Newsgroups: sci.lang
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From: lilandbr@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross)
Subject: Adam's Apple:  Misnomer or Mumpsimus?
Message-ID: <E4L86x.E1r@scn.org>
Sender: news@scn.org
Reply-To: lilandbr@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross)
Organization: Seattle Community Network
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 1997 23:35:20 GMT
Lines: 29


A week or two back, hermandw@innet.be (Herman DE WAEL) was looking for a 
term to denominate an expression (e.g. a compound word) whose referent is 
not the sum of the referents of its constituent parts, tiel diri, yet 
which persists in common use despite efforts to introduce an 
etymologically more appropriate alternative.  

Daniel "Da" von Brighoff suggested "misnomer", and somebody else came up 
with "mumpsimus", neither of which strikes me as being on the money, 
though both are in the ballpark (mixed metaphors intentional).  

I have no better suggestion, but I'm wondering whether "Adam's apple" 
belongs in the class to which Herman was referring.  ("Adam's apple" 
results from a Hebrew phrase, *each of whose* constituents had two 
meanings, being loan-translated into Latin and eventually into English 
using the translation of the *wrong* sense of the Hebrew, so that what 
*should* be "man's [i.e., male] protuberance" comes out "Adam's apple".  
The mistranslation *may*, of course, have been intentional, in order to 
avoid confusing conflations with other possibly meant male protuberances,
or to contrast with "Eve's apple", the one corresponding to the Greek 
"Pandora's Box"...

Dilatorily, dilettantishly,
--
Liland Brajant ROS'           Aspergas mi per spermo de l' espero
P O Box 30091                    virginon de l' argxenta astro
Seattle, WA 98103 Usono       en la arom' de sxia sino cxasta
Tel. (206) 633-2434  	         dum farniento de l' vespero.   --Mihhalski
			
