Through trip
BUS stops are the new butterflies of chaos theory, discovers Stephen Jorgenson-Murray while perusing Google Maps. Looking for travel routes across Europe, he says, âI was pleasantly surprised to find that Frankfurt to Warsaw â previously a 10-hour journey by train â was now possible in 5, at one point running in a perfectly straight line for 700 kilometres, in just 3 minutes.â
Sadly, this isnât the result of a new bullet train lying under eastern Europe. A bit of investigation led Stephen to deduce that a bus stop in the Mikulczyce suburb of Zabrze, Poland, normally located at longitude 18.79° west, has instead been placed at 8.79° west. âBy sheer coincidence, this happened to be right next to Dornheim railway station in Germany,â allowing for quick connections between the two countries.
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âThis tiny error has left Google Maps unable to give accurate train routes across a huge chunk of Europe,â says Stephen. Letâs just hope that the bus drivers of Mikulczyce arenât reliant on Google for directions, lest their passengers suffer a longitudinous detour.
âA chill wind blows? The UK Foreign Office has issued a travel advisory that âalthough thereâs no recent history of terrorism in the British Antarctic Territory, attacks canât be ruled outââ
Why not?
MORE examples of retronyms, words coined by attempts to sound out an acronym, punctuate our inbox. David Roffey informs us of the Sydney suburb with an unusual name: Dee Why. âThis is definitely a retronym dating back to at least 1840,â says David. âThough no one knows what the original DY stood for.â
Lately, the name has mutated a stage further, he says, with the locale being referred to as DW. We look forward to revisiting the topic in 50 years, and telling readers about the strange town of Dee Dubbleyew.
Dodgy characters
MEANWHILE, Lance Hartland writes that âokayâ might be the only example of a retronym being based on a mis-spelling, explaining that âOK is the abbreviation of âall correct'â.
Catching some Zs
HOWEVER, John King provides an alternative theory. âThere is a strong body of opinion that OK is derived from the Scotsâ âoch ayeâ, suggesting the reverse process of using letters to imitate words.â
John adds that, âamong acronyms made into words, perhaps the most notorious is Naziâ, stemming from Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. âNa is the German n, and tzi is modified tzett, z, taken, perhaps, in preference to the less assertive ess, s.â
More mischaracterisation
AND Tony Griffin complains that the challenge âhas hijacked my attention off and on for several days now, and so far Iâve only been able to come up with a couple of rather pathetic near-misses: âBeemerâ to describe a vehicle made by BMW, and âBeemoâ, a word referring to the Bank of Montreal.â
Oh dear
HAVING given the issue our full attention for far too many days, we can produce two further examples. Belgian cartoonist Hergé, creator of The Adventures of Tintin, coined the pseudonym from the reversed initials of his own name: Georges Remi.
And finally, if youâre getting rather tired of all these retronyms, we have a handy one to add to your lexicon: âteal deerâ, a dismissive internet slang word taken from the abbreviation of âtoo long; didnât readâ.
Power plug
IN A shocking discovery that could solve all our energy worries, David OâNeill writes that his new car battery charger is listed as being suitable for powering up the following items: saloon car, sports car, SUV, pick-up, motorcycle, launch, solar system. The last entry leaves him wondering âwhere I would plug it in, and how long it would takeâ.
Planet hoppers
MEANWHILE Allan Reese spots the UKâs i newspaper reporting earlier this month that âscientists at Nasa have dubbed the void around Saturn âthe big emptyâ after astronauts made their first dive into the space between the planet and its rings and encountered almost no dust or debrisâ.
Itâs incredible that NASA was able to keep an interplanetary crewed mission quiet for so long, says Allan. Amid plans for a âgrand finaleâ dive into Saturnâs atmosphere, Feedback wonders how NASA plans to get the diving astronauts back.
Cosy casks
THOSE who like their beer served warm would do well to pay the Otter Brewery a visit. Adrian Wilkins is told via their website that two-thirds of the ground floor is â contrary to the name â built below ground. This sunken floor allows the brewery to do away with expensive climate control systems.
âUsing the Earthâs core temperature,â explains a promotional beer mat, âour underground cellar saves us 6.5 tonnes of carbon emissions every single year.â Exactly how deep is that cellar?
Ocean cruiser
THE octopus Haliphron atlanticus is not only rare âbut appears to have a most unexpected capabilityâ, says Graham Hubbard. He directs us to 51¶ŻÂțâs own coverage (8 April, p 19), in which it is claimed that a researcher had seen â⊠three of them using remotely operated vehiclesâ.
J is for Iodine
THE assertion made by Andy Ward in these pages â that there are no elements represented by J ârather ignores the German version of the periodic tableâ, says Alan Wells, âwhere jod (iodine) is represented by the letter Jâ.
While this may help readers making words from the elemental alphabet, Feedback canât help but feel that any words containing a J ought to be German ones, JA?
