or
confusing, the facts about bees seem highly relevant, at least to me.

DanG



On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 9:42 AM, Ronald Butters <ronbutters at aol.com> wrote:

> Real people live in the lexicosemantic world of what Victor dismissively =
> refers to as "folk taxonomy," and for good reason: there is no reason =
> why an ordinary person would follow insects around and note the kind of =
> material they use to build their "houses" before using their names in a =
> sentence. I doubt that one person in a million has ever picked up a wasp =
> and said, "oh, well, this couldn't be a bee, it doesn't have any body =
> hair, whereas I am totally certain that a bee is not glabrous. And that =
> probably means that a Mexican Hairless is not a dog, and maybe bald =
> women are really guys."
>
> Real people in ordinary conversations do not "classify" hornets as bees, =
> but they do use the term "bee" as they hypernym for a class of insects =
> that seem a lot alike, on the whole. (And if not "bee", what? Even if =
> one looks in a respectable dictionary, one finds nothing much that would =
> point one the direction of VS's scientific distinction. NOAD1 has
>
> bee ...  n. 1 a honeybee. See illustration at HONEYBEE.
> 2 an insect of a large group to which the honeybee belongs,
> including many solitary as well as social kinds.
> See illustration at HONEYBEE.
> =95Superfamily Apoidea, order Hymenoptera: several families,
> often now placed in the single family Apidae.)
>
> And is what a bee has on its belly really "hair," or is that just "folk =
> taxonomy"? Must I read the Wikipedia entry on "hair" before discussing =
> what grows on a "bee"? Am I merely stupidly using "folk taxonomy" when I =
> speak ofd the "belly" of a bee?=20

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