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Everything now officially a blog
My favorite prescriptivist is a talking dinosaur
Housekeeping: Site name change
Dan's new word crush
Good Stuff: 5/1/08
Internet famous is the best famous
Geeking out with the U.S. Board on Geographic Name...
BGN Geekery: New name proposals
BGN Geekery: The Apostrophe Problem
BGN Geekery: Trivia roundup
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Tuesday, May 13, 2008 3:27 PM
Loosely categorized! Whoo!
Words we hate comics
It's a disaster!
You heard me!
Men stereotypically leave the toilet seat up!
There are other words than "bitches"! Daaamn!
It is not a generic intensifier!
Words we love comics
For instance: the word "awful" (really bad) and the word "offal" (butchered entrails)!
Sorry, other word classes! I have a NEW girlfriend now!
Prescriptivism comics
So dumb!
Well, yeah!
And guys I wasn't even trying that hard!
FOR EXAMPLE: T-Rex is a pretty sweet dude because he's always so friggin' awesome!
RESOLUTION ONE: eat less chickens!
Man! I'll never have kids at this rate!
Okay! Our first letter comes from Jenn!
Cowboy hat dude got DECIMATED!
Guys! I am not alone in this!
(Pleonasm is the use of redundant, unnecessary words to express an idea!)
Etymology comics
However, this is not the case!
I also left a big tip, so as not to appear NIGGARDLY!
They MOVED?
A HISTORY OF HYSTERIA
First: snake oil salesmen!
Linguistics-ish comics
This source says: DEFINITELY YES!
It's the coolest!
Labels: comics, etymology, geekery, grammar politics, spelling
"However, this is not the case" seems to imply that "man" is derived from Latin "humanus."
"Maybe ADJECTIVES wouldn't force us to have such conversations!" hehe he
Oh, how I love Dinosaur Comics. And I've realized that I never finished going through all the archives.
Also, I really like this Scrabble comic.
Hah. When I was in college "playing Scrabble" was often employed as a euphemism for "having sex."
nenu shudda shaakaahaarini - Telugu for "I am a pure vegetarian" heheh
Thanks for posting this. I forgot how much I like Dinosaur Comics.
Internet famous is the best famous
Tuesday, April 29, 2008 7:28 AM
The business first became Internet famous a decade ago, but has proved remarkably durable, with sales climbing to around $4.5 million last year.
It's new to the NYT, but Internet famous has been around for a while now. Last year Time had an article on an "Internet Famous" course offered through the Parsons New School for Design.
Years ago I coined (or re-coined; it's so hard to tell) the phrase Internet true, but it didn't go anywhere. I blame truthiness.
Geeking out with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names
Tuesday, April 22, 2008 12:20 AM
The Board is responsible by law for standardizing geographic names throughout the Federal Government, and discourages name changes unless necessary. Further, the Board states that, "changing a name merely to correct or re-establish historical usage is not in and of itself a reason to change a name."
That last sentence really makes things interesting. More BGN geekery:
New name proposals
The Apostrophe Problem
Trivia roundup
Argh. I hate the BGN. Their disdain for diacritics and the impossibility of recovering many originals thanks to their wacky transliteration systems is infuriating. I know they have a hard job, but they could show a little respect for the languages they deal with...
BGN Geekery: New name proposals
Monday, April 21, 2008 11:46 PM
This proposal is to change officially the name of Squaw Peak, the highest point inthe Phoenix Mountains, to Piestewa Peak. The change, submitted by the Governor of Arizona, is intended to eliminate a name considered by many to be derogatory, and also to honor U.S. Army Pfc. Lori Piestewa (b.1979), a Hopi Indian woman who died in the Iraqi conflict on March 23, 2003. Pfc. Piestewa is believed to be the first American Indian woman killed in combat.
For some states — I think it was Maine and Colorado — the proposal summary indicated that the renaming was mandated by a recent state law.
Since the government (in theory) won't change a name just to match the historical name or even to correct a misspelling, each renaming is accompanied by a lengthy proposal summary explaining the history of the old name and the reasoning behind the proposed change. These summaries were often quite charming.
Here are some of my favorite bits from the most recent quarterly review list:
This proposal, to name a 0.6 km (0.4 mi) long unnamed perennial spring-fed stream in Mobile County Turpentine Branch, would recall the early 1900's local history of turpentiners.
This proposal is to make official the name Sven Slab for a 91 m (300 ft) wide, 61m (200 ft) high cliff wall in the McDowell Sonoran Preserve, at the north end of the McDowell Mountains. According to the proponent, the name is widely used within the hiking and rock climbing community; the name came into use because Sven power saws were used to cut a trail to the base of the wall.
This proposal is to make official the Dena'ina name Taq' Nust'in Mountain for a 722 m (2,370 ft) summit in Lake and Peninsula Borough, just west of the Newhalen River and approximately 16 km (10 mi) northwest of the village of Iliamna. The proponent, a Professor of Linguistics Emeritus at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, reports the name is of Dena'ina origin and means "the one that extends across the timbered lowlands."
More recent research conducted by an archivist with the Colorado Mountain Club reveals that the 1878 Wheeler Survey referred to the "unnamed" peak by the descriptive name Frustum Peak. The word "frustum" refers to "a pyramid with the top chopped off," which the author notes could refer to Kit Carson Mountain but more likely to Humboldt Peak.
The proponent reports the name Corn Church Creek was chosen because the stream lies near St. John-Hill United Church of Christ (built in the mid-18th century and long known as the "Hill Church"); the church's roof, which projected over the sides, was used not only for storm protection but also for hanging seed corn to be dried. Many of the area's early German settlers referred to the church
as "Die Welshkorn Kerche" or "Corn Church."
Although the name Saline Branch Drainage Ditch has appeared on USGS topographic maps since 1957, the proponents report that the name is misleading and cumbersome and should be changed to West Salt Fork. They suggest the use of "Drainage Ditch" is particularly objectionable because the feature is predominantly a natural one, following the original course of the stream over most of its length, having been only straightened and deepened in a few places to facilitate drainage. They also believe the name "Saline" causes people to question the salinity and therefore the safety of the water for both recreational and drinking purposes.
The BGN seems to do a great job of contacting all interested parties before going ahead with a name change, but in many cases not everyone responds. Several of the proposal summaries contain the following (fantastic!) boilerplate: "No response was received, which is presumed to indicate a lack of an opinion on the issue."
For my other BGN posts, click here.
BGN Geekery: The Apostrophe Problem
11:32 PM
The U.S. Board on Geographic Names FAQ defends this decision at length. I still disagree with them, but their response is so interesting that I've excerpted it in its entirety here:
Since its inception in 1890, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names has discouraged the use of the possessive form — the genitive apostrophe and the "s". The possessive form using an "s" is allowed, but the apostrophe is almost always removed. The Board's archives contain no indication of the reason for this policy.
However, there are many names in the GNIS database that do carry the genitive apostrophe, because the Board chooses not to apply its policies to some types of features. Although the legal authority of the Board includes all named entities except Federal Buildings, certain categories — broadly determined to be "administrative" — are best left to the organization that administers them. Examples include schools, churches, cemeteries, hospitals, airports, shopping centers, etc. The Board promulgates the names, but leaves issues such as the use of the genitive or possessive apostrophe to the data owners.
Myths attempting to explain the policy include the idea that the apostrophe looks too much like a rock in water when printed on a map, and is therefore a hazard, or that in the days of "stick-up type" for maps, the apostrophe would become lost and create confusion. The probable explanation is that the Board does not want to show possession for natural features because, "ownership of a feature is not in and of itself a reason to name a feature or change its name."
Since 1890, only five Board decisions have allowed the genitive apostrophe for natural features. These are: Martha's Vineyard (1933) after an extensive local campaign; Ike's Point in New Jersey (1944) because "it would be unrecognizable otherwise"; John E's Pond in Rhode Island (1963) because otherwise it would be confused as John S Pond (note the lack of the use of a period, which is also discouraged); and Carlos Elmer's Joshua View (1995 at the specific request of the Arizona State Board on Geographic and Historic Names because, "otherwise three apparently given names in succession would dilute the meaning," that is, Joshua refers to a stand of trees. Clark's Mountain in Oregon (2002) was approved at the request of the Oregon Board to correspond with the personal references of Lewis and Clark.
For my other BGN posts, click here.
Labels: geekery, naming, punctuation
I've always wondered about the aversion to apostrophes. My parents recently lived in a town called Scottsbluff, which is named after a nearby bluff named after a man named Scott.
Not only is the apostrophe missing, but so is the space, which makes me want to say it with primary stress on the first syllable and no stress on the second, when in fact it's pronounced with secondary stress on the first and primary stress on the second.
BGN Geekery: Trivia roundup
10:56 PM
Contrary to popular belief, only 34 states have a community named Springfield; however, Riverside appears in 46 different states, with "only Alaska, Hawaii, Louisiana, and Oklahoma not having a community so named."
The 3,141 counties and county equivalents in the 50 States (and D.C.) are categorized as follows:
3,007 entities named "County"
16 Boroughs in Alaska
11 Census Areas in Alaska (for areas not organized into Boroughs by the State)
64 Parishes in Louisiana
42 Independent Cities (1 in Maryland, 1 in Missouri, 1 in Nevada, and the remainder in Virginia)
1 District - the Federal District or District of Columbia.
("What are the only two U.S. states without counties?" would be a good trivia question. Likewise, "What are the four states officially known as commonwealths?")
If you count hyphens, then Winchester-on-the-Severn, in Maryland, has the longest official community name in the U.S. Another Maryland community takes second place: Linstead-on-the-Severn, with 22 characters.
For communities without hyphens, it's a tie between the 17-letter Mooselookmeguntic, in Maine, and Kleinfeltersville, in Pennsylvania. Elsewhere in the U.S., Chickasawhatchee, Chancellorsville, and Eichelbergertown are all one letter short of the record.
The longest name, period, in their database is University of Rhode Island Coastal Institute on Narragansett Bay Conference and Visitor Center, at 94 characters. But they count spaces.
For my other BGN posts, click here.
Cluster and Mother
Tuesday, April 15, 2008 12:36 PM
Urban Dictionary has these clippings covered.
Pause to note that these aren't merely interrupted swears, like the mother- in the new Die Hard trailer or the holy- (for holy s***) that you see sometimes in movies or Homer Simpson's epic f- in "Who Shot Mr. Burns." You can use mother and cluster prettymuch anywhere in a sentence without adding an extra pause afterwards. (Disclaimer: Our Bold Hero is not a linguist.)
No, these are abbreviations of swear words, just like F, that ubiquitous signpost for f***.
(I suppose that suck, as in you suck or that sucks, is also similar, but those phrases leave considerably more up to the imagination. Donkeys are sometimes involved! The expression this blows works the same way — goats! — although it supposedly does not have a vulgar origin.)
In some ways mother and cluster are like minced oaths (Jebus, sugar, frak, etc.), which generally derive their meaning from their resemblance to an existing profanity. However, the connection here is stronger, because mother and cluster are also the building blocks of their dirty cousins. In mothertrucker, you've got a minced oath, but in mother it's just been chopped.
Then there's this item about "clustered nuns":
http://grammatically.blogspot.com/2008/04/hail-mary-full-of-grapes.html
I suppose the abbess would be a "clustered mother."
Why is it that when some nuns are left in darkness, they will seek out the light? Why is it that when nuns are stored in an empty space, they will group together, rather than stand alone?
Also: posh, S.O.S., news, golf, wop
Thursday, March 27, 2008 2:09 PM
Or something! She wasn't quite sure. But I was sure that tip didn't stand for anything, sure enough to put a 6-pack of Springboard Ale on the line.
Here's the Online Etymology Dictionary entry for tip:
"give a small present of money to," 1610, "to give, hand, pass," originally thieves' cant, perhaps from tip (v.3) "to tap." The meaning "give a gratuity to" is first attested 1706. The noun in this sense is from 1755; the meaning "piece of confidential information" is from 1845; the verb in this sense is from 1883; tipster first recorded 1862.
O, bacronyms! So interesting yet so false. It's not like I'm just too clever to fall for them, either: for about 10 years I thought that phat was an acronym for Pretty Hot And Tempting.
(The best actual acronym is either the ubiquitous snafu or taser, a barely-plausible abbreviation for Thomas A. Swift Electric Rifle.)
It's always disappointing to find out that a good etymology was just too good to be truth. A good rule is that, at least in English, if it's an old word like tip, it's almost certainly not an acronym. David Wilton's Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends can back me up:
The fact is, however, that very few words actually begin their life as acronyms, and most of these are proper nouns like NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and NORAD (North American Air Defense Command). Also, forming words from acronyms is a distinctly twentieth- (and now twenty-first-) century phenomenon. There is only one known pre-twentieth-century word with an acronymic origin and it was in vogue for only a short time in 1886. The word is colinderies or colinda, an acronym for the Colonial and Indian Exposition held in London that year.
I believe there were some other pre-twentieth-century acronyms, notably OK (assuming that it really does come from oll korrect, as the evidence suggests).
link
But even though there may be a handful of examples from before 1900, it's a pretty safe bet that if the word predates World War II, it doesn't come from an acronym.
I think that what Wilton is talking about here are acronyms in the narrow sense, i.e. abbreviations pronounced phonetically, as opposed to initialisms like OK.
(I always have to go to Language Log to make sure I'm using those terms correctly... I'm never sure if initialism or abbreviation is the catch-all.)
Not that I'm down on OK. I'm a huge fan of the oll korrect theory, which actually came up during our tip discussion at the bar.
I love the term "bacronym."
I vote for "snafu" as BAE (Best Acronym Ever).
Because of the profanity-avoidance technique it employs.
I heard the "to ensure promptness" etymology on CBC radio recently. arghghg
,.? !
Friday, March 14, 2008 10:33 AM
Built by eccentric architect Arthur Marshman on the site of an old tennis court, Horton Rounds has broad curving eaves and a chimney made of local yellow stone.
Ultimately, however, the house is more notable for its unusual shape: it's designed to look like a comma next to a full stop.
View Larger Map
Labels: geekery, punctuation
National Grammar Day:
No Time for Diatribes Edition
Tuesday, March 4, 2008 2:40 PM
(If you find yourself liking the comic, please go back and start at the beginning.)
Labels: geekery, National Grammar Day, spelling
I could read Achewood all day, in fact I have.
National Grammar Day:
How to Correct Someone
11:12 AM
Labels: geekery, National Grammar Day
Explication of the Nerds
Friday, January 11, 2008 2:54 PM
If that's incorrect... well, I make no apologies when I can't Search Inside!
It's a bit silly to quibble over the meaning of terms that come to us as reclaimed insults — that is to say, via people who really don't care whether they call you a geek or a nerd or a dork — but this definition goes against what I've (almost certainly naively) understood as a commonly-held distinction between nerds and geeks.
That would be something like what you get at the end of the Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test:
A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
I consider myself mainly a geek (that is, an English geek), but I score high in all three categories. Of the three terms, only dork seems negative to me anymore. Geeky is, of course, the new cool.
(Related: In his neo-fantasist gamer novel Lucky Wander Boy, D.B. Weiss offers an eloquent albeit chauvinist definition of geek: "A geek is a person, male or female, with an abiding, obsessive, self-effacing, even self-destroying love for something besides status." He's also very critical of faux-geek chic, a.k.a. dorkface.)
There are different schools of thought on this — for example, some people think that a nerd is just a dorky geek — but Dr. Anderegg's purported definition struck me as especially unusual.
Also: since this is a book about nerds, a few of the reviewers decide to repeat the claim that Dr. Seuss coined the word nerd in 1950.
Here's the Washington Post:
(It should be noted that another literary icon actually coined the word nerd, which first appeared in 1950 in the completely irrelevant, and typically fantastic, context of Dr. Seuss's "If I Ran the Zoo": "And then, just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo, and bring back an IT-KUTCH, a PREEP, and a PROO, a NERKLE, a NERD, and a SEERSUCKER, too.")
And here's the Economist:
How very unfortunate that Dr Seuss, whose verbal pyrotechnics have given so much pleasure to so many children, should also have given them, however innocently, the ghastly label "nerd".
It's certainly the first published occurrence of the term discovered so far, but some people, including Our Bold Hero, think that the connection between the two nerds is mere happenstance, and that Seuss' word was another whimsical one-off that went nowhere.
The website The Origin of the Nerd has the low-down on this etymological controversy, but right now the earliest citation for nerd outside of Dr. Seuss is from 1951. I doubt that I'm the only would-be antedater for whom this word has become something of a white whale.
Relieved to say I scored "pure nerd."
What's up with "dork"? -- it's the only one of the three that doesn't emphasize some kind of intellectual ability. Makes them sound . . . unfortunate.
Ella Minnow Pea
Wednesday, January 9, 2008 1:25 PM
If you can parse that description, bravo: that's prettymuch the gist of the book.
The story takes place on a hyper-literate island (stuffy cacozelia abounds!) where the fictional Nevin Nollop is revered for having invented the pangram the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
(As I had to remind one confused client, that pangram is now used to test fonts; it's not a substitute for Lorem ipsum, no matter how many times you cut and paste.)
The sentence is immortalized on a monument to Nollop, but when one of the letter tiles (z) falls off, the Island Council decrees that the corresponding letter should be banished from all writing and speech, a ruling they enforce with harsh penalties. Unfortunately, it turns out that z wasn't the only loose tile...
(Incidentally, the letter Z has met this cruel fate before: it was officially banished from Icelandic first in 1918, then again, decisively, in 1974.)
The story that unfolds is told entirely through the letters characters send each other, letters that become progressively more constrained as more of the letter-letters are taken away. I think that the author cops out a little at the end, but the effort is nevertheless impressive.
However, that's prettymuch all there is to this book: it's a nice little nothing with an amusing conceit, equivalent to one of those books where the author lives in a weird way for a year. Still, was it worth a couple hours of reading time? Definitely.
(I'm a sucker for the almost non-existent "hyper-literate alternate universe" subgenre. The Eyre Affair is a must-read for any English major, although you should stay away from the other Thursday Next novels.)
With its strange, diminishing alphabet, Ella Minnow Pea reminded me of a sci-fi short story I'd just recently read, Kim Newman's "Tomorrow Town." In the Tomorrow Town alphabet:
Q and X are replaced by KW and KS; the vestigial C exists only in CH and is otherwise replaced by K or S. E.g.: "The kwik brown foks jumped over the layzee dog."
So forget z; apparently it's the letter C that doesn't get any respect. Benjamin Franklin wanted to get rid of it too (along with j, q, w, x, and y) and a quick Google search turns up some present-day haters.
None of that for me. If it does anything, Ella Minnow Pea will make you appreciate the awesomeness of every single one of our letters.
(And book title puns involving eye dialect, if I'm indeed using the term correctly. In any case: that looks hard.)
I mourn for the letters we've lost - ash and thorn spring to mind. Man, they even had cool names.
On the plus side, we might gain some additional letters in the future. It's more of a symbol, but just look at the way '@' has come on in recent years...
Glad you liked the book!
I haven't read it since college -- maybe it's time for another read! And I'll take your linking advice to heart.
The Distracting Word Meme
Sunday, December 30, 2007 2:11 AM
Words that always look misspelled to me
adviser (clearly a pet peeve of mine)
separate
dilemma
whisky
Words that look nicer in italics
far
murderous
Words I enjoy saying
h.c. (for hardcore)
introvert
roger
hence
solid (instead of favor)
Words I enjoy hearing
"abzurd"
jerkin' (Josie and the Pussycats)
yonder
killjoy (Halo 3)
Abbreviations I dislike
MILF (and its lexical offspring are even worse)
micro (for microwave)
s/f or SF (instead of sci-fi)
Proper nouns I enjoy
Londonderry
Harvey Wallbanger
McKean's Law
Words I associate with happiness
breeze
malt
twilight
Words I always misspell
periphescence
misspelling
Words I enjoy spelling correctly, every time
complimentary
stationery
Albuquerque
Words that, though I love their meaning, I'm too embarrassed to say out loud
bailiwick
f*ckbuddy
bloviate
whence
seigniorage
Words I can never remember the meaning of no matter how many times I look them up
cacozelia
crepuscular
lacuna
The word whose meaning I can never remember is "jejune."
As for MILF, have you heard about Spirit Airlines' MILF promotion? They claim they had NO IDEA it stood for anything but "Many Islands Low Fares." Right-o. More info here: http://commercial-archive.com/node/141850
Fantastic words! Breeze is a happy word isn't it? Hence does feel good in the mouth. And you are right, murderous looks great in italics :)
The thing about "sci-fi" is that it's something of a shibboleth. There are communities where it's got a history as a patronizing and derogatory term, generally aimed exclusively at bad film and television science fiction, and so if you use it around members of those groups, you will mark yourself as an outsider, and ignorant of their mores. 'SF' has no such connotations to navigate.
Yeah, I don't mean to open a can of worms there — I did that already with a "videogame vs. video game" post — but I'm aware of the arguments for "speculative fiction" and "sf" as opposed to "sci-fi." I just think that, as a label for straight-up science fiction, "sf" is overused within the community of people that has no narrow-minded prejudices against "sci-fi."
If you don't want to open a can of worms, maybe hanging up loaded phrases like "narrow-minded prejudices" before you start may be helpful.
Hah! Fair enough. I guess I didn't think it would be controversial to say that people who don't like sci-fi because it's called "sci-fi" are being narrow-minded.
I suspect that the people who don't like the term "sci-fi" are primarily the really big sf fans...?
There should be a category for words that you always seem to misread, no matter how common they are.
My two worst offenders are "misled," which I always want to read as [mai.zld] and "uniformed," which I usually see as "uninformed."
Where did you get the idea that I was talking about people who don't like science fiction in discussing people who don't care for the term "sci-fi"?
I took you at your word when you said, "I'm aware of the arguments for 'speculative fiction' and 'sf' as opposed to 'sci-fi'," but if in fact you're supposing that the likeliest opponents of the term "sci-fi" are people who are not fans of the genre, then I'll have to conclude you were talking through your hat.
It's precisely among fans of science fiction as a literary genre that the term "sci-fi" may be objected to most strongly. And to call that objection narrow-minded might be likened to calling a person of color narrow-minded for objecting to the term "coon".
Is that a bit clearer?
I think "coon" is a poor comparison, since it's incredibly perjorated, whereas I highly doubt that I'm the only sci-fi fan who still finds the term "sci-fi" innocuous. A sometimes-contentious, increasingly unfashionable label like "hipster" might be a more apt — albeit less dramatic — comparison.
But obviously it's I who's been having trouble being clear. Since my first comment we've been talking about two different groups: I mentioned that I was aware of "the arguments for 'speculative fiction' and 'sf' as opposed to 'sci-fi'," saying that I didn't mean to open a can of worms. I added, however, that I thought those terms were overused within the community of people with no narrow-minded objections to the term "sci-fi," i.e. the community of science fiction fans. I think it's here that I lost you.
I have no bones against the people who use the term "s/f" so that certain works can gain a broader acceptability, or refer to "speculative fiction" because it's a useful umbrella term. I disagree with them and continue to dislike these terms, but however strong their opinions about the word "sci-fi", these fans can presumably still look beyond the label. In short: I wasn't trying to call a subset of science fiction fans narrowminded; I was referring to a different group of people, as I made explicit in my second comment.
I do think that the likeliest, if not the most vociferous, pejoraters of the term "sci-fi" would be the general public (i.e. non-fans and some of the casual fans). As far as I can tell, it's largely their perception of sci-fi that has given it a connotation as a "patronizing and derogatory term, generally aimed exclusively at bad film and television science fiction."
I see "speculative fiction" as a rebranding, an escape from a genre pigeonhole necessitated by the pejoration of "sci-fi" within the general public. And so you get people like Margaret Atwood saying stuff like "No, it certainly isn't Science Fiction. Science Fiction is filled with Martians and space travel to other planets, and things like that."
Compare "progressive" with "liberal," a label which was until quite recently still in use here in Minnesota, but which was abandoned mostly because "liberal" had become a dirty word. This very blog is premised on a similar rebranding: the abandonment of "descriptivist grammar" (in favor of "reactive grammar") because the prescriptivists have made "descriptivist" out to be something crazy.
So now that we're using a different label some people who used to be called "descriptivists" can call descriptivism "utterly insane." Likewise, having abandoned the label "sci-fi" for serious works, it seems like a certain subset of science fiction fans have begun using it in the pejorated sense. Your point in your first comment was, and still is, well-taken: among that group of science fiction fans, "sci-fi" has become a shibboleth.
I'm starting to wonder if "sci-fi" might be what's sometimes called a "skunked term" — "a disputed word that has undergone a semantic shift, thus making it difficult to use it in either the older or the newer sense. Sticking to the older sense confuses those unfamiliar with it, while using the newer sense annoys traditionalists who feel that it is wrong." Although I suppose in this case both sides seem to end up annoyed.
