Clipped Words

Periwigs? 

Clipped words are defined as words that are formed by dropping one or more syllables from a longer word or phrase with no change in meaning. 

When some man calls another guy his "bro," most people know he is clipping "brother." However, I have found that some younger folks don't know that deli comes from delicatessen and that flu is a clipped influenza.

Less obvious is that "varsity" comes from "university," "hack" comes from "hackney" or that "margarine" was once "oleomargarine." 

You know "wig" but have you ever heard of periwig, an archaic term for a highly styled wig worn formerly as a fashionable headdress by both women and men.

Some clipped words and their original form have just fallen out of usage. I think few people talk about "stereo" sound any more, but no one uses "stereophonic."

A FEW OTHERS
alum alumni
mart market
auto automobile
math mathematics
bike bicycle
memo  memorandum
bra brassiere
bro brother
mike or mic  microphone

Naming the Clouds

I came across a book that looks at a story from modern meteorology about an overlooked man, Luke Howard. The Invention of Clouds is a detailed and informative examination of Howard's life and achievements. What did Howard do? He named the clouds, classifying them in terms that remain familiar to this day: cirrus, stratus, cumulus, and nimbus. 

A shy young Quaker who was an amateur meteorologist, Luke Howard, defined what had hitherto been random and unknowable structures ― clouds.

In December 1802, Luke Howard delivered a lecture that was to be a defining point in natural history and meteorology. His cirrus, stratus, cumulus, and nimbus were a new and precise nomenclature that sparked worldwide interest and captured the imaginations of some of the century's greatest figures in the fields of art, literature, and science. Goethe, Constable, and Coleridge were among those who came to revere Howard's vision of an aerial landscape. Legitimized by the elevation of this new classification and nomenclature, meteorology fast became a respectable science.

Most clouds can be divided into groups (high/middle/low) based on the height of the cloud's base above the Earth's surface. Other clouds are grouped not by their height, but by their unique characteristics, such as those that form over mountains (lenticular clouds) or beneath existing clouds (mammatus clouds).

Clouds seen from above give you a different perspective

Charon

 

Charon (KAIR-on, or SHAIR-ən) is the largest of the five known natural satellites of the dwarf planet Pluto. It was only discovered in 1978 at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. by astronomer James Christy. After its discovery, Charon was first given the temporary designation S/1978 P 1, following the then recently instituted convention.

Christy soon after suggested the name Charon as a scientific-sounding version of his wife Charlene's nickname, "Char". His colleagues at the Naval Observatory proposed Persephone, since mythological characters are often used in naming stars, planets, and moons. Christy decided to use Charon because he discovered in an interesting bit of serendipity that it is also the name of an appropriate mythological figure. Charon is the mythological Greek ferryman of the dead, closely associated with the god Pluto. The IAU officially adopted the name in late 1985, and it was announced on January 3, 1986.

But I find it even more interesting and serendipitous that in 1940 science fiction author Edmond Hamilton invented three moons of Pluto for his novel Calling Captain Future. He named them Charon, Styx, and Cerberus after mythological characters. He thought he was writing about fictional moons, though one might suspect that a planet (back then Pluto had full planet status) would have at least one moon. Pluto has five known moons. Charon, the largest, followed by Styx; Nix; Kerberos; and Hydra. Hamilton seems to have predicted 2 of the 5 correctly.

In Greek mythology, Charon or Kharon is the ferryman of Hades, the Greek underworld. He carries the souls of those who have been given funeral rites across the rivers Acheron and Styx, which separate the worlds of the living and the dead.

Charon as depicted by Michelangelo
 in his fresco The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel

Archaeology confirms that, in some burials, low-value coins were placed in, on, or near the mouth of the deceased, or next to the cremation urn containing their ashes. This has been taken to confirm that at least some aspects of Charon's story are reflected in some Greek and Roman funeral practices. In Virgil's epic poem, Aeneid, the dead who could not pay the fee, and those who had received no funeral rites, had to wander the near shores of the Styx for one hundred years before they could cross the river.