Camels vs. dromedaries?

Michael Covarrubias mcovarru at PURDUE.EDU
Fri Apr 4 03:59:17 UTC 2008


Ah better -- I'd not heard that half of it.

But then some semantic shift has gotten in the way of it working
perfectly. Crescent is used to describe the moon before the first
quarter -- when it's waxing crescent -- and also after the third quarter
-- once it's waning crescent. So when it's 'C' it *is* crescent.

Waning Crescent. Maybe that one will end up next to 'jumbo shrimp' in
all those email forwards that say our language is impossible to
understand because of the oxymorons.

michael


Laurence Horn wrote:
> and "C" when it's crescent, or else it would only be lying half the time
>
>
>> that mnemonic always seemed like too many steps.
>>
>
> But it's so elegant!  (In the northern hemisphere, anyway.)  Now, if
> we can prove that camels have two humps and dromedaries one when
> they're south of the Equator, we'll really be on to something.
>
> LH

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