From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S263681AbTDXOZT (ORCPT ); Thu, 24 Apr 2003 10:25:19 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S263715AbTDXOZT (ORCPT ); Thu, 24 Apr 2003 10:25:19 -0400 Received: from watch.techsource.com ([209.208.48.130]:47038 "EHLO techsource.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S263681AbTDXOZQ (ORCPT ); Thu, 24 Apr 2003 10:25:16 -0400 Message-ID: <3EA7F8AE.8050402@techsource.com> Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 10:46:06 -0400 From: Timothy Miller User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Steven Cole CC: Johannes Ruscheinski , Chuck Ebbert <76306.1226@compuserve.com>, linux-kernel , Linus Torvalds Subject: Re: How did the Spelling Police miss this one? References: <200304230936_MC3-1-35AA-864B@compuserve.com> <1051109635.29423.20.camel@spc9.esa.lanl.gov> <20030424033913.GA32423@mail-infomine.ucr.edu> <1051158383.22271.123.camel@spc> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Steven Cole wrote: > > >Strictly speaking, you are probably right. According to this: >http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=canonize >sense #2 would qualify "canonize". I took the position that the only >person who could "canonize" anything is an elderly Polish fellow living >in Rome. But I've been wrong before. > >The tortured variant "canonicalize" has seen enough usage to warrant >this related entry here: >http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0%2c%2csid9_gci841392%2c00.html > >As far as "no such words" go, a descriptive grammar is generally more >useful for human languages than a prescriptive grammar. Healthy human >languages allow for growth. See Tao Te Ching 76. (late night rambling) > >Steven "verbalizing in his native language, where nouns and adjectives can be verbed" Cole > > There is a subtle issue that we need to consider regarding "canonize" and its meaning of "to make canonical". Are we saying: (a) To add something to the canon or (b) To change something so that it conforms to the canon "Canonize" is ambiguous. Its first definition, to make into a saint, in fact conforms to (a) above, which, I believe, is NOT the definition we want! In fact, all of the m-w.com definitions conform to (a). Unless I misunderstand, we are not adding anything to the canon here. So even if (b) is (somewhere) an acceptable meaning of "canonize" the ambiguity obscures what we're intending to say. On the other hand, "canonicalize", while strange and new, unambiguously means (b). Is there an already-existing word which means (b)?