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May 20, 2005 What does to ‘charge a battery’ mean? When Theodore Roosevelt led the cavalry against the enemy artillery, he was ‘charging a battery’. When the man from the gas station puts jump cables under your hood, he is ‘charging a battery’. When you buy one at Sears with your Mastercard, you are ‘charging a battery’. And when the DA writes the bill of indictment against someone who beaten someone else, he is ‘charging a battery’. The English language is sorely deficient when it comes to naming shapes. For example, what is the name of the shape typified by a brick, a plank or a mattress, that is, a six-sided figure whose sides are all rectangles but not necessarily squares. Such a shape may be called a ‘cuboid’, a ‘rectangular parallelepiped’ or a ‘right rectangular prism’, but none of these expressions has much currency. Of course, there are words like ‘slab’, ‘sheet’ and ‘block’, but these are applicable only when the ratio of the sides corresponds to some vague standard. Anyway, a word like ‘block’ has so many meanings that it is useless outside of defining context. For example, we have: “She lives a block down the street.”; “I put a block on my phone.”; “You can buy a block of online time.”; “That was a tremendous block by the right tackle.” It would be salutary to have half a dozen or a dozen unambiguous nouns denoting cuboids of different ratios. Objects having such shapes are innumerable. What is the name of the shape approximated by some pincushions, hassocks, tangerines and tomatoes, or by individual M & M candies, that is, the shape of a sphere that has been flattened a little? This is called an ‘oblate spheroid’, but again this name is a rather artificial one, invented by geometers, and has no place in the popular language, though the shape is common enough. What is the name of a symmetrical egg, that is, an egg not enlarged at one end? This is called a ‘prolate hemispheroid’, but this too is rather obscure. Someone may pipe up and say that we have the word ‘oval’, but an ‘oval’ is not necessarily solid; it may be a plane figure. Surely we can do better than that! What does ‘solid’ mean anyway? ‘Solid’ seems to be the opposite of ‘hollow’. ‘Solid’ seems to be the opposite of ‘liquid’. And ‘solid’ seems to be the opposite of ‘plane’ or ‘planar’, as in ‘solid geometry’. Is there a ‘liquid geometry’? If we ask whether a tree trunk is ‘solid’, obviously we are not suggesting that it might be ‘planar’ or ‘liquid’; we mean, “Is it ‘solid’ or ‘hollow’?” Anyway, suppose you cut an oblate or prolate spheroid in two equal parts. What do you have? You have an oblate or prolate hemispheroid. But there are two ways to cut a spheroid in half. If you cut it one way, the section will be a circle. If you cut it the other, the section will be an ellipse. An oblate hemispheroid with a circular base is a shape something like that of a bowl or the top of a cranium, a shape towards which a hub cap, a wok or a yarmulke tends. But what is the common English word for this common shape? A prolate hemispheroid with a circular base is approximated by the bowl of a goblet, a bullet less its cartridge or a glans penis, But what is the clear-cut English word for this? A ‘torus’ is the name of the shape common to a doughnut, an inflated inner tube and a hula hoop. Looking at a cross-section through the periphery, we see a circle, whether solid or hollow. But what if we see a rectangle? Then we call it a ‘pineapple ring’, but that doesn’t sound very dignified to me. And if the rectangle is long in the vertical direction, will we call it ‘a roll of toilet paper’? What if we flatten the torus till it’s planar? We have a figure like a notebook paper reinforcement or a washer for a bolt. What do we call that? And what does the ring around a bolt have to do with ‘washing’ anyway? We also call a washing machine a ‘washer’. And what does a structural fastener like a ‘bolt’ have to do with lightning, which also comes in ‘bolts’, just like velvet or satin. And why is the companion of a bolt called a ‘nut’. What does it have to do with a ‘pecan’ or an ‘almond’? Or do we mean to suggest that it’s ‘bonkers’ or ‘bananas’? If you said ‘torus’ to the average American, he’d think you were talking about astrology. I don’t think ‘Taurus’ and ‘torus’ are generally distinguished in pronunciation. About the only thing you can do with a mess like the English-language is trash it, and start all over. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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