On Sun, 26 Sep 2004, bulia byak wrote:
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 20:25:54 -0300 From: bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...> To: Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> Cc: Inkscape is a vector graphics editor inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] "Vacuum Defs"
Initially I thought Vacuum was a mispelling, I have only ever seen the word vacumn before, Vacuum seems to be an American word.
Wow. At first I didn't believe that but then I googled for it and found 13000 "vacumns" out there, against 8 million vacuums. So it seems like this is indeed a fairly common misspelling, though its origins are unclear. I highly doubt that this has anything to do with British/American difference. The correct Latin word is of course vacuum.
I checked the Oxford English dictionary and Vacumn is not to be found (although I did find Vacuum and Vacuvm). I thought perhaps it was a scientific term but I can only guess it might be related to "vacumn cleaners", the home appliance which we more often refer to as "hoovers" anway (from the brand name). If anyone has any better ideas on the etymology of the word I would be interested to know. I guess now I finally have an exuces to write to the newspaper and ask their etymology expert (the Irish Times has a regular column 'the words we use' and given what the Irish have done to the English language there are always plenty of colloquialisms to write about).
I'm clearly very very badly wrong about the spelling but (to change the subject) more importantly "Clean up defs" or "Remove unused defs" would be clearer and even more importantly is this really necessary at all?
Sincerely
Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/ Inkscape, Draw Freely http://inkscape.org Free SVG Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org
PS I'm so wrong it is almost embarassing but (I save my embarassement for bigger mistakes and) I am surprised that it is not even considered a valid alternative spelling.