I put every variant I could think of in. Nothing.
I don’t even care about the nuance or anything. Out/at are interchangeable here, and I simply cannot get myself to remember which is the one it refuses, and which it accepts.
Why won’t it let me add my own definition?
Perhaps “to point out” is on the block list?
“To point at” sounds to me like you’re physically using your finger to point at something, whereas “to point out” can more mean to bring up/mention something in a non-literal sense. I’ve personally never used “point out” for the physical action, but when I look it up some dictionaries do have a more literal, physical definition as well. So it seems like people use the phrase differently.
I would say they are not interchangeable.
Yes, “point out” can involve pointing a finger at something, but it doesn’t have to (“point out” also can mean “mentioning” something). And when it involves physical pointing, it is a finger point with the purpose of directing someone’s attention. Which is not always the case with just pointing at.
But yeah, it’s clear from the rejection of the synonyms that “point out” is on the blacklist, so I don’t think that aspect of it is mysterious. It would just be a matter of whether one thinks it should be or not. And since they’re not interchangeable, I would say it’s reasonable to have it blacklisted.
Oh sneaky feature. I’ve been around here a while and I didn’t know WK did that. They should have some UI that let’s people know what’s on the blacklist when making synonyms. I can certainly see myself getting caught in that trap.
I just checked by querying the blacklist for the item, it’s the only item on the blacklist for 指差す.
Like the others have mentioned, to point out and to point at/to are not completely interchangeable. To point out generally means to call attention to (e.g “I pointed out a mistake”). You could also use it for locations, although it’s a bit more rare.
To point at seems to be the more literal pointing your finger in the direction of something, which I assume is closer to the real definition of the word.
I assume they added “to point out” to the blacklist to prevent people from thinking the definition would match what we use “to point out” for.
I never knew there was a blacklist?
Like the comment below too. So I guess that does answer it.
It may not be wholly correct. I get what you’re saying, but I personally would never have thought of a difference between point out/point at. If I’m pointing at something, I would think of myself as pointing out something. I point at a car, I point out a car.
That is, until this brought it up to me.
You could go for something completely different, like ‘fingerpokeyverb’. Oh, and you’ll learn ‘to point out’ in just a few levels, so get ready.
If I heard the two uses, I’d assume a different scenario in both cases. If you just “point at your car”, then you’d be telling me where your car is located, and no other information is given. If you were “pointing out your car”, it would probably be from a set of cars or similar.
Ah, yeah, we get a few threads a week asking for things to be blacklisted on various items.
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