Can someone explain "smooth" stone to me?

[kilteroff]

Where did it come from?
Why does everyone say it?

Why, why, why. It's extra characters. "To avoid confusion" makes no fucking sense to me, no one calls cobblestone stone, everyone just says cobble. Why the shit don't people simply say STONE.

I will never give in.When I get around to making a LP, you will never hear me say smooth stone, this I vow. /sliceshandandbleedsonkeyboard.

 

[Yusunoha]

it's the internet, logic does not apply here

 

[Patmika1]

 

[PeggleFrank]

If you just say 'stone', there's both 'stone' and 'cobblestone'. People don't know if you're abbreviating it for cobblestone or if you're saying stone. So people made smooth stone. And then there wasn't a need for the name cobblestone so they just made it cobble. And they didn't name cobble 'stone' because it would just start up the confusion again.

 

[TH3ON1YN00B]

there is also "clean stone"
allready 3 different names xD

 

[ff255away]

Because stone is a material and you say smooth or cobble to describe the state of said material. Cobble is an accepted real world reference to. What the game calls cobblestone,. If you just say stone, all we hear is blast resistance and color.

 

[kilteroff]

Because stone is a material and you say smooth or cobble to describe the state of said material. Cobble is an accepted real world reference to. What the game calls cobblestone,. If you just say stone, all we hear is blast resistance and color.

Yea, I disagree. You're modifying the base material, and it isn't done with other things; you don't say natural wood.. you just say wood, and no one thinks you're talking about planks. It's specifically because everything turns into something else that a modifier to the base is damaging, it could have people searching nei for smooth stone and thinking something's wrong.

It's arbitrary and illogical.

 

[ff255away]

https://www.google.com/search?q=def...chrome-mobile&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8

PLanks by definition are made of wood. And anybody I've ever spoken to differentiates between logs and planks, and what type of wood is used if its relevant. Like stone, you'd say a wood house or a stone house; but if you ask somebody to bring stone or wood, expect potential confusion.

We've called stone smooth stone since the alpha... its probably not going to change any time soon.

 

[tehBlobLord]

I agree, I call them "Wood logs" and "Wood planks" (or, if I'm being racist (tree racist) I'll say "Birch logs" or "Jungle planks" etc)

Smoothstone because it is smooth.
People abbreviated Cobblestone to Cobble, but abbreviating Smoothstone to Smooth would be weird.

People don't always call items what their tooltip says; for example, most people say "XP bottles" instead of "Bottle o' Enchanting" and a lot of players (such as myself) say "Reeds" instead of "Sugar Cane" because they used to be called reeds.

 

[Silent_007]

You're modifying the base material, and it isn't done with other things; you don't say natural wood.. you just say wood, and no one thinks you're talking about planks.

Mmmmmm, not true. I specify between planks and logs all the time. If I just ask my brother for "wood", he will almost invariably give me planks.

Regardless, as you said the term "smoothstone" is not necessary to avoid confusion with cobble, but it does avoid confusion better than simply referring to it as stone. Why would you have a vendetta against a term that only serves to help people communicate more reliably?

EDIT: There are also stone bricks, mossy cobblestone, mossy stone bricks, and sandstone to consider. Granted very few people would default to any of those materials if they just heard "stone". But this is just further evidence for the fact that more specific terms are useful to aid clear and complete communication.

 

[tehBlobLord]

Asking why Smoothstone is called Smoothstone is like asking "Why are tables called tables? It's easy to differentiate tables from chairs, so we might as well call tables "rondelfuds" instead".
It's silly to even question the randomness of the English Language.

 

[mathjazz]

In the real world, a stone building may be made out of cobblestone or out of smoothstone (or other things, but we are just talking about these two). It just happens that the default meaning for a "stone" building is a cobblestone one, not a smoothstone one. In Minecraft, this default terminology is contrary to the naming of the blocks. So what we have is terminology that is a hybrid of the real world terms and the game terms.

 

[ThatOneSlowking]

HOLY NECROSLOWKING BATMAN

It is smoothstone because beofore beta 1.0 there were not official item names and it just stuck

 

[Hambeau]

Nice Necro

 

[midi_sec]

 

[KuroiMitsukai]

Its just the way the great internet horde decided to do things. Now its a way of life, I wouldn't worry yourself to much but yea I agree it doesn't make much sense if you take a second and think about it. But thats just how it works now