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Posted by dorayme on 02/17/06 02:46
In article <bs7$QbCAFG9DFwe8@gododdin.demon.co.uk>,
Jake <jake@gododdin.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >I was thinking it has its origin in an acronym but is now an
> >ordinary English word. There would be other words that have
> >passed into English that are no longer what they were. But I am
> >not an expert in these things. It would not take much to make me
> >recant. But I would like to see a good argument. Perhaps it both
> >is and is not, there being a basic uncertainty in these matters,
> >especially when the word is used without periods, in lower case,
> >the original expansion of the initialisation mostly forgotten by
> >even educated folk who know well enough what the word means
> >without the technical details.
> >
> I would suggest that 'RADAR' is an acronym -- and 'radar' isn't.
Well, fair enough, but how can we decide such things? No one much
uses "RADAR" except for when it is in a heading and all or many
of the key words or important words are capitalised and that is
not generally for reasons to indicate some special thing that is
being meant, it is just "radar" in capitals. When folk say or
write this word, it is just, by now, an English word meaning
devices and beams for detecting ....
(German submarines that are about to blow up Allied shipping...?
- or as in the marvellous Das Boot, roughly other way around...
Er, maybe that is going too far or is a bit in the past... but
the movies are still playing... better not go on or BdeZ will
increase my killfile time even further... (Can one be good inside
a kf and earn parole or something?)
--
dorayme
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