2020-11-16
ศัพท์ น่าสับสน ชุด N - nuclear
การใช้ภาษาอังกฤษ ที่ถือว่า ถูกต้องนี้ เป็นไปตามมาตรฐานการใช้ภาษา
การใช้คำอังกฤษ ไม่กำหนดมาตฐาน ถือตามส่วนใหญ่ที่ใช้แต่ละท้องถิ่น
ความหมาย อาจยืดหยุ่น ขึ้นอยู่กับ ตำแหน่ง/หน้าที่ ในประโยค
Dictionary.com
ออกเสียง nuclear = ‘NOO-klee-er
Dictionary.com
PRONUNCIATION NOTE FOR NUCLEAR
In pronouncing nuclear, the second and third syllables are
most commonly said as [-KLEE-ER],
a sequence of sounds that directly reflectsthe spelled sequence ‐cle·ar.
In recent years, a somewhat
controversial pronunciation has come to public attention,
with these two final syllables said as [-kyuh-ler].
Since [-klee-er], the commonpronunciation of ‐cle·ar,
might also be represented, broadly, as [-kluh-yer],
the [-kyuh-ler] pronunciation can be seen as
coming from a process of metathesis,
in which the [l] and the [y] change places.
The resulting pronunciation is reinforced
by analogy with such words as molecular, particular, and muscular,
and although it occurs with some frequency
among highly educated speakers,
including scientists, professors, and government officials,
it is disapproved of by many.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
How do you pronounce nuclear?:
Usage Guide
Though disapproved of by many,
pronunciations ending in \-kyə-lər\ have been found in widespread use
among educated speakers including scientists, lawyers, professors, congressmen, U.S. cabinet members,
and at least two U.S. presidents and one vice president.
While most common in the U.S.,
these pronunciations have also been
heard from British and Canadian speakers
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Word History
The History of 'Nuclear Family'
Getting at the core of it.
What to Know
Nuclear family refers to the core members of a family,
usually parents and children.
Nuclear had a long history of
figurative use before its main association with "nuclear energy," as nucleus has origins meaning "kernel"
or more simply "something essential."
Grandparents are grand;
great-aunts are great; and
nuclear families are … nuclear?
Well, yes. Nuclear families
—the term refers to a family group that
consists only of parents and children
—are nuclear but in a sense of that word
that's now much less common than
today's most common uses of nuclear.
Origin of 'Nuclear Family'
Nuclear family dates to the 1920s,
when the academic fields of anthropology and sociology were both still young.
The Oxford English Dictionary cites Bronisław Malinowski, considered a founder of social anthropology, as the coiner of the term.
At the time nuclear family was coined,
the word nuclear inhabited contexts
other than those most familiar to us now.
Its use was broad and tied, as it still is,
closely to uses of its parent word,
nucleus, which had been a member of the language for 250 years.
Many Uses of 'Nucleus' and 'Nuclear'
Tracing the development of the word nucleus in the Oxford English Dictionary, we see that it was first applied in English in the mid-late 17th century to the brightest mass of matter in the head of a comet.
Its origin is New Latin, from Latin nucleus, meaning "kernel."
Other astronomy meanings followed, with the word referring to other bright and dazzling celestial sights,
such as the relatively small, brighter, and denser portion of a galaxy, or the hot faint central star of a planetary nebula.
By the early 18th century,
nucleus described other more earthly kernels in the fields of botany and pathology too, with a wide range of scientific applications active by the mid-19th century,
including the one we all learn at some point from a science teacher,
about the little ball at the center of an atom: that is,
as this dictionary puts it,
"the positively charged central portion of an atom that comprises nearly all of the atomic mass and that consists of protons and usually neutrons."
That meaning of nucleus is the source of most of the nuclear compound terms we have today,
which typically relate to the nucleus of an atom—
for example, nuclear membrane
—or to the energy that is created when the nuclei of atoms are split apart or joined together—nuclear energy, nuclear fission, nuclear reactor.
But the word nucleus didn't startreferring in any concrete sense to atomic nuclei until the early part of the 20th century; for the preceding decades that meaning was a speculative one, based on unconfirmed ideas about atoms.
Nuclear as we now most often encounter it is very much a child of the second half of the 20th century.
At the time of Malinowski's coinage,
the idea of atomic nuclei as actual entities wasnascent.
The nuclear in nuclear family is figurative, and it comes from
an extension of those varied scientific applications of nucleus.
In addition to the astronomy, botany, and other technical applications,
nucleus has also since the mid-18th century
meant simply "a basic or essential part,"
with many examples of the term
describing people considered core to some organization or effort.
In coining nuclear family,
Malinowski was hitching a sensible descriptor to the word family
to create what is now one of our basic familial designators.
No one could have known at the time that
that descriptor would go nuclear.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Words We're Watching
The Nuclear Option
Figurative use of the term 'nuclear option' is relativelynew
The rules for adding compound terms to the dictionary are pretty clear for dictionary editors.
If a compound term has an obvious meaning that
derives from the conventional definition of each term
—if it is self-explanatory
—then it is not added to the dictionary.
For example,
there is no entry for cattle ranch, but there is an entry for dude ranch
It wasn't until the early 21st century that 'nuclear option'
began to describe a procedure by which the voting requirements
are changed to require only a simple majority,
thus ending the minority party's ability to prevent a vote.
The term nuclear option was initiallyused with a literal meaning
“the option to use nuclear weapons” in the early 1960s,
just after the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.
Interestingly, the term non-nuclear option
was also used at this time,
referring to “the option to use conventional weapons.”
There were nuances to this literal use of nuclear option.
It could mean “a choice as to the manner of using nuclear weapons”:
[Stewart] Alsop interviews McNamara and details the bold steps the Defense Secretary has taken to avoid such spasm strategy and to follow instead a series of nuclear “options” in which nuclear capability is realistically employed.
—Arizona Republic, 25 April 1962
It could also refer to the possibility of acquiring nuclear weapons:
Nuclear option for Swiss
The Swiss electorate this weekend rejected by an overwhelming majority a Socialist proposal requiring approval by referendum of any Parliamentary decision to equip the Swiss Army with nuclear weapons.
—The Guardian (Manchester, England), 27 May 1963
By the mid-1960s,
nuclear option had achieved fixed-phrase status
and was in the news regarding NATO’s tactical weapons defense strategy in eastern Europe,
Israel’s consideration of acquiring nuclear weapons, and discussions of their use in the Vietnam War.
By 1974, the phrase became de-weaponized, meaning “the option of using nuclear power”:
Citizens in Rhode Island, disturbed over the cavalier responses of utilities operating nuclear plants in nearby Massachusetts and planning future “nukes” in Rhode Island, are pleading with their senator to take a new look at this nuclear option and its vulnerabilities.
—The Tennessean (Nashville, TN), 19 November 1974
Dr. Norman C. Rasmussen, professor of nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will speak on “Electric Power – The Nuclear Option” on Wednesday in the Gettysburg College Union ballroom.
—The Gettysburg Times, 26 April 1975
It wasn’t until 2003, when rules changes were discussed in the Senate about how to break the paralyzing tactic known as the filibuster,
that a figurative use of nuclear option began to be applied to the reduction of votes needed to bring an end to debate (known as cloture)
to a simple majority of 51, thus ending the minority party’s ability to prevent votes from taking place.
A dictionary definition for nuclear option in this decidedly un-self-explanatory meaning might read as follows:
nuclear option noun :
a parliamentary procedure by which the requirement of the affirmative votes of a supermajority of senators is changed to require only a simple majority to invoke cloture in order to stop a filibuster and allow a vote on a matter (as a nomination) to proceed
Given its frequent and established use,
this phrase is likely to be included sometime soon in our dictionaries.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Words We're Watching: Going Nuclear
How the election is changing our language
Update: This word was added in February 2017.
The 2016 presidential campaign has its own distinctive vocabulary.
Some words, like deplorable, are already defined in our dictionary.
But others weren't common enough to merit their own headword until recently.
The new surge in use moves these words into the category we refer to as Words We’re Watching for possible inclusion in the dictionary.
Go nuclear is one such expression—and its heavy use in the presidential campaign may be altering its meaning.
The figurative sense of 'go nuclear' can mean"to behave in an unrestrained manner"
("I went nuclear on that bag of potato chips")
or “to become furious; to resort to drastic measures in an attempt to undermine an opponent."
Guess which meaning is becoming more common. Guess.
Here's the situation:
go nuclear has historically had twodistinct senses.
The first one is literal: “to acquire or to utilize nuclear weapons or nuclear power.”
The second one is figurative, and has a broader range of definition.
(There is another sense of go nuclear that precedes both of these uses—“to work on a nuclear submarine”—but this sense is rarely used today.)
The election hasn't affected the literal sense of go nuclear, which people have been using since the mid-1950s:
Everybody’s going nuclear. No more had Great Britain announced plans for bigger and super hydrogen weapons than Australia tells about a $12,300,000 project involving a reactor near Sydney.
—The Philadelphia Inquirer, 21 Feb. 1955
The British are determined to “go nuclear” and to do so without increasing over-all costs.
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 17 Jul. 1956
But the figurative sense of go nuclear is another story. This sense begins to show consistent use in the 1980s, and has multiple meanings, one of which—"to behave in an unrestrained manner"—is used much like the informal phrase go wild:
And Cathy proceeds to go nuclear on a box of cookies.
—The Philadelphia Inquirer, 4 Oct. 1983
Paul W. Smith. Don’t go nuclear celebrating your birthday! I’m watching! Love, Chrissie.
—(classified ad) Detroit Free Press, 18 Apr. 1987
Importantly, this figurative sense of going nuclear
can also mean “to become furious; to resort to drastic measures in an attempt to undermine an opponent."
He has served notice that he is going to go nuclear against anyone who deviates from the crooked foreign policy line he had laid down.
—Arizona Republic (Phoenix, AZ), 17 Feb. 1984
It's this "furious/drastic measures" sense of go nuclear that we keep seeing in the presidential election:
Donald Trump Is About to Go Nuclear on Hillary Clinton
— (headline) newrepublic.com, 29 Sept. 2016
In the end, you know, Donald Trump went nuclear. He really did.
He brought out the big thing that he said he had been threatening to bring out for a long time. —Tamara Keith, The Charlie Rose Show (transcript), 10 Oct. 2016
What does this mean?
Since most of the recent figurative examples of go nuclear
use it in a "furious/drastic measures" sense,
people are more likely to use it that way inthe future.
If the election continues to have an impact on going nuclear's use,
it seems possible that some of the lessexplosive figurative senses
(such as the one from the citation above, in whicha celebrant is advised to not go nuclear on his birthday) will fall by the wayside.
That's right: this election is so negative that it's affecting what some words mean.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language,
Usage Note:
The pronunciation (no͞o′kyE-LER), which is generally considered incorrect,
is an example of how a familiar phonological pattern caninfluence an unfamiliar one.
The usual pronunciation of the final twosyllables of this word is (-klē-ər), but this sequence of sounds is rare in English.
Much more common is the similar sequence (-kyə-lər),
which occurs in words like particular, circular, spectacular,
and in many scientific words like molecular, ocular, and vascular.
Adjusted to fit into this familiar pattern,
the (-kyə-lər) pronunciation is often heard in high places.
It is not uncommon in the military in association with nuclear weaponry, and it has been observed in the speech of US presidents,
including Dwight D. Eisenhower and George W. Bush. The prominence of these speakers,
however, has done little to brighten the appeal of (no͞o′kyə-lər),
which was considered acceptable to only 10 percent of the Usage Panel in our 2004 survey.
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary
pron:
The second and third syllables of nu•cle•ar
are commonly pronounced as (-kli ər)
which can be transcribed more broadly as (-klə yər)
The somewhat controversial pronunciation of these two syllables
as (-kyə lər) prominent in recent years, results from a process of metathesis in which the sounds (l) and (y) change places.
This pronunciation, reinforced by analogy with words like molecular,
is disapproved of by many,
although it occurs among such highly educated speakers as scientists, professors, and government officials.
The American Heritage® Student Science Dictionary
Usage
The words nuclear and atomic
mean the same thing
when referring to weapons or to the making of power:
We say nuclear (or atomic) weapons and nuclear (or atomic) energy.
But in most scientific uses
nuclear and atomic mean different things.
Nuclear is used to refer to the nucleus ofan atom,
where the protons and neutrons are located.
When a radioactive element gives off a neutron,
for example, we call this a nuclear event.
Atomic, by contrast, is used to refer to the outer layers of the atom,
where the electrons that orbit about the nucleus are located.
So, when two or more atoms share electrons to forma covalent bond,
we call this an atomic interaction.
Common Errors In English Usage Dictionary
nuclear
This isn’t a writing problem, but apronunciation error.
President Eisenhower used to consistently insert a “U” sound
between the first and second syllables,
leading many journalists to imitate him
and say, ”nuk-yuh-lar” instead of the correct “nuk-lee-ar.”
The confusion extends also to “nucleus.”
Many people can’t even hear the mistake when they make it,
and only scientists and a few others will catchthe mispronunciation;
but you lose credibility if you are an anti-nuclear protester
who doesn’t know how to pronounce “nuclear.”
Here’s one way to remember: we need a new, clear understanding of the issues; let’s stop saying “Nuke you!”
