this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2023
135 points (95.9% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35694 readers
1097 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

For example, in Washington Heights and Golan Heights, what does "heights" mean? What does it tell us about the place?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Hobart_the_GoKart@lemm.ee 12 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Usually the community is built on a hill or a mountain. Often times the highest part of the town, geographically. The incline may be gradual or subtle, so you may not notice that it's taller than the rest of the area.

Similarly when streets (in the US) are named High St., it's literally the highest street in town.

[–] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I thought a "high street" was like a commercial strip and didn't refer to literal height

[–] litchralee@sh.itjust.works 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I would guess that High Street in the (mostly British?) commercial shopping area sense would have evolved from "highway", meaning a principal or main road, which in turn evolved from "high way", being those roads constructed above grade, so that water would drain off the road into the adjacent ditches. The Romans [citation needed] tended to build all-weather roads like this.

In American English, "highway" would be an odd term to apply to a shopping district -- usually referring to a higher-speed road -- but in some contexts, highway is understood to be any improved road. The California Vehicle Code uses this definition, so that "highway" basically means any public road.

At least in California, roads named High Street do exist, but don't necessarily corespondent to being physically tall over its surroundings or other steets. If anything, a typical High Street is often the same in character as another town's Main Street, which sort-of returns to the British meaning of shopping area again, at least in small towns.

[–] squaresinger@feddit.de 4 points 11 months ago

The term high in highway has nothing to do with elevation, but has the same meaning as in "high government official", "high society" or "high priest".

None of them are named so, because they are especially tall, but because they are of elevated status. Same as the highway or high street.

[–] squaresinger@feddit.de 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

High Street, same as Highway, come from Old English, where high denoted not only elevation, but also status/rank/quality.

You can see this in a lot of other Modern English words. For example, a high sheriff, a high priest or high society aren't called high because they are very tall.

[–] Nougat@kbin.social 4 points 11 months ago

... aren’t called high because they are very tall.

Maybe it's because they smoke a lot of weed.

[–] WashedOver@lemmy.ca 2 points 11 months ago

Over in Calgary Alberta it's mostly rolling hills in the Prairies. Being on a Ridge is a big deal for a housing development.

[–] hedgehogging_the_bed@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

High street is an alternative term for Market and used in towns where Market Street is not used. None of them are really the highest street in town, at least not in the US East Coast. The actual elevated places are usually called -view.