Peter Otten <__pete...@web.de> writes: > Grant Edwards wrote: > >> On 2018-06-18, Joe Pfeiffer <pfeif...@cs.nmsu.edu> wrote: >>> Peter Otten <__pete...@web.de> writes: >>> >>>> Gene Heskett wrote: >>>> >>>>> This biggest single thing wrong with any of those old scsi interfaces >>>>> is the bus's 5 volt isolation diode, the designer speced a shotkey(sp) >>>>> diode, and some damned bean counter saw the price diff and changed it >>>>> to >>>> >>>> Is this a case of <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology> ? >>>> >>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_H._Schottky >>> >>> I'm missing why the claim that management changed the spec on a diode >>> from Schottky to conventional would be folk etymology? Or why Gene >>> being unsure of his spelling would? What does any of this have to do >>> with etymology, folk or genuine? >> >> I was wondering the same thing... > > "folk etymology" would be the retrofitting of the exotic "Schottky" into two > familiar words "shot" and "key". Sometimes the writer assumes that these > words are somehow related to the labeled object.
This would only be a folk etymology if (1) the spelling were really "shotkey", and (2) someone thought it was because of some tortured derivation from "shot" and "key". Most of the best-known examples in English are backronyms like Port Outboard Starboard Home and For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
