Conference thebay::joyoflex

There's an excellent book in the US called "Technobabble", which I'd
advise you to read.  I'll try and remember to look up the ISBN for you.

--

There's one fairly obvious point about jargon, and that is that
some of it is necessary, and some of it isn't!   As an example
of the former, consider trying to say "floating-point" without
being a jargonaut.  You can supply your own examples of the latter!

--

With respect to "functionality" -- well, even better: some VMS
releases are described as "functional", and the others presumably
are not functional.  This is commendably honest of the engineers,
don't you think?  Somehow, though, I don't think that's what they
meant.

    Sometimes jargon is necessary because no word exists to describe
    something; this is the way of all language.  One example is the word
    `glitch.'  It originally meant an extremely short pulse of electrical
    current or voltage; in a computer, a glitch is basically an event that
    is too short in duration to elicit a proper response from a circuit
    into whose input it is fed.  Glitches cause flip-flops to fail to
    switch or to switch at the wrong time.  But the word `glitch' has been
    adopted by the wider speaking public to mean something's going wrong, a
    hitch in the progress of things.  This sort of linguistic evolution is
    normal and reasonable.
    
    The use of words like `functionality' often comes about through a
    speaker's lack of knowledge of proper usage; `function' or `feature' or
    even `feature set' would work as well, but someone, sometime, didn't
    know English well enough to know that, and the bastard word caught on. 
    This, too, while less acceptable to the linguistic purist, is also a
    normal occurrence.  Legal documents and government reports are well-
    known users of big words that mean little or nothing; by this means
    they gain the weight of legitimacy by impressing the reader with the
    fact that there must be words the reader doesn't know.  In order to
    appear well-informed, people pick up these words, and the rest, as they
    say, is history.  Similarly, government reports often use circumocution
    to gain points in the quest of ponderousness, and that as well is
    picked up.  One example is "at this point in time," which could quite
    well be replaced with "now" or, to be more precise, "at this moment." 
    The US government is famous for such tricks, which were dubbed
    "gobbledygook" by a commentator who was not amused.  One of the most
    asinine instances of gobbledygook appears in a report on human rights,
    in which the phrase "unlawful deprivation of life" is used to mean
    "killing."
    
    The use of acronyms (and of much other jargon) is the natural result of
    people's wish to expend as little effort as possible in communication. 
    (We are not living in classical Rome, where the highest skill to which
    a man could aspire was to be a great orator, although there are a great
    number of preachers who appear to think they are there.)  It takes less
    effort to say or write "DEC" than to say or write "Digital," so people
    use the TLA (three-letter acronym).  It has a side effect of being
    apparently snappier, and often this kind of thing is picked up by
    advertisers and marketers for that reason.
    
    Another reason for the use of jargon is to form a group of insiders, a
    clique; those not in the know can't understand what is being said and
    are thereby excluded.  As the Curmudgeon's Dictionary says:
    
    	jargon, n.  A pseudo-language pertinent to a particular specialized
        field of endeavor.  Usually sadistically cryptic to the uninitiated.
    
    I believe this sort of thing is relatively rare in industry, but it is
    rampant among teenagers throughout the world.
    
    I realize that this meandering reply has strayed from the specific area
    of computerese (itself a made-up word), but the same trends and reasons
    are behind all language change, regardless of its environment.

    re .1 & .2
    
    Thank you datapanik and Smurf for that. It's hopefully the start of
    loads of info.
    
    If that book Technobabble is written by one John A Barry, then I have a
    copy beside me as I type. I recommend it to any cynic of the computer
    lexicon.
    
    On that point, I must agree that some jargon, slang or whatever you
    like to call it, is relevent and useful within certain circles and
    groups. What interests me is how this was introduced. Where do words
    come from ?
    
    There's an interesting conversation I had about a computer `bug'
    recently. One theory is that bug originated from the word "buggered" -
    I think that this suggests that it is of UK origin as I have never
    heard the word bugger off an American tongue (correct me if I'm wrong)
    
    Another more logical theory is that at one time in history, insects
    used to get into the massive room-sized computers and screw up the
    system - rather like a spanner in the works .
    
    Any advance on two theories ?
    
    Whatever, like glitch, bug and thousands of other words (half of the
    English language) is an adaptation or branch off from another word.
    
    I'm not against progress, but aren't there enough words now. Do we need
    more ? Never mind the utilizationary kinds of words but at the last
    count there were over 500.000 official (recognised words) and the
    average person knows about 12.000 (UK figures).
    
    What gets on my wick is the amount of junk flying about in the
    language. I'm no purist, but people who deliberately think up verbose
    words annoy me. There are a lot of these in this industry . 
    
    Keep writing
    	Regs,   Sean

    Speaking of "feature set", am I the only one who hates the term 
    "skill set" (often spelled "skillset".) I don't know why but it makes
    me cringe every time I hear it.

    - Jim

    When computers used relays for switching devices, it was a very real
    phenomenon that an insect could cause a malfunction by dying between
    the contacts of a relay.  Hence the term.
    
    These kinds of words come from wherever any word comes from.  Someone
    said or wrote it, someone else liked it.  As for language's being
    anything "sacrosanct," to be reserved for only utilizationary (egad!)
    words, codswallop.  Words communicate, and in the closed circles that
    use jargons, their jargons communicate more effectively (efficiently,
    perhaps?) than older, less precise or less directed language.  I care
    not one whit that there are 500,000 words, or a million, or however
    many there really are.  If a neologism is better (more meaningful or
    more precise or, sometimes, more subtle in character) than the word or
    phrase it replaces, then that's good.  I object only to the creation or
    adoption of words that are *not* better than those they shoulder out of
    the mainstream, such as the aforementioned "functionality."

    	The original bug is reputed to have been found by Capt. Grace Hopper, 
    and was a beetle that was jammed against the read heads of a drum
    memory, preventing correct reading. This was in the days when almost
    the only application for computers was cryptography, and the president
    of IBM was predicting that the world would never need more than 3
    computers.
    
    	You can also find interesting comparisons in other languages. "bit"
    is reputed to be a contraction of "binary digit", and French has "eb"
    as a contraction of "element binaire". The only explanation I have seen
    for "byte" is as a pun on "bit", and the French use "octet". This
    latter gets quite interesting when you have to translate something
    referring to 9-bit bytes into French ;-)
    
    	The French, of course, don't like to borrow words from other
    languages, and while most languages use "computer" with minor
    variations of spelling and accent, the French use "ordinateur".
    
    	A Swede told me that there was an attempt make Swedish as
    independant, and the proposed Swedish for "volatile memory",
    "non-volatile memory" became "chicken memory" and "horse memory" 
    when translated literally back into English. He said it didn't catch
    on.

    The English language is the most extensive language in history.
    There are, as you said, somewhere in the neighborhood of half a 
    million words currently recognized and used in English.  English 
    is the most powerful and flexible language ever.
    
    Do we have enough words?  That depends -- for what?  
    
    Do we need more?  Perhaps?  Sometimes we redefine old words
    to have new meanings ("Gay," for example).  Sometimes we adopt
    words from other languages (In a recent US spelling contest, the
    final two words were "enchilada" and "kamikaze"). Sometimes we
    create new words ("laser," "morph," "lepton," "quark," and so on).
    
    Is jargon necessary?  Of course -- if it weren't, it wouldn't be used.
    
    Do people "misuse" language?  Of course -- all the time.  However, I
    have learned that I can't do anything about it, and if I try, I come
    off as an arrogant snob.  
    
    What can I do?  Use language wisely and well, and not worry about how
    others use the language.  English will survive them -- and me as well.
    
    					andrew

    The French "ordinateur" is an eminently satisfactory word for the
    machine.  French, being a child of Latin, uses the very proper French
    form of "ordinator," a Latin word meaning "one who sets things in
    order."  This is IMHO especially applicable because in most computer
    applications today the operation of the machine, insofar as the actual
    information presented to the user is concerned, is one of organizing
    (numbers in a report, words in a WP document, messages in a mail file,
    images on a screen).
    
    In 1980 I designed a disk controller for the US Air Force.  The system
    manipulated 9-bit pieces of data arranged in 9-piece groups.  We called
    the 9-bit piece a munch and the 9-munch group a lunch.  These words are
    now official, as they were written into the specification.  This, in
    direct response to .0, is one way some computer jargon words have come
    about: because someone had a sense of humor.

    re.8
    
    I see the point in having a sense of humour; I've always wanted one.
    Don't you think that words should be meaningful and reflect the action
    or object that they are `describing'. I know that the track record for
    this in English isn't great . Like new architecture, new words should
    be clean and precise, uncluttered. How about taking a tip from the
    French.
    
    Sorry for calling you smurf......

    Re .9
    
    > words should be meaningful and reflect the action or object that they
    > are `describing'.
    
    Not necessarily, not always.  "Her azure eyes were twin limpid pools,
    and he imagined them as windows upon her soul."
    
    Would this be better rendered, "Her eyes, the blue of the clear sky at
    noon, apeared to him as if they were two pools of water, clear and
    simple, and he imagined that he could look through them into her soul."
    
    Maybe yes, maybe no.  It depends on the poetic vision of the writer and
    of the reader.  The same concern applies to new architecture.  Why
    should it be clean and precise?  There is equal beauty in the arches
    and gargoyles and grotesques of a Gothic cathedral and in the
    Guggenheim Museum; each appeals do different sensibilities.
    
    If I call a particular piece of computer code spaghetti code, you know
    what I mean.  Why should I refer to it as "disorganized code full of
    instructions that allow branching in no orderly manner?"  If I call it
    a hack or a kluge�, you know what I mean.  Why should I call it "code
    that has been thrown together or written just to get the job done
    without regard to system or efficiency"?
    
    Jargon serves a purpose.  The phrase "spaghetti code" is particularly
    descriptive, although it certainly is imprecise, and "hack" and "kluge"
    are similarly imprecise.  None of these is "clean and precise."  But
    they communicate.  Q.E.D.
    
    �   Commonly misspelt "kludge," which anyone can see must rhyme with
        "nudge," "budge,' "fudge," and "sludge."

    >Don't you think that words should be meaningful and reflect the action
    >or object that they are `describing'.
    
    To paraphrase Humpty Dumpty in "Through the Looking Glass...":
    "Words mean exactly what I want them to mean."  Lewis Carroll
    made the humorous but telling point that there is NO connection
    between a word and its meaning.  All connections between word and
    meaning are made by people who use the words.  
    
    The English langugae grows because it not only accepts new words and
    new meanings, it -- actually, the people who speak it -- they embrace
    new words: some good, some clumsy, many indifferent.  English is a
    mishmash of new and old words -- it is not, nor has it ever been clean,
    precise, or uncluttered.  That is its strength, and that is its glory.
    
    The French are anal retentive when it comes to their language.
    The language suffers as a result.

    > The French are anal retentive...
    
    They are not alone.  L'Acad�mie Anglaise has arrived, and its name is
    BBC.  :-)
    
    As Andrew says, English's glory and strength lie in its myriad ways of
    expression and in its mutability.  Its weakness also lies therein,
    because learning English is the bane of virtually all native speakers
    of other languages.  Its subtleties are often difficult to comprehend
    if they are not second nature.  Well, say I, that's too bad.  You take
    the good with the bad, and I think we're the better for English.  Even
    though I do from time to time rail at gross abuse of the language, yet
    I revel in its freedom to grow.  And in a sense, what is language
    abuse, anyway, if not one of the mechanisms of evolution?

    >They are not alone.  L'Acad�mie Anglaise has arrived, and its name is
    >BBC.  :-)
    
    Is that why they insist on calling the capital of the PRC Peking?
    
    					andrew

    Rathole re .-a_few
    
    The moth that was caught between two relay contacts by members of
    Grace Hopper's team was duly entered into the log book for her
    inspection, with a joking comment to their catching the "'bug'".
    The word "bug" was quoted in the log book, which is why I quote
    its quotation.  And the entry made it quite clear that the word
    "bug" was already jargon and that the literal occurence was funny.
    
    -- Norman Diamond

    Re .11, .12: About the French being anal retentive about their
    language. I probably should take exception about that, but for me it
    only shows how poorly informed you are... The French Academy is a never
    complete body of old farts (there should be 40 of them but, given their
    average age, one of their main activity is to elect new members to
    replace the dead ones) who can only try to cooperate with the
    inevitable by registering, with an average 50 years time delay, words
    that people are using without bothering to ask for their permission.
    Usually when they admit a word, the meaning they accept is already
    obsolete and has fallen in disuse. What's more, they really aren't very
    competent or outstanding persons. The academy is over 350 years old,
    and in all that time I think that less than 10 writers of really great
    stature (I mean, writers whose works are known internationally and have
    survived the trials of time, the most well known being probably Victor
    Hugo, who sought mermbership for political reasons, because at the time
    he wasn't rich enough to be elected, and membership of the academy
    included automatically a seat in the house of peers - that was under
    Louis-Philippe -) have been  members of it. Most French speaking people
    usually mention the academy only to make fun about it (although I
    wouldn't mind being elected, given the perks that go with it...). All
    the documents from the academy or the French administration about the
    use of French language and specific terms are dead letters before the
    ink is dry (ever heard anyone use "monade" instead of "bit"?).
    	About English being unique in power and flexibility, and the most
    extensive language in the world (.7), pardon me Andrew, there's nothing
    personal in it, but I think this is pure bullshit. Voltaire was already
    in the 18th century making the same point about French against English,
    and I feel the same about Voltaire's opinion. About the half million
    words in English, I've seen estimations of about 750,000-800,000 words
    in French. So what? In the first place, I'd be very interested in
    finding how the count was taken. Second, it means nothing as the number
    of words in a language is fluctuating. A language is (very likely, I'm
    not sure it can be proven, one way or the other) not a well defined set
    (in the mathematical meaning of the term). This is one of the many
    reasons why the efforts toward automatic translation of languages have
    produced so few results so far. I'm not sure, but I've heard that this
    was one of the reasons behind the work on the theory of "fuzzy sets"
    (is that how you call them in English? In French we call them
    "ensembles flous"). The argument of power and flexibility comes only
    from the number of different cultural or technical backgrounds of the
    people using the language and the same would most probably be true
    about Zulu or Qarluk if these languages were spoken by as many people
    as English is today. Chinese could also be a candidate but, while the
    number of Chinese speakers is probably comparable to the number of
    English speakers, they come from a much smaller number of cultural
    origins (I've also heard that, while written Chinese is common to all
    Chinese people, spoken Chinese varies greatly from one area to the next
    one, but I'm not competent to discuss that). In short, the flexibility
    is introduced in the language by the people who use it. The greater the
    number of different uses the greater the flexibility, simply because
    people are bound to adapt the language to their needs and ideas. There
    are probably, as was noted about Humpty Dumpty, about as many
    definitions of a word as there are speakers who know and use this word.
    Mutual comprehension comes from the relative compatibility of these
    definitions, and drifts of meaning are one of the causes for the
    evolution of languages. I'm not sure I've been able to make myself
    clear, as English is a second language for me, but I hope that readers
    will be able to grasp my point.
    			Denis.

    	Now "monade" for "bit" is new to me. I mentioned "eb", which I
    failed to find in a French-English dictionary 25 years ago when I was
    working on modem design and trying to read a French text.

    Interesting...
    Re.10 Maybe I didn't elaborate enough on my point that was commented
    on. I should have added ..in context.. somewhere in that note.
    I am a technical writer (or will be) and my work revolves around
    written communication; instructional material, user guides etc..
    
    When writing this material, I am required to be concise, accurate,
    relevent and all the rest... Once I thought that a light hearted
    and easy to use instruction guide is what the world needs. Experience
    now shows me that I'm wrong. Throw a jest into a short and accurate
    document and it becomes longer, more confusing to the reader and
    irrelevent. It's out of context.
    
    There is a manner which must be adapted when writing in this way.
    Problem is that `windows to the soul' is now replaced with `..windows that
    allow the user to select the file that is required simply by quickly
    clicking on its icon twice with the mouse.'  
    Same window, different context.
      
    I enjoy prose, poetry and flowing descriptive text. I sometimes find it
    hard to write in the way that my job requires me to. It doesn't help
    matters when the information that I'm required to write into simple
    easy to read understandable instructional text is full of words that I
    don't understand and the person who thought of them for a new concept
    cannot explain it accurately. How am I supposed to explain to a dumb
    user when I'm a dumb writer ?
    Times such as these are the times that I wish that people would be
    relevent and sensible when they are in control of naming a new concept.
    
    One more thing re.15 "automatic translation of languages".
    That's someting I didn't consider. I asked in my initial note if
    technology (computers) could (are) influencing this language. What
    language translation packages are available and how good are they. When
    computers are programmed to speak (if they can't already) will they be
    able to understand the concept of similar words in different contexts?
    If they can't will more words need to be devised to facilitate them?
    
    Just a thought....
    Sean

    Re .16: Dave, "monade" for "bit" was one of the most ridiculous
    recommendations in a French government report about the use of French
    terms rather than English ones in computer science (computer science is
    "informatique" in French; now, this term has gained recognition by all
    French speakers and is the only one used, probably because it is shorter
    than the English one). The report is at least 10 to 15 years old, but
    it had probably not been yet released 25 years ago.
    			Denis.

    Jargon is generally generated by computer programmers.  This is not a 
    DEC phenomenon.  If you want insight into jargon look up the file at
    decwrl::/pub/GNU.  It is a 'gunzipped' file called jargon2910.ascii.gz.
    Hope you have plenty of disk space.
    
    Have fun.
    Sai

    Re .17
    
    Technical communication should be concise and clear, yes, but there is
    still room in that apparently restrictive framework for jest or humor. 
    Better, perhaps, that I should refer to what I mean as whimsy.  A good
    example among Digital technical publications is _The Big Gray Book: The
    Nex Step with ULTRIX_, a user-friendly tutorial on several useful
    ULTRIX�/UNIX� commands and utilities.  Several readers of the book have
    remarked that they liked it, and learned from it, because of the
    whimsical nature of the examples provided.  The footnotes in the book
    identify them as coming from these sources:
    
    	Universal Cyclopedia and Atlas, D. Appleton and Company, 1903 (a
    	list of Japanese naval vessels)
    
    	100 Ways of Cooking Eggs, by Filippini, Charles L. Webster & co,
    	1892 (a recipe)
    
    	The Coming Race, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1871 (a text fragment)
    
    	A Book of Nonsense, by Edward Lear, reprinted by Dover
    	Publications, 1951 (a limerick - a *clean* one!)
    
    	Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam, Empire State Book Company, 1924 (several
    	quatrains)
    
    The Big Gray Book also uses a shopping list and many off-the cuff
    examples describing the Bible, the boxer John L. Sullivan, and more.
    
    Examples of this kind serve just as well as, and perhaps even better
    than, dry code listings or similar soporific text.  Of course, if
    you're discussing the code for some piece of software, you needs must
    use the code, but there are times when whimsy is the better part of
    teaching.
    
    Again, one footnote in the book, talking about a convention used with
    an interactive communication utility, says this:
    
        Another common protocol uses "o" to signal "Over" and "oo" to
        signal "Over and out."  This protocol is often used for radio
        conversation in war movies and police dramas, but it's actually
        pretty silly.  "Over" means "It's your turn now," and "Out" means
        "Goodbye," so when you say, "Over and out," you're really saying,
        "You can talk now, but I just hung up."
    
    While you wouldn't want to lard your discourse with this kind of
    superfluous material, it adds interest, and people *will* read it.  And
    they'll learn what you're telling them better by virtue of liking the
    book.
    
    --------
    
    �   ULTRIX is a trademarl of Digital Equipment Corporation.
    �   UNIX is a registered trademark of UNIX Systems Laboratories.

>(computer science is
>    "informatique" in French; now, this term has gained recognition by all
>    French speakers and is the only one used, probably because it is shorter
>    than the English one).

  "Informatics" is a recognised English word now, and I for one
  prefer it to "computer science":  I've never been entirely convinced
  that what I do is a science, even though I have a degree certificate
  which says it is.

  ("English" in the above refers to the lanaguage spoken by the English;
   I don't think I've heard it used much in American, except for
   those whose speech has a heavy ISO accent).

    Re: .18
    
    	"'monade' for 'bit' was one of the most ridiculous recommendations in
    	a French government report about the use of French terms rather than
    	English ones in computer science (computer science is 'informatique'
    	in French; now, this term has gained recognition by all French
    	speakers and is the only one used, probably because it is shorter than
    	the English one)"
    
    Who came up with "le logiciel"?  That appears to be the most successful
    of the French coinages in this area.
    
Lew Lasher

    Re .22: Sorry, Lew, I've no idea about it. "Logiciel" is much more
    often used in French than "software", although "software" is used and
    understood by everybody (same way, "mat�riel" is used for "hardware"),
    and I've seen them in use for over 20 years, but I don't know the
    origin. I'd say that terms like logiciel, mat�riel, informatique,
    ordinateur, octet, pile (for stack), periph�rique (for external
    device), compilateur (for compiler), station de travail (for
    workstation) and a few others are among the few successes of
    terminology adaptation to the language. "Bit" and "bus" are the most
    well-known cases of repeated failure to find a French equivallent that
    would stick. Now what are the reasons why people accept one term and
    reject another, I've no idea.
    			Denis.

    >"Bit" and "bus" are the most well-known cases of repeated failure to
    >find a French equivallent that would stick.
    
    Huh?  Isn't "bus" a French word that was copied into English because
    there's no English equivalent?
    
    -- Norman Diamond

    	19th. century London had the omnibus "for all" people movement. The
    PDP-8E had the Omnibus(TM) "for all" data movement. In both cases it was
    often abbreviated to 'bus.
    
    	I suspect that French usage is from the Latin via English, rather
    than the other way round.

    Re .25, .24: I'm not sure of the origin of the French word "bus". It
    may come from Latin or from English, but the French word "omnibus" does
    not mean a bus for all, but a bus that stops at all stations.
    			Denis.

    RE: .17
    
    > What language translation packages are available and how good are they.
    
    The current Machine Translation or MT systems don't translate in the
    literal sense of the word. They are based on text recognition and
    retrieval: they compare new text against a database of previously
    translated and stored strings, and they're good (and fast) at that. 
    The result of this high-speed search-and-replace operation is a rough
    translation - you still need an editor or translator to fill in the
    blanks and proofread/edit the whole text.
    
    MT can be a solution in a highly standardized environment where the new
    or updated documentation re-uses major chunks of the previous versions.
    Assuming that the previous translations have been correctly "fed" into 
    the string database, MT will speed up the translation process. 
    
    Note that you need to build a separate database for each language pair.
    There have been attempts to use an intermediate layer or "interlingua"
    to facilitate the process, but most (if not all) of the current systems
    are built on search-and-replace operations by language pair. BTW - the
    interlingua procedure is based on the theory that human translation
    uses an intermediate or kernel language to translate from one language
    into another. 
    
    So to come back to the question: how good are they? It depends on what
    you use them for. Asking a random MT system to translate a random text
    is likely to produce surrealistic prose. It does work for Siemens in
    Germany and for the aviation industry, it will probably not (yet) work 
    for DEC as our level of documentation standardization is insufficient
    to make MT profitable. 
    
    -maarten. 
    

    
    This is where jargon comes from....
    
    To describe the condition in which a customer cannot change or even
    upgrade an application because it affects too many other applications,
    the marketing guy uses the term INTEGRATION GRIDLOCK. Fine. Then, he
    has to give a presentation on this in Munich, and being a 90's global
    kind of guy, he wonders if perhaps "gridlock" can convery what he
    means. The night before the presentation he is having supper with two
    native French-speakers. He describes "gridlock" and asks for the
    equivalent term, if any. The Frenchmen confer between them and then
    tell him, "Yes, French has the equivalent. It is <something>." This
    French phase, which my marketing guy can't remember, translates back
    into English as "German_in_the_head". Apparently, gridlock is what it
    feels like to be a French-speaker who is hearing/translating German --
    you are kind of stuck until the verb shows up.
    
    I predict that "gridlock" will become a loan-word in French and German.
    BTW, so what *is* the French word for "gridlock"?
    

    Re .28: As a native French speaker, I can't on the spot find a French
    equivallent of Integration Gridlock, although I'm pretty sure there
    must be one, but where I'm really puzzled is what French expression
    could possibly translate back into English as "German_in_the_head"?
    Could you possibly find it back and post it here, please? I'm fairly
    sure I don't know it and would like to be enlightened (Note: I'm merely
    curious, not sarcastic).
    			Denis.

    French for 'gridlock'?
    
    I've just looked it up in a big E-F,F-E dictionary -- there's no entry.
    
    Looks like the word 'gridlock' will be used, but will need explanation.
    
    Nick

    	My wife has been told that she speaks French like a Spanish cow,
    but I don't remember any specifically German insults.

    I predict that "gridlock" will not be absorbed into French.  The
    Acad�mie Fran�aise would first expire en masse of heart failure.

What's 'gridlock' in English?  It's not listed in my 6th ed. (1976)
Concise Oxford, which is all I have available in my office.

    TNOESD:-
    
    'gridlock' a traffic jam affecting a network of streets caused by
    continuous queues of intersecting traffic.

    The closest we get to 'gridlock' is 'traffic jam', but then we don't have
    street maps that look like graph paper, we are still using quaint
    cobbled streets designed for hand-pulled carts and the like  :-)
    
    Gridlock is one of those graphically expressive "new" American terms
    that are so instantly understandable that they wheedle their way into
    the language despite infuriating almost everyone who hears them. Other
    examples anyone?  
    
    Steve
    
    

    I constantly baulk at "interoperability", a word _so_ user-unfriendly
    that we have already had to transmute it to I14Y.
    
    Having said which, I can not come up with a suitable, user-friendly,
    alternative.  Offers?
    
    Jon

    
    RE: .29
    
    I pleaded with the marketing guy to remember, but as he does not know
    French, the phrase was just sound to him. He immediately asked his
    companions what the phrase meant and they said "German in the head"
    which is what he remembered. He thought that it might be derogatory and
    he also thought that maybe his companions were setting him up for a
    joke, so he didn't use any phrase at all. He used "traffic jam" which
    is quite the same thing but seemed the safest choice.
    
    RE. 35
    
    "WEEKEND", at least in industrial cultures

    Re .36
    
    >I constantly baulk at "interoperability", a word _so_ user-unfriendly
    >that we have already had to transmute it to I14Y.
    >Having said which, I can not come up with a suitable, user-friendly,
    >alternative.  Offers?
    
    Maybe just "balk", without the "u"?
    (How's that for cooperation?)
    
    -- Norman Diamond

    Norman,

    Not that I'm offended, but my dictionary (admittedly merely the
    Chamber's Twentieth Century and not the Shorter Oxford English on the
    shelves at home) gives:

    bauk, baulk.  Same as balk.

    And it offers

    balk, baulk, .....

    indicating that, although balk is the more common usage, baulk is not
    incorrect.  Or were you trying to say something else?

    Jon
    
    p.s. I note with interest that Spell Checker (Houghton Mifflin British
    dictionary engaged) doesn't recognise baulk as a word.  But then it
    wouldn't have recognised recognize either so "pah" to it!

    How aout stymie, then?
    

    Re .36
    
    Unfortunately for you, "interoperability" is a really good word,
    concise and specific in its meaning.  To replace it would require a
    phrase such as "ability to operate together"; I prefer i14y to a25r.
    
    :-)

    OK, sorry, I'll take your word for it that "baulk" is in some
    dictionaries.  (There's no English-language dictionary near my
    office now and I won't remember to look at home.)
    
    So now, how's *this* for cooperation?
    
    -- Norman Diamond

    So now, where's the �mlaut/dia�resis in co�peration???

:-)

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    Looks like someone vomited over my screen, but it's impossible to tell
    (for me at least) if there are any verbs in it :-)
                                                        
                                                  - Rik -
    

    Too true, Rik.  Around these parts, whatever Norman entered has slopped
    out of my laptop's screen, past the keyboard, and down onto the
    terminal case on the floor.  I shudder to think what it sez!!?
    
    D

    Probably something very ordinary -- in Japanese.
    
    							Ann B.

    Actually it was very ordinary and in English.  But since some of the
    other regulars in this conference make full use of some of Digital's
    uncooperative character sets, I did the same.  Each of your dieresized
    or accented characters plus following character (ordinary or not)
    turns into a square on Digital's uncooperative terminals and terminal
    emulators.  Each of my double-width Roman characters turns into two
    pieces of garbage on Digital's uncooperative terminals and terminal
    emulators.  (How's this for ininteroperability?)
    
    -- Norman Diamond

    re: .43
    

>    So now, where's the �mlaut/dia�resis in co�peration???
    
    According to my dictionary, you can place one in between the two letter
    os as long as the two dots which form the dia�resis are joined.
    
    Hope my co-operation helps ;-)
    
    Jon