[Ads-l] "fracking"

[Wilson Gray]

 > In other words, the same motivation for the spelling of “pandemicked”

Not to mention the spelling of "picnicked."

On Sun, Aug 9, 2020 at 8:29 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:

> > On Aug 9, 2020, at 7:53 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >
> > And yet, "mike" for microphone has become "mic".
> >
> > On Sun, Aug 9, 2020, 5:23 PM Mark Mandel <markamandel at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> The word didn't originate with activists but within the industry, which
> the
> >> discussion doesn't mention until the 20th paragraph:
> >>>>>>>
> >> The drilling industry has generally spelled the word without a "K,"
> using
> >> terms like "frac job" or "frac fluid."
> >> <<<<<
> >>
> >> But the spelling "frack" is not novel. Again from the article:
> >>>>>>>
> >> The spelling of "fracking" began appearing in the media and in oil and
> >> gas company
> >> materials long before the process became controversial. It first was
> used
> >> in an Associated Press story in 1981. That same year, an oil and gas
> >> company called Velvet Exploration, based in British Columbia, issued a
> >> press
> >> release that detailed its plans to complete "fracking" a well.
> >>
> >> The word was used in trade journals throughout the 1980s. In 1990,
> Commerce
> >> Secretary Robert Mosbacher announced U.S. oil engineers would travel to
> the
> >> Soviet Union to share drilling technology, including fracking.
> >> <<<<<
> >>
> >> The addition of "k" was probably prompted by the rarity of non-Latinate
> >> English monosyllables ending in vowel+"c" – as opposed to " crack, back,
> >> lack, sack, Jack" and a myriad more –  combined with the awkwardness of
> >> "fraccing" as well as "fracced". Its spread in the protest movement,
> >> though, is certainly attributable to the reasons cited by the writer.
> >>
> >> Mark A. Mandel
>
> In other words, the same motivation for the spelling of “pandemicked”
>
> LH
>
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>


-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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