this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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Microblog Memes

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(Re)bracketing (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by ReadyUser31@lemmy.world to c/microblogmemes@lemmy.world
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Was slightly mindblown whenl discovered this.

The two parts to the word "helicopter" are not "helil" and "copter", but "helico" meaning spiral, and "pter" meaning one with wings, like pterodactyl.

1044 AM-5Mar 2018 21,200 Retweets 67,241 Lkes

wait WHAT

Aderinthemadscientist: Wait, so... does -copter come "from" helicopter?

108echoes: Yep! This is called rebracketing. Another famous example would be"-burger": the original food item is named after the German city, (Hamburgl+(er], but semantically reinterpreted as (ham]+[burger].

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[–] Draegur@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago

I was JUST thinking about this and had a nearly identical exchange with a friend of mine over a sci-fi series we've been reading.

Humanity finally reverse engineered "kinetic fields" which allow the creation of force shields, synthetic gravity, stasis chambers, and the arbitrary conversation of energy into thrust WITHOUT a reaction mass, and we relatively promptly built VTOL vehicles that made traditional helicopters obsolete...

... But in the canon of the setting, nobody was coming up with a better name for the new vehicles than "helicopter", it was simply that no other names stuck.

But I realized that since Kinetic Force Emitters work via electrostatic means, we would probably have to call them Electrostatopters and god DAMN that feels awful to say. So like ... No wonder they kept calling them copters.

[–] Heavybell@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

See also the fictional flying vehicle that works by flapping its wings like a bird, the ornithopter.

[–] IntergalacticZombie@feddit.uk -1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Does that mean the 'P' was supposed to be silent? You don't say puh-terodactyl without getting laughed at in school... Um, probably!! So, is it a actually called a helicoter?

[–] hakase@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

The 'p' is only silent in English because English doesn't allow syllables to start with 'pt'. It was perfectly fine to do so in ancient Greek, where both the 'p' and the 't' would be pronounced, but when English borrowed the 'pt'-initial words, the 'p' gets deleted to make the word pronounceable.

But, it's perfectly fine in English for one syllable to end with 'p' and the next to start with 't', so English speakers have no problem saying 'cop-ter'.

Same with, for example, 'tsunami' vs. 'Mit-subishi' (which in Japanese is actually syllabified 'mi-tsu-bi-shi').