It is of course obvious to all that the English language is continuously being enriched (well at least more new words are being coined) by science. It is also true that we generate new uses for old words in the description of scientific and technical matters. Now I am not one to spoil the fun, and I am sure that scientific publishers have every right to coin new phrases. However, when using the online enquiry service of the Materials Research Society, Fall 2008 Conference Proceedings, website at Manuscript Central, I was returned the following
You have no decisioned manuscripts.
We all know that the international language of science is Bad English, but I think this is going too far.
Oh dear.
My new word of the day (discovered in a scientific paper) was “musiking”. From the context I take it to be the act of making music, possibly communally. Sometimes I think the Academie Francaise has the right idea.
I wonder if a word exists for the action of having to create a new word because one is too lazy, ignorant or stupid to learn the appropriate words or phrases that already exist? No? So I’ll invent one – inertiolexicate
I once had dissertation feedback that criticised my use of ‘methodising’ because it ‘is not a word’ (D’uh!). The vexing thing was that this formed part of an obviously negative stick-the-boot-in-at-every-opportunity report, the antithesis of that from the other marker (it was devisive subject matter). Sometimes maybe we pick fault too hard if we have an axe to grind.
My palabra mala of the month is “incentivizing”. Una palabra muy fea.
My father, also a scientist, dislikes the word “sacrifice” in reference to euthanizing lab animals. “What, did you dress up in ceremonial costume and use a sacred knife?” He claims that he once dissuaded a colleague from using “dispatched” in place of “euthanized” … as in “Where did you mail them to?”
Tolkien had it right. Never use some poncey lah-de-dah Norman French running-around knees-bend donkey-bottom-biter when perfectly good Anglo Saxon words are available.
Henry do you suggest we smite lab animals?
splort
You owe me a new cup of tea
Ooh, I do like a bit of smiting in the mornings. But ‘kill’ would do nicely, to be getting on with.
Actually, does “smite” automatically mean “kill”? I thought it just meant “wallop” or similar.
So our new grant application will read “After we smote ye olde animal we will…”
I think ‘sacrifice’ is used to make researchers feel better about dispatching animals en mass… like I just did this morning (I so want a beer). Although now ‘sacrificing’ has morphed into ‘sacking’ mice and isn’t nearly as soothing. Does that make it a bastardization of bastardized English?
I’ve heard “sacking” too. I always have visions of the researcher going into the mouse room and saying “you do not have the expected phenotype. You’re fired”.
What do people feel about the word ‘abrogate’? I always thought it was a hex in Harry Potter And The Columns Of Sephadex that had the effect of turning one’s adversaries into cardboard boxes.
“Rendered dead”, perhaps? Honestly, I had nothing to do with the killing. These animals were rendered dead.
Euthanasia is the term I’ve seen most frequently in the official forms and documents (IACUC, AAALAC, USDA, etc.); not that it necessarily makes the word the best choice.
I think the Plain English Campaign would prefer we used kill. After all it does what it says on the box.
For further light relief, here is the Campaign’s “Gobbledygook of the Week”:
‘The results of the price barometer illustrate that the reprieve in the pace of price inflation evident in the first quarter has abated.’
Smite: To wallop or thump with fatal consequences.
I always thought sacking was something done by Vikings in between raping, pillaging and perfecting the dark arts of agriculture in northern climes.
But “sacrifice” has to be OK. White lab coats, latex gloves and shiny, sharp scalpels surely cut it as ceremonial wear in
politicians’ boudoirsscientific labs around worldI always thought ‘sacking’ was US colloquial for initiating an ongoing state of illicit and therefore pleasurable fornicationalization.
If animals are slaughtered for food, could they be slaughtered for science too? Or is that playing into the hands of the ALF and others?
Ahhh, slaughter. The most delicious form of ending a life.
And as for talking plain English, I think the article below sums it up perfectly.
“Sacrifice” is against Nature house style – it was one of the first things I learned when I started out as a subeditor. “Mice are killed, not sacrificed” I was told (by the style manual probably, or by my fierce trainer if not). I remember Charles Wenz taught me about en rules and em rules on the same day – that was much more confusing to get – but I did. Only to discover later that American English has quite different rules to English English on hyphens, ens and ems.