I dunno, for as long as I can remember resolution (Auflösung) has used “fein/grob” for fine and coarse. Example: “Eine grobe Auflösung sieht eben hässlich aus auf große Bildschirme.” I am beginning to suspect that the control you saw back then really did say grob and not groß.
That’s really interesting. I now see you are totally correct, and this puts a new light on the whole thing. The panels had been rejected because of the “GroB” and we assumed that it was a mistake for Gross. But now you are telling me it could have been a mistake which accidentally resulted in the correct word, though with incorrect capitalisation. It’s quite a rabbit hole.
My German dictionary doesn’t give this meaning of “grob”, but then I’ve often found that ordinary German/English dictionaries are very weak on technical terms, and at one time I had to obtain an (extremely expensive) technical dictionary for my job.
So, thank you for enlightening me. It’s always interesting when something you remember turns out to be different from what you think.
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Only in Switzerland. In German and Austrian German it is still spelled “groß” because the vowel is long. What was abolished was the rule that it was always “ß” instead of “ss” and the end of words regardless of vowel length.
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I recommend the leo.org online reference, which grew out of a university website to become the one German-English dictionary I trust most. For example: http://dict.leo.org/englisch-deutsch/grob
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Ah, yes, I remember some even getting pissy about the difference between in massen and in maßen, which to me seems disingenuous: it’s a ligature that was invented for the printing presses, after all. Germans have an above-average hatred of ambiguity, it seems.
Well, it is complicated.
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Thank you.
When I read this kind of stuff I’m reminded, vaguely, of hearing about ideas of deep structure in language. For instance, as here, grob meaning uncouth and approximate, while in English coarse has the same two not closely related meanings.
Don’t breathe on me, Adrian.
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… auf großen Bildschirmen. Plural.
And yes, “grob / fein” on a set of controls makes better sense than “groß / fein”.
As would, on the other hand, “groß / klein”.
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That’s my favorite line from Rocky.
In Massen: lots and lots of something.
In Maßen: a reasonable amount of something. Moderation.
Eine Maß: a litre of beer at Oktoberfest. In a Maßkrug. (No, it’s not called a ‘Stein’.)
Ein Maß: a measurement (of several).
Maßstab: scale (of a plan, for example) or a ruler. Or a standard, etc.
Maßband: tape measure. Oddly enough, a folding rule is commonly referred to as “Zollstock”. Possibly because they were introduced in mid-19th century by British railway engineers who brought their inch rules with them. 1 Zoll = 2.54 cm, so basically 1 inch. (Unless the topic is customs, tariffs, tolls & duties.) The technical term, however, is “Gliedermaßstab”.
Maßnahme: measure (as in course of action), provision, procedure, sanction, step, activity, task, method, event, scheme, arrangement, etc.
Nun, damit dürften wohl alle Klarheiten beseitigt sein.
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“Gag me with a spoon.”
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“Like, that is so totally tubular!”
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Seit 1988 mache ich immer noch Fehler mit das Deklinieren von Artikel. passiert wenn man Deutsch erst als Erwachsene lernt. Scheiss drauf.
I think this misconception comes from the old pottery mugs, the Steinkrug, also known as a Keferloher. They fell out of favour in the early 20th century because you can’t see how much in the mug you just bought is foam and how much is beer, or even if the mug was clean. They are more collector’s items now or used for novelty.
(Full disclosure: I came to Germany in 1988, and just stayed here. Now I have been living in Munich since 2010)
Not very likely. How many Americans would have heard of a Keferloher?
A lot of Americans however have seen (or heard of)
either on Broadway or one of the movie adaptions.
It features the song “Drink, Drink, Drink!”
which starts with
Ein zwei drei vier
Lift your stein and drink your beer
Ein zwei drei vier
Lift your stein and drink your beer
Which is both meaningless and gramatically wrong. But what the hell, lyrics don’t have to make sense, they must sound good and match the music.
Anyway: welcome to Germany!
To the max.
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what’s grosser than gross ?
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Approximate is the ‘opposite’ of coarse, it means close to.
