ADS-L Digest - 23 Mar 2006 to 24 Mar 2006 (#2006-84)

[Landau, James]

Page Stephens [hpst at EARTHLINK.NET] wrote:

>Is there any word for words like Sasquatch, bigfoot, flying saucer,
UFO, etc. which can
>be used in sentences but which have no relationship to anything which
has been 
>demonstrated to exist?

Several comments:

- why are all of your examples post-World War II?  Why didn't you ask
about rocs, flying carpets, leprechauns, nymphs, dryads, Babe the Blue
Ox, etc?

- UFO's demonstrably exist.  That is, many people have seen sights in
the sky which certainly _appear_ to be airborne physical objects, which
in many cases move ("fly"), and which they cannot identify.  The
question then becomes: are UFO's always natural meteorological
phenemona, man-made objects such as weather balloons, optical illusions
etc., or are some of them alien visitations?  (One night I saw a rather
spectacular UFO.  I described to a friend who was a flying saucer nut,
and he was able to identify it as an airplane with special lighting
systems used by a local company for advertising.)

- it is hard to say that "leprechauns" do not exist, when you stop to
consider all those millions of St. Patrick's Day cards with depictions
of leprechauns on them.  

- I once met, and photographed, a leprecohen (a Jewish leprechaun).  He
certainly had a physical existence---for about an hour; he was a
contestant in the Masquerade Contest at the 1974 World Science Fiction
convention.  

- a favorite example of mine is the word "troika", not the carriage but
the usage introduced by Nikita Krushchev meaning "triumvirate".  When he
proposed setting up a troika to run the UN, he introduced a word into
English (and effectively removed the word "triumvirate").  Yet there did
not exist such a troika then, and none has ever come into existence
since.  Would you include "troika" in your list?

             - Jim Landau

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