THE WORLD still waits, with bated breath, to know whether 2003 UB313, the object larger and farther away than Pluto whose discovery was revealed at the end of July, ends up as a planet or a mere Kuiper belt object, and what it will be called. Meanwhile, several colleagues have alerted us to the claim at that “An Illinois man has added fuel to a furious astronomical debate by officially applying to the International Astronomical Union for status as a planet.”
We suspect that the site may, possibly, be satirical, but we appreciate the writer’s grasp of the problem. “There isn’t a good definition of what constitutes a planet,” says Gerald Finkelschmidt. “I’ve put on a few pounds these past couple of years, but I’m clearly below the limiting mass for thermonuclear fusion… And I orbit the sun, obviously. So technically, I qualify.”
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IN scientific journals, “Materials and methods” should always be written fully and precisely so that other researchers can replicate the work. Liz Hirst points us to a model example of this in the journal Blood (vol 104, p 1397) in a paper on lymphocyte microvillar properties.
The paragraph on scanning electron microscopy in the “Materials and methods” section tell us: “This drop of cells was placed on top of a 5 millimetre round acid-washed glass coverslip (EM Sciences) previously coated with 0.1 per cent poly-L-lysine (>300,000 molecular weight [MW]; Sigma, St Louis, MO). After 30 minutes (while serenaded by a selection of baritone arias), cells on the coverslip were treated with a 0.5 fixative for 30 minutes…”
“A notice Marie Rabouhans came across on park gates in Richmond, on the outskirts of London, told her enigmatically: “These gates will close ½ hour before closing time””
A HUGE number of readers responded to our call for a word for a word that describes itself (10 September). Several pointed to the Wikipedia page , which provides a word for such words and gives a list of them.
However, Wikipedia restricts its definition of “autological” to adjectives only, such as “short” and “polysyllabic”, both of which are what they mean. It notes that these are in contrast to adjectives such as “long” and “monosyllabic”, which are not what they mean and are therefore “heterological”.
It then goes on to a discussion of the Grelling-Nelson paradox, which asks whether “heterological” is autological or heterological, and concludes that it is both. This discussion hurts Feedback’s head – just as it once hurt Bertrand Russell’s head – but, more importantly in this context, what we want to know is: where do Wikipedia’s definitions leave “word”, which is undeniably a word, as many readers have pointed out, but is a noun, not an adjective?
John Steele points us to , which includes nouns in its definition of “autological” and lists them. But Corey Kosak and Elizabeth Swinbank both suggest that “word” is actually an “autonym”, and they have weighty online support for this at . Pam Lunn, meanwhile, suggests “autonominative”, which, as well as being an example of itself, appears to be an original coinage. And several readers came up with “self-referential”.
As to examples of whatever-we-call-it, readers seemed to particular enjoy the grey areas. Dennis During points out that when it was invented, “invention” was autological/an autonym/autonominative/self-referential – but for how long? Several readers also point out that “TLA” (three letter acronym) ought to qualify even though it isn’t a word. Others observe that “black” and “written” sometimes are and sometimes aren’t, and Grant Hutchison was just the first of many readers to suggest examples like “mispelled”.
Most confusing of all, it occurred to Malcolm Winterburn when he was shaving (when else?) that the word “here” is here when it is here, but there when it is not here, while “there” is there when it is there, but here when it is not there. At which point Feedback’s head starts hurting again, so we declare: “Enough!”
WE haven’t finished with words, though. Owen Lorian points out that though “palindrome” is not a palindrome, as we said on 10 September, “emordnilap” is a word – at least according to you-know-what search engine, which reported 2240 occurrences when Owen looked and 815 when we did (look now, while emordnilaps last!). One of those is which lists many, many words that are other words reversed, from “abut”/”tuba” via “gulp”/”plug” and “paws”/”swap” to “yob”/”boy”. If you find more, tell the site owner.
AND the last word on words for now, Hal Koun offered this as a polyontologia (see 24 September). It isn’t, and we don’t know what it is (and nor do we want to know). But we liked it enough to pass on the fact that his architect, obsessed with intricate assemblages of buildings, would have a complex complex complex.
