they are docked at a young age for health reasons because they can collect filth easily and can lead to maggot infestations that are painful or fatal.
thats fascinating! mostly because “fatty sheep’s tails” are mentioned in the Torah as a delicacy and all my RS teachers would give us theories on how in ancient times they had specialised breeds of sheep that had tails that were lost to time etc etc. Turns out they just didn’t dock ‘em back them. Cool!
fat tail sheep are a real breed and theyre kind of scary
also guys i think it’s time to start spelling ‘small’ right again,, it’s been long enough
see the thing is, at this point, smol isn’t even a “mispelling” of small anymore; it has its own connotations. while small is a regular adjective, smol acts more like a diminutive marker, which English has been lacking
in essence, a smol dog will always be a small dog, but not all small dogs are smol.
what the fuck are you talking about
Linguistic evolution. Accept the smolness into your vocabulary and be cleansed.
@nentindo, assuming you’re asking in good faith & not just trying to dismiss a perfectly accurate analysis, here’s an elaboration of what @princeofdoomrps said:
small and smol mean different things, so they’re different words. smol means something like “small in a cute way” & not just like both small and cute but the two are related. This is what makes smol more like a diminutive marker (c.f. -tje in Dutch, or -let/-ling/-ie [like in kidlet/kidling/kiddie] in some forms of English*)
note that: 1. not all small things are smol. Microbes and electrons? Generally not considered smol.
2. similar-sized things in the same category can be smol or not depending on cuteness. So, a tiny cottage may be a smol house, but an equally tiny tenement room that is an awful place to live? Not smol.
3. smol can refer to youth (e.g. the people I call my “smol frens” are mostly taller than I am but much younger)
4. It also can have implications of fondness/emotional attachment, especially, from what I’ve seen, in fandoms where people call characters things like “my smol son”, which doesn’t have to mean someone who’s actually young, short, or cute at all. Like, IDK if anyone uses that to refer to Hannibal but I wouldn’t be surprised?
So! There are contexts where you could call something/someone small but not smol, and contexts where you could call something/someone smol but not small. This is the textbook definition of “different words”. They are no longer the same word and op, you are very welcome to only use one of them! Anyone is!
Just be aware that pretty much every part of your vocabulary, someone at some point has decried as “wrong” usage and complained about people mangling the language this way, and when you do this thing you’re carrying on a long tradition of pompous silliness.
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*
English isn’t completely lacking in diminutive markers just kinda deficient.
And some of those markers have become derisive or dismissive in usage, which i hope never happens to my smol word-child, smol.
It’s like millennials do not understand that middle east has been at war for 1000′s of years. That we intervened on behalf of Kuwait. That without “bombing” people that want to kill and oppress others, millions will be murdered and tortured.
“at war for 1000′s of years”
you clearly know nothing about Afghanistan nor the middle east
It’s interesting to note that when the communist government came to power in Afghanistan in the late 70′s, one of the first things they did was declare equality of the sexes, made education for girls mandatory, & banned child marriages. The conservative tribal leaders who the US armed & funded (& who later became the Taliban) declared this to be a “war on Islam” & fought against the central government.
The US had no problem back then with encouraging the growth of Islamic conservatism to counter socialism/communism. You created your biggest enemy & you have no one to blame but yourselves.
its crazy to me how the US talks about war in the middle east as if its this ancient problem inherent to the area instead of a recent problem created by western countries to further their own interests.
A sad story from the Bray Animation Project about finding one of C. Allan Gilbert’s Silhouette Fantasies, all of which are lost films.
“While
researching the Bray films during a visit to the Library of Congress,
we made an exciting discovery. Located in a very large,
recently-received nitrate collection was a print labeled “Bray Gilbert
Silhouette – Decomp.” Upon taking the print out of its can, we quickly
identified it as Haunts For Rent.
Sadly, however, it was also immediately obvious that the print’s
decomposition was in its later, quite severe stages. The photographs
below show some of the few frames that could be viewed from the
mostly-destroyed element. It is still fair to consider Haunts For Rent a lost film.”
Waiting for Winter 