Muleociation

[Yerkes, Susan]

Dear John:

Sorry, but is this a joke?

>From a non-technical point of view, seems apparent to me that the student is
using the word "mule" as a questionably punny
substitute for the word "ass" which still is enough to raise some folks'
hackles (believe me, some publications still get worked up about this sort
of thing), so I gather he or she is simply carrying the no-ass dictum to
extremes.

I once had an editor who wouldn't let me refer to a mythical country song
named "It Took A Hell of a Man to Take My Ann, But It Sure Didn't Take Him
Long" on the basis of his impression that the "Take" in the title referred
to the Biblical sense of "take" as "sexually possess." More importantly, I
suppose, he was worried that the readers of the metropolis of San Antonio
Texas would assume that meaning -- and furthermore, that they would care.

Perhaps I'm too simplistic, but FWIW.
Susan Yerkes

   -----Original Message-----
From: John McChesney-Young [mailto:panis at PACBELL.NET]
Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 4:10 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Muleociation


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/%23
mozilla.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.  ***


This e-mail message is intended only for the personal use of the recipient(s) named above. If you are not an intended recipient, you may not review, copy or distribute this message. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the San Antonio Express-News Help Desk (helpdesk at express-news.net) immediately by e-mail and delete the original message.