On 2007 Jul 10 , at 5:23 PM, Michael Palumbo wrote:
- Mileage
-
With words such as "mileage", is there a metric substitute such as
"metreage"? It doesn't make sense to me to say, "My auto has low
mileage" when I'm not counting it's use in miles
Michael mentions several use of old English measurements being
used in colloquial way. I'f like to comment on one particular use of
the several he mentioned; namely, the adding of "-age" to the end of
a unit to form a word meaning the attribute that is measured in that
unit.
I would argue for eliminating the practice completely.
There are many examples of this particular practice:
mileage for distance travelled*
yardage for distance forward in an American football game
yardage for length of cloth
footage for distance (although sometimes for area in SQUARE feet)
acreage for land area
voltage for potential difference or electromotive force
amperage for electric current
wattage for power**
My main objection to this practice is the confusion caused when
(for example) a power is large enough to me measured in kilowatts (or
megawatts or gigawatts). It seems incongruous to call it "wattage"!
Why not "kilowattage", etc.? Worse yet are situations like the
question "What is that yardage in metres". (And the answer: "The
yardage is 7.5 metres.")
My other objection is that it forms a slang word for which there
is an established proper word. This can lead to the problem, among
the uninitiated, of misunderstanding what is referred to because they
do not know that (for example) amperage and electric current are
supposed to mean the same thing. If it is current, call it "current".
It can be measured in amperes or milliamperes or kiloamperes, etc.
but it is still "current".
Bill Hooper
72 kg body mass
Fernandina Beach, Florida, USA
* Mileage is also used incongruously to mean fuel economy (number of
miles driven in a car per gallon of gasoline used.
** In SI, watts are used for any kind of power but the word "wattage"
seems usually to refer only to electrical power, especially when
referring to "the power company" or a "power outage".
