"Todd Pattist" wrote in message
...

Language has a tendency to go its own way and get labeled as
correct or incorrect after the fact :-)

I spent a while writing the physics bit of the New Penguin Dictionary of
Science. The hardest part was knowing whether to be prescriptive (tell them
what the usage *should* be) or descriptive (describe what the common usage
*is*). It's a judgement call in almost every case -- for example, I had no
qualms about defining "weight" quite carefully to distinguish it from
"mass", even though many people say "weight" when they mean "mass". But
should I really make a fuss about the difference between "spectrograph" and
"spectrometer" when everyone uses the terms interchangeably?

I guess "Dutch Roll" is pretty close to the line.

Julian