Wikipedia has an entry headed Final good, which subsumes all kinds of things as goods. For example, the public good and private good are listed as types of goods.
I am in a quandary. I don’t feel like correcting the article, because it is about economics terms and not language. I also feel that people like the Language Log bloggers would see me as a prescriptivist.
But for me, the public good is an abstract, only ever used in the singular, and consumer goods always has an s on the end, and never the twain shall meet. That is, goods is an example of pluralia tantum – nouns that in a particular sense occur only in the plural.
However, there is also a technical meaning of good: a particular article that is produced in order to be sold. So it’s not part of everyday English, but it fits in that article. I’m still not happy with the heading – it’s not a disambiguation article, after all.
I was originally raised as an economist, and we always referred to public goods. They cover many things: defence, health, welfare, etc. I think it is more or less standard speech. It’s to do with the opposition between state-supplied goods and private market goods.
Thanks very much. I see it’s part of economic s terminology, but it was completely new to me. Mind you, as a legal translator, I should learn more about economics, but when I read things I find they don’t stick.
powidl?
My friends are never happy when I say “krapfen”, always insisting that that is Austrian and that they should be “berliner”.
There’s a Wikipedia article on powidl, but it seems misinformed – it should be the same as German Pflaumenmus, a sort of plum ‘cheese’ cooked for a long time without added sugar.
Yes, I realized the dialectal variations would come up. We haven’t exhausted them – see comments on earlier entry
There ist still the name “pfannkuchen” for krapfen in the eastern part of germany – so it`s again nearer to the “pancake”.
–but i`ve never seen thes krapfen with champagne! And they deliver, i just called!!!