The three magi, the three Kings of the East, or the three wise men (Latin magus, a wise man, Greek μάγος), are also known as the three Kings of Cologne, their bodies having supposedly been deposited in Cologne Cathedral in 1164 by Rainald of Dassel, who looted them from Milan after the Holy Roman Emperor […]
During the years spanning the 100th anniversary of the 1914–18 war, The Daily Telegraph has, day by day, been publishing facsimiles of issues of the paper that appeared 100 years ago. This advert appeared in the issue of Friday 7 December 1917. Doan’s Backache Kidney Pills came in boxes of 40 kidney pills and 4 […]
At this time of year, well at any time of year really, a look at alcohol may not go amiss. Alcohol was originally what you put on your eyes, powder of antimony stibnite, antimony trisulphide, or black antimony, known to the Arabs as al-koh’l, from kohl, meaning paint or stain. Kohl was used as a […]
To begin with, flex your mental muscles. To flex (Latin flectere) means to bend; a flex is easily bent. Reflection is bending back, of objects, light (as in the retinal reflex), and, metaphorically, thoughts. Retroflected means bent backwards, as a uterus may be, and a retroflex sound is one that’s articulated with the tongue curled […]
Last week I discussed the use of the word “de-adoption” in the title of a paper recently published in The BMJ: “De-adoption and exnovation in the use of carotid revascularisation”. I analysed “de-adoption” and suggested that “disinvestment” was a preferable term—well established, more commonly used, and more relevant. Here I analyse the neologism “exnovation”. Searching […]
A study published in The BMJ attracted my attention when I saw it in the print issue of 11 November: “De-adoption and exnovation in the use of carotid revascularisation”. Neither of these neologisms, de-adoption and exnovation, has yet made it into major English dictionaries—not surprisingly, since they have only recently been introduced into scientific texts. […]
One can hardly pick up a newspaper or magazine these days without reading something about artificial intelligence, typically in relation to computer programmes or robots. In March 2017 a computer programme, AlphaGo, beat a world champion, the South Korean Lee Sedol (pictured below), at go, a game once thought to be too difficult for computers […]
Artificiality is an ambiguous concept. The Latin adjective artificialis (from ars, art, and facere, to make) was introduced by the Roman rhetorician Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (c. 35–100 AD), as a translation of the Greek word ἔντεχνος, artistic, artificial, or within the province of art; τέχνη meant an art, craft, or skill; a system, a method, […]
The words automaton, android, replicant, and robot refer to pretty much the same thing. The word automaton (Greek αὐτόματον, a marionette), describing a device that moves by virtue of a concealed mechanism, entered English at the start of the 17th century and was applied to instruments such as clocks, clockwork toys, and mechanisms designed to […]
Which is better: “Aspirin can cause Reye’s syndrome” or “Aspirin may cause Reye’s syndrome”? The answer lies in a consideration of modal verbs, also called modal auxiliaries. Modal verbs are used to express modality, in other words, they modify the meaning of a verb, indicating how to interpret it. The main (or central) modal verbs […]