Hi, I know that these two words sound quite similar but I figure there must be a difference between them:
populace vs population
According to my dictionary populace describes the lower layers of a society, the common folks while population is a neutral term to talk about inhabitants of an area or country. Is that correct or am I missing something? Again, thank you for answering all my endless questions.
Andreana
My dictionaries don’t show much difference between populace and population. They both mean the inhabitants of an area. The thesaurus gives some words indicating the lower strata of society as synonyms of populace, but populace can also be a very neutral term that’s got nothing to do with social class.
My feeling is that in the most general sense population sounds more numerical or statistical, and populace sounds more like the actual flesh-and-blood people.
In specific contexts, though, all bets are off.
Hi Jamie,
would You explane the meaning of all bets are off?
And an other one: “all else aside” means something like “besides”?
Thank You in advance
Spencer
Spencer, this is what Google says if you search for ‘your’ word explane: (which clearly does not exist)
Did you mean: explain
Thanks Adriana for pointing at it, I meant explain.
Do You know the answers to my questions as well?
Spencer
I think all bets are off is a phrase that originated in sports were people would bet such as horse races etc. All bets are off probably indicates that all options are possible in a situation. (anything can happen now)
All else aside means, you concentrate on just one factor and leave all other factors alone.
Andreana is right. “All bets are off” comes from gambling, and in everyday language it means that the outcome of something is so uncertain that you shouldn’t even try to predict it.
“All else aside” means something like, “Let’s stop discussing the other details of this situation and focus on this one point.” This expression is used when we think that unimportant details are distracting everyone from the most important point of a discussion.
By the way, Spencer, where are you, and what’s your native language? I’m just curious.
Thank you Andrea, and Jamie, for answering my questions.
I’m writing from Hungary.
Why?
Spencer
J? napot kiv?nok! Hogy vagy?
I have been to Hungary several times. What part of the country are you from?
J?l, k?sz?n?m k?rd?sed!
I’m from Budapest.
Don’t say that You recognise this by my writing!
(Anyway, Your message was a shocker, it’s made my day,
thanks Jamie)
Spencer
Spencer –
I was in Budapest only a day and a half, during which I got the flu, unfortunately. I laugh now about my time in Budapest, because the place was like a strange semi-nightmare to me. I felt like I was in Prague, but everything was in the wrong place and I couldn’t read the signs or understand the people. Have you ever had one of those dreams in which you’re in a familiar place but everything has been moved? I guess if I’d stayed a week, I wouldn’t have felt like that. Also, the gypsies changing money in the Budapest train station could speak Chinese!
Most of my time in Hungary I was in S?rv?r and in P?cs.
I had a very enlightening thought while I was there. I was startled at how many Hungarian men are named Atilla, and I told a friend that in the West this would be like naming your child Hitler. She replied, “I don’t think he did anything that the Germans and the French didn’t do.”
If I had recognized it by your writing, I wouldn’t have asked. I just would have said sometime, “You know, many Hungarians make X mistake because…” But I couldn’t tell.
[color=blue]Right now, we’re sure we can stay in business, but if our biggest client cancels the contract, all bets are off. (= we don’t know if we’ll be able to stay in business or not)
[color=blue]Professor Davis is an easygoing professor, so if you get him for the course, you’ll get an A without doing much work. Professor Kirchner is very tough, though. If you get him, all bets are off. (He’s so tough that a perfect grade is not guaranteed.)
[color=blue]If the economy stays good, the president will surely be reelected. If a recession starts, though, all bets are off. (No one can predict who will win if there’s a recession.)
Hey Jamie!
How are You?
Since I’ve read Your messages some things keep on crossing my mind, so I’ve got to tell them.
I don’t know what You have been taught of Attila, the king of Huns, but according to Your writings, I don’t suppose they said too nice things about him. Although I don’t give a d**n about history, some people might find a bit offensive to mention Attila and Hitler on the same day.
In Europe this subject (the nazis) is still very sensitive,You know.
Not to mention that Attila is a first name, and if You look hard enough, could still find some Adolfs in Germany.
But listen, I have a lot of friends named Attila, but till this time, I’ve never tought of the king of Huns when I met them.
Do You have a friend called George? Do You think of the dragonkiller whenever You see him? 
In our thousand year old history a lot of heroes showed up,
but lately not too many people name their child by them, so You couldn’t find too many Attilas betwen the young generation, they rather choose from international names instead.
I’ve been living in Canada for four years, and I love Canadians (my daughter is one of them), but I was laughing when I saw a streat named by a hockey player.
At the beginning I felt the same way as You did, when You were here, but I got used to it fast, and I think if You come to Hungary next time , and stay longer, You’ll like it, trust me.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no hard feelings, and I’m really happy for You, it’s good to have someone who speaks american english, and this much helpful as You are,
Thanks
Spencer
Spencer, I wasn’t trying to say anything insulting about Hungary.
What I was trying to get across is that the only large Austro-Hungarian city I’d ever seen was Prague – which I had been running around for a few years. (I didn’t live there, but when you live in the Czech Republic you have to travel there for something or other all the time.) When I got to Budapest, everything looked almost exactly the same as in Prague. The ordinary architecture was the same, the streets looked the same, there was a big river running through the city. Everything was the same, except that nothing was the same. I felt as if I should know where everything was, but I didn’t. That was why I had that surrealistic feeling. I wouldn’t be confused that way going from Madison to Minneapolis, from Poitiers to Bordeaux, or from Bonn to D?sseldorf, but for some reason the two Austro-Hungarian cities stuck me that way. The only difference was that at that time I seemed to note more cultural and economic sophistication in Budapest than there was in Prague. (This was in the early 1990s.)
I didn’t mean any insult to guys named Attila. One of my favorite Hungarians is a very kindly professor named Attila. I had never heard before of anyone being given that name, and it was a surprise. It’s very common in English to refer to a really bad, scary, unpredictable boss, teacher or criminal as “Attila the Hun”, and in fact that’s one of the first comparisons that comes to people’s minds in that situation, even among people who don’t know who Attila the Hun was. Since the typical American has never heard of or met any other person named Attila, nobody notices a problem.
We have this problem in my family with the name Adolph. The most beloved man in my family was my mother’s uncle Adolph. We’d love to name kids after him, but we can’t. And I felt sorry for a student I had from Libya named Osama. Most people here have never met a person named Osama, and even though people know he’s not THE Osama, it still startles them. It would be like having a handsome, cheerful appliance salesman graciously introduce himself to you as Tom Hitler. You know he’s got nothing to do with the famous Mr. Hitler, but you’ll have to know him for a while before you can get the image out of your head.
I happen to like (but not always agree with) George, so that’s not a problem for me. I am very close to the Iraqi refugee community here – which is very large – and if George ran for the office of God, most of them would vote for him. So let’s not get into that. There’s no winning those arguments.
Don’t worry. I’ve always had a GREAT time in Hungary, and have beloved friends there.
Hey Jamie,
this is really shocking that Attila the Hun is a bad guy, I’ve been taught thouroghly different in the school, that is why I didn’t understand why You were saying such things of him.
It’s not our fault, I’m sorry for this misunderstanding.
But, You see I got You with George, because I didn’t refer to George Bush, I really was writing about saint George, the dragonkiller, and in Hungary sounds like:
Gy?rgy, a s?rk?ny?lő,
and if we hear this name rather this,not George Bush crosses our minds.
The best way to learn of each other, from now on I know what Attila means to the world, and You know what the name George reminds Hungary.
This was a really interesting talk though, one of my co-workers said this was more interesting than a movie on TV.
Spencer
What does ?l? mean? The only definition I could find online is “slow poison”. I suppose s?rk?ny?l? means “dragon slayer”.
(Sorry, I can type the long ?, but the message board software isn’t letting me display it, so I have to use a short one.)
Speaking of people slaying things, did you know that in the 1980s the movie (and TV show) title “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” was funny? In those days, Buffy was usually thought of as the name of a soft, spoiled rich girl. However, with the TV show having been on for so long, there’s a whole generation of kids who’ve grown up without recognizing the humor.
What I like best about the name Attila is this: In many European languages in ancient times, the word “atta” meant dad. The suffix -ila indicated a diminutive. So, the man we’ve been discussing has a name that really means “Little Daddy the Hun”.
Hey, here’s something else. Look at this:
Czech: [color=blue]svet = world, [color=blue]svetl? = light
Hungarian: [color=blue]vil?g = world, [color=blue]vil?gos = light
Romanian: [color=blue]lume = world, [color=blue]luminos = light
I’m told there are many more examples.
How do you think something like THAT happened? I think it’s because both the Romans and the Magyars conquered Slavic lands, and there got to be a Slavic substrate to both Hungarian and Romanian. It’s kind of like the way (according to experts) French began as a colloquial form of Latin spoken with a German accent.
?lő means killer, this poison thing is either wrong, or just a too old definition to be heard by someone like me
Slowly killing poison - lassan ?lő m?reg (?lő is killing)
About this Attila I only remember one thing from school, his coffins. According to the legend, they put him in a gold coffin, then the gold coffin (with Attila) had been put in a silver one, and finally in a coffin made of iron.
This whole thing was dropped in the Tisza (river) , and a lot of people are trying to find it because of this.
Since You mentioned this daddy of ours, I’ve asked some people about him, but no one remembers anything else, except he was a tough guy, who was burried this way.
I’ve never thought that I was gonna learn Hungarian history in this forum, thanks Jamie
Spencer
A year or so ago they showed a documentary on the History Channel here about Attila and his raids through Europe. I was startled to find out that he was a military leader and politician who could be negotiated with. In some places they actually made deals with him to make him back off. The reason this was surprising was that we were always raised thinking he was just some kind of irrational animal who led a bunch of mad horsemen through Europe to rape, burn and pillage for no particular reason.
That’s one of the three great history surprises of my life. Another was about the Inquisition. We were always taught that the Catholic church just went crazy executing a lot of people as heretics and witches. I find out later in life that the church’s inquisitors were actually lawyers who were brought in because the secular leaders were killing masses of people with no standard of proof. They actually reduced the amount of killing instead of increasing it.
The third one was about Cortez and the conquest of Mexico. They told us that the bad, bad Spanish could just roll over the Aztecs and flatten them, because the Aztecs thought Cortez and his men were gods. Then I read an eyewitness account and found out that the Aztecs quickly figured out the Spanish weren’t gods, after they killed one of the horses. It made me realize that Cortez could not have taken over Mexico with just a few shiploads of men, and told me that when he got to Mexico City he was backed up by an army of tens of thousands of Indians who were angry about having to send gold, silver and human sacrifices to the capital every year. Apparently Montezuma was as brutal as Cortez.
Real history books are full of surprises.
About the inquisition, I thought the same as You did before, because all the movies show that Catholics killed as much as they could with no mercy.
There is another saying about Hungarians in Mexico.
A friend of mine is from Mexico and she told me that when children didn’t behave themselves, parents were usually threatening them by telling that the Hungarians would take them away.(kidnap them)
In her case this saying had come true, because her husband is Hungarian and they live in Canada, far away from Mexico.