« The Airing of Grievances: Fifth Anniversary Edition | Main | Word of the Year Predictions »

December 23, 2013

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

I believe the mayfly, which is said to live for only a day, is called an ephemeris, but I don't know if this literal application preceded the metaphoric use or the other way around.

John: Close! Mayflies are "ephemerids" belonging to the order Ephemoptera; the two species are Ephemera danica or Ephemera vulgata. (Source: OED.)

Wikipedia gives some names for mayfly in non-English languages, all of which contain the "one-day" element: German Eintagsfliege, Dutch eendagsvlieg, Slovenian enodnevnica, Swedish dagslända, Danish and Norwegian døgnflue, Polish jętka jednodniówka, Finnish päivänkorento, Hebrew בַּריוֹם.

Mayfly would be a good name for an ephemeral app!

Yesterday on Fresh Air, Geoff Nunberg did a piece on SAT words; at the end he said:

I asked my daughter if she recalled any of the items we went over on flashcards when she was preparing for the SAT about seven years ago. "The only one I remember is 'ephemeral,' " she said, then added, "I'm aware that there's a certain irony in that."

http://www.npr.org/2013/12/23/256570578/sorry-assiduous-adj-sat-takers-linguist-in-dudgeon-n-over-vocab-flashcards

Hard to tell how it was spelled, but I think the drug that halted telekinetic powers in the film "Scanners," by David Cronenberg, was called Ephemerol. Did Cronenberg mean that it rendered the scanners mind control ability "ephemeral," or was it just a meaningless term he threw in because he had to quickly finish the script? Hopefully, Cronenberg (he wrote it also) will write in and tell us. Probably ain't gonna happen though.

Timothy: Ephemerol is on one blog's list of "11 Awesomest Fictional Drugs": http://www.ugo.com/the-goods/ephemerol

The comments to this entry are closed.

My Web Site

Pinterest

  • Pinterest
    Follow Me on Pinterest
My Photo

Your email address:


Powered by FeedBlitz

Bookmark and Share

Categories