Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Mon Apr 25 21:44:18 CEST 2011

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> Alexander's changesets are part of that, since he didn't precise where

For the benefit of people who are not native-English speakers and who 
wish to write literate English: The English word 'precise' is only an 
adjective, and not a verb, so the above does not work as an English 
sentence.

This mistake, which I have seen before, has an understandable reason. 
'Precise' is derived (borrowed) from the French "pre'cis" which is at 
least a verb and noun. "Pre'cis" comes from the Latin 'praecisus' and 
'praecidere'. Spanish has the same verb in the form 'precisar'. So 
native Romance speakers have a tendency to over-generalize the usage of 
this restricted English cognate. English speakers learning other 
languages so the same sort of thing. The closest English verbs to 
"pre'cis" are 'abstract', 'summarize', and 'specify'.

Terry

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