Re: what is it?

On Thu, 18 Oct 2001 19:40:33 GMT, ppu...@damthatspam.chello.nl (Peter Punk) tried
to confuse everyone with this message:

>On Thu, 18 Oct 2001 03:02:42 GMT, Peter Henderson <pet...@usa.net>
>provoked the following text:
>
>>Peter Punk wrote:
>>> It is an acronym, and if an acronym is pronouncable as a regular word, people
>>> usually will pronounce it as a word. 
>>> Some examples are NATO, NAFTA, UNESCO, ASCII, etcetera.
>>
>>Actually, et cetera is two words. It comes from Latin, literally, "and 
>>(the) rest." (The is in () because Latin doesn't have articles. Articles 
>>are "the" "a" and "an.") So et cetera is not an acronym. Technically it 
>>can be one word, but not how it's usually used. Usually it means, "and 
>>so forth." As one word it means "odds and ends." Then it's a noun. 
>><http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?etcetera> Compare: 
>><http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?et%20cetera>. And finally an 
>>acronym is a word made from the first letters of other words, according 
>>to the dictionary. I think it's also sometimes the first _few_ letters 
>>(not only the first _one_).
>
>Gee, had i known that you'd think that i think that etcetera is an acronym (it
>is not, it is a contraction as you demonstrated), i would have used "and so
>forth" instead.
>
>But you could have known that that's not why "etcetera" was in the list, because
>aconyms, contrary to abbreviations, are usually written in all caps. "Etcetera"
>wasn't.
>
>>Hope that helps your English to be more perfect. Maybe you can do that 
>>with my Danish? (or whatever language(s) you speak, if I remember 
>>incorrectly) :o)
>
>Pardon my French, I'm Dutch :-))
>
>So you have taken an interest in the boring and hard-to-pronounce language
>called Dutch have you? :-)
>
>>BTW what does "1800wu/2.563yrs" and similar mean in your sig?
>
>I take part in the Search For Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) at home
>through the SETI@Home project.
>I have installed a program (as have over 3 million others all over the world)
>that downloads a piece of data, collected by the Arecibo radio telescope in
>Puerto Rico, filters it and when the program is finished filtering the data
>package (or work unit as it's called) it sends back the result and downloads
>another work unit.

I think searching for prime mersenne numbers (www.mersenne.org) is much more
useful. Who cares about aliens when they're >1000 light years away?

-- 
GRUE@|And to auoide tediouse repetition of these woordes: is equalle to:
MAIL|I will sette as I doe often in woorke use, a paire of paralleles of
RU|one lengthe, thus ===, bicause noe .2. thynges, can be moare equalle.
GRUE.FREESERVERS.COM|Robert Recorde,"The Whetstone of Witte',1557.[4*72]

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