Endangered specie (coinages)

Sun Mar 11 18:18:18 UTC 2012

On Sat, 10 Mar 2012 11:08:30 -0600 Larry Sheldon <LarrySheldon at COX.NET> wrote:

<quote>
Endangered in the traditional sense, and in the sense of "if people
don't stop saying...."

Terms that bother me, either because they in and of themselves annoying,
or because the antecedents are disappearing and the coinage actually has
no meaning, like "clockwise" although that may be making a come-back.

Annoying.

"Acoustic" meaning not amplified--Facebook doubles-down with ads for
"affordable acoustic guitar amps".  The parser blows a fuse every time I
try to attach meaning to that.

"Analog" meaning "not digital".  Thinking of a clock without digits is
like thinking of one hand, clapping.  Several lifes back (I have been
through the "get a life" thing several times) I worked on computers that
did their work with gears, shafts, cams, and stuff.
</quote>

"clockwise" means "in the direction that the sun's shadow moves on a sundial in the Northern Hemisphere".  So it became what you call an "endangered species" not when digital clocks appeared but when mechanical clocks put sundials out of business.

"Analog" does not mean "not digital".  It means "not granular" and "digital" means "granular".  In theory an analog clock displays the instantaneous time at which it is observed, whereas a digital clock reports only the second or the minute in which the observation is made.  With your work on gears, shafs, and cams,you should be aware of this.

An "acoustic guitar" is not one that is not amplified, but rather one that is built so that its primary method of making sound is by vibration of the wood of the guitar, unlike an electric guitar whose primary method of making sound is via the electric signal output to the amplifier.  I like the use of the word "acoustic" because it fits my opinion that the cacophonous electric guitar does not qualify as a musical instrument.  It is possible to put an acoustic transducer (e.g. a microphone) inside an acoustic guitar, and amplify the resulting signal.  This is done when recordings are made of folk singers who let their guitars speak for themselves.

    - Jim Landau

------------------------------

Date:    Sat, 10 Mar 2012 13:39:50 -0500
From:    Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
Subject: Re: Endangered specie (coinages)

On Mar 10, 2012, at 12:08 PM, Larry Sheldon wrote:

> Endangered in the traditional sense, and in the sense of "if people
> don't stop saying...."
>
> Terms that bother me, either because they in and of themselves
annoying,
> or because the antecedents are disappearing and the coinage actually
has
> no meaning, like "clockwise" although that may be making a come-back.
>
> Annoying.
>
> "Acoustic" meaning not amplified--Facebook doubles-down with ads for
> "affordable acoustic guitar amps".  The parser blows a fuse every time
I
> try to attach meaning to that.
>
> "Analog" meaning "not digital".  Thinking of a clock without digits is
> like thinking of one hand, clapping.  Several lifes back (I have been
> through the "get a life" thing several times) I worked on computers
that
> did their work with gears, shafts, cams, and stuff.
>
> What does ..... mean?
>
> "Started out on a shoe string"  was a little dicey before Velcro....
>
> "Clockwise".
>
> "Home-made" seems only to be used by restaurants, home is for
microwave
> and take-out (or delivered).
>
> [I'm new to the list and if I commit (or have committed) breaches of
> protocol or decorum, I am truly sorry and willing to try to learn.
I'm
> kind of a trial and error sort and I try to keep the ratio high, but I
> do recognize the risks of failure.]

No breaches of protocol or decorum, but a useful term we've kicked
around here (due apparently to Joseph Mankiewicz, and popularized by his
friend William Safire in the latter's "On Language" columns for the N.
Y. Times Magazine) is "retronym".  The locus classicus (or one of them,
anyway) was "acoustic guitar", or maybe "analog(ue) watch", but many
others have popped up over the years, due to technological and/or social
progress (or "progress").  A few of my favorites are "biological
mother", "World War I", "terrestrial radio", "human translation", "white
milk", "able-bodied Olympics", and "human poll".

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