Humanities desk
< February 2	<< Jan \| February \| Mar >>	February 4 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

February 3

What is the word used for when you are from country X and get stuff from country X?

There is the word import for when an country X get something from country Y. What is the word used for when you are from country X and get stuff from country X? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 179.197.136.196 (talk) 15:53, 3 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Domestic spending is what you’re looking for, assuming that by “get stuff” you mean “buy goods and services”. I’ll put in a dab page to fix the redlink. If you are more specific about who and what does the buying, there’s Consumption (economics), Investment (macroeconomics), and government spending. Loraof (talk) 16:18, 3 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ship is the word for the movement of goods internal to a country, even when a ship is not the medium. Example: "I just bought a piano on an auction site and it's being shipped east to me by rail next week". Akld guy (talk) 18:57, 3 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

To import means to carry in, and to export means to carry out. If it's neither one, to port might work, though I've never heard it used that way. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:33, 3 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

To ship by something other than an actual ship is apparently an American invention, in the mid-19th century.[1] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:36, 3 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

And your point is, Bugs, ... ? --ColinFine (talk) 22:06, 3 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ship would often be understood outside America, but might sound odd when delivery is not by water. Dbfirs 22:12, 3 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A counterblast to the frequent claim that American English preserves the original spelling and pronunciation of words, and that it is other Englishes, including English English, that have strayed from the one true path. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:52, 4 February 2019 (UTC) [reply]

I've never heard that general claim, though it is true of a small number of older English words where the older (now just dialect) word has been retained in American English. Webster was responsible for most of the spelling differences, of course. The first recorded usage of "ship" for general transport is in Harper's Magazine of September 1857, but the verb to ship (by ship) goes back to Anglo-Saxon ("Se micla here..wurdon gescipode") around AD900. ( I don't think American has retained that spelling! ) Dbfirs 22:34, 4 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

To ship something is usually associated with business, but you can bus items or ferry them or taxi them or cart them, not car, plane or train them, but many of the words associated with a vehicle are used to describe moving items over distance. Shuttling and rocketing describe the speed of the transport, while the word transport itself, literally means from port to port or, transfer between ports, literally moving by ship. Your original question uses the word "import". The sea has been very important in the development of the English culture, and therefore the language too. ~ R.T.G 12:26, 9 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Buying local would be a similar sentiment. And for Luxembourg or Lichtenstein, it would be synonymous ;-). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:05, 6 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the answers now I will be able to find the country with biggest value of X. Where X is [100/ (DomesticSpending+Import)]*DomesticSpending 177.177.210.67 (talk) 22:09, 6 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]