It's Good to Have a Clew (and a Clew)

The word CLUE derives from ‘clew’, an Old English word for a ball of string. It came to mean ‘a hint that aids a solution’ through allusion to the Greek legend of Theseus, who used Ariadne’s ball of thread to find his way back out of the Labyrinth after killing the Minotaur. pic.twitter.com/LrrzAKtEDk

— Haggard Hawks 📚🦅 (@HaggardHawks) January 7, 2019

Scientific Nomenclature: The "Thagomizer"

This is so awesome!

I love this.

When the Far Side came out in 1982, paleontologists realised they'd never actually named that part of a stegosaurus and began using the term informally. And now, 36 years later, if you type "Thagomizer" into a search engine... pic.twitter.com/pMDYoOrT8d

— Jim Bliss (@JimBliss23) July 21, 2018

(Tip of the cap to C E Watkins.)

Taking the First Stab at "Taking the First Stab"

I couldn't find this with a simple Google search, but if you think about it, the origin of the phrase "take the first stab" has to be rather violent.

Maybe a nice piece of art to go with somebody starting to write the initial draft of an academic paper would be a picture of a scientist quite literally taking an initial stab through a pile or papers or perhaps through a laptop.

(If anybody has a favored website for etymology and similar matters, please let me know. I was hoping my global search would turn up a good answer on one of those pages.)

And, by all means, somebody should take the first stab at answering my query.

Anachronisms, Anatopisms, and "Anamegethisms" (or possibly "Anadiastasisms")

We all know about anachronisms (things that misplaced in time), and I looked up that an analogous word for space (anatopism) indeed exists. However, the word I really want for things like Dungeons and Dragons --- and maybe even for a convenient or possibly snarky use in mathematics --- is to be misplaced in dimension. In the context of Dungeons and Dragons, this would be something that is the wrong plane of existence.

Apparently, there isn't a literal Greek translation of the word "dimension" in the way that we would say that time and space are examples of dimensions. Of the two choices, διάσταση (pronounced "diástasi̱") and μέγεθος (pronounced "mégethos"), the latter has an analogous form as the Greek words for time (χρόνος; khronos) and space (τόπος; place), so I have chosen to use the latter. This leaves me with the word "anamegethism". (However, from my Googling, it seems like "mégethos" would translate more to "greatness", so using a term like "anadiastasism" would probably be a more appropriate way of saying that something is displaced in dimensions, even though the form of the original Greek word is different from those for time and space.)

Context (using an example that really annoyed me from a novel that I read about 25 years ago): "The kender in the Dragonlance novel whispered that their captor obviously had some orc blood, but that is a anamegethism, because orcs do not occur naturally on the world of Krynn. So even if an orc somehow got there at some point --- perhaps via spelljamming --- it still wouldn't have been something that would be construed as obvious (especially from a low-level character).

If anybody who actually knows Greek --- Hell, I'm in Oxford, so I certainly have access to experts --- will let me know if I did this right, that would be great. In fact, I am going to e-mail one now.

Update: I also very much like the notion of "displaced in greatness", even though I wasn't thinking of that when I started down this rabbit hole.

The Silent Majority Will Rise Up on Election Day

Yes, yes it will. :)

And from looking at the Online Etymology Dictionary, the origin mentioned by SMBC does indeed appear to be accurate.

Dubious Origins of the Word "Seminal"

In retrospect, I really should have realized a long time ago that the origin of the word "seminal" is dubious.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a letter in APS News commenting on why the word "seminal" shouldn't be used in formal publications, and I can definitely understand the point that the author is making. I don't agree with the conclusion---the word "seminal" is hardly alone in this respect---but it's at the very minimum worth pausing and thinking about it.

And, in case you haven't figured it out yet, seminal originally meant to be of seed or semen rather than full of possibilities (and 'foundational', which seems to be the current predominant meaning).

Sowing the seeds of science, indeed. (Yes, that song by Tears for Fears was indeed seminal---in at least three senses of the word, and I would arguably include a fourth if you want to include the music video.)

Double Dog Dares

I was recently having a discussion with my friend Danny Schwarzblatt, and I was wondering about the origin of the phrase "double dog dare", which didn't make any sense to me. Apparently, it takes bat to the 19th century (at least), and (based on this link) it seems like there might be some negative connotations associated with it that have long since left the phrase. You can find other details at this site. Still, the origin of this phrase is far from definitive, and I'm curious whether any other juicy details are known.

By the way, is the term "etymology" still correct if one is thinking about the origin of a phrase and not just a single word?