[Ads-l] UAP - unidentified aerial phenomena (or phenomenon)

Ben Zimmer bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM
Thu Apr 13 19:38:44 UTC 2023


Garson provided that cite info in the original thread in October:

https://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2022-October/162459.html

Also included in my February Twitter thread (with a hat tip to Garson):

https://twitter.com/bgzimmer/status/1626924403622543362


On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 3:31 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Update: the 1958 "UAP" is  from Avram Davidson's story, "The Grantha
> Sighting," in the April, 1958, ish of _Fantasy and Science Fiction_, p. 58:
>
>
> https://archive.org/details/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v014n04_1958-04_PDF/page/n47/mode/2up?q=sightings
>
> JL
>
> On Sun, Oct 23, 2022 at 10:33 AM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Thanks, Garson.  And many thanks for ID'ing the month and page.
> >
> > I was a saucer buff from 1965 to the late '70s and read all I could find
> > on the subject that wasn't totally screwball. I must confess, though,
> that
> > when the Navy used "UAP" when it released UFO footage in 2017, the acro
> > seemed novel.
> >
> > Of course, "aerial phenomenon" is a more objective description than
> > "flying object."
> >
> > In my day, the acronym was so rarely employed that it never fully
> > registered on me. Rereading some of the exx. above, I'm sure I'd have
> > thought it no more than a marginal eccentricity. It doesn't seem to
> appear,
> > for example, in Ron Story's extensive _UFO Encyclopedia_ (1980).
> >
> > It seems likely that Davidson (a prominent sf writer) was the originator.
> >
> >
>

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