On April 22 2011 05:22 flowSthead wrote:
Once precision is established, complexity will help you delineate and create greater precision. So for the example of "contingency of marines", you could say that the discussion started with different uses for marines. Marines as attacking and defending would be the first way you could do this, and then get more complicated: marines in a bio ball with marauders and medivacs, versus marines in a medivac doing drop harass, versus marines backing up tanks, versus marines staying in your base to chase off mutalisks/phoenixes/other air. That last one could be called a "contingency of marines" as a shorthand instead of every time having to type "the marines that defend my base from air". I chose this based on this definition from dictionary.com of contingency:
1. dependence on chance or on the fulfillment of a condition; uncertainty; fortuitousness: Nothing was left to contingency.
The chance is an air attack, or an air scout. So you leave marines behind to account for that chance. Thus, a contingency of marines.
On April 22 2011 10:32 gods_basement wrote:
I considered this justification of a 'contingency of marines' when writing the initial post. However, I did not feel like writing such a long explanation (perhaps a bit shorter than yours), so I decided that it was not particularly accurate, glib and contrived.
On April 22 2011 17:34 flowSthead wrote:
What I disagreed with was the notion that there can never be a proper use for "a contingency of marines". I think you were a little too focused on the wrong usages, rather than the possible right usages. The video is helpful there with the idea of ugly words like "I actioned the starcraft" or whatever the example was. "Actioned" there seems ugly the way "contingency" seems ugly in "contingency of marines". Just because it's ugly doesn't necessarily mean that it cannot be useful or clear. What I did in the second paragraph was try to establish a possible scenario where the ugly use of contingency could possibly work. It all depends on context.
On April 23 2011 05:11 Maliris wrote:Man, can't believe all this time i thought "contingency" meant like a squad/small group that were given a task, i used to say contingency of marines all the time rofl
did a caster start saying this sometime? because i have no idea where i picked this up
Forget all the lengthy explanations: the word people are looking for is "contingent".
EPT
