AWADmail Issue 207
April 30, 2006
A Compendium of Feedback on the Words in A.Word.A.Day
and Other Interesting Tidbits about Words and Languages
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From: Anu Garg (gargATwordsmith.org)
Subject: Interesting stories from the net
Oniomania in news: My God is a God who wants me to have things:
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/arts/story.html?id=0361fd09-4117-469f-bf08-38d315b1021b
http://tinyurl.com/m48hv
Study: Grammar can be for the birds; There is no "single magic bullet" that
separates humans from animals:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002955804_birds27.html
'W' gets its own place in Swedish language:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1103AP_Sweden_Language_Change.html
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From: Raymond Forest (rpauldefATwebtv.net)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--oniomania
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/oniomania.html
When my daughter used to take frequent cruises to European ports, they
did little sightseeing but never missed a shopportunity, which was my
neologism for the practice.
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From: Ed Buhl (etbuhlATaol.com)
Subject: oniomania
Perhaps it should be spelled own-I-owe-mania; its meaning would then be
obvious.
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From: Karen Trame (momketATfuse.net)
Subject: oniomania
My sister and I were shopping for a pair of shoes for her to wear to a
wedding. We had taken my five-year-old nephew TJ along and with every pair of
shoes that my sister tried on, TJ had brought one from the boys' section. "A
pair of sandals because it was warm out, a pair of dress shoes for church, a
pair of sneakers for running fast," were his explanations. My sister referred
to him as her "very own Imelda". He has outgrown this form of oniomania,
but it was very funny at the time.
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From: Carl N. E. Burnett (carl.n.e.burnett.03ATalum.dartmouth.org
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--garbology
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/garbology.html
One of the sixties' most prominent garbologists was AJ Weberman, a
self-proclaimed Dylanologist who believed he could gain insights into
the mind of Bob Dylan by combing through the dumpster behind his house
in Manhattan.
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From: Goldie Silverman (goldie.silvermanATcomcast.net)
Subject: feedback: garbology
I'd never heard of garbology, but when I was researching my book, Backpacking
with Babies and Small Children (Wilderness Press, Berkeley, CA), I came
across the Garbage Project of the Bureau of Applied Research, Department
of Anthropology, University of Arizona. Beginning in the 1980s, these
researchers dug up landfills in different parts of the country. Up until
that time, no one had really studied what happens in landfills. Assumptions
were based on models that assumed that biodegradable materials would degrade
with time. The investigations showed that as the landfills aged and the
oxygen in the first two or three feet was used up, decomposition stopped.
They found 40-year-old newspapers at the bottom of the landfills that were
still legible. Surprisingly to me, as a writer trying to discourage parents
from using disposable diapers, it was not the diapers that were filling up
the landfills--most of the intact material was newspaper.
----------------------------
From: Julie Lipkin (julonATadelphia.net)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--garbology
The last time I ate a hot dog was right before I learned that hot dogs
unearthed from landfills after 10 to 15 years are perfectly preserved and
still edible.
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From: James E. Hunter (jehunterATpantechengineering.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--garbology
With regard to words with common prefixes, "Crateology" was coined by the
CIA during the Cold War. It involved our determining the contents of crates
containing Soviet weapons of war, e.g., MiG fighter aircraft and battle
tanks, and thereby helped in maintaining a running tally of the inventory
of Soviet puppets.
These large items were stowed on the exposed decks of ships and, since
Russia has no warm water port, these ships were forced to pass through
the Dardenelles en route to the Mediterranean from the Black Sea. Under
a 1930s treaty, the Soviets were required to announce in advance their
intention to send a ship through this strait. And, of course our agents,
having studied at length the shape of the crating of any large weapon, were
stretched out with field glasses along the crest of the same cliffs from
which Turkish fire decimated Churchill's troops at Gallipoli in 1915.
Another such word with roughly the same provenance is "Rustology". The
Soviets tried to camouflage their ships of war traversing this route by
placing painted steel forms over bridges, guns, decks, etc., but they were
unable to hide the signature of the hull of any ship: its rust spots. And
it was these giveaways, studied intently by US agents, that kept their
movements under constant observation.
----------------------------
From: Larry Goldman (lgoldmanATcsupomona.edu)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--theophany
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/theophany.html
Here's a relatively new uncommon word with a common prefix and a common
suffix:
Neurotheology: A new field of research in the neurosciences that
investigates the brain activity that accompanies and is responsible for
various religious beliefs and experiences. A popular book in this area (by
Andrew Newberg, Eugene D'Aquili and Vince Rause) is called "Why God Won't Go
Away". The reason presented there, and in many other books and research
articles, is that religious experiences are rooted in the biology of the
brain. Apparently having religious and mythological beliefs and experiences.
has been adaptive for humans, and so we have evolved with brains that tend
to establish and follow such belief systems.
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From: Eric Shackle (eshackleATozemail.com.au)
Subject: philography
Philography hounds must be used to famous people saying NO. They could
reverse that response by asking ON for his autograph. On is a brilliant
young Japanese web designer who has devised cryptic game puzzles twice as
difficult as cryptic crosswords. First you have to work out how to play one
of the games, then how to achieve a high score. For further details, see a
story in the May edition of my free e-book, http://bdb.co.za/shackle
............................................................................
Homicide and verbicide -- that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal
results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life -- are alike forbidden.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., poet, novelist, essayist, and physician
(1809-1894)
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