RPMs vs. RPM
lightbulb
write or say "RPMs." Would this not in effect translate back into
"revolutions per minutes?"
"...resulting in increased RPMs." (sounds right)
versus
"...resulting in increased RPM." (seems right)
Mike
Steve MacGregor
news:tH_xd.21381$mH4....@fe06.lga...
No. RPMs is the plural of RPM. RPM unpacks to "revolution per minute",
the plural of which is "revolutions per minute".
--
Steve
Default User
Similar to RBI (Run Batted In for you non-baseball types). For the
plural, some people say RBIs, some say RBI.
English speakers don't seem comfortable with words (or initialisms)
that don't inflect in some manner for plurals (other than sheep and few
other established ones).
Brian
lightbulb
"Steve MacGregor" <s_t_ma...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:TF_xd.7996$Ix2.55@okepread02...
RPM unpacks to "revolution per minute",
>
> Steve
RPM unpacks to "revolutions per minute" according to MW-C and most of the
returns from a OneLook dictionary search. Encarta returns "resale price
maintenance" but I submit that that is not relevant to the current topic.
The only instance where I would argue your definition is when the rate of
revolution is one revolution per minute.
Mike
lightbulb
I've noticed a related phenomenon with the word passerby turning into
passersby instead of passerbys/passerbies. The "s" is in the seemingly
correct place, even though with most english words it is placed at the end
of the word.
Mike
Don A. Gilmore
RsPM?
Don
Kansas City
lightbulb
"Don A. Gilmore" <eromlig...@kc.rr.com> wrote in message
news:32rgecF...@individual.net...
required to say "revolutionses per minute," which is fine if one is a 900
year old hobbit that eats raw game and lusts after a precious evil ring.
According to at least six dictionaries the "s" is built into the "R."
Mike
Don A. Gilmore
>
> > RsPM?
> >
> > Don
> > Kansas City
> >
> Yes, that seems to follow, except that if that were the case we would be
> required to say "revolutionses per minute," which is fine if one is a 900
> year old hobbit that eats raw game and lusts after a precious evil ring.
> According to at least six dictionaries the "s" is built into the "R."
I assume you knew that I was being facetious.
"Rpm", like "GPM" or "psi", is a sort of non-standard way to express an
engineering unit. In their proper forms they would be rev/m, gal/m and
lbs/in^2 respectively. Sometimes you call a unit by its initials, sometimes
you don't. For example, you would normally say 20 mph as "twenty miles per
hour", not "twenty emm-pee-aitches". Most engineering units are that way.
You wouldn't call feet per second "eff-pee-esses" or foot-pounds
"eff-tee-ell-bees".
Since when expressing an engineering quantity, the value is nearly *always*
not unity, you would need to place the plural "s" after virtually any
measurement's abbreviation. The only example I can think of where this is
sometimes done is "lbs" for "pounds". I have also infrequently seen "gms"
for "grams", though the standard notation is simply "g". There may be a
handful of others as well.
--
Don A. Gilmore
Mechanical Engineer
Kansas City
Stan Brown
>I've noticed that in abbreviating "revolutions per minute" many people will
>write or say "RPMs." Would this not in effect translate back into
>"revolutions per minutes?"
You have logic on your side, and we know what that's worth in
linguistic matters. :-)
FWIW, I'm not so offended by "RPMs" as you -- I think of "RPM" as a
word like "shrimp", where the plural may be formed with or without
the "s": 1 RPM, 2 RPM or RPMs.
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
"Don't move, or I'll fill you full of [... pause ...] little
yellow bolts of light." -- Farscape, first episode
Steve MacGregor
news:MPG.1c3275f9c...@news.odyssey.net...
> FWIW, I'm not so offended by "RPMs" as you -- I think of "RPM" as a
> word like "shrimp", where the plural may be formed with or without
> the "s": 1 RPM, 2 RPM or RPMs.
That's probably the best approach.
--
Steve
[[ This message was packed by weight, not by volume. Do not induce
vomiting. No user-serviceable words inside. Batteries not included. ]]
Steve Hayes
wrote:
Same with people who write or say "WMDs".
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk
Jordan Abel
> Similar to RBI (Run Batted In for you non-baseball types). For the
> plural, some people say RBIs, some say RBI.
Does anyone ever say RsBI?
lightbulb
"Jordan Abel" <jma...@purdue.edu> wrote in message
news:slrncsibfh...@random.yi.org...
Yes. There are 934 hits for it on google.
Mike
Joe Fineman
> I've noticed that in abbreviating "revolutions per minute" many
> people will write or say "RPMs." Would this not in effect translate
> back into "revolutions per minutes?"
No. At least in technical usage, noun phrases reduced to initials are
normally pluralized at the end, regardless of which initial stands for
the (head) noun: POW, POWs. That is, they are treated like words.
However:
1. Abbreviations of units are not pluralized in modern usage: 1 cm,
3 cm; 1 lb, 3 lb; 0.2 rpm, 300 rpm.
2. The following examples are slang:
> "...resulting in increased RPMs." (sounds right)
> versus
> "...resulting in increased RPM." (seems right)
In these, the name of the unit is used for the quantity whose unit it
is. If you try that in a tony journal, the copyeditor will probably
change "RPM" to "rotation rate" or "angular velocity" or the like --
either in the singular or in the plural, depending on the context.
--
--- Joe Fineman jo...@verizon.net
||: Is God one of man's blunders, or is man one of God's? :||
Ian Noble
<s_t_ma...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>"lightbulb" <ligh...@chartermi.net> wrote in message
>news:tH_xd.21381$mH4....@fe06.lga...
>
>> I've noticed that in abbreviating "revolutions per minute" many people
>> will
>> write or say "RPMs." Would this not in effect translate back into
>> "revolutions per minutes?"
>>
>> "...resulting in increased RPMs." (sounds right)
>> versus
>> "...resulting in increased RPM." (seems right)
>
>No. RPMs is the plural of RPM.
Not unless you're ignorant of what RPM means.
>RPM unpacks to "revolution per minute",
No.
RPM is a unit of measurement. I can't speak for the rest of the
world, but in the UK the dimensions of units are expressed as
"(plural) per (singular)" unless the quantity is exactly ONE.
Hence:
"0.007 mileS per gallon" (fuel efficiency of the Space Shuttle's
transport crawler)
"16 meterS per second " (air speed velocity of an unladen European
swallow)
"32 FEET per second squared" (acceleration due to gravity)
"14.7 poundS per square inch" (atmospheric pressure)
And in particular, "76 revolutionS per minute" - abbreviated to "76
rpm" (playback speed of early phonograph records)
Cheers - Ian
J. J. Lodder
Units (with a few exceptions) shouldn't be pluralized,
1 m, 3 m.
So 1 RPM, 20 RPM.
Or just call them 'revs',
Jan
--
"rev up the engines!"
Don A. Gilmore
news:1gp7nf8.18w...@de-ster.xs4all.nl...
> Units (with a few exceptions) shouldn't be pluralized,
> 1 m, 3 m.
>
> So 1 RPM, 20 RPM.
>
> Or just call them 'revs'
"Revs" would only refer to "revolutions". Without reference to time you
don't have angular velocity (rpm). 20 revs only means that you rotated an
object twenty times, without regard to whether it took you three hours or
three milliseconds to do so. Maybe you're thinking of "rev" in its verb
form.
Now let's talk about radians; they technically don't have units at all!
Don
Kansas City
Rodolphe Audette
>
> "J. J. Lodder" <nos...@de-ster.demon.nl> wrote in message
> news:1gp7nf8.18w...@de-ster.xs4all.nl...
>
> > Units (with a few exceptions) shouldn't be pluralized,
> > 1 m, 3 m.
> >
> > So 1 RPM, 20 RPM.
Sometimes pluralising units, and sometimes not, may at times lead to a
little silliness. There is a unit (less and less) used to measure
computer speed: Million Instructions Per Second: MIPS (such as: a 100
MIPS computer). Some believe the final "S" is for a plural and say: a
100 MIP computer, which means: a 100 million instructions per computer.
Mike Barnes
>"J. J. Lodder" <nos...@de-ster.demon.nl> wrote in message
>news:1gp7nf8.18w...@de-ster.xs4all.nl...
>
>> Units (with a few exceptions) shouldn't be pluralized,
>> 1 m, 3 m.
>>
>> So 1 RPM, 20 RPM.
>>
>> Or just call them 'revs'
>
>"Revs" would only refer to "revolutions". Without reference to time you
>don't have angular velocity (rpm). 20 revs only means that you rotated an
>object twenty times, without regard to whether it took you three hours or
>three milliseconds to do so. Maybe you're thinking of "rev" in its verb
>form.
Or maybe he/she isn't. The word "revs" is commonly used in BrE to mean
RPM. You could try Googling "thousand revs" for lots of examples.
NSOED:
rev /rEv/ n.1 & v.
E20. [Abbrev. of REVOLUTION n.]
A n. A revolution of an engine; chiefly ellipt. in pl., revolutions per
minute. Also, an act of revving an engine etc. E20.
--
Mike Barnes
Cheshire, England
Roland Hutchinson
>
> "Don A. Gilmore" <eromlig...@kc.rr.com> wrote in message
> news:32rgecF...@individual.net...
>> "lightbulb" <ligh...@chartermi.net> wrote in message
>> news:tH_xd.21381$mH4....@fe06.lga...
>> > I've noticed that in abbreviating "revolutions per minute" many people
>> will
>> > write or say "RPMs." Would this not in effect translate back into
>> > "revolutions per minutes?"
>> >
>> > "...resulting in increased RPMs." (sounds right)
>> > versus
>> > "...resulting in increased RPM." (seems right)
>>
>>
>> RsPM?
> Yes, that seems to follow, except that if that were the case we would be
> required to say "revolutionses per minute," which is fine if one is a 900
> year old hobbit that eats raw game and lusts after a precious evil ring.
> According to at least six dictionaries the "s" is built into the "R."
We could cut the Gordian know and just call it 7.9587 inverse seconds (the
radian, being, of course, dimensionless).
--
Roland Hutchinson Will play viola da gamba for food.
NB mail to my.spamtrap [at] verizon.net is heavily filtered to
remove spam. If your message looks like spam I may not see it.
Mark Brader
> > people will write or say "RPMs." Would this not in effect translate
> > back into "revolutions per minutes?"
>
> No. At least in technical usage, noun phrases reduced to initials are
> normally pluralized at the end, regardless of which initial stands for
> the (head) noun: POW, POWs. That is, they are treated like words.
That is, they are acronyms.
--
Mark Brader "MSB is an accepted explanation for men's
Toronto misbehaviors. ... Just blame it on MSB
m...@vex.net and everyone nods their heads." -- "TJ"
Matthew Newell
fr...@clara.co.uk says...
If you've still got any 76 rpm records keep them and care
for them. Original *78* rpm records are expensive - but i
would have thought that such a rarity as a 76 rpm would be
priceless.
Regards
Matthew Newell
J. J. Lodder
> "J. J. Lodder" <nos...@de-ster.demon.nl> wrote in message
> news:1gp7nf8.18w...@de-ster.xs4all.nl...
>
> > Units (with a few exceptions) shouldn't be pluralized,
> > 1 m, 3 m.
> >
> > So 1 RPM, 20 RPM.
> >
> > Or just call them 'revs'
>
> "Revs" would only refer to "revolutions".
Not in Leftpondia, where 'revs' may be used as a synonym for RPM.
Don't know about the other side.
> Without reference to time you
> don't have angular velocity (rpm). 20 revs only means that you rotated an
> object twenty times, without regard to whether it took you three hours or
> three milliseconds to do so. Maybe you're thinking of "rev" in its verb
> form.
>
> Now let's talk about radians; they technically don't have units at all!
They do: a radian is a m/m, in the SI.
Or about 5000 foot/mile, to you,
Jan