pluton

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 8/17/06, Michael Quinion <wordseditor at worldwidewords.org> wrote:
>
> Ben Zimmer noted:
>
> > A Sep. '96 post on the Usenet group sci.astro suggests that sci-fi
> > writer Fred Pohl used "pluton" as a generic term for Plutolike objects
> > in his 1992 novel _Mining The Oort_. Anyone know if this is the origin?
>
> That I can't answer (it's one of the few Pohl's books I don't have on my
> shelves). But Robert Heinlein used "pluton" as the name of the Earth
> currency in his stories Gulf and Tunnel in the Sky.
>
> The implication of the various pieces I've read this week is that the
> committee working on the definition of "planet" created this word out of
> whole cloth, though it's just the French equivalent of "Pluto" and it
> already exists as an English geological term.

Well, besides that 1996 Usenet post, "pluton" (in the relevant sense)
has been kicking around in the English-language press since at least
1997:

1997 _Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch_ 8 June 7B (Factiva/Nexis) Some
astronomers have taken to calling these Plutolike objects ice dwarfs.
Personally, I prefer Plutons. Poor Pluto has taken its lumps lately,
and deserves some sort of recognition. So Pluto is a comet, a Kuiper
Belt object, an ice dwarf or a Pluton. Take your pick.
[From a column by astronomer Tom Burns.]


--Ben Zimmer

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