4 ms·
"Unexpectedly named after people". Erlang seems to be short for for Ericsson Language, Elo is often misspelled ELO as if it stands for something. Shrapnel is
by mkl 3y ago
"Unexpectedly named after people". Erlang seems to be short for for Ericsson Language, Elo is often misspelled ELO as if it stands for something. Shrapnel is less unexpected.
- MiddleEndian 3y agoI swear I correct people about Elo vs ELO two to three times a year. And yes I am a great party guest!
- thih9 3y agoSaxophone is just as unexpected, other -phone musical terms, like vibraphone, idiophone, membranophone, come with a prefix unrelated to people. Sadism and masochism - perhaps less unexpected, but no less than shrapnel IMO.
- defrost 3y agoSantorum literally screams eponymous neologism.
- mkl 3y agoVibra-, idio-, membrano-, aero-, etc. are existing or obvious prefixes. Sax- is not. All I can think of is Saxon, but saxophones are pretty recent, so that doesn't match. Sousaphone is another -phone that's pretty obviously named after a person. Less well known but still pretty obvious are rothphone, heckelphone, sarrusophone, sudrophone.
- pradn 3y agoAll my life, I thought "sadism" had to do with the word "sad"!
- zuminator 3y agoIn the case of shrapnel I guess I always assumed it was derived from some World War era Germanic word for metal scrap/shards, so that it's just named after a British dude is pretty unexpected to me.