Comments on: A Murmuration of Starlings http://www.waywordradio.org/murmuration/ A lively radio program about words and language, broadcast on many NPR stations and heard by podcast around the world. It's more than grammar! Sat, 18 May 2013 23:30:17 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: hippogriff http://www.waywordradio.org/murmuration/#comment-2766 hippogriff Thu, 02 Aug 2012 00:54:56 +0000 http://www.waywordradio.org/?p=1158#comment-2766 My objection to abandoning anatomical eponyms is that a proper name is the same in any language, whereas the substitution is Anglophone arrogance. I suspect this may have started with the death of King George VI from Buerger’s disease. At the time, this was associated in the popular mind with smoking, as almost all cases were smokers. Suddenly, the corporate media changed from eponym to symptom with thromboangiitis obliterans – possibly under orders from the Tobacco Institute whose members spent considerable money on advertising in those media. The symptomatics are also much longer and frequently unpronounceable on quick reading – part of what a friend of mine called the “witchdoctor syndrome” – that which has no or even negative medical effect, but enhances the status of the doctor in a given situation.

Dog breeds: A feral dog (whatever breed) and coyote cross is called a coydog and they are a major problem to livestock.

Texas has largely escaped the turnpike term because of the extensive use of tollway or toll road. It is interesting that Dallas is somewhat encircled by the LBJ freeway and the more recent President George Bush Tollway.

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