Today's Elites

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Newton's "Pendent"

"Who put the names on the moon? by thonyc

If you have ever looked at a map of the moon you might have noticed that many of the selenographical features are named after astronomers and you might just have asked yourself how come? At this point several of my readers are probably thinking what in the name of all that is holy is selenographical. Don’t worry my spell checker just asked the same question. Now geography is a Greek word that literally means earth-writing from geo meaning earth and graphos meaning writing. Selenography is moon-writing from Selene the Greek goddess of the moon and graphos. So selenographical features are what someone who is not a pendent like me would probably refer to incorrectly as geographical features of the moon. Now back to the main plot. The person who chose to name the selenographical feature after astronomers was the Jesuit mathematician, astronomer and physicists Giovanni Battista Riccioli who was born 17th April 1598."

Hmm. Interesting article. Even though you pride yourself on a rare degree of acuity in wordsmithing, I notice you denominate yourself as a "pendent." Of course, I assume you meant to write the word "pedant." (Normally a humorous pejorative term.) But unless you might mean that your continual fawning over Newton makes you a pendent of the British "nobility."

No comments:

Post a Comment

Blog Archive