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I'm Mike Pope. I live in the Seattle area. I've been a technical writer and editor for over 35 years. I'm interested in software, language, music, movies, books, motorcycles, travel, and ... well, lots of stuff.

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Some innocent people are under the impression that writers prepare their manuscripts correctly, as the articles appear in the paper. Not so, my son. In many cases, if an article should appear as originally written, the author would refuse to father it and never make another effort. But they must be encouraged, and so their productions are trimmed up in the office and made presentable.

Unknown, as printed in the Arizona Daily Star, May 21, 1882



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Blog Statistics

Dates
First entry - 6/27/2003
Most recent entry - 9/4/2024

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Posts - 2655
Comments - 2677
Hits - 2,726,430

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Entries/day - 0.34
Comments/entry - 1.01
Hits/day - 345

Updated every 30 minutes. Last: 9:10 AM Pacific


  08:48 AM

I missed last week due to being at a linguistics conference, but while I was there I picked up another batch of language-related terms:These are well known to real linguists (I presume), but new to me.

Anyway, those aside, it's time for another Saturday edition of Friday words (oops). Oh, and PS, Happy New Year!

The first new-to-me word this week (leaving aside the list above) is wikidrift, which defines a situation I am all too familiar with. This is the practice of (or game of, if one does it with intent) following links in Wikipedia from article to article. The drift part alludes to the notion of moving further and further away from the original starting point. A supposed outcome of unlimited wikidrift is that one eventually gets to the topic on philosophy.

My second term for this week is white-labeling, which came up at work recently. This is not a new term, and I'm a bit surprised I'd never heard it. (That I know of.) To white-label, is, in effect, to put your brand on something created by someone else. A typical example is a store brand, like Archway for Target, Lucerne for Safeway, and Kenmore for Sears.

The term apparently came from the music business, and specifically from the business of vinyl records. Demo or promo versions of new records were created before the artwork for the album was finished, and the record would be sent out to radio stations with only a blank white label. Thus the idea of a "blank" product that a seller could add their own information to.

For etymology today I've got myriad, meaning "a lot," as in There are myriad ways to say "a lot." Sure, I knew what the term means, but I didn't realize it had such a precise etymology: it's a Greek word meaning "ten thousand." Apparently the Greeks had a number system with a specific word for ten thousand.

The word has been used for centuries in English both to mean ten thousand of a thing and as term for "a countless number of specified things," as the OED has it. Still, if you run into one of those annoying people who insist that decimate can only mean "reduce by one-tenth," see if you can get then to admit that the only proper use for myriad is when they mean "ten thousand."

And speaking of numbers, read James Harbeck's writeup on using myriad, couple, and other numbers in The Week.

Like this? Read all the Friday words.

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