Conference thebay::joyoflex

1066.0. "Madonna on vectors" by CHEFS::BUXTONR () Wed Sep 08 1993 06:15

    From today's Daily Telegraph (UK broadsheet)
    
    Madonna joins Shakespeare in dictionary definitions (by Jonathan Petre)
    
    The latest of English to join the ranks of Milton and Shakespeare in
    the 'New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary' was unveiled yesterday as
    Madonna.
    
    The inclusion of quotations from the American singer, not an obvious
    literary source, was met with wry amusement by the academics, authors
    and lexicographers who gathered in London for the publication of the
    new edition of the two-volume dictionary.
    
    Referred to merely as M. Ciccone, Madonna warrants two entries, one,
    predictably under " nudity " and the other, bizarrely, under " vector".
    The latter aroused much curiosity, with one professor wondering in what
    context she could have used the word. The answer appears on page 3,552
    of volume two, where she is quoted as saying: "Music is the vector of
    celebrity."
    
    Quoted earlier on the subject of nudity, she is uncharacteristically
    coy: "I loved the script...but I could not get over the nudity."
    
    While there was general agreement that the dictionary, which had taken
    13 years to complie, should be as contemporary as possible, there was
    less consensus over the inclusion of some words, especially slang
    expressions such as "grunge" - defined as a "raucous" style of rock
    music.......
    
    The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, OUP, �60.
    
    Bucko...
    

My high school physics teacher used to intone, "Add the vectors head to tail."
I can see why M. Ciccone would be interested.

    Does that have anything to do with "Every couple in a field has its
    moment" from my maths teacher?

    I don't know how you had the gall...

re .2 -

wish I had that one during my undergraduate days as
a physics major! - would have livened up the nerdy
atmosphere

--angela