[Ads-l] banana (UNCLASSIFIED)

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Fri Nov 1 15:19:58 UTC 2019


> On Nov 1, 2019, at 3:31 AM, Dave Hause <dwhause at CABLEMO.NET> wrote:
> 
> EEs remember wires, MDs struggle to remember cranial nerves.  Lots of mnemonics for the names but you have to memorize functions, too.  Suggestive or obscene helps but I went to St. Louis U, a Jesuit-founded school so we (MD, 1980) sought also for sacrilegious;  S - sensory, M - motor, B - both sensory & motor:  Sally sucked many monks but Magdalene blew seven brothers before morning mass.
> Dave Hause

Very elegant!  For those of us who were neither electricians nor med school students but enjoyed looking at rainbows, we had it easier.  There are indeed mnemonics for ROYGBIV, including at least "Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain” (for Richard, Duke of York, perhaps he of the 10,000 men marched up the hill and back down again) or "Rinse Out Your Granny's Boots In Vinegar”, but I always found Roy G. Biv perfectly memorable on his own.  I’m sure there must be obscene or sacrilegious variants extant.   

LH

> 
> -----Original Message----- From: MULLINS, WILLIAM D (Bill) CIV USARMY CCDC AVMC (USA)
> Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2019 2:18 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: banana (UNCLASSIFIED)
> 
> CLASSIFICATION: UNCLASSIFIED
> 
>> 
>> In any case, Edward Said's _Orientalism_ (1978) was the biggest nail in the
>> coffin and lexical re-orientation was de rigueur.
>> 
>> For people with degrees anyhow.
>> 
> 
> Oh, I have a degree - Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering.  But the standard mnemonic for color codes on resistors was taught to us with a straight face ("Black boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly" -- black, brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, grey, white)), so whether or not "oriental" was offensive was completely off the radar.
> 
> (Wikipedia has a number of mnemonics which are not so racist or sexist, but are also much less memorable.)
> 
> 
> CLASSIFICATION: UNCLASSIFIED
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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