Conference thebay::joyoflex

    	Fred, you just caused me some grief! :^)
    
    	Some months ago, while I was getting to know the lady I love
    	via Vaxphone/mail, I incautiously used the word 'liaising' in
    	response to a question concerning what I did within the company!
    
    	Did I get a hard time or what? It turned out that she was once
   	a teacher of English, and she went to town on my use of that
    	word! Now, I figure that it was all forgotten, until I read
   	my mail this morning - telling me to read this very note!!
    
    	AArrrggggghhhh!! :^)
    
    	But I do agree with you on the subject - I just wish I could
    	be allowed to forget my worst abuse of the language! :^)
    
    	Andy.

        And I thought it was "preventive"..  after all, who ever heard
        of "preventation"?

    My dictionary lists "liaise" as: "Make liaison (sense 3) with or
    between" and "liaison 3" as: "connection, co-operation". Why would
    the usage mentioned here be wrong?
    
    The same for "preventive"; "serving to prevent, esp. (Med.) to keep
    off disease". "Preventative" is listed as being derived from "preventive".

    What dictionary are you using?  I want to be sure to avoid it.
    
    	HRB

    	The dictionary I used for .3 is "The Concise Oxford Dictionary",
	but I found the same information in "Collins Concise English
	Dictionary" and in "Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary".
	You see, Hugh, all of them well-known and respected British
	and American dictionaries.

	H.W.Fowler's "Dictionary of Modern English Usage" has "liaise"
	as a "back formation" of "liaison". A "back formation" creates
	a verb from an existing noun. Other examples of this are:
	"scavenge", "diagnose" and "burgle".

	Fowler's has the following entry for "preventative":
	  prevent(at)ive. The short form is better; see Long Variants.

    By the way, I do not want to say with my entries that I agree with
    the use of "liaise", only that I do not think that it is really wrong
    to use it. I consider it a pompous word.

  I have no objection to "liaise," except for the pomposity that .6 noted.

  However, it is very disappointing that "preventative" made its way into
  the dictionary.  Is there anything we can do to preventate the same thing
  from happening to "commentate?"

  JP

    Dictionaries include bad words as well as good ones so that readers
    who come across them can find out what they mean.  Most let you
    know it, too.  English makes it easy to back-form, front-form,
    etc., or whatever it's called -- sort of a free-form language! IF
    you're willing to abuse it!
    
    As a native speaker, it grates on my ears.
    

    Of course not. Everyone knows that engineers are illiterates.
    
    	Jon

    re. 9.
    How come it is that you thinks we engineers be alliterate?

    That is the question of 'descriptive' vs. 'prescriptive' dictionaries.
    A dictionary that aims merely to describe language as it is used will
    not give good advice on correct usage (assuming that you are willing
    to admit that there can be a difference between current and correct
    usage).
    
    I looked these up in the OED and Webster's New 20th Century Dictionary
    (second edition - the third is unreliable).  Neither will give 'liaise'
    so much as a nod in passing.  'Preventative' is allowed as an alternate
    form in Webster without comment.  The OED lists 'preventative' but
    refers to 'preventive' as the preferred form.  Score one for the OED. 
    
    So there.

    	HRB

    The fact that you do not find a word in the most extensive dictionary
    you can find does only mean that the word was not accepted as an
    often enough used and logical extension to the language. Smaller
    and more often published dictionaries are often ahead of their bigger
    counterparts. I will be very surprised *not* to find "liaise" in
    the next editions of the OED and Webster's 20th Century, after all,
    they put it in the derived editions.
    
    Why do you consider the third edition of Webster's to be unreliable?
    Maybe it has "liaise" in it? :-)  I'm sure the people who have put it
    together and published it do not agree with you.

    I would think that bigger implies *less* up-to-date.
    
    See note 41.3 for a quote from Hayakawa on the construction of
    dictionaries.

    	Jon

    Actually my reply title was merely intended to recognize that this is a
    pretty silly game I'm playing here, and one I wouldn't play in any file
    but this.  When choosing a dictionary to guide us in the use of the
    language, we favor the one that fits with our prejudices; then we use
    it to support the prejudices we used to select it.  That OED and
    Webster's are generally respected doesn't make the argument any less
    circular. 
    
    As for up-to-date, if you find a dictionary that includes every
    neologism coined by every petty bureaucrat and illiterate education
    major in the last twenty years, you can keep it.  Don't expect me
    to use it as a guide to proper English usage.

    	HRB

    No dictionary is intended to be "a guide to proper English."
    Dictionaries are the equivalent of tour books and histories, not law
    books. 
    
    	Jon

'Lialise' is a particularly bad back-formation.  This note is the first time
I've ever encountered this non-word.  I couldn't figure out what it meant,
or what it was supposed to be a back-formation of.  I would never have guessed
that it was related to the word 'liason' without being told.

--PSW

re .15:
    
        No dictionary is intended to be "a guide to proper English."

    In that case, don't quote them in an attempt to prove that 'liaise'
    is a word.

    	HRB

    And here I thought that "lialise" is what happens when you have
    a cold and something occurs to you...
    
    	Jon

      Re .16
      
      > ...the word 'liason' [sic]...
      
      Even you, PSW?  The word is 'liaison'.
      
      Dave C.

    ... goes to 'transportation'.  I believe this means 'transport'.
    
    Jeff.

    Re:  .20
    
    What's wrong with 'transportation'?  To _transport_ is a verb meaning
    to carry from one place to another.  _Transportation_ is a noun which
    describes a device by or on which something can be transported.

        Probably that's what was meant in place of "transportation".
        There's something about the "tat" that makes people want to
        double it to "tatat" -- ratatatat (or pocketapocketa)..
        
        Tom

    Transport, as well as being a good old v.t., is a perfectly good
    noun.  I did not use public transport to get to work this morning,
    I have my own [means of] transport, which is a car.
    
    Jeff
    

    Icons number in the hundreds, and aren't taught widely.  The problem
    is similar to what we would have with traffic signs if no one other
    than traffic engineers were taught traffic signs (the population
    at large being expected to intuit their meaning without any training).
                                 ^
                                 |
    

 Seen last week on the backs of about a hundred seats in an airplane:

    Use seat bottom cushion for floatation.

 Oops!

---Phil

    The U. S. Government has a Department of Transportation, so I think
    we're stuck with it here in the States. I think this is a case where
    good British usage differs from good American usage.
    
    					Val

    OK.  It seems that the U.S. Government can get away with most things
    (still fuming at today's news), so I guess I'll let them keep their
    Department of Transportation :-).  We have a Department of Transport.
    Don't think I mentioned that.
    
    Jeff.
    
    PS: Glad SUMMIT got mended - I was missing my fix!)

I just got a pamphlet from a company that makes LCD displays. It says 
each of their products "...is built with sophisticated mechatronic 
technologies..."
			Sounds big-time to me. >>>==>PStJTT

    
    My favorite is IRREGARDLESS!!  That old double-standard,
    double-negative!
    
    I LOOOOVE it when people use words out of context like:
    their/there
    hear/here
    by/bye
    yours/your's
    your/you're
    
    By! (tee-hee)

    
    Oh, and another:
    
    strickly (in place of strictly)!
    

Don't you think you're being a bit strick?

-- Sam

RE: .29
	Another pair of words that are being misused, and have been upsetting
to me is "then/than". I've seen each used for the other one, but the most
common misuse is when making a comparison. e.g. His car is newer then her's.

	It has been in some of the notes files that I've seen the biggest
abuse of these words, but I did see it once in print.

		- - -   Karl

    Yeah, but it's an easy typo to make, and not one that a spelling
    checker will catch.
    
    	Jon 

RE: .33

>    Yeah, but it's an easy typo to make, and not one that a spelling
>    checker will catch.

It happens much too often for it to be a typo. In some sample replies that I
have read, they have been consistant. They would use the wrong word as many as
four or five times in a single reply. Now that I put it into writing, that
doesn't sound like enough to complain about, but while I was going through the
notes, I started wondering if the people doing the writing knew the difference
between those words, and I had to read the note several times to understand
what they were trying to say. 

			- - -   Karl

    Re .34:
    
    "Consistent".
    
    
    				-- edp

Back on the original topic, here's a fragment of a memo that just went
around ZK.  -- Val


+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|d|i|g|i|t|a|l|        I N T E R O F F I C E   M E M O R A N D U M
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

TO:  ZKO Tenants                      DATE:  15 May 86
                                      FROM:  Bill Heffner
                                      DEPT:  SSG Administration

SUBJ:  ZK III & Driveway reconfiguration

       ... Although not part of the ZK III project, but concurrent
       with it however, is the reconfiguration of Tara Blvd./
       Digital driveway. This also includes the installation of
       signalization equipment at the above intersection as well
       as at the Tara Blvd./Spit Brook Rd. intersection.  

    Val pointed this out to me, and we decided that "signalization 
    equipment" means one of two things:
    
    1. If we're good, and eat our vegetables, they'll remove the
       signalization equipment and install *real* traffic lights;
    
    2. "Signalization Equipment" is a euphemism for "traffic lights 
       and X-ray lasers". 
                     
    					andrew

    Possibly of interest to the authors of .20 through .27:

    "A victory for the English language has been scored at a conference in
    Geneva on space. American speaker after American speaker droned on
    about space transportation problems. Ivor Franklin of British Aerospace
    opened his address in immaculately British tones. "The word is
    transport. You only use transportation to send convicts to Australia." 

				-from "New Scientist", 22-May-1986

    -b

    (The opinions expressed by Mr. Franklin do not necessarily reflect
    those of the management.)

    I thought I saw this non-word mentioned elsewhere, but it's not
    in this note, so here goes.
    
    From a nameless product specification:
    
    ... this would allow for the disambiguation of certain instances
    of forward references to ...
    
    

    Seen recently in another conference: "interferencing."
    
    
    Re .39: Is there an existing word that means precisely the same
    thing? Words like "determination" or "selection" are imprecise,
    so I suspect that whoever coined "disambiguation" had no choice.
    
    					Val

    ...Lucy shouted, "It may be obvious to you, but it's unobvious to me!"
    
    And then proceeded to muse in the next panel, "Disobvious?  Ob-obvious?
    Nonobvious?  Antiobvious?..."

      Re .39,.40
      
      What about 'distinguish'?  Does 'disambiguate' mean any more
      or less than 'distinguish'?
      
      Dave C.

    RE: .recent
        
 >  "... this would allow for the disambiguation of certain instances
 >  of forward references to ..."

        
    How about -
    
    "... this would prevent the ambiguity of certain instances
    of forward references to ..."

    
    However,  the quote out of context may be creating an ambiguous
    situation in regards to what each of us thinks the statement is
    really trying to say.
    
    - chuck
    

 >  "... this would allow for the clarification of certain instances
 >  of forward references to ..."

   ---Phil

    Is this discussion "goodness" or "badness"????

    The quote on "disambiguation" was taken from a spec for a compiler.
    In certain cases, references to an object not yet declared (a forward
    reference) could be ambiguous, i.e. the compiler would be unable
    to work out precisely which object was intended.  The change to
    the compiler (or language spec, or whatever, I forget) was made
    to remove this ambiguity.
    
    Hope this disambiguates the matter.
    
    Jeff. (now noting on location)
    

    I've seen "disambiguate" before in compiler literature, and
    it doesn't bother me. It has a clear and specific meaning,
    resolving the correct-by-definition handling of multiple
    occurrences of a symbol in a symbol table, and there is not
    another word that serves as well. The need to resolve the ambiguity
    of multiple occurrences of a symbol in a symbol table rarely
    arises in ordinary life, and the use of "disambiguation" at
    your ordinary cocktail party may properly be regarded as
    grotesque, reprehensible, and wholly contrary to the norms of
    civilized society as we know it; but in a compiler spec, it's
    O.K.
    
    -John 

I agree that "disambiguate" is alright.  Not classical English, but
very much to the point, and not a back-formation like "functionality".
That latter word has gotten to me... I just got back from an ANSI T1D1
meeting and they were using it like mad.  Then they liaised.
I mentioned that the service should also have featurosity.  Maybe
I'll put in a contribution.

BTW when I used the word "disambiguate" on some of them, they
cringed... they weren't used to it (yet).  Hmmm, sort of revenge.
      fred

    I think "disambiguate" is a very good example of a valuable neologism.
    It says precisely and concisely what is meant, i.e. "provides
    information needed to determine the correct interpretation of an
    otherwise ambiguous sign".  Words like "clarify" aren't much use,
    since they don't have a precise interpretation. "Determine" comes
    close but the mood is wrong: if x disambiguates y, then I can use
    x to determine what y means, i.e. you can't use it actively where
    you can use disambiguate.
    
    	John
    

      Re .50
      
      'Distinguish' works in the context you claim solely for
      'disambiguate.'   If you can use x to determine what y means,
      than you can say that x distinguishes y (presumably from z,
      which means something else, similar to y, but y and z are
      indistinguishable without x).
      
      Dave C.

    'Distinguish' is, however, ambiguous.  If I read that the compiler
    will distinguish an identifier reference, I would expect it to
    mean "distinguish it from other references to that identifier."
    'Disambiguate' clearly means "resolve the ambiguity in'.
    
    	-Neil

      Re .52
      
      Ah, now I see.  If the meaning is "to resolve the ambiguity
      in" [or of], then I believe the verb "to define" will serve.
      But we probably already have enough meanings of "to define,"
      and it wouldn't do to have the word 'define' be ambiguous.
      So I guess it's time for me to accede.
      
      I had also seen "disambiguate" used in a manner which meant
      distinguish:  Test Foo can be used to disambiguate the two cases
      of condition Bar that can occur....    I believe "distinguish"
      would work in this context.
      
      Dave C.

  So what's wrong with "make unambiguous?"
  
  JP

    I dropped out of this for a while...
    
    The problem with "makes unambiguous" is that it is awkward to say
    and just generally feels clumsy.  Further, to my sense, "disambiguate"
    has an implication of "in the context under discussion" whereas
    "x makes y unambiguous" has an absolute sense to it... it removes
    all ambiguity surrounding y.
    
    I agree wholeheartedly with the comment (in .53?) about "disambiguate
    between x and y".  It's always a problem that when a valuable new
    word comes along, people immediately start to abuse it (because
    they think it makes them seem smart?) so that it loses its "edge",
    the precision which made it valuable in the first place.  How many
    people (not regular readers of this file) know the correct meaning
    of "osmosis" for example?
    
    	John
    

    Re: .55
    
    I've never had any problem with "osmosis" since High School Biology.
                                                            

re: .55
I'd guess about 200,000,000
larry

    I'm sopping up all I can from this discussion.
    
    As a matter of fact, I've got osmosis out of it as I can.
    
    Nice of you to drip in.
    
    -bs