[topspin]

Would a native English speaker use the word "landed" in this way? In the context of aircraft? "Landed" is badly ambiguous here and several distinct meanings are plausible. Captured is the most natural word given your interpretation.

Honestly that sentence -- the use of landed and that awful plural -- approaches engrish. Is that deliberate or is the use of English here just badly flawed? I can't see any other possibilities.

[rjvs]

There are a lot of native English speakers in the world and not all of them use the same idioms that you do. This seems like perfectly valid English to me; some other words that could be used instead of “landed” in the aircraft sentence include “bagged”, “nabbed”, “poached”, “got” and “did in”. One of the entertaining aspects of English is the multitude of ways it can be used.

[mcabbott]

Those are all good synonyms for "got" in the context of shooting at things. But none of the others already has a strong meaning in the context of aircraft, and this other meaning does create some confusion, which is why many speakers would avoid it (if thinking clearly).

[gpm]

On the other hand they might go out of their way to use it to take advantage of the word play.

[bllguo]

I wouldn't use it that way myself, but at the same time the intended meaning is clear as day to me from the context. I'm surprised by the reactions. "Enemy" should give it away immediately.

[tombh]

I'm surprised too. This algorithm is about understanding language, and surely that includes understanding the intended usage. This is something humans have to do all the time. So what if there isn't a formally archived consensus on the definition of "landed" as used in the example. The intended meaning is clear, and so hats off to the algorithm for rolling with it, that is in my mind the fundamental goal of understanding language.

[saalweachter]

It's more or less impressive depending on whether the algorithm already ate a dictionary; then it's the difference between inferring from context, as people do, and simply knowing all of the known unconventional usages in a very inhuman way.

[Accacin]

I don't know. I guess I understood the sentence with 'landed' the same as I would have if someone told me that they'd 'landed a big job'. I wouldn't really say this myself though, although I hear people say 'landed a big catch' when they're talking about fishing.

[treis]

Landed, with this meaning, is used in the context of successfully enticing someone to give you something. Like hooking a fish with bait.

[mod]

FWIW, Landing a fish is not the same as hooking it. Landing a fish literally means pulling it to land (or boat).

So landing=catching=scoring.

Depending on the type of fishing, you can still be an underdog to land the fish after hooking it.

[thrower123]

I don't think anyone would use that particular construction, unless it's some weird dialect of pilot-speak or argot among anti-aircraft folk that I'm not aware of. It's just really awkward and unnatural. Possibly correct, but not the way that anybody actually talks.

[wisty]

Possibly, you could say the planes were landed, as in forced to stay on the ground (because of damage, fear of enemy fire, or damage to the runway). But grounded would be better.

[sgt101]

I think it's archaic; in the past a fishing reference would have been more common and widely understood.

[topspin]

I guess it annoys me because I suspect that if this is the sort of borderline incoherence one must wade through I would probably score below average.

[tremon]

Or just average. There's contextual dependencies in most speech, and (as displayed in this subthread) not every speaker of a language has the same context. It's a fallacy to think that if you lack context for one of the examples, you will automatically score less than average -- other people may miss context for things obvious to you.

[h0h0h0h0111]

For me, this context sounds like "damaged, but in a minor way which forced them to leave the battle/exercise/war/whatever and go land"