Aureoles/areolae eggcorn?

[Wilson Gray]

You are correct, sir.

By the way, arnold, are you related to _Fritz Zwicky_, the astronomer
who postulated the existence of, and named, so-called "dark matter" in
1933? He was mentioned in an article on the bottom left of the
editorial page of yesterday's NYT. It seems that concrete evidence for
the existence of dark matter has been found.

-Wilson

On 8/24/06, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Aureoles/areolae eggcorn?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Aug 24, 2006, at 7:11 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
> > This has been a problem for decades. When I began to do umresearch
> > upon reaching puberty in the mid-'Forties, I learned "aureole" from my
> > readings. It was perhaps ten or more years later that I first came
> > across "areola." By that time, I had studied Latin for about five
> > years and I decided that "areola" - "a small area" - must be the
> > "correct" term, as being more descriptive than "'aureole,"
>
> so you had the substitution "aureole" >> "areola".  (the reverse
> substitution is the common one.)
>
> > from a
> > Latin word that means "golden, gold-colored, gold-plated," etc.
>
> ah, let me correct my earlier posting.  the latin nouns involved are
> AREA and AURUM (not AURA, which is something else entirely).
>
> arnold
>
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