This is where yesterday follows tomorrow, departure follows arrival, front follows back, start follows end, past follows future and even life follows death.
What is it?
Asked
Active
Viewed 2,329 times
3 Answers
34
A dictionary. The word 'yesterday' comes after 'tomorrow' in a dictionary. The word 'departure' comes after 'arrival' in a dictionary. And so on...
generalcrispy
- 6,031
- 2
- 36
- 45
AeJey
- 14,506
- 5
- 58
- 117
5
Only an English-language dictionary, in general.
For bonus points, here are some other languages where this does not hold: denoting "follows" by '>' and "doesn't follow" by '>#' :
French: hier > demain, départ > arrivé, devant ># envers, début ># fin, passé > avenir, vie > mort
German: gestern ># morgen, Abfahrt ># Ankunft, Vorderseite > Rückseite, Anfang ># Ende, Vergangenheit ># Zukunft, Leben ># Tod/Sterben
Hence we could characterize any language with a 6-digit binary number (although the choice of words is in some cases subjective, as in whether 'front' vs 'back' refers to the human body or 'obverse'/'reverse' etc.)
doppelgreener
- 344
- 2
- 14
smci
- 890
- 5
- 14
-
-
1I tried to, but it only broke them a bit further (and if my edit gets passed, you should reverse it). I think spoiler quotes might be one line only, or there's a bug. – doppelgreener Nov 04 '14 at 00:30
-
1
-
Thanks for your help with formatting guys. The short answer is
>!can only be used for spoilers, not for anything else. So in my case I used>#to denote 'does not follow'. – smci Mar 17 '19 at 00:44
3
I would guess a dictionary. All the first words of those pairs are lexicographically after the second words.
QBrute
- 1,178
- 9
- 13