Re: [dict]"epitome"

[Horace LaBadie]

In article <epitome-202...@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de>,
r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote:

> In a dictionary from our century we read:
>
> |epitome
> |the epitome of sth
> |the perfect example of something
>
> . In a dictionary from 1899:
>
> |epitome
> |a concise summary; abridgement; compendium
> |To reduce to an epitome; make an epitome

So? Both definitions are listed in dictionaries today, usually in that
very order.


> . BTW: I had pronounced the word
>
> |?p??tom
>
> , but it's
>
> |??p?t?mi
>
> (with a flapped t).
>
> BTW: "epitome" has frequency rank 16379 and is in grade 13
> (the maximum grade) of the EDL Reading Core Vocabulary.

Words first encountered in reading sometimes get mispronounced. Nothing
unusual.

[CDB]

On 2/17/2021 1:32 PM, Stefan Ram wrote:
> In a dictionary from our century we read:

> |epitome |the epitome of sth |the perfect example of something

> . In a dictionary from 1899:

> |epitome |a concise summary; abridgement; compendium |To reduce to an
> epitome; make an epitome

> . BTW: I had pronounced the word

> |ɛpɪˈtom

> , but it's

> |ɪˈpɪtəmi

>
> (with a flapped t).

> BTW: "epitome" has frequency rank 16379 and is in grade 13 (the
> maximum grade) of the EDL Reading Core Vocabulary.

As Bobby said about his brother Jack, and Juliet said about Romeo, "cut
him out in little stars" J adding "And he will make the face of heaven
so fine/ That all the world will be in love with night/ And pay no
worship to the garish sun."

I'm sure at least one of them was thinking "epitome".

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Wednesday, February 17, 2021 at 3:17:20 PM UTC-5, Horace LaBadie wrote:
> In article <epitome-202...@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de>,
> r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote:

> > In a dictionary from our century we read:
> >
> > |epitome
> > |the epitome of sth
> > |the perfect example of something
> >
> > . In a dictionary from 1899:

There is of course no hope of learning what those dictionaries are.

Does he suppose the Stasi is still keeping an eye on his choices
of reading material?

> > |epitome
> > |a concise summary; abridgement; compendium
> > |To reduce to an epitome; make an epitome
>
> So? Both definitions are listed in dictionaries today, usually in that
> very order.

Though not so in an historical dictionary (which all the best dictionaries
are). The 'optimal' sense comes from the 'concise' sense.

> > . BTW: I had pronounced the word
> > |?p??tom
> > , but it's
> > |??p?t?mi
> > (with a flapped t).
> > BTW: "epitome" has frequency rank 16379 and is in grade 13
> > (the maximum grade) of the EDL Reading Core Vocabulary.

Someone ought to tell his news reader to use UTF-8. Or perhaps Stefan
should begin to use a UTF-compliant font. (But we'll never know.)

> Words first encountered in reading sometimes get mispronounced. Nothing
> unusual.

The three-syllable one would be an upper blade, or perhaps a
blade for cutting an outer layer of something.

[Bebercito]

As would exactly the four-syllable, as the Greek root of "temnein" (to
cut) for -tome would still be identical.

[Peter T. Daniels]

I guess you're unfamiliar with the English names of various surgical and
laboratory instruments used in cutting, all of which contain the root -tome
pronounced -[towm].

Really, your knee-jerk pouncing on anything I post is becoming as tedious
as Cooper's.

[Ken Blake]

Don't misle him.


--
Ken

[Quinn C]

* Ken Blake:

> On 2/17/2021 1:17 PM, Horace LaBadie wrote:
>> In article <epitome-202...@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de>,
>> r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote:

[epitome]

>>> . BTW: I had pronounced the word
>>>
>>> |?p??tom
>>>
>>> , but it's
>>>
>>> |??p?t?mi
>>>
>>> (with a flapped t).
>>

>> Words first encountered in reading sometimes get mispronounced. Nothing
>> unusual.
>
> Don't misle him.

Everyone has gaps.
<https://youtu.be/QPwYNhDliFE>

--
Grab your lip gloss and your pepper spray, sweetheart. Your
date's here.
-- Keith Mars

[Peter Moylan]

On 18/02/21 07:23, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 17, 2021 at 3:17:20 PM UTC-5, Horace LaBadie wrote:
>> In article <epitome-202...@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de>,
>> r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote:

>>> . BTW: I had pronounced the word
>>> |?p??tom
>>> , but it's
>>> |??p?t?mi
>>> (with a flapped t).
>>> BTW: "epitome" has frequency rank 16379 and is in grade 13
>>> (the maximum grade) of the EDL Reading Core Vocabulary.
>
> Someone ought to tell his news reader to use UTF-8. Or perhaps Stefan
> should begin to use a UTF-compliant font. (But we'll never know.)

Of course we know. Just look at the article headers. Stefan posted using
UTF-8, but Horace's newsreader couldn't handle it.

--
Peter Moylan Newcastle, NSW

[Peter Moylan]

On 18/02/21 05:32, Stefan Ram wrote:
> In a dictionary from our century we read:
>
> |epitome
> |the epitome of sth
> |the perfect example of something
>
> . In a dictionary from 1899:
>
> |epitome
> |a concise summary; abridgement; compendium
> |To reduce to an epitome; make an epitome
>

> . BTW: I had pronounced the word
>

> |ɛpɪˈtom
>
> , but it's
>
> |ɪˈpɪtəmi
>

> (with a flapped t).
>
> BTW: "epitome" has frequency rank 16379 and is in grade 13
> (the maximum grade) of the EDL Reading Core Vocabulary.

For a couple of similar words, check out calliope and Hermione.

(Plus, no doubt, dozens of words that I won't think of until after
pressing "Send".)

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

such as Penelope and anemone.


--
Athel -- British, living in France for 34 years

[Ross Clark]

I had the same problem with "epitome", and also with "Penelope", until I
connected the written form (the name of a comic-strip character, I
think) with the name of an elderly family friend which I knew only by ear.

[Peter Moylan]

That last word is one of my bêtes noires. For a long time I pronounced
it as "an enemy", and that was a hard habit to break.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Like antimony and antinomy.

[Peter Duncanson [BrE]]

On Thu, 18 Feb 2021 08:18:35 +0100, Athel Cornish-Bowden
<acor...@imm.cnrs.fr> wrote:

>On 2021-02-18 07:06:57 +0000, Peter Moylan said:
>
>> On 18/02/21 05:32, Stefan Ram wrote:
>>> In a dictionary from our century we read:
>>>
>>> |epitome
>>> |the epitome of sth
>>> |the perfect example of something
>>>
>>> . In a dictionary from 1899:
>>>
>>> |epitome
>>> |a concise summary; abridgement; compendium
>>> |To reduce to an epitome; make an epitome
>>>
>>> . BTW: I had pronounced the word
>>>

>>> |?p??tom
>>>
>>> , but it's
>>>
>>> |??p?t?mi
>>>

>>> (with a flapped t).
>>>
>>> BTW: "epitome" has frequency rank 16379 and is in grade 13
>>> (the maximum grade) of the EDL Reading Core Vocabulary.
>>
>> For a couple of similar words, check out calliope and Hermione.
>>
>> (Plus, no doubt, dozens of words that I won't think of until after
>> pressing "Send".)
>
>such as Penelope and anemone.

I'm OK with Penelope, but I have to stop and think about anemone.

There is an Indian stand-up comedian living in the UK who some years ago
on the TV panel show QI pronounced "epitome" rhyming with dome, home and
gnome. She was corrected in a friendly way.

She uses "Sindhu Vee" as her stage name. "Vee" represents the initial
letter of her surname.

Mispronunciation of "epitome" is nothing compared with the multiple ways
people could mangle her actual surname,

"Venkatanarayanan".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sindhu_Vee

--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

The main difficulty is that it's long: no problem with any of the
individual syllables. It's like Hungarian place names, such as
Kiskunfélegyháza, that look very threatening but are quite easy once
you know some basic spelling rules (like what sound gy represents): you
just start at the beginning and continue saying the syllables syllables
one after another until you get to the end.

There is a prominent structural biologist called Venkatraman
Ramakrishnan, who usually goes by Venki.

>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sindhu_Vee

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

On 2021-02-18 12:47:25 +0000, Athel Cornish-Bowden said:

> On 2021-02-18 12:30:11 +0000, Peter Duncanson [BrE] said:
>
>>

>> [ … ]

>>
>> "Venkatanarayanan".
>
> The main difficulty is that it's long: no problem with any of the
> individual syllables. It's like Hungarian place names, such as
> Kiskunfélegyháza, that look very threatening but are quite easy once
> you know some basic spelling rules (like what sound gy represents): you
> just start at the beginning and continue saying the syllables syllables

There are lots of syllables in the name, but only one "syllables"
should be in the sentence.

> one after another until you get to the end.

Incidentally, gy isn't too recondite, as it occurs in "Magyar", a word
one comes across very frequently in Hungary.

[musika]

And the cricketer Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan, who goes by Venkat.


--
Ray
UK

[Jerry Friedman]

On Thursday, February 18, 2021 at 5:47:31 AM UTC-7, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> On 2021-02-18 12:30:11 +0000, Peter Duncanson [BrE] said:

...

> > There is an Indian stand-up comedian living in the UK who some years ago
> > on the TV panel show QI pronounced "epitome" rhyming with dome, home and
> > gnome. She was corrected in a friendly way.
> >
> > She uses "Sindhu Vee" as her stage name. "Vee" represents the initial
> > letter of her surname.
> >
> > Mispronunciation of "epitome" is nothing compared with the multiple ways
> > people could mangle her actual surname,
> >
> > "Venkatanarayanan".
> The main difficulty is that it's long: no problem with any of the
> individual syllables.

I'd say the problems are knowing which syllable is accented and whether each
"a" is long or short.

> It's like Hungarian place names, such as
> Kiskunfélegyháza, that look very threatening but are quite easy once
> you know some basic spelling rules (like what sound gy represents):

And once you're capable of producing it.

> you
> just start at the beginning and continue saying the syllables syllables
> one after another until you get to the end.

...

At least there's no problem with knowing which one is accented.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Peter T. Daniels]

That became clear subsequently, when someone independently
quoted Stefan. The correct answer, you can see, was my first guess.

You're not a GG user, so you're not in the "we." Once again, the inadequacy
of English in not distinguishing inclusive/exclusive "we" becomes clear.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Suh as "misanthrope"? :-)

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Thursday, February 18, 2021 at 7:57:01 AM UTC-5, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:

> Incidentally, gy isn't too recondite, as it occurs in "Magyar", a word
> one comes across very frequently in Hungary.

Which is absolutely NOT a [g] followed by a [j] (y-sound).

[Rich Ulrich]

However, "epitome" is the only word about which I recall my own
shock when I learned that the word that my ear knew was not spelled
differently from the word in my reading vocabulary. I was about 25
at the time, having a discussion with my housemates, Steve and Suzie.

About 1971: At the time, I knew maybe 6 couples who were "Steve
and Suzie" (or slightly variant) -- as another friend pointed out at
the time. I haven't known that many Steve's or Suzie's since.


--
Rich Ulrich

[Quinn C]

* musika:

I always wondered whether Mindy Kaling shortened her last name,
Chokalingam, just to make it easier to pronounce, or also to avoid
annoying jokes from people with ideas about what a "lingam" is.

--
It was frequently the fastest way to find what he was looking
for, provided that he was looking for trouble.
-- L. McMaster Bujold, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen

[Bebercito]

Le jeudi 18 février 2021 à 19:31:03 UTC+1, Quinn C a écrit :
> * musika:
> > On 18/02/2021 12:47, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> >> On 2021-02-18 12:30:11 +0000, Peter Duncanson [BrE] said:
> >>> "Venkatanarayanan".
> >>
> >> The main difficulty is that it's long: no problem with any of the
> >> individual syllables. It's like Hungarian place names, such as
> >> Kiskunfélegyháza, that look very threatening but are quite easy once you
> >> know some basic spelling rules (like what sound gy represents): you just
> >> start at the beginning and continue saying the syllables syllables one
> >> after another until you get to the end.
> >>
> >> There is a prominent structural biologist called Venkatraman
> >> Ramakrishnan, who usually goes by Venki.
> >>
> > And the cricketer Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan, who goes by Venkat.
> I always wondered whether Mindy Kaling shortened her last name,
> Chokalingam, just to make it easier to pronounce, or also to avoid
> annoying jokes from people with ideas about what a "lingam" is.

Especially one that can make you choke.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

One you've learned "epitome" you can think about "microtome".

>
> About 1971: At the time, I knew maybe 6 couples who were "Steve
> and Suzie" (or slightly variant) -- as another friend pointed out at
> the time. I haven't known that many Steve's or Suzie's since.


--

[Anders D. Nygaard]

Dearest creature in creation ...

/Anders, Denmark

[Peter Moylan]

Someone I've worked with in Canada is called Mathukumali Vidyasagar, but
always went by Sagar. I never found his full name difficult, and in fact
I think I've just written it correctly from memory.

[Quinn C]

* Peter Moylan:

> For a couple of similar words, check out calliope and Hermione.
>
> (Plus, no doubt, dozens of words that I won't think of until after
> pressing "Send".)

I had an analogous wrong idea about "Hebrides" for a long time.

--
It gets hot in Raleigh, but Texas! I don't know why anybody
lives here, honestly.
-- Robert C. Wilson, Vortex (novel), p.220

[Quinn C]

* Peter Moylan:

There's a Thai computational linguist with the family name of
Sornlertlamvanich (which I just wrote correctly from memory). In a long
list of conference participants, his name was set in a smaller font than
anyone else's.

He was working in Japan when I met him, and although in Japan, it's
custom to be addressed by family name, he generally went by his 6-letter
first name. I think his last name works out to 11 syllables in Japanese,
so he must have struggled with some Japanese forms; I've seen extreme
examples where only 3 places each were reserved for first name and last
name (there are Japanese names longer than that, but they're quite
rare.)

--
Americans are not that comfortable with being uncomfortable.
-- Veronica Osorio

[Garrett Wollman]

In article <s0n18l$ddd$2...@dont-email.me>,

Peter Moylan <pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:

>Someone I've worked with in Canada is called Mathukumali Vidyasagar, but
>always went by Sagar. I never found his full name difficult, and in fact
>I think I've just written it correctly from memory.

We have a faculty member here who decided just to use the name
"Arvind" (I'm told his second name has some connotation in India that
he didn't want following him in his professional life) -- which was
less of an issue when he got his doctorate 40 years ago and few
Indians came to the US to study, but as "Arvind" is a fairly common
Indian given name, there are now lots of people (even faculty in the
same department) named "Arvind Something" plus this one older
professor whose name is just "Arvind".

We do see his full name from time to time, so it's not like it's a
secret.

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,
wol...@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is
Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)

[Garrett Wollman]

In article <s0l3mj$f83$2...@dont-email.me>,

Peter Moylan <pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:

>For a couple of similar words, check out calliope and Hermione.

But contrast "epitope" which has exactly the pronounciation you'd
expect if you didn't know about any of those words.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Thursday, February 18, 2021 at 8:56:35 PM UTC-5, Quinn C wrote:
> * Peter Moylan:

> > For a couple of similar words, check out calliope and Hermione.
> >
> > (Plus, no doubt, dozens of words that I won't think of until after
> > pressing "Send".)
>
> I had an analogous wrong idea about "Hebrides" for a long time.

No, that's not a gender-confusion term ...

[Lewis]

In message <hlabadie-E940F4...@aioe.org> Horace LaBadie <hlab...@nospam.com> wrote:
> In article <epitome-202...@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de>,

>> |epitome

> Words first encountered in reading sometimes get mispronounced. Nothing
> unusual.

I here "epih-tome" or "epee-tome" often enough that I fear for this
word's future.


--
If you [Carrot] were dice, you'd always roll sixes. And the dice
don't roll themselves. If it wasn't against everything he wanted
to be true about the world, Vimes might just then have believed
in destiny controlling people. And gods help the other people who
were around when a big destiny was alive in the world, bending
every poor bugger around itself...

[Peter T. Daniels]

A fellow linguistics graduate student at Chicago was K. Paramasivan.
He _never_ told us what the K. stood for, and insisted that we call him
K.P.

His native tongue was Tamil, and he could not pronounce an initial
e- without a y- before it.

Vijayarani Fedson, who goes by Rani, kept her ex-husband's name
after the divorce. Their two daughters are Anjali and Savitri, which
seem to be fairly common Tamil names.

[Lewis]

Thankfully antimony has never come up in conversation.

--
Rule 1 of the Dunning-Kruger club is that you don't know you're a member of
the club.

[Lewis]

In message <fyqit4g6xjmc$.d...@mid.crommatograph.info> Quinn C <lispa...@crommatograph.info> wrote:
> * musika:

>> On 18/02/2021 12:47, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>>> On 2021-02-18 12:30:11 +0000, Peter Duncanson [BrE] said:
>>>>    "Venkatanarayanan".
>>>
>>> The main difficulty is that it's long: no problem with any of the
>>> individual syllables. It's like Hungarian place names, such as
>>> Kiskunfélegyháza, that look very threatening but are quite easy once you
>>> know some basic spelling rules (like what sound gy represents): you just
>>> start at the beginning and continue saying the syllables syllables one
>>> after another until you get to the end.
>>>
>>> There is a prominent structural biologist called Venkatraman
>>> Ramakrishnan, who usually goes by Venki.
>>>
>> And the cricketer Srinivasaraghavan Venkataraghavan, who goes by Venkat.

> I always wondered whether Mindy Kaling shortened her last name,
> Chokalingam, just to make it easier to pronounce, or also to avoid
> annoying jokes from people with ideas about what a "lingam" is.

I wonder. She went to a posh prep school and then to Dartmouth, it's
quite possible that "Kaling" was a nickname that happened to her rather
than one she specifically chose herself.

I didn't know until today that her first name is Vera.

She wrote and said one of my favorite lines, "Best friend isn't a
person, it's a LEVEL" which I used quite often, sometimes substituting
other words for "best friend".

--
I've never done good things
I've never done bad things
I've never done anything out of the blue

[Peter Moylan]

On 19/02/21 15:56, Lewis wrote:
> In message <hlabadie-E940F4...@aioe.org> Horace LaBadie <hlab...@nospam.com> wrote:
>> In article <epitome-202...@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de>,
>>> |epitome
>
>> Words first encountered in reading sometimes get mispronounced. Nothing
>> unusual.
>
> I here "epih-tome" or "epee-tome" often enough that I fear for this
> word's future.

Socket tome.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Has antinomy? Are you a student of Kant? 

[Peter Moylan]

On 19/02/21 15:56, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> A fellow linguistics graduate student at Chicago was K. Paramasivan.

> He_never_ told us what the K. stood for, and insisted that we call
> him K.P.

Using initials that way is apparently a common practice in some parts of
India - and I think it's the part(s) where people have long names.

[Peter Moylan]

In the south, apparently, the first initial represents the person's
father's name.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

A few minutes ago we were listening to an interview with the Secrétaire
d'État Chargé de la Transition numérique, whose name is Cédric O. The O
is not an initial; it's his name.

--

[Lewis]

In message <i997v3...@mid.individual.net> Athel Cornish-Bowden <acor...@imm.cnrs.fr> wrote:
> This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

Yuck.

> On 2021-02-19 04:59:43 +0000, Lewis said:

>> Thankfully antimony has never come up in conversation.

> Has antinomy?

Not much, but more than atimony.

> Are you a student of Kant?

Would I necessarily know? Though I guess if I perceive I am, I must
be.

Or am I confusing my Germans?

--
Up the airy mountains, down the rushy glen... From ghosties and
bogles and long-leggity beasties... My mother said I never
should... We dare not go a-hunting for fear... And things that go
bump... Play with the fairies in the wood... --Lords and Ladies

[Quinn C]

* Garrett Wollman:

> In article <s0l3mj$f83$2...@dont-email.me>,
> Peter Moylan <pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:
>
>>For a couple of similar words, check out calliope and Hermione.
>
> But contrast "epitope" which has exactly the pronounciation you'd
> expect if you didn't know about any of those words.

I guess all the -tope words are fine, as well as -trope and -scope. The
exceptions to remember here are the non-scope -cope words like syncope,
apocope.

It just occurs to me that this has a regular relationship to the form of
the words in German:

Biotop
Heliotrop
Mikroskop
Synkope
^

That last one is only a schwa, so intuition might suggest it could be
mute in English, but in fact words of this kind don't even have schwa at
the end in German when the -e isn't sounded in English.

This rule also works for anemone and catastrophe. It doesn't help with
"epitome", because that word is quite exotic in German. It seems you'll
hardly see it outside of the study of antique literature.

--
The wrong body ... now comes not to claim rightness but to
dismantle the system that metes out rightness and wrongness
according to the dictates of various social orders.
-- Jack Halberstam, Unbuilding Gender

[Quinn C]

* Peter T. Daniels:

He-man might want to marry one day.

--
Do not they speak false English ... that doth not speak thou to one,
and what ever he be, Father, Mother, King, or Judge, is he not a
Novice, and Unmannerly, and an Ideot, and a Fool, that speaks Your
to one, which is not to be spoken to a singular, but to many?
-- George Fox (1660)

[Ken Blake]

There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium


--
Ken

[Ross Clark]

In case anyone else was wondering, Wiki explains that his father is
Korean (cf. Sandra Oh).
I think there is a Japanese surname "Oh", as well -- there was a famous
baseball player, the rest of whose name I can't remember. Someone told
me that he was of Chinese ancestry, and the "Oh" /o:/ was just the
Sino-Japanese equivalent of the very common Chinese family name Wang/Wong.
And in this connection we shouldn't forget the Å /o:/ family of Norway.

Oh yes! If anyone else was wondering whether M.O's office had something
to do with gender issues: Wiki translates it as "State Secretary of
Digital Transition and Electronic Communications". So something to do
with computers, but just what is it that is transitioning?

[Jerry Friedman]

On Friday, February 19, 2021 at 12:50:04 PM UTC-7, Ken Blake wrote:
> On 2/18/2021 9:59 PM, Lewis wrote:
> > In message <i96rfh...@mid.individual.net> Athel Cornish-Bowden <acor...@imm.cnrs.fr> wrote:
> >> On 2021-02-18 09:29:00 +0000, Peter Moylan said:

...

> >>> That last word is one of my bêtes noires. For a long time I pronounced
> >>> it as "an enemy", and that was a hard habit to break.
> >
> >> Like antimony and antinomy.
> >
> > Thankfully antimony has never come up in conversation.
> There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium

Pronounced to rhyme with "millennium", for some reason.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Garrett Wollman]

In article <583237d8-f2d8-4487...@googlegroups.com>,

Not by Dr. Lehrer.

[Quinn C]

* Ross Clark:

> On 19/02/2021 9:40 p.m., Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>>
>> A few minutes ago we were listening to an interview with the Secrétaire
>> d'État Chargé de la Transition numérique, whose name is Cédric O. The O
>> is not an initial; it's his name.
>
> In case anyone else was wondering, Wiki explains that his father is
> Korean (cf. Sandra Oh).

But it turns out such pithiness is not new to the French:
<https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_d%27O>

> I think there is a Japanese surname "Oh", as well -- there was a famous
> baseball player, the rest of whose name I can't remember. Someone told
> me that he was of Chinese ancestry, and the "Oh" /o:/ was just the
> Sino-Japanese equivalent of the very common Chinese family name Wang/Wong.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadaharu_Oh>

Whereas <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mipo_O> is Korean-Japanese.

> And in this connection we shouldn't forget the Å /o:/ family of Norway.

> Oh yes! If anyone else was wondering whether M.O's office had something
> to do with gender issues: Wiki translates it as "State Secretary of
> Digital Transition and Electronic Communications". So something to do
> with computers, but just what is it that is transitioning?

Society. The economy, mainly.

But aren't we all transitioning, all the time?

--
Sic transit Gloria Gaynor (but she will survive)

[musika]

On 19/02/2021 22:25, Garrett Wollman wrote:
> In article <583237d8-f2d8-4487...@googlegroups.com>,
> Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> On Friday, February 19, 2021 at 12:50:04 PM UTC-7, Ken Blake wrote:
>>> There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium
>>
>> Pronounced to rhyme with "millennium", for some reason.
>
> Not by Dr. Lehrer.
>

I thought that he never completed his doctoral studies.


--
Ray
UK

[Peter Moylan]

I haven't met that, from Lehrer or anyone else. More commonly I see
people write "millenium", presumably so spelt to make it rhyme with
"selenium".

[Peter Moylan]

On 20/02/21 08:09, Ross Clark wrote:
> On 19/02/2021 9:40 p.m., Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:

>> A few minutes ago we were listening to an interview with the
>> Secrétaire d'État Chargé de la Transition numérique, whose name is
>> Cédric O. The O is not an initial; it's his name.

[...]

> Oh yes! If anyone else was wondering whether M.O's office had
> something to do with gender issues: Wiki translates it as "State
> Secretary of Digital Transition and Electronic Communications". So
> something to do with computers, but just what is it that is
> transitioning?

Thanks. I thought it was about transitioning from decimal to
hexadecimal, or something like that.

[Jerry Friedman]

On Friday, February 19, 2021 at 3:26:01 PM UTC-7, Garrett Wollman wrote:
> In article <583237d8-f2d8-4487...@googlegroups.com>,
> Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >On Friday, February 19, 2021 at 12:50:04 PM UTC-7, Ken Blake wrote:
> >> There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium
> >
> >Pronounced to rhyme with "millennium", for some reason.
>
> Not by Dr. Lehrer.

Another false memory. Where do I get them from?

--
Jerry Friedman

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

I was going to suggest that maybe Tom Lehrer wanted it to rhyme with
"rhenium", but that doesn't work because the regular pronunciation
rhymes perfectly well with "rhenium". However, he may not have known
any better, as he was a mathematician, not a chemist.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

On 2021-02-19 22:25:57 +0000, Garrett Wollman said:

> In article <583237d8-f2d8-4487...@googlegroups.com>,
> Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> On Friday, February 19, 2021 at 12:50:04 PM UTC-7, Ken Blake wrote:
>>> There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium
>>
>> Pronounced to rhyme with "millennium", for some reason.
>
> Not by Dr. Lehrer.

Ah, I wondered about that, but I wasn't about to contradict Jerry.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

On 2021-02-19 21:09:56 +0000, Ross Clark said:

On 19/02/2021 9:40 p.m., Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:

On 2021-02-19 07:35:41 +0000, Peter Moylan said:

On 19/02/21 15:56, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

A fellow linguistics graduate student at Chicago was K. Paramasivan.

He_never_  told us what the K. stood for, and insisted that we call

him K.P.

Using initials that way is apparently a common practice in some parts of

India - and I think it's the part(s) where people have long names.

A few minutes ago we were listening to an interview with the Secrétaire d'État Chargé de la Transition numérique, whose name is Cédric O. The O is not an initial; it's his name.

In case anyone else was wondering, Wiki explains that his father is Korean (cf. Sandra Oh).

I had finished wondering, as I had looked him up. His mother was (is?), however, French, so although his appearance suggests the Far East it doesn't suggest it very strongly.

I think there is a Japanese surname "Oh", as well -- there was a famous baseball player, the rest of whose name I can't remember. Someone told me that he was of Chinese ancestry, and the "Oh" /o:/ was just the Sino-Japanese equivalent of the very common Chinese family name Wang/Wong.

And in this connection we shouldn't forget the Å /o:/ family of Norway.

Oh yes! If anyone else was wondering whether M.O's office had something to do with gender issues: Wiki translates it as "State Secretary of Digital Transition and Electronic Communications". So something to do with computers, but just what is it that is transitioning?

Nothing to do with gender (or sex), but a modern Gallic version of Harold Wilson's white-hot tecnological revolution that was going to revitalize the British economy. There is a feeling among politicians that France has been left behind in the race to adopt modern computer-based technology. So Cedric O's task is to supervise the transition from a system inherited from Louis XIV into something more appropriate for the 21st century.

[Ross Clark]

On 20/02/2021 11:28 a.m., Quinn C wrote:
> * Ross Clark:
>
>> On 19/02/2021 9:40 p.m., Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>>>
>>> A few minutes ago we were listening to an interview with the Secrétaire
>>> d'État Chargé de la Transition numérique, whose name is Cédric O. The O
>>> is not an initial; it's his name.
>>
>> In case anyone else was wondering, Wiki explains that his father is
>> Korean (cf. Sandra Oh).
>
> But it turns out such pithiness is not new to the French:
> <https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_d%27O>

Lovely. But no connection with the Lac d'Oô, apparently?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac_d%27O%C3%B4

(I once made a special détour to try and visit this lake in the
Pyrenees. We got within a km or two, but it was late in the day, further
access was over private property and we didn't feel up to negotiating
it. I was all ready with an Ode: "Ô eaux d'Oô!...")

[Anders D. Nygaard]

Den 20-02-2021 kl. 09:32 skrev Athel Cornish-Bowden:
> This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

This has been happening a couple of times lately, Athel.
Have you made some sort of change to your setup,
or is it a strange bug in Unison?

/Anders, Denmark

[Peter T. Daniels]

God you're nasty.

[Peter T. Daniels]

Whose "newsreader" has become completely broken.

He didn't actually write almost any of the above.

[CDB]

On 2/19/2021 10:51 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:

> Horace LaBadie <hlab...@nospam.com> writes:

>> Words first encountered in reading sometimes get mispronounced.
>> Nothing unusual.

> The epitome of such a word, for me, is "recipe", which, of course, is
> not

> |rɛˈsaˑɪp

> but

> |ˈrɛsəpi

Traditional English pronunciation of Latin imperative "recipe", take to
yourself.

Etymonline says that it was originally used in pharmaceutical
prescriptions (both recipes and prescriptions are still sometimes
colloquially called "receipts").

https://www.etymonline.com/word/recipe

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/receipt

> . Frequency rank 2532, reading grade 6. Cf.

> |favorite |ˈfeˑɪvɹɪt

> |appetite |ˈæpəˌtaˑɪt

[Ken Blake]

On 2/20/2021 6:17 AM, CDB wrote:
> On 2/19/2021 10:51 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:
>> Horace LaBadie <hlab...@nospam.com> writes:
>
>>> Words first encountered in reading sometimes get mispronounced.
>>> Nothing unusual.
>
>> The epitome of such a word, for me, is "recipe", which, of course, is
>> not
>
>> |rɛˈsaˑɪp
>
>> but
>
>> |ˈrɛsəpi
>
> Traditional English pronunciation of Latin imperative "recipe", take to
> yourself.
>
> Etymonline says that it was originally used in pharmaceutical
> prescriptions (both recipes and prescriptions are still sometimes
> colloquially called "receipts").
>
> https://www.etymonline.com/word/recipe
>
> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/receipt

I've seen "receipt" used for "recipe," but never for "prescription." Is
that usage just in the UK?


--
Ken

[Ken Blake]

I doubt if that's the case. My guess is that most people who spell it
"millennium" have never even heard of selenium.

And whether you spell it with one n or two doesn't necessarily change
the pronunciation. I also think that those who misspell it still
pronounce it the same way: mill-EN-ee-um. "Selenium" is pronounced
sell-EE-nee-um, at least according to me.


--
Ken

[Peter Duncanson [BrE]]

On Sat, 20 Feb 2021 07:39:32 -0700, Ken Blake <k...@invalidemail.com>
wrote:

>On 2/20/2021 6:17 AM, CDB wrote:
>> On 2/19/2021 10:51 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:
>>> Horace LaBadie <hlab...@nospam.com> writes:
>>
>>>> Words first encountered in reading sometimes get mispronounced.
>>>> Nothing unusual.
>>
>>> The epitome of such a word, for me, is "recipe", which, of course, is
>>> not
>>

>>> |r??sa??p
>>
>>> but
>>
>>> |?r?s?pi

>>
>> Traditional English pronunciation of Latin imperative "recipe", take to
>> yourself.
>>
>> Etymonline says that it was originally used in pharmaceutical
>> prescriptions (both recipes and prescriptions are still sometimes
>> colloquially called "receipts").
>>
>> https://www.etymonline.com/word/recipe
>>
>> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/receipt
>
>
>I've seen "receipt" used for "recipe," but never for "prescription." Is
>that usage just in the UK?

In the context of medicine a "receipt" was a recipe.

OED:

IV. A formula or preparation made according to a formula. Now
generally superseded in this branch by recipe n.
12.
a. Medicine. A statement of the ingredients and procedure necessary
for making a medicinal preparation, a prescription; (also) a
medicine made according to such a prescription. More generally: a
remedy or cure (esp. for a disease). Cf. recipe n. 1. Now
historical or archaic.

Originally a prescription told a pharmacist what ingredients should be
mixed to make the medicine for the patient.
Information about historical prescriptions here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_prescription#History

--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)

[Sam Plusnet]

Not too sure what _is_ happening, but Athel's post was perfectly OK when
received here[1], but PTD's quote of that post was broken such that the
whole text seemed to come from Athel.

Google groups mangling things again?

[1] Via Thunderbird 78.7.0

--
Sam Plusnet
Wales, UK

[Peter T. Daniels]

Someone questioned whether his MIME-header was amiss.

It was Anders, though without quoting anything, in a message
whose time translates to 6:34 am EST.

> Google groups mangling things again?
>
> [1] Via Thunderbird 78.7.0

No, no other message in this thread or any other was missing its
chevrons. Recall that Athel has claimed it's not possible for him
to follow any of the standard conventions for copy-pasting text,
as well.

[Anders D. Nygaard]

Den 20-02-2021 kl. 14:17 skrev CDB:
>
> Traditional English pronunciation of Latin imperative "recipe", take to
> yourself.
>
> Etymonline says that it was originally used in pharmaceutical
> prescriptions (both recipes and prescriptions are still sometimes
> colloquially called "receipts").

The Danish word for a (pharmaceutical) prescription is "recept".
German uses "Rezept" for both prescriptions and recipes.

/Anders, Denmark

[Anders D. Nygaard]

Den 20-02-2021 kl. 21:34 skrev Peter T. Daniels:
> On Saturday, February 20, 2021 at 2:27:23 PM UTC-5, Sam Plusnet wrote:
>> On 20-Feb-21 12:56, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>> On Saturday, February 20, 2021 at 3:32:52 AM UTC-5, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:

>>>> [something MIME-encoded]

>> Not too sure what _is_ happening,

Fairly obvious if you use the "View Source" facility in Thunderbird.
See below

>> but Athel's post was perfectly OK when
>> received here[1],

Not here - on Thunderbird 78.7.1. I saw some HTML-formatted gunk.

>> but PTD's quote of that post was broken such that the
>> whole text seemed to come from Athel.
>
> Someone questioned whether his MIME-header was amiss.
>
> It was Anders, though without quoting anything, in a message
> whose time translates to 6:34 am EST.

No, I remarked that Athel for some reason posted multi-part MIME
instead of the text-only format expected in newsgroups.

/Anders, Denmark

[Peter Moylan]

Australian medical prescriptions used to start with "Rx", but that
doesn't seem to happen now that they're no longer handwritten.

I see that mine have an "eRx" at the top, but I think it's put there by
the pharmacy's software, and I don't know what the "e" means.

[Peter Moylan]

Peter, you need to refine your insults. You're descending to the non
sequitur far too often lately.

How many non-chemists know the correct pronunciation of every element?
(Present company excepted.)

[Peter Moylan]

I believe Athel has explained before that this happens when he posts
from a different computer. Presumably that second computer is not well
configured.

[Peter Moylan]

On 21/02/21 06:27, Sam Plusnet wrote:

> Not too sure what _is_ happening, but Athel's post was perfectly OK
> when received here[1], but PTD's quote of that post was broken such
> that the whole text seemed to come from Athel.
>
> Google groups mangling things again?
>
> [1] Via Thunderbird 78.7.0

The post was a multipart one. The text-only part, which is the only part
a news client should display, is correctly formatted. The HTML part is a
bit quirky. Thunderbird managed to display it anyway, but Google Groups
got confused.

Both Thunderbird and Google Groups unwisely chose to display the HTML
version. Thunderbird does it because the Thunderbird programmers have
never understood the difference between e-mail and newsgroups. (And they
don't give a high enough priority to getting "plain text" e-mails
right.) GG does it because Google doesn't understand the difference
between Usenet format and HTML.

[Ken Blake]

Electronic?

--
Ken

[Garrett Wollman]

In article <i9bt7h...@mid.individual.net>,

Athel Cornish-Bowden <acor...@imm.cnrs.fr> wrote:
>On 2021-02-19 22:25:57 +0000, Garrett Wollman said:
>
>> In article <583237d8-f2d8-4487...@googlegroups.com>,
>> Jerry Friedman <jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> On Friday, February 19, 2021 at 12:50:04 PM UTC-7, Ken Blake wrote:
>>>> There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium
>>>
>>> Pronounced to rhyme with "millennium", for some reason.
>>
>> Not by Dr. Lehrer.
>
>Ah, I wondered about that, but I wasn't about to contradict Jerry.

He rhymes it with "rhenium" for which there isn't a generally accepted
alternative pronunciation (in English, at least).

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,
wol...@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is
Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)

[Peter Moylan]

Possibly. But in any case the Rx is almost certainly an abbreviation for
"receipt".

[Tony Cooper]

In Agent, a notice pops up when one of Athel's "different" posts is
encountered.
--

Tony Cooper Orlando Florida

[Sam Plusnet]

Mr Lehrer may not be a chemist, but he did play one at the keyboard.

[Peter Moylan]

He played a lot of things at the keyboard.

Anyway, the subject is a song that rhymes "discovered" with "Harvard".

[Peter T. Daniels]

Well, considering that Lehrer didn't mispronounce it, it's far from
clear what Athel was trying to do, other than insult every mathematician
in the world.

[Peter T. Daniels]

I didn't see any extraneous characters, such as are usually seen when
HTML gets into an ASCII environment. (Those % codes and such.)

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

I've never knowingly done that in my life. It looks fine on my screen,
and apparently on Sam's also.

Clearly Google Groups is messed up beyond hope, so there is no point in
discussing it. What's wrong with your system I have no idea.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Not on this occasion. In these days of Covid-19 confinement it's very
rare that I go into my office.

[Peter Moylan]

If I were a mathematician, I wouldn't feel insulted by that comment. I
know quite well I'm not a chemist, so it wouldn't be hurtful to have
that pointed out.

I could equally well say that Athel is not a mathematician, and I'll bet
he won't feel insulted by that observation.

Now, if I happened to say that David K was not a mathematician, *that*
would be an insult.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Needless to say I agree with all that. I was amazed that PTD F.D.
thought my comment was "nasty". It would never have occurred to me that
is was impolite, let alone nasty.

[Snidely]

Athel Cornish-Bowden asserted that:

Despite getting the wrong headers, it's GG's fault?

-d

--
"What do you think of my cart, Miss Morland? A neat one, is not it?
Well hung: curricle-hung in fact. Come sit by me and we'll test the
springs."
(Speculative fiction by H.Lacedaemonian.)

[Snidely]

Snidely is guilty of <mn.a8407e52f7e9e774.127094@snitoo> as of
2/21/2021 1:04:59 AM

"Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary=--------------1797350574111914389 "

and apparently line breaks disappeared, without a "flowed" setting.

Mime-Version: 1.0, and I don't see a char-set

/dps

--
"Inviting people to laugh with you while you are laughing at yourself
is a good thing to do, You may be a fool but you're the fool in
charge." -- Carl Reiner

[Kerr-Mudd,John]

On Sat, 20 Feb 2021 08:32:45 GMT, Athel Cornish-Bowden
<acor...@imm.cnrs.fr> wrote:

plain text omitted]

> --
> Athel -- British, living in France for 34 years

> Attachment decoded: untitled-2.txt
> ----------------1797350574111914389
> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
> "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <html>
> <head>
> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
> <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css">
> <title></title>
> <meta name="Generator" content="Cocoa HTML Writer">
> <meta name="CocoaVersion" content="1561.2">
> <style type="text/css">
> p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 15.0px; font:
> 18.0px Courier} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height:
> 15.0px; font: 18.0px Courier; min-height: 22.0px} p.p3 {margin: 0.0px
> 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px; line-height: 22.0px; font: 18.0px Courier; color:
> #011892} p.p4 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 24.0px; font: 18.0px Courier;
> color: #008e00} p.p5 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 24.0px; font: 18.0px
> Courier; color: #008e00; min-height: 22.0px} p.p6 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px
> 0.0px 36.0px; font: 18.0px Courier; color: #941100} p.p7 {margin:
> 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 36.0px; font: 18.0px Courier; color: #941100;
> min-height: 22.0px} p.p8 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 48.0px; font:
> 18.0px Courier; color: #011892} p.p9 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px
> 12.0px; font: 18.0px Courier; color: #011892; min-height: 22.0px}
> p.p10 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 12.0px; font: 18.0px Courier; color:
> #011892} p.p11 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 22.0px;
> font: 18.0px Courier; min-height: 22.0px} p.p12 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px
> 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 22.0px; font: 18.0px Courier} p.p13 {margin:
> 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 22.0px; font: 18.0px Courier;
> color: #011892} p.p14 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px
> Courier; color: #000000; min-height: 22.0px} p.p15 {margin: 0.0px
> 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Courier} p.p16 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px
> 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Courier; min-height: 22.0px} p.p17 {margin:
> 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Courier; color: #929292}
> </style> </head>
> <body>
> <p class="p1">On 2021-02-19 21:09:56 +0000, Ross Clark said:</p>
> <p class="p2"><br></p>
> <p class="p3">On 19/02/2021 9:40 p.m., Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:</p>
> <p class="p4">On 2021-02-19 07:35:41 +0000, Peter Moylan said:</p>
> <p class="p5"><br></p>
> <p class="p6">On 19/02/21 15:56, Peter T. Daniels wrote:</p>
> <p class="p7"><br></p>
> <p class="p8">A fellow linguistics graduate student at Chicago was K.
> Paramasivan.</p> <p class="p8">He_never_¶ÿ told us what the K. stood
> for, and insisted that we call</p> <p class="p8">him K.P.</p>
> <p class="p7"><br></p>
> <p class="p6">Using initials that way is apparently a common practice
> in some parts of</p> <p class="p6">India - and I think it's the
> part(s) where people have long names.</p> <p class="p5"><br></p>
> <p class="p4">A few minutes ago we were listening to an interview with
> the SecrǸtaire d'Ç%tat ChargǸ de la Transition numǸrique, whose
> name is CǸdric O. The O is not an initial; it's his name.</p> <p
> class="p5"><br></p> <p class="p9"><br></p>
> <p class="p10">In case anyone else was wondering, Wiki explains that
> his father is Korean (cf. Sandra Oh).</p> <p class="p11"><br></p>
> <p class="p12">I had finished wondering, as I had looked him up. His

> mother was (is?), however, French, so although his appearance suggests

> the Far East it doesn't suggest it very strongly.</p> <p
> class="p11"><br></p> <p class="p13">I think there is a Japanese

> surname "Oh", as well -- there was a famous baseball player, the rest
> of whose name I can't remember. Someone told me that he was of Chinese
> ancestry, and the "Oh" /o:/ was just the Sino-Japanese equivalent of

> the very common Chinese family name Wang/Wong.</p> <p class="p10">And
> in this connection we shouldn't forget the Ç. /o:/ family of
> Norway.</p> <p class="p9"><br></p>
> <p class="p10">Oh yes! If anyone else was wondering whether M.O's

> office had something to do with gender issues: Wiki translates it as
> "State Secretary of Digital Transition and Electronic Communications".
> So something to do with computers, but just what is it that is

> transitioning?</p> <p class="p14"><br></p>
> <p class="p15">Nothing to do with gender (or sex), but a modern Gallic

> version of Harold Wilson's white-hot tecnological revolution that was
> going to revitalize the British economy. There is a feeling among
> politicians that France has been left behind in the race to adopt
> modern computer-based technology. So Cedric O's task is to supervise
> the transition from a system inherited from Louis XIV into something

> more appropriate for the 21st century.</p> <p class="p16"><br></p>
> <p class="p17">--<span class="Apple-converted-space">¶ÿ</span></p>
> <p class="p17">Athel -- British, living in France for 34 years</p>
> </body>
> </html>
> Attachment decoded: untitled-3.htm
> ----------------1797350574111914389--
>

My response has reflowed "messed up" the code; but it's there.

--
Bah, and indeed, Humbug.

[Kerr-Mudd,John]

Sorry, but it's your PC that's posting the additional html. See my post
of 20s ago

>> --
> Athel -- British, living in France for 34 years
>

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Sorry, but I've no idea why my computer (not a PC) is doing that. I've
been through the Preferences, and I don't see anything relevant, except

Port 563 Use SSL

which is ticked normally, and is on this message.

I'll send it again with that unticked.

For the text encoding I have Unicode™ (UTF8), but seems to affect what
I see, not what I send.

[Snidely]

Remember Sunday, when Athel Cornish-Bowden asked plainitively:

As with the non-SSL version (which I saw before this)

Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit


/dps

[Kerr-Mudd,John]

On Sun, 21 Feb 2021 10:31:53 GMT, Athel Cornish-Bowden

This post came through fine; I doubt very much it's connected to SSL!

[Peter Moylan]

Neither SSL nor UTF8 should have any relevance to the problem.

I don't know whether this will help, but in Thunderbird the HTML option
- which is the thing you have to disable - is in the news server account
settings, under "Composition".

But it's worth pointing out that your last many postings have been
perfectly normal. There was only one in which the HTML appeared.

[CDB]

On 2/20/2021 9:39 AM, Ken Blake wrote:

> CDB wrote:
>> Stefan Ram wrote:
>>> Horace LaBadie <hlab...@nospam.com> writes:

>>>> Words first encountered in reading sometimes get
>>>> mispronounced. Nothing unusual.

>>> The epitome of such a word, for me, is "recipe", which, of
>>> course, is not

>>> |rɛˈsaˑɪp

>>> but

>>> |ˈrɛsəpi

>> Traditional English pronunciation of Latin imperative "recipe",
>> take to yourself.

>> Etymonline says that it was originally used in pharmaceutical
>> prescriptions (both recipes and prescriptions are still sometimes
>> colloquially called "receipts").

>> https://www.etymonline.com/word/recipe

>> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/receipt

> I've seen "receipt" used for "recipe," but never for "prescription."
> Is that usage just in the UK?

PeterWD has answered your direct question.

The Wiktionary definition linked to above says

"7. (archaic in New England and rural US since end of 20th century,
elsewhere since middle of 20th century)[1][2] A recipe, instructions,
prescription.
1650, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], 2nd edition, London:
[…] A. Miller, for Edw[ard] Dod and Nath[aniel] Ekins, […], OCLC 152706203:
She had a receipt to make white hair black.
1863, Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard:
Have you never eaten them, either preserved or candied […] if you will
allow me, Sir, I shall be very happy to send the receipt to your
housekeeper."

[CDB]

On 2/20/2021 10:05 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:

> CDB <belle...@gmail.com> writes:

>> Etymonline says that it was originally used in pharmaceutical
>> prescriptions (both recipes and prescriptions are still sometimes
>> colloquially called "receipts").

> Trying to find this in a latin dictionary, I find:

> |reciperō (recup-) ~āre, ~āuī, ~ātum, tr.

> ...

My school paper dictionary (Cassell's New Latin Dictionary, first
published in the mid-19th Century by a father and son named Beard, which
raises an interesting possibility, and most recently revised and
enlarged in 1953 by one DP Simpson of Eton) (he says pointedly) doesn't
have that verb. I looked up "recipio (recipere, recepi, receptum) and
depended on that entry.

> |5 (med., of remedies) To be made up of, take.
> |
> |potione, quae ~ipit semunciam sulpuris ouumque crudum
> |COL.6.38.3; stratioticum collyrium ad caliginem . . ~ipit . .
> |heac LARG.33; plura etiam quam ~ipit ipsemet contundi
> |iubebat pigmenta fallendi suos causa 97.

> I don't even know what "~ipit" is. Maybe "reciperipit"?
> Or "recipipit"? - No, it's "recipit"!

Looks like a form of "recipio" to me.

> COL. might be "de Re Rustica" by "L. Iunius Moderatus Columella".
> LARG. might by "Scribonius Largus". Both "i A.D.".

> My attempts to translate the first quotation using sources and means:

> |a potion, which contains half an uncia sulfur and a raw egg

> . "recipit heac" seems to be "it contains:".

Probably a misprint for "haec". What dictionary are you using, pray?

> Don't try any potions from ancient books!

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Sunday, February 21, 2021 at 2:43:48 AM UTC-5, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 21/02/21 15:36, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Saturday, February 20, 2021 at 7:44:34 PM UTC-5, Peter Moylan
> > wrote:
> >> On 20/02/21 23:56, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >>> On Saturday, February 20, 2021 at 2:48:08 AM UTC-5, Athel
> >>> Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> >>>> On 2021-02-19 22:11:13 +0000, Jerry Friedman said:
> >>>>> On Friday, February 19, 2021 at 12:50:04 PM UTC-7, Ken Blake
> >>>>> wrote:

> >>>>>> There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium
> >>>>> Pronounced to rhyme with "millennium", for some reason.
> >>>> I was going to suggest that maybe Tom Lehrer wanted it to
> >>>> rhyme with "rhenium", but that doesn't work because the
> >>>> regular pronunciation rhymes perfectly well with "rhenium".
> >>>> However, he may not have known any better, as he was a
> >>>> mathematician, not a chemist.

Still is, incidentally. The same age as Noam Chomsky, it turns out.

> >>> God you're nasty.
> >> Peter, you need to refine your insults. You're descending to the
> >> non sequitur far too often lately.
> >> How many non-chemists know the correct pronunciation of every
> >> element? (Present company excepted.)
> > Well, considering that Lehrer didn't mispronounce it, it's far from
> > clear what Athel was trying to do, other than insult every
> > mathematician in the world.
>
> If I were a mathematician, I wouldn't feel insulted by that comment. I
> know quite well I'm not a chemist, so it wouldn't be hurtful to have
> that pointed out.

I guess I was assuming that all mathematicians have had high school
chemistry -- or grade school earth science. The names of the elements
are common, if not knowledge, exposure.

> I could equally well say that Athel is not a mathematician, and I'll bet
> he won't feel insulted by that observation.

You didn't suggest that he doesn't know how to do long division.

[charles]

In article <b5f7d1cd-7ebe-452b...@googlegroups.com>,

An interesting thought. At the start of the second year of my Engineering
degree, one new subject began with the line: "Since you have all got
A-Level (school leaving) Chemistry, we'll start from there." I thought " I
have never done any chemisry in my life - at any level" My school subjects
had been Maths (a lot) and Physics.

> > I could equally well say that Athel is not a mathematician, and I'll
> > bet he won't feel insulted by that observation.

> You didn't suggest that he doesn't know how to do long division.

> > Now, if I happened to say that David K was not a mathematician, *that*
> > would be an insult.

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England
"I'd rather die of exhaustion than die of boredom" Thomas Carlyle

[Ken Blake]

According to Wikipedia, "Rx (sometimes written ℞) is a common
abbreviation for medical prescriptions derived from the Latin word for
recipe, recipere."


--
Ken

[Peter T. Daniels]

Curious. We had Earth Science, Biology, Chemistry, and optionally Physics.

And Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, and optionally Calculus.

The options were respectively Latin IV and Art.

[Sam Plusnet]

On 21-Feb-21 11:11, Peter Moylan wrote:
> I don't know whether this will help, but in Thunderbird the HTML option
> - which is the thing you have to disable - is in the news server account
> settings, under "Composition".

I haven't had much reason to look at those settings, but Thunderbird
seems to offer the option of top posting. Yetch!

[Peter Moylan]

On 22/02/21 02:16, charles wrote:

> An interesting thought. At the start of the second year of my
> Engineering degree, one new subject began with the line: "Since you
> have all got A-Level (school leaving) Chemistry, we'll start from
> there." I thought " I have never done any chemisry in my life - at
> any level" My school subjects had been Maths (a lot) and Physics.

My engineering degree included chemistry for the first one and a half
years, and my high school chemistry classes were in a room where the
periodic table of the elements was prominently displayed. If you asked
me to recite the periodic table, though, I'd get stuck beyond boron.
(Logically number 6 should be carbon, but I'm not willing to swear to
it.) And I don't think I was ever told the correct pronunciation for the
less well-known elements.

As a former academic I'm aware of the problem of assumed knowledge. Long
ago we had prerequisites for most university degrees, but in the long
term a greater diversity of high school offerings meant that we had too
many candidates who had done the "wrong" subjects, and many schools
simply stopped teaching things like advanced mathematics. (And there
were other complications. For example, we found that students who had
done high school computing studies had trouble with university computer
science, because there were so many misconceptions they had to unlearn.)
In the end we had to stop insisting on prerequisites, and instead design
pathways for students with inadequate background.

Here's another example of assumptions going wrong. When teaching second
year electrical circuit theory, I said "Now, for this next step we need
to use complex variables. I assume you know how to work with those."
There were mutterings of "No" and "Never heard of it". I insisted that
I'd looked at the mathematics syllabuses, and that Maths 101 did cover
complex arithmetic. Finally somebody said "Oh, yes, we did do that", but
someone else came out with "But that was mathematics, not engineering".
The whole topic had gone in one ear and out the other, because of
students who only wanted to learn "relevant" topics. So I ended up
having to re-teach what they should have learnt the year before.