Mark It's not so obscure - at least to the users of Indo-European languages - if you take an etymological approach.
Thus you probably know what "necromancy" means and what its associations are. You may also have heard of "dendrites" if you have ever, for example, had an interest in metallurgy or mineralogy. Clearly "necrodendritic" is a combination of the two. The Greek words archetypally combined in order to form a word with which you are very familiar is "hippos", horse, and "potamus", river. Even if you weren't aware of the Greek for horse, you will surely know what a "hippodrome" is and, even if you weren't aware of the Greek for river, you may well know the origin of the name "Mesopotamia" or quickly appreciate the roots if you know that it - a little inaccurately[1] - means "the land between the two rivers", the Tigris and the Euphrates. Knowing the meaning of words one hears every day can be a rewarding exercise - not least when it comes to matters connected with, say, z/OS. <g> In an old atlas I happen to have the area between the upper Tigris and Euphrates is labeled Al Jazierah, from Syria to the pinch-point near Baghdad. According to Wikipedia, Al Jazeera, surely just another transliteration of the same Arabic word, is supposed to mean "the island". On the evidence of the name of this area of land coincident with upper Mesopotamia, I'm inclined to think that the word really means "land surrounded by water" where the "surrounding" may not be complete. Thus "Al Jazierah/Jazeera" has similar meaning to "mesopotamia". In any case I was sure the name of the TV station was supposed to represent the Arabian peninsula. [1] Inaccurate because the land adjacent to, and not just between, both rivers is generally considered to be Mesopotamia, certainly up to the Zagros Mountains in the East. Chris Mason ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Zelden" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ibm-main To: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, 08 November, 2006 3:00 PM Subject: Re: Combine spool output datasets > On Wed, 8 Nov 2006 03:34:20 +0100, Chris Mason <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > >[1] I know you know but this is for any who may not. > > > > Well... actually I didn't - and I doubt most subscribers did. I spent > 5 minutes or so trying to look it up before I realized it was > Paul trying to be funny. So my mood at the time prompted the > post - which I'm sorry I did now (Paul, I hope you aren't thin > skinned). > > That being said... this is a technical list (well... some of the time :-) ) > and if you are trying to respond to a post to help someone, why > throw in something that obscure? It would be one thing if it was > common usage (or even common usage on this list), but it isn't. > Or maybe I'm just not too smart and everyone got the joke but me. > > Mark > -- > Mark Zelden > Sr. Software and Systems Architect - z/OS Team Lead > Zurich North America / Farmers Insurance Group - GITO > mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > z/OS and OS390 expert at http://searchDataCenter.com/ateExperts/ > Systems Programming expert at http://expertanswercenter.techtarget.com/ > Mark's MVS Utilities: http://home.flash.net/~mzelden/mvsutil.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
