Wednesday 13 October 2010

Nomenclature

I've always liked the word, mainly because for the first 30 years of my life I never understood what it meant. Nomenclature is a term that applies to either a list of names and/or terms or procedures related to naming. Clearly now we need to complement the Exec with this position to provide support for the newly appointed Measurement Secretary. Nomenclature Secretary's first task would be to propose a naming procedure for new developments, so that we don't have the current and obvious issue of having to change the name of the wing away from err wing, so that we don't confuse them with the already currently named.. err wings.
I would recommend we do, but on no account must we let an American do it. Americans do invent new words, almost every day actually, but this is largely by adding the prefix "de" and the suffix "fy". So we can get (recently heard) wonderful words like "Decomplexify" which presumably is another word for "Simple". Which it isn't.
The Australians should be precluded as well because they would just stick an "o" on the end of it and we'd just move from wing/wing to wingo/wingo which wouldn't be much help. The Germans, who currently translate the quite attractive word "bra" to "Büstenhalter" which I think means "bosom holder" would come up with something more literal still like "solid sail", which would be shortened to "SS" and that really wouldn't work.
No this must be left to the British. And so I would propose that the procedure is that any new invention brought to the class is named after the first sailor to use it. Adam however already has the "Maystick" and I'm now mindful of the recently introduced 2010 Equalities Act which means he can't have it in isolation as he's already go one invention, and two would be un err.. equal. Nobody is allowed to loose in Britain these days and anyway if he had two we'd be back to where we started with May/May Stick.
So its not easy as you can see, but a combination may work? How about the Bora May Invention? We could consult the French to shorten it and surely (but not guarranteed) it would turn into "BMI" which also stands poignantly for "Body Mass index" which is a subtle hint that if you are a fat bastard it could be for you, but BMI is also a low cost airline which makes flying accessible to the masses and that may just be a subtle reminder to everyone to think, as they look up, about what's really important to the moth class..

Si (sitting in a Starbucks waiting for someone, so err sorry)

6 comments:

Fred said...

This is not just a blog entry, this is an uber entry about the über wing. Thanks for the bra bit. You seem to have had contact with it, don´t you?

Simon Payne said...

Yeah sorry about the post, just trying to make time go a little faster.

Simon Payne said...

For me, if not for you..

Bora Gulari said...

I dont understand the nomenclature

Anonymous said...

Your posts are so much more interesting and entertaining when you are not trying to sell us stuff.

Unless that was convoluted way to endorse starbucks....which would leave a bitter taste.....

pending crash tests, maybe they'll be known as self dis-assembling hard sails

Chris Rast said...

Simon.... that's hilarious! nice work...