-
Clement Ader
As everybody knows, airplanes didn’t arrive until appropriate power plants, gasoline engines, were invented. The older steam engines were much too heavy. As is the case with a daunting number of things that “everybody knows,” this is not true. Clement Ader, who was born April 2, 1841 in France, invented a working airplane in 1886, Continue reading
-
An April 1 word
If something is fine, valid, or acceptable, there are plenty of English words available to communicate that judgement. One of them is “cromulent,” as in “…it’s a perfectly cromulent word.” You don’t hear “cromulent” as much as some of its synonyms, but you might run across it here and there. David X. Cohen, a scholar Continue reading
-
An April Fool’s Birthday. Or two.
On April 1, 1959, Donald Kaufman was born in New York City. The family moved to the town of Massapequa, NY when Donald was a boy, then to Connecticut, where he and his brother Charles graduated from high school. After graduating he followed his brother to Boston University. Then they both transferred to New York Continue reading
-
A rose by any other nym
Most people know that an “acronym” is a word created from the first letters of a group of different words, like “NASA” (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). The “-nym” part of “acronym” is from the Greek word “onoma,” which means name. The “acro-“ part is also from Greek: “akros” means the top of something. You Continue reading
-
It’s intense
Keeping your nose to the grindstone means continuing to work; paying attention. It actually comes from old grist mills, which had big turning stones for grinding grain into flour. The stones, which were several feet across and weighed tons, had to be adjusted precisely so they ground the grain, but didn’t grind against each other. Continue reading
-
Milling Around
Keeping your nose to the grindstone means continuing to work; paying attention. It actually comes from old grist mills, which had big turning stones for grinding grain into flour. The stones, which were several feet across and weighed tons, had to be adjusted precisely so they ground the grain, but didn’t grind against each other. Continue reading
-
Pathological science?
Remember cold fusion? Back in 1989, two scientists specializing in electrochemistry announced — not in a scientific journal, but in a press conference — that they’d created a “sustained nuclear fusion reaction” at room temperature without the vast technical apparatus traditional “hot” fusion experiments required. The leading scientist on the team was Martin Fleischmann, who Continue reading
-
Symmachy against the Philologasters!
Like “-mancy” or “-logy”, another English suffix that indicates something important about a set of words is “-aster”. That suffix is from Latin, and indicates “lower status” or “incompleteness”. In Latin it was used pejoratively. The English words that end in “-aster” have passed out of everyday usage, but a century or more ago they Continue reading
About Me
I’m Pete Harbeson, a writer located near Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to writing my own content, I’ve learned to translate for my loquacious and opinionated pup Chocolate Bossypaws. I shouldn’t be surprised, but she mostly speaks in doggerel. You can find her contributions tagged with Chocolatiana.
Check out my other blog, Techlimitics, where I’m grappling with the nature of simplicity.
Privacy policy
No trackers, no ads, no data collected or saved.
Contact
peterharbeson@me.com