Fritinancy

Word of the week: Penumbra

A penumbra is a partially shaded area, in particular “that of the shadow cast by the moon on the earth in a solar eclipse, or by the earth on the moon in a lunar eclipse, resulting in an area that experiences only a partial eclipse” (OED). The word comes from Latin pen- (“almost”) and umbra (“shadow”); that pen- is the same “almost” we see in penultimate: the almost-last thing in a series.

But I’m not here to talk about astronomy or Latin or second-to-last things. I’m here to talk about abortion, the US Supreme Court, the US Constitution, and a thrilling theatrical performance I urge you to see.

 

Earth’s umbra (central shadow) and penumbra (extended shadow) during a lunar eclipse. Via NASA.gov.

Word of the week: Tiktaalik

Few science stories have delighted me as much as the one that appeared in the New York Times on April 29 (online) and April 30 (print). The story, by Sabrina Imbler, is about an extinct sea creature that may be a missing link between fish and four-legged mammals—a fishapod connection to our very own species.

Tiktaalik roseae illustration by Zina Deretsky for the National Science Foundation, 2006.

 

The news hook isn’t the creature’s discovery; that happened in 2004, in the Nunavut Territory in the Arctic. Nor is it the animal’s name, Tiktaalik (tic-TAH-lick), which departs from traditional scientific naming conventions—Latinate, possibly honoring a scientist—in that it’s an Inuktitut word that means “large freshwater fish that lives in the shallows.” (The full name, Tiktaalik roseae, does have a Latin component: The second element “cryptically honors an anonymous donor”—someone named Rose, maybe?—according to a Wikipedia entry.) A council of Inuit tribal elders worked with a team of paleontologists to develop the name.*

Word of the week: Dopamine dressing

It’s been a tough week, in Ukraine and elsewhere. The responsible, grown-up thing would have been to write about a serious topical word like tranche or SWIFT or drought. But I couldn’t work up the will.

Instead, I went looking for a mood boost. I found one, sort of, in the fashion pages.

“The Science—and Styles—Behind Dopamine Dressing in 2022.” – Town & Country, February 2022. 

Word of the week: Sewershed

Throughout the pandemic, researchers have been monitoring wastewater to detect levels of coronavirus. Lately, those efforts have yielded a startling find: “cryptic lineages” of the virus. These viral fragments, found in New York City sewers and elsewhere, are “cryptic” because they have “a unique constellation of mutations that had never been reported before in human patients — a potential sign of a new, previously undetected variant,” reported Emily Anthes in a New York Times article published online February 3. Researchers at UC Berkeley “have found similar sequences in one California sewershed.”

It was only the second time sewershed had appeared in the Times. (There’s a Twitter bot that keeps track of such things.) The first time was on January 19, 2022, in a story about wastewater surveillance in several U.S. states, including Missouri. The story quoted Jessica Gilmore, director of the pharmacy department at Hannibal Regional Hospital: “We don’t have the capability to do gene sequencing in real time to know which variants are prevalent. … So the best we have is the sewershed data to help us guide our decision making.”

Sewershed provoked some head-scratching.

How implicit egotism affects naming

When it comes to choosing company and product names, we’re all a little egotistical—we prefer the sound and spelling of our personal names, and gravitate toward company and product names that mirror our own. Read about the implicit egotism effect in my latest story for Medium: “You, Yourself, and Your Brand Name.”

June linkfest

“Controversial terms, from ‘abortion’ to ‘Zionism,’ tend to shut down dialog because they mean different things to different people.” The AllSides Red Blue Dictionary defines these hot-button terms across the political spectrum: “Until we fully understand what a term means to someone else, we don't know the issue and can't effectively communicate.”

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I’m enjoying (and learning from) the short essays Susan Orlean publishes on Medium, especially her stories about  the writing craft. Here she is on beginnings and on endings.

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After a four-month hiatus I’m back on Medium myself with some reflections on fifteen years of blogging. (And here’s your annoying-but-obligatory reminder that Medium contributors earn money from their stories only if enough people “clap” for them, and that up to 50 claps per story are allowable, nay, encouraged.)

Word of the week: Arum

Around midday last Monday I got an urgent call from my friend C.J.: “Come across the street right away! You’ve got to see this!” I know better than to disobey C.J., so I asked no questions, just shoved my feet into some sandals, grabbed my keys and phone, and dashed out my front door. In the driveway of the house directly opposite mine—a house I’d never once entered during the six and a half years I’ve lived on this street—was a Honda with with a hand-lettered sign taped to its rear window.

“Corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum) UP DRIVEWAY – Thru Gate. Viewing ===>”

A corpse flower! This was definitely going to be good. 

On the Visual Thesaurus: Vax vocab

Ever since the pandemic began in early 2020, I’ve kept track of the ways in which COVID-19 has influenced the way we talk and write. In my May column for the Visual Thesaurus I take a look at the latest corona-cabulary trend: vaccination words. From the names of pharmaceutical companies like Moderna—coined not from modern but from modified and RNA—to inventions like vaxhole and Fauci ouchie, we continue to make linguistic lemonade out of pandemic lemons.

Full access to the column is restricted to subscribers for three months; here’s a preview:

Names in the news: Bamlanivimab and beyond

Yes, there have been other things going on besides the bonkers yet tedious aftermath of the US election.

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August linkfest

I’ve been reading some excellent books—more about them soon—but right now I want to tell you about a couple of interesting podcasts for language lovers.

• Word Matters is “a show for readers, writers, and anyone who ever loved their English class”; it’s hosted by four Merriam-Webster lexicographers: Emily Brewster, Neil Serven, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Episodes have tackled singular kudo, the pronunciation of antennae, and everyone’s favorite bugaboo, irregardless (which is definitely “a word” even though my editing software red-squigglies it. Yes, “red-squigglies” is also a word. Because I said so, that’s why.)
• Science Diction is “a bite-sized podcast about words—and the science stories behind them,” brought to you by the folks at NPR’s “Science Friday” and hosted by Johanna Meyer. Did you know that restaurant originally meant “a medicinal soup”? Do you know “the linguistic reason why ‘Rocky Road’ sounds so dang delicious”? How about the connection between cobalt and German folklore? Lots more like that, too.

The kobold. (Source)