RE: Weird words

[Lori Olcott <lori_olcott -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

Linguistic urban legends?  

Our team has to send a quickie status update to NASA daily, and "All
systems nominal" is the standard message.  I was told that it's understood
that there's always something going wrong; but as long as the problems
aren't causing major disruptions, it's not worth mentioning.  Therefore
"All systems are at a nominal level of chaos." :)

Lori

> One of the more famous examples of catachresis is "nominal", as in "all
> systems are...".  Friends at NASA claim that it came into being when a
> speech-giver there could not quite decipher his speech-writer's
> handwriting; the actual word was "normal".  Members of the press oohed
> and aahed about this nifty new techie term and away they went.


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