Atomic

12 August 2005

This past week saw the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the events that brought an end to World War II. These two grim events introduced a large number of terms in the vocabularies of millions.

First among these are the names for the device itself. The term atomic bomb predates the device, being used as early as 1914 in H.G. Wells’s The World Set Free. Its shorter cousin A-bomb dates from 1945 as does the term the bomb. The thermonuclear hydrogen bomb comes a few years later in 1947 and H-bomb in 1950. The use of more technically accurate nuclear to denote fission and fusion processes and weapons also comes in 1945.

Much of the jargon of the scientists and engineers constructing the bombs also made its way into the vernacular. The Manhattan Project was the name of the secret project, so-called because finance office responsible for paying the bills was located in the Manhattan district offices of the Army Corps of Engineers. The individual bombs had their own names too. The first device, code-named Trinity, was detonated at Alamogordo, New Mexico on 16 July 1945. The scientists who built it simply called it the gadget. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 was called Little Boy. Three days later Fat Man, so-called because of its round shape, was dropped on Nagasaki. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan the following day and the Japanese surrendered on 15 August. Historians have long debated which event was more important in prompting the surrender, the dropping of the atomic bombs or the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Japanese-occupied Manchuria.

The power of atomic weapons also created a couple of terms to describe the unprecedented size of the explosions. A kiloton is the explosive power equivalent to one thousand tons of TNT. The term dates to 1950.  The Hiroshima bomb was somewhere between twelve and fifteen kilotons. The Nagasaki bomb was larger at somewhere just above twenty kilotons. (The unclassified yield of a modern US nuclear strategic warhead is 300 kilotons.) In 1952 the term megaton was coined to denote explosive power equivalent to one million tons of TNT.

While the explosive power, or blast, of an atomic weapon is its most spectacular feature, it is not the only effect. Radiation is a significant hazard. The term fall-out was coined in 1950 to describe the radioactive particles of dirt and dust that are sucked into the fireball and which eventually touch down, often many miles away from the detonation. The less well-known rain-out was coined in 1954 to denote fall-out that was prematurely flushed from the atmosphere by rain.

The effects of excessive radiation on the human body can be deadly. The term radiation sickness describing some of these effects has been around since 1924. The term radiation burn, seen on many of the survivors of the bombings, dates to 1949. Since radiation cannot be detected without instruments, various devices are needed to measure radiactivity. Radiation counter dates to 1947, as does radiation meter. Radiation monitor comes a bit later in 1951. The more familiar Geiger counter, named after physicist Hans Geiger, is older, dating to 1924.

But atomic weapons have other effects as well. Notable are the thermal effects, or heat and fire—both direct from the detonation and secondary from fires started by the heat of the blast. The term fire storm was known well before the atomic age, being used as a descriptive term for a great fire since the 16th century. Modern use of the term to refer to an all-consuming conflagration caused by bombs dates to 1945. Fire storms are not unique to atomic weapons; the incendiary bombings of Dresden and Tokyo also created fire storms.

Atomic weapons also have electromagnetic effects, but these weren’t fully appreciated early in the atomic age. It took until 1963 for the most famous of these to get its name, EMP or electromagnetic pulse, which can destroy electronic equipment many miles away.

The term ground zero was coined in 1946 to denote the point of impact or point directly underneath a nuclear explosion. The term critical mass dates to 1941.

The dawn of the atomic age did leave us at least one less-grim term. The bikini was named in 1947, after the site of a 1946 atomic test in the Pacific.

What Is This Phishing of Which You Speak?

29 July 2005

Reuters reported this week that a survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project asked online users about various internet buzzwords and jargon terms. It found that despite all the buzz, the words were not that familiar to most internet users.

Most users knew what spam was, but there the familiarity ended. Words like phishing (soliciting financial information about a person by pretending to be a bank or other trustworthy source), podcasting (audio downloads available over the internet), and RSS feed (a service that pushes blog entries to a user as soon as they are published).

Younger internet users fared better than older ones in recognizing the terms.

A Scandal of Errors

29 July 2005

The latest Washington scandal, that of presidential consigliere Karl Rove and vice presidential assistant Lewis "Scooter" Libby revealing the name of a C.I.A. agent Valerie Plame to the press in an attempt to discredit her husband, suffers from not having a catchy name. Some have suggested Plamegate, using the –gate suffix that has been affixed to many a scandal since the original Watergate. Others have suggested the more unwieldy Rove v. Plame, a play on the court case Roe v. Wade.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, the essence of the scandal is that Rove, architect of President Bush’s electoral campaigns for governor of Texas and president of the United States, and Libby, told reporters that Plame worked for the C.I.A. either for revenge because her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was critical of the administration or to discredit Wilson by implying that he was given a C.I.A. assignment by his wife. There are questions about what laws, if any, were actually broken, and one reporter has been sent to jail for refusing to reveal her sources even though she never wrote a story about the case.

The scandal centers on that venerable Washington institution, the leak. A leak is the revelation of a secret. Leak has been used in this sense since 1859. Of course leaks are usually made to reporters, who seek to protect their sources from exposure. 31 states and the District of Columbia have shield laws (1998) that do not require journalists to reveal their sources to police or official investigators, but the federal government does not have one. This is why the reporter, Judith Miller of the New York Times, was sent to jail.

Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper has given us double secret background, the terms under which Rove spoke to him. Cooper used the term in an email to his editor that was made public during the investigation. Background is a journalism term used to describe a source who is not to be quoted. There is also deep background, meaning that the source is not even to be referred to anonymously, the information is only provided to the reporter as a guide for finding more leads or other sources. Cooper jocularly dubbed this double secret background, a play on the term double secret probation, which was used in the 1978 movie Animal House to refer to a punishment inflicted on a fraternity by the university.

Another word that has gotten a lot of use in this particular scandal is the verb to out, meaning to reveal a hidden identity, as in "Rove outed C.I.A. agent Valerie Plame." Most recognize the word in the sense of publicly revealing that someone is gay, but some question its use in this, more general, sense. Both these senses are cited in the Oxford English Dictionary as early as 1990. The specific sense relating to gays is a variant of the reflexive verb phrase to come out or to come out of the closet. This older term dates to 1968, but it’s not the oldest related sense. Out has been used to mean to reveal a secret since the late 14th century.

In response to the scandal, Republicans have released their legions of spin doctors (1984) who loyally repeat the daily talking points (1920), or message, on television, the radio, and to print reporters. The Democrats have their spin doctors and talking points too, but the Republicans are better at message discipline (1993).

Finally, there is the word scandal itself. It’s from the Latin scandalum, meaning a cause of offense and ultimately from the Greek meaning trap or snare. English usage dates to the 13th century and originally applied to something that brought discredit upon a clergyman or a church. The OED’s first citation in a secular and general sense is from Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. This current scandal is chock full of errors, on all sides, but is hardly a comedy.

Failure Is Not an Option

22 July 2005

On 20 July, the Reuters news service reported that some members of the Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) in Britain have called for the banning of the word fail in classrooms. Instead, the term deferred success should be used.

The organization as a whole will consider the proposal next week.

In Passing: Charles Chibitty, 83

22 July 2005

The last of the Commanche code talkers, who used the Commanche language to communicate sensitive information over the radio during World War II, died on 20 July.

The Navajo code talkers were more numerous and more famous. Navajo code talkers served in the Pacific Theater. Their lesser known Commanche comrades served in Europe. Choctaw Indians also served as code talkers. Both groups used their native languages, supplemented with coded terms for military jargon that did not exist in those languages, to send indecipherable messages faster than by using conventional codes.

The "code" spoken by the code talkers was not very complex and could have been broken had someone with knowledge of the language been listening, but the fact that almost no non-native speakers of those languages existed and the information they transmitted was tactical in nature and only useful for hours at best, the code talkers proved a very secure way to communicate.

"It’s strange, but growing up as a child I was forbidden to speak my native language at school," Chibitty said in 2002. "Later my country asked me to. My language helped win the war, and that makes me very proud."