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Assume v. Presume

I just got p*ssed off hearing for the umpteenth time that such-and-such building is so high (not so tall).
 
Black Hole said:
I just got p*ssed off hearing for the umpteenth time that such-and-such building is so high (not so tall).
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All the buildings in La Rinconada are high. And Colquechaca.


But are mountains high or tall? Why the distinction? If you built a building that looked like a mountain, would it be high or tall?

And how about people? We talk about their height, not tallness.
 
Mike0001 said:
All the buildings in La Rinconada are high. And Colquechaca.
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Granted, and probably not very tall.

Mike0001 said:
But are mountains high or tall?
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Definitely should be tall.

Mike0001 said:
Why the distinction?
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Same as all the other (relevant) items in this topic: imprecise use of language fails to convey meaning. I may have said this before: when the participants in a conversation can see context and body language, and interact to establish clarification where necessary, these fine points are not important. In written work (or a one-way voice channel) the precision use of words resolves potential ambiguities. If somebody says: "that man is 6 feet high", knowing that "high" is commonly misused one cannot tell whether he is standing on something that is 6 feet tall or the man is 6 feet tall himself. If I say "that man is 6 feet tall" you are sure which is meant, and if you are aware that the speaker will use "tall" when he means it, "that man is 6 feet high" now definitely means he is 6 feet up in the air. Language creep, in my opinion, is caused by the written word no longer being the primary means of mass communication.

Mike0001 said:
If you built a building that looked like a mountain, would it be high or tall?
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No difference, if we accept that "high" is a qualifier for the elevation of an object's base, and "tall" is a qualifier for its vertical extent.

Mike0001 said:
And how about people? We talk about their height, not tallness.
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Therein lies a challenge to my quest for tidiness. The engineering dimensions are length, width, height, and depth, when their equivalent qualifiers are long, wide, tall, and deep.
 
To calculate the volume of, say a box, the accepted formula is Length times Breadth (or width) times Height. As a building is basically a box shape, it must have height, not tallness. So a building is high, not tall. QED
 
gomezz said:
I am with Tina Turner on this one.
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Isn't she a bit old for you? :disagree:

The Wasatch Mountains are both tall and high. Their base is at 4,210' and they rise to almost 12,000'. Compared with Olympus Mons, though, at 70,000', they are neither tall nor high. The Wasatch Mountains are sometimes high above the Martian landscape, though, as is the Moon above ours.

I don't see any problem with tall vs high. Tall often sounds strained. We all know that we mean the mountain top: nobody is talking about the mountain base.
 
Black Hole said:
Only because it has become unfashionable.
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Tall generally means having greater than average height, or having large height in relation to width.

Neither really applies to mountains.:confused:

But...this is tall, and its base is high too:




106692021_large_4483c0.jpg
 
I say BH, it seems that not everyone shares our thoughts (fastidiousness?) and humour regarding grammar! Dear me, it seems that despite hand holding and avoiding mentioning "read the manual", you must not mention the 'g' word. ;)
 
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