If Men Are from Mars...

...and women are from Venus, are some relationships from Pluto?

It seems the publicist for Kevin Smith's latest film, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, thought so. He or she issued the following synopsis:

Two lifelong plutonic friends, strapped for cash and in debt, decide to make a porno.

And a bunch of papers, including the New York Times, ran it verbatim.

Not that it mattered to some readers. A Google search for "plutonic friends" turns up 2,380 results, including:

I think guys and girls can be just friends, but I seriously wonder if most plutonic friends just deny a hidden sexual desire or chemistry that secretly sparks between them. (Blubet)

Mid-30s couple looking for plutonic friends. (South Jersey Craigslist)

Professional Indian girl seeks plutonic friends for cultural day trips. (Gumtree)

And there are 3,300 Google matches for "plutonic relationship," such as:

u can't have a plutonic relationship with opposite sex (PlentyOfFish¹ forum)

In all these instances, I assume the writers are using a variation of "platonic." Unless they're  expressing a nostalgic yearning for a former planet. Or an unnatural interest in a certain Disney canine.

"Plutonic friends" hasn't yet made it into the Eggcorn Database. Soon, perhaps? 

(Hat tip: Bill Tozier, who linklogged the Times blurb on Delicious.)

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¹ PlentyOfFish is a dating site, but when I saw it in my browser window--plentyoffish.com--I asked myself who'd want to date someone who was "plenty offish."

Comments

[WIIIAI]

I just googled "plutonic ideal." 255 hits, including a disturbing number of references to people's "plutonic ideal of beauty." Evidently many people wish to hook up with someone who looks like a cartoon dog, or possibly someone who is small and icy, with an eccentric orbit, who thinks they're a planetary celestial body, but really aren't.

[Q. Pheevr]

The thesis expressed in your quotation from Blubet, with its reference to "a hidden sexual desire or chemistry that secretly sparks between them," actually resonates rather nicely with the OED's definition of the geological sense of the word 'plutonic': "Pertaining to or involving the action of intense heat at great depths upon the rocks forming the earth's crust; igneous."

[Bill Brohaugh]

Further to Q. Pheevr's point, I suspect that the "plutonic" relationships may actually source back to "plutonium" and not "pluto" (neither former planet nor dog). My evidence is that like plutonium, platonic relationships have half lives.

[Editrix]

I'm going to start using "plutonic" to describe relationships with people I no longer consider friends--people I've grown apart from.

[Schizohedron]

I'm mixing mythologies, but Orpheus and Eurydice eventually had to settle for a Plutonic relationship.