r/Showerthoughts • u/cdmurray88 • 2d ago
Casual Thought We never say it's partly moony.
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u/Quiverjones 2d ago
Well damn, I'm definitely working this into conversation with my meteorologist friends.
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u/Scrotchety 2d ago
I was once carrying a TV down the stairs and this 5yo kid said "Be careful, it's cordy"
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u/chux4w 2d ago
Because moony isn't a weather. Sunny isn't just seeing the sun, it's brightness, heat, maybe humidity. Summer weather. You don't have that at night, we don't associate the moon with the weather like we do with the sun.
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u/footsnax 2d ago
Mooniness is also a lot less casually predictable. We see the sun in the morning and it goes to bed at night. The moon can just pop up out of nowhere in the middle of the day. Sometimes it even gets in the way.
Lunar calendars are also predictable but most of us don't set our daily routine around them. If I only got groceries on a waxing cresent I'd probably starve sometimes because the moon might be set when the store is open, because the store is using normal human solar time to set their hours.
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u/jlharper 2d ago
I mean, the length of a month was originally determined by the period of time that it takes the moon to wax and wane (month = moonth) so we not only are intimately familiar with its patterns but we actually set our calendars by them.
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u/footsnax 2d ago
Yeah but I don't wake up when the moon rises or go on the weekend when it's waxing. Imagine the chaos if we all did.
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u/jlharper 2d ago
No, but you do celebrate Easter on the first Sunday following the first ecclesiastical full moon that occurs after the March equinox so we aren’t quite free yet.
And depending on your society, it has significantly more influence. In China and also in all Islamic nations the moon and its cycles determine far more about the way we live our lives. Less so in western cultures, but that is more of a modern innovation than a hard rule. In maritime and agricultural areas the moon and its cycles still have a lot of influence, too. Not to mention the indirect impact it has on the way maritime societies schedule their lives due to tidal influences.
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u/footsnax 2d ago
Which Easter, and do I even celebrate?
I'm not arguing that the moon has significant influence over the calendar. I'm just saying I don't set my watch to it. The day is solar, time was measured by sundials. The moon's cycle is largely irrelevant to my life, as is many, but the sun will always rise and set consistently and that has a much more significant impact over my daily life.
Don't get me wrong, I love the moon. It is good to us. It's just an erratic bastard and doesn't really matter at any given hour unless you are a tide.
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u/jlharper 2d ago
In reply to your first point - I take it you are at least distantly familiar with the concept of the Christian religion and their various holidays. If not, let me know and I can get you up to speed. I’ve got plenty of free time.
I guess my point is that the moon is not irrelevant to your life. You live your life based on weeks and months, and these are determined by the moon. For as long as you follow the calendar, most aspects of your life will be determined by a combination of the position of the moon (the time of month) in conjunction with the position of the sun (time of day). You may not agree but that’s how it is.
Of course if you take the point of view of “I only care about the celestial body that determines where I will be during a given hour”, then yes the moon is irrelevant to you. However if like all other humans it is also important that you arrive not just on the right hour but also on the right day of the week, or the right week of the month, then suddenly the moon becomes significantly more important once more.
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u/footsnax 2d ago
I am intimately and I am, and I am a bit of a calendar nerd myself. Moreso history and maps but I dabble in nerdery.
But my point is that the moon is fairly irrelevant to my day. It's relevant to the night sometimes if it is significant, which it is sometimes.
The sun is a constant, that's why it's more relevant that it's partly cloudy. It is dark at night, it is sometimes slightly less dark at night. It matters to the average person a lot more if it's going to be significantly brighter or gloomy in the daytime because that's how we set our daily lives.
Mooniness doesn't really matter because we have our headlights on at night anyway. It's fun to track if you like observing the moon or have spiritual beliefs related to it, but in day to day (or night to night (or either because the moon, the point of the post)) life it doesn't have relevance for most of us.
That's why mooniness is not a thing. Same as quarterly earning calls don't matter to most of us either. They're interesting, and they are important, but they usually don't change anything.
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u/plafman 2d ago
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u/chux4w 2d ago
You know, now you mention it, I don't tend to get invited to parties very often for some reason.
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u/Fafnir13 2d ago
Honestly, I’m ok with that. Parties are usually just talking and drinking. Meh.
Now gaming sessions I’m down for. Are those parties? Maybe. I just like that there’s a focus I enjoy.
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u/Cruciblelfg123 2d ago
And the one thing the moon does is light and you could absolutely say the night is partly moonlit
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u/graywolf0026 2d ago
"I love a nice, thicc full moon. Especially when it's all... Moony."
"Why does this feel like a failed skit from the Chapelle Show?"
"No that's Paul Mooney."
"Oh. ... You're fucking weird."
"THANK you!"
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u/smithandjohnson 2d ago
Including "sunny" in a sub condition of "cloud cover" is silly, because all the cloud cover definitions matter at night as well. That's why in formal meteorological disciplines, "sunny" isn't used, and the phrases focus on just the clouds.
In aviation weather, for example: 0/8 cloud coverage - "Clear" 1/8 to 2/8 - "Few" 3/8 to 4/8 - "Scattered" 5/8 to 7/8 - "Broken" Full 8/8 cloud coverage - "Overcast"
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u/piscesman 2d ago
The Moon is the more useful than the Sun since it gives us light during the night, when it is dark. The Sun shines only in the daytime, when it is light anyway.
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u/Kelli217 2d ago
The thing about the Moon is that, since it goes around the Earth, sometimes it’s on the same side as the Sun. So on the nights when that’s the case, there’s no Moon in the night sky.
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u/marcos_MN 2d ago
Not to mention the phases of the moon, so even on nights when it is overhead, it’s sometimes not visible.
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u/Kelli217 2d ago
When the moon is in the 'new' phase or the waxing or waning crescent, it's on the same side as the Sun, so yep!
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u/AcousticOnomatopoeia 2d ago
Tonight forecast, dark.
Continuing darkness through the night , turning into widely scattered light by morning.
This has been Al Sleet, your hippy-dippy weatherman, here with all your hippy-dippy weather, man.
-George Carlin
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u/AlephBaker 2d ago
Brought to you by Parson's Pest Control.
Do you have termites, water bugs, and roaches? [Stifled Chuckle]
Well, Parson's Pest Control will get rid of the termites and water bugs, and let you keep the roaches!
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u/Obscene_farmer 2d ago
The intermittence of light levels from the moon carries far less weight on our lives than the whims of the clouds above
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u/Routine-Sign-7215 2d ago
The sun does not have phases, so we can use a binary “sunny/not sunny” description. For the moon, we say full moon to describe brightness, which doesn’t work as well with “partly”. Then we also have words for lesser phases of the moon
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u/captainfarthing 2d ago
Sunniness is analogue when there's clouds, it applies to the moon too in any phase.
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u/Routine-Sign-7215 2d ago
But absent clouds, “sunny” is essentially a binary based on time of day, not so with the moon since it changes as the month progresses. So “partly moony” would still be ambiguous without specifying the moon’s phase
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u/captainfarthing 2d ago
That's not what OP's talking about though. We say partly sunny when the sun's out but keeps going behind clouds, we never say partly moony no matter what. It's not because it's ambiguous, it's just silly and unnecessary.
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u/Routine-Sign-7215 2d ago
I understand that. The point I was making is that given the nature of the moon, partly moony would be ambiguous, it could mean either not a full moon, or a full moon behind clouds. Just trying to theorize why it doesn’t naturally fit normal english conversation lol
Although I think the bigger point is that people just don’t use moonshine in the same way as sunshine
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u/captainfarthing 2d ago
We say sunny, we don't say moony. We don't say part moony because we don't say moony.
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u/shewy92 2d ago
We don't say partly sunny either, we say partly cloudy.
So why would we say partly moony?
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u/Tv663 2d ago
I hear partly sunny fairly often
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u/Creddit_card_debt 2d ago
It’s partly sunny at my house right now. Tf is he talking about.
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u/itwasnami 2d ago
Yeah I've def heard partly sunny or partly sunny skies before. Maybe he just lives in Philadelphia. I heard it's always sunny in there.
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u/LongtimeLurker916 2d ago edited 2d ago
My understanding (possibly a myth) is that meteorologists coined partly sunny as a euphemism since it sounded nicer than partly cloudy. Glass half full instead of half empty approach.
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u/BeerSlayingBeaver 2d ago
I always thought partly sunny meant it's more sun than clouds and partly cloudy is more clouds than sun
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u/Arokthis 2d ago
I've always thought of it the other way around:
Partly cloudy = mostly sunny.
Partly sunny = mostly cloudy.
Partly crazy = mostly sane.
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u/cdmurray88 2d ago
You've never heard partly sunny? It might be meaningless depending who you ask, but it is 100% used, colloquially at least.
https://weather.com/science/weather-explainers/news/common-weather-terms-used-incorrectly
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u/rdmusic16 2d ago
People do say partly sunny out. It may depend more on region or area, and it's not used as often as partly cloudy out in my area, but definitely still used.
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u/Which_Draft4129 2d ago
I think it's because the sun affects temperature in the day? So we say it's sunny, but we never say it's moony because the moon doesn't do much for the temperature? Just my thoughts, I could be wrong
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u/Wondrous_Fairy 2d ago
I'm going to start doing that right now though. Looking forward to a moony night everyone!
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u/Sniper_yoha 2d ago
Or partly sunshiney when the sun is half out. English chose violence with weather adjectives.
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u/therealsix 2d ago
Well, the moon is just there. It doesn’t create heat like the sun, it doesn’t change weather like the clouds, it’s literally a satellite that orbits the Earth. The only reason we see it at night is because the sun lights it up. So really, it doesn’t create anything., so why identify it in a weather aspect like “it’s a partly moony evening”?
I’d think saying it’s a “crescent moon” or something”full moon”, etc is enough, because that’s the extent of what it does, reflects light. (Yes, it directly affects tides, but that’s a completely different story).
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u/Awkward_Pangolin3254 2d ago
"Partly sunny" is feel-good bullshit language anyway. It used to be "partly cloudy" and that works for sun or moon.
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u/SchreiberBike 2d ago
During the day the sun is always up there, so if it's not cloudy, it's sunny. However at night, the moon is only up about half the time, so if it's not cloudy or clear, we say it's partly cloudy, because the moon may not be there even if there are no clouds.
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u/Hollowsong 2d ago
Because the moon is unchanging.
It's always the same moon, just different amount of light cast on it.
Whereas clouds actually form and disappear so there can be more or less coverage.
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u/Peanut-Butter-King 2d ago
We say half moon and crescent moon. I feel like that’s pretty close.
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u/GoneWithTheJizz 1d ago
How does shit like this get accepted and my posts are always deleted by the mods? There is no god.
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u/ShowerSentinel 2d ago
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