Muleociation

[James Smith]

mule - ass, get  it?


--- John McChesney-Young <panis at PACBELL.NET> wrote:
> A high school teacher in Bryn Athyn, PA, posted to
> the Latinteach
> list the following:
>
> ... one student 3 times used a word [in an
> assignment]
>   I have never
> seen, nor have my colleagues on the faculty who have
> seen it.  He obviously thinks it has a meaning, so I
> thought I would run it past all of you in case
> someone
> recognizes it as either a word or a misspelling or
> can
> anyone figure out where in Hades he got it.
>
> Muleociation.  As in, "Venyus was originally
> muleociated with vegetable gardens,"  or "Hera was
> particularly muleociated with the institution of
> marriage."   "Mercury's purse was symbolic of his
> muleociation with commerce."  Obviously the word
> association works here, but that persistently was
> not
> the word he chose.
>
> I am at a loss, because I can find no muleociation
> between this word and any Latin or Greek roots.
> Perhaps this just sprung full-grown from my
> student's
> head.
>
> (end quote)
>
> Searches for assorted forms of the word
> ("muleociate," "muleociated,"
> etc.) at the search engine Dogpile turn up just a
> handful of uses in
> three places: a discussion forum for players of the
> Xbox game system,
> and a couple of others for developers of the open
> source version of
> Netscape's browser, Mozilla.
>
> Here are two examples where it apparently means
> "association":
>
>
http://forum.teamxbox.com/showthread.php?s=fe88131c6c8d084291e2bef1061dad71&threadid=201892&highlight=muleociation
>
> Also on Ubi-Soft's on site the Xbox logo is nowhere
> to be found in
> muleociation with Far Cry.
>
> [and]
>
>
http://www.mozdev.org/mailarchives/reviewers/2002-December/000890.html
>
> \"The first thing you have to do to build a custom
> view is
> instantiate your tree and then muleociate a view
> object with it,
> commonly known as a view.
>
> (end quote)
>
> Teoma also reports a use at the Teambox.com domain
> in this phrase,
> "Proud member of the Correct Grammar muleociation,"
> but it appears to
> be a signature file which is no longer in use.
>
> Here's a place where the sense is clearly different:
>
>
http://www.pseudorandom.org/irclog/mozilla/%23mozilla/%23mozilla.2002-12/%23mozilla.2002-12-23.log
>
> 09:29 < biesi> bsmedberg: german reden="to talk"
> mond="moon" so there
> 09:30 < Neil> heh, someone posting in
> n.p.m.reviewers using
> censorware - associate gets turned into muleociate
> :-)
> 09:30 < bsmedberg> biesi: I figured it was
> translation... makes more sense now
>
> (end quote)
>
> Cf. "mucilage"?
>
> A check of Usenet via Google's Groups search turned
> up no hits at all.
>
> Has anyone here run across the term before, and does
> anyone have an
> idea of its origin, if it's common in any particular
> areas, and
> whether it (usually) bears any distinction in
> meaning from
> "association"?
>
> Thanks!
>
> John
> --
>
>
> *** John McChesney-Young  **  panis at pacbell.net  **
>  Berkeley,
> California, U.S.A.  ***


=====
James D. SMITH                 |If history teaches anything
South SLC, UT                  |it is that we will be sued
jsmithjamessmith at yahoo.com     |whether we act quickly and decisively
                               |or slowly and cautiously.

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