3.11.2008

Things You Already Knew Because You Are Smarter Than Me

Per the Volokh Conspiracy:

"Splitting the Atom" is an oxymoron. 'Atom' is the Greek equivalent of 'Singularity.' The phrase means "Splitting that which cannot be split."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, but it's a loan word from Greek. It doesn't mean the same thing in English that it DID in Greek.

-Michael M

Anonymous said...

Not only does "atom" not mean the same thing in English that it did in Greek, the phrase is absolutely not an oxymoron: the phrase "splitting the atom" means "doing something once thought to be impossible," which is actually an accurate description of the development of Nuclear Fission technology.

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