At 09:02 PM 12/31/98 -0800, Don Baccus wrote:

> that doesn't mean we have to move
>backwards when we've made progress. The birding world seems to have embraced
>the more descriptive and accurate term "supercilium",
>
>Seriously, though, what's the virtue in moving backwards from acceptance of
>a technical term in favor of a less-accurate common term?

The odd thing about "supercilium" being "more descriptive and accurate" is
that if you look in the etymological part of your dictionary you will find
that "supercilium" means "eyebrow" in Latin, just as "cilium" means
"eyelash". The only thing more accurate about this term is that it comes
from a language that now lives a truncated existence primarily in biology
textbooks (although speakers of Romance languages might disagree). The
context of the word (in bird books) is the only thing that makes it "more
accurate", and this is only because by context we know it means "the
eyebrow on a bird (if it had one)" and not the "the eyebrow on Henry Hyde".

it's not such a
>big deal to learn proper terms for bird parts, IMO.

I agree, Don, and tweeters seems like an appropriate audience to use them
on. After all, since we went to the trouble to learn these terms, we might
as well use them somewhere, and they certainly won't help us communicate
with the non-birding non-Latin speaking masses for whom "eyebrow" would be
far more informative. It's part of our heritage, darn it, and we should use
these terms in honor of our forbears a few centuries ago who had to learn
their natural history in Latin. Let's not forget our roots!

Happy New Year/Hauoli Makahiki Hou

Paul Talbert
Seattle, WA
tuisto at oz.net