How the super-rich are digging down in London

Re:How the super-rich are digging down in London by chrisseaton on Sunday May 13, 2018 @05:08PM (#17061056)

But when you use a specific term like ‘condo’ rather than something generic like ‘home’ it looks like that specific term is there for a reason.

If you ask if building condos is hard does that mean you think building apartments instead is easier, for example.

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Re:How the super-rich are digging down in London by burke on Sunday May 13, 2018 @05:36PM (#17061173)

It’s not really a specific use, it’s just terminology that doesn’t overlap in a the way you want it to. Most high rise developments, at least where I am, are condos, as it tends to be more profitable or convenient for a developer to sell all the units than for a single entity to rent them all out on an ongoing basis. Lots of the units will be rented out as apartments.

“High rise condo” May sound overly specific but it’s just the most common example of a category for which we don’t have a convenient descriptor.

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Re:How the super-rich are digging down in London by jessriedel on Sunday May 13, 2018 @05:59PM (#17061257)

In addition to the consideration burke mention, there is just the fact that in American English we generally don't have a term equivalent to flat (i.e., condo or apartment). (In this situation, "home" is not appropriate since that word is much more general.) This sort of use of a special case as an abbreviation of a more general case is a very common linguistic phenomenon.

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Re:How the super-rich are digging down in London by nitrogen on Sunday May 13, 2018 @10:34PM (#17062281)

Synecdoche (which I eventually learned is four syllables) is the name of that linguistic phenomenon.

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