Newsgroups: sci.lang
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From: donh@netcom.com (Don HARLOW)
Subject: Re: Most Internation Written Word
Message-ID: <donhD3KHoH.5vF@netcom.com>
Organization: Esperanto League for North America, Inc.
References: <3gi2n2$njj@newsbf02.news.aol.com> <STOLFI.95Feb2162000@stack.dcc.unicamp.br> <3h4gsh$ncp@net.auckland.ac.nz>
Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 07:19:29 GMT
Lines: 24

asi_beh@ccnov2.auckland.ac.nz (Tim Behrend) skribis en lastatempa afisxo <3h4gsh$ncp@net.auckland.ac.nz>:

>Radar is an Indonesian word.  For a citation, see for example 
>_Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia_ (Jakarta: Balai Pustaka, 1988).

Radar comes from the Esperanto "radaro", which means "clockwork."

All right, enough with the jokes. The English "radar", and its various 
international borrowings, is, like the later "laser", an acronym. It 
is short for, if I remember correctly, RAdio Detection And Ranging.

As others have pointed out before, the system was roughly described -- 
with a name surprisingly close to that used thirty years later by 
the inventors -- by Edgar Rice Burroughs, in _A Princess of Mars_, 
who called the system "wireless finding and sighting". Fortunately, 
Burroughs did not provide a working model; otherwise we would be stuck 
with the international word "wifas", which someone would try to prove 
came from Lithuanian.

-- 
Don HARLOW			donh@netcom.com
Esperanto League for N.A.       elna@netcom.com (800) 828-5944
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/el/elna/elna.html         Esperanto
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/do/donh/donh.html 
