Re: promoting Lua

[Norman Clarke <compay@...>]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 4:52 PM, Gavin Wraith <gavin@wra1th.plus.com> wrote:
> In message <4AE9DEF4.3040706@spellingbeewinnars.org> you wrote:
>
>> > When I was learning PHP, Python and now C/C++, one of the first things I
>> > did/do was search for Python sucks, PHP sucks etc.
>>
>> I fear I haven't seen the interest. Can you expand a bit?
>
> Does the usage "xxx sucks", which I presume was coined in the USA,
> mean "I like xxx" or "I do not like xxx"? For most of my life "to suck"
> meant in English what Latin "sugere" meant, and it had no pejorative
> or sexual connotation. I presume that the recent usage means what Latin
> "irrumare" meant. Latin has two advantages over English: 1) it is
> unnecessary to invent new words in it to describe sexual acts, as
> it already has a sufficiency of them, and 2) it is impossible to invent
> new words in it because outside the Vatican it is dead.

I don't know where it was coined, but in American English it
essentially means you consider something to be bad. It originally had
a sexual connotation which I think is mostly forgotten now, though
it's a phrase which more careful speakers still won't use in polite
company.