Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by gadders | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

gadders

OFFTOPIC: "Today, I want to share some recent learnings from performance tuning this new application stack."

The word you want is "lessons".

View on HN

"learnings" is a perfectly cromulent word: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=learnings&year...

Nope. You see an option for a plural here? http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/learning

Dictionaries ain't arbiters of the English language. And quite fortunately so, I should note.

Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive. They can only tell you if something is a word, not whether something isn't a word.

Well certainly there is no law against using made-up words. If that's what you want to do, have at it.

At least it will help people get their buzzword bingo cards filled up sooner.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=learnings&year...

If you are Sacha Baron Cohen, yes.

Use of this word predates Sacha Baron Cohen's entire existence.

OFFTOPIC: "Today, I want to share some recent learnings from performance tuning this new application stack."

The word you want is "lessons".

Jeez, not only is your comment offtopic and pedantic, it's also wrong.

"it's also wrong."

I believe the word you want is "incorrect."

/sarcasm

I flagged it as Offtopic. But it is correct. "Learnings" is at best a pointless affectation, like saying "utilised" instead of "used". At worst, according to the OED, it's not even a word.

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/19227/plural-of-l...

Also: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/learning No plural option.

I play tournament Scrabble and learnings is a valid word in it.

Continuing the OT and heedless of the downvotes: I appreciate your efforts, but they can't help themselves -- so many people love using recently invented (and redundant) words because they think it makes them sound smart and hip. Sorta like people who think JS is an amazing language and love to sell that point of view.

I think their must be a voting ring of marketers that are upset their latest buzzword-bingo entry has been called out :-)

> "Learnings" is at best a pointless affectation

No, at best it's a deliberately wonky usage for comic effect [1], like "Internets". It's quite possible the author is being gamesome. [2]

[1] https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borat:_Cultural_Learnings_...

[2] http://youtu.be/Wc1pxO_-5S8?t=6m43s

I didn't like it when people started using "learnings", but I'm beginning to appreciate some subtle shadings it seems to have over lessons. It seems more discovery oriented, and less sure it's correct, or at least, less widely correct. Sort of like "hacky, working hypotheses, that we think are worth sharing."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com