Jon Butler writes: <begin extract> I won't argue APAR nor SPOOL, which is one acronym that is more meaningful than its deriving phrase, Simultaneous Peripheral Operation On-Line, but I will have to question Cadaver. </end extract>
adumbrates without really making the useful distinction between analytic and synthetic acronyms. Did the phrase come first, followed by its acronym? Or did the acronym come first, followed by the construction of a more or, often, very much less felicitous phrase to serve as its imputed its origin? A recent IBM press release mentions the DOE's Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) and here it is clear that 'INCITE' came first. It in hand, the laboured, all but meaningless 'Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment' was then constructed for use as its notional "deriving phrase". Let's move on to cadaver. The verb cadere does indeed mean to fall, in Latin and and indeed in modern Italian. The notional, but probably apocryphal quotation from Tertullian has, however, the defect that Tertrullian's dates, bracketed by the interval 155-235 AD, are too late. There are many CAro DAta VERmibus|verminibus ==> flesh given to the worms derivations that long antedate him. "To err is human" is much used in exculpatory fashion, particularly in American English. In origin its sense was very different. Pliny the Younger [unquestionably] wrote Errare humanum est, perseverare autem diabolicum. (To err is human; to persevere in it is diabolical.) John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
