Fwd: cubic gallons

[Wilson Gray]

On 9/24/05, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Fwd: cubic gallons
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 5:23 PM -0700 9/24/05, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
> >apparently, this went only to Wilson...
> >
> >Begin forwarded message:
> >
> >>From: "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu>
> >>Date: September 22, 2005 11:48:23 AM PDT
> >>To: Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com>
> >>Subject: Re: cubic gallons
> >>
> >>On Sep 22, 2005, at 11:19 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
> >>
> >>>FWIW, back in the '70's, there was a company that sold liquid
> >>>hand-cleaner in containers whose content it referred to as "four
> >>>liters - one metric gallon." I thought that was pretty cool.
> >>>Unfortunately, Weights & Measures did not agree and the company
> >>>had to
> >>>simplify the statement of content to the far more prosaic "four
> >>>liters." My feeling is that, if there can be metric tons, why not
> >>>also
> >>>metric gallons? For the average Joe Blow working a job that requires
> >>>the use of a special hand-cleaner, "one metric gallon" probably makes
> >>>more sin... uh, sense than "four liters."
> >>
> >>i was about to post something similar.  "metric X", where X is a
> >>unit in some non-metric system of measurement, has a fairly easy-to-
> >>interpret meaning, namely 'measure close to and therefore analogous
> >>to X in the metric system'.
> >>
> >>i'm still baffled by "cubic gallon" and "cubic liter", however.
> >>maybe "cubic" is supposed to convey 'measure of volume', in which
> >>case the expressions are pleonastic  -- but sometimes people like
> >>to pile on extra reminders of meaning.
> >>
> >>the meanings analogous to "square acre" 'something that is both an
> >>acre (in area) and a square (in shape)' -- namely 'something that
> >>is both a gallon/liter (in volume) and a cube (in shape)'
>
> Yes, but as noted, "square acre(s)" *very* rarely has that meaning;
> it's much more often simply pleonastic.  I take it to be a phrasal
> analogue to "unthaw", "unloosen", "debone", and other cases of
> redundant morphology when the formally redundant addition makes the
> meaning clear (viz. that we're talking privative actions,
> two-dimensional figures, or volumes, as the case may be).   Plus in
> the case of "square acre"

Sigh! Is anyone else old enough to remember when any elementary-school
child knew that 640 acres <=> one square mile and it never occurred to
anyone that either the 640 acres or the square mile had to be
*literally* square in shape? And nobody was under the impression that
"rectangle" was the word for "oblong"?

-Wilson

, that assimilates this case to others like
> "square inch", "square foot", "square yard", "square mile",
> etc.--"square" here can be interpreted across the board as a signal
> for two-dimensionality, which is would also be in "square acre" even
> though there's no unsquare counterpart in that case.  "Square" is
> thus non-restrictive here.
>
> Oops, I see on rereading the relevant first paragraph that this is
> almost exactly what arnold was positing on his "maybe" interpretation
> above.  What he said.
>
> larry
>
> >>-- make
> >>sense, but, as jon lighter pointed out, they don't seem appropriate
> >>to the original context.  and anyway, they're better expressed by
> >>"gallon cube" and "liter cube".
> >>
> >>arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)
>


--
-Wilson Gray