Friday, October 16, 2009

2624 And another one! Or two.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Ted Kennedy, of his friend Barry Goldwater: [He] had one motto. It was "Ready! Shoot! Aim!"

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"Staycation".  Yeah, it's cute.  But it makes my jaw clench as much as "cafetorium" does.

"Vacation" comes from "vacate", which means "to cease to occupy".  "Vacation" is the noun.  "Vacate" + "(t)ion", the noun ending, becomes the act of leaving the place you usually occupy.

"Staycation" obviously substitutes "stay" for "vacate", but it does it WRONG!  It's "stay" + "CAtion"  which is the end of "vacate" and the noun-maker "(t)ion".   Or else it's "stayca" + "tion".  Either way it's wrong.

If they do it right, it would be "stay" + "tion", or "station", which is a place to stay or wait.  But that isn't cute.

In Daughter's elementary school, the cafeteria doubled as the auditorium.  The school drove me crazy by referring to the room as "the cafetorium".  These people responsible for the education of my daughter seemed to think that was a combination of the two words.

It's not.  "Cafe" refers to eating.  "Audit" refers to listening.  "(T)eria/(t)orium" means "room", singular and plural forms of the same ending.  So in "combining "cafeteria" and "auditorium" to come up with "cafetorium", all they really did was change the plural ending of  "cafeteria" to singular "cafetorium".  (This is not technically precise, but will do for the sake of argument.)  Cafetorium is still just a room for eating.  No listening involved.

I was not annoyed that they'd changed the ending.  It was convenient and got the idea across.  What annoyed me was that these educators seemed to think that in doing so they had combined the meaning of the two words.  It annoyed me that they didn't know what was wrong with it, and they SHOULD have.

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Dinner group in the Albany area tonight.  Giffy's BarBQ.  Yum.

Incidentally, my weight is still 13 pounds down.  Remarkable with all the eating out I've been doing.  If I'm going to lose more I'll have to exercise more, I guess.

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