Re: v8 first impressions

On Sep 11, 6:42=A0pm, "John Cowan" <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 12:48 PM, David Griswold wrote:
> > [...] suggest can't be distinguished from a truly megamorphic send. =A0=
Such a send
> > would be slower for megamorphic sends [...]
>
> By the way, I don't know who coined the word "megamorphic", but he was
> clearly a barbarian (originally, someone who doesn't speak Greek).
> "Monomorphic" and "polymorphic" are fine, but "megamorphic" would mean
> having a big form, as in "You've grown rather megamorphic since you
> left school."
>
> Can we please switch to "perissomorphic"? =A0It's better Greek and onlly
> a little bit longer. =A0We already have the rare words "perissology"
> (too many words) and "perissosyllabic" (having too many syllables), as
> well as the more common word "perissodactyl" (ungulates that have an
> odd number of toes, such as horses, from a second sense of Greek
> _perissos_, 'odd (in mathematics')'.
>
> "Megamorphic": kill it before it spreads!

Too late. It seems to be in fairly widespread usage already. While I
bow to your superior classical Greek, as I have none, I think
megamorphic will be hard to change. Inaccurate though it may be, it
seems to me more expressive than your possibly more correct
alternative. Also, the negative connotation implied by "perissology"
and "perissosyllabic" - ie. too many words/syllables - doesn't really
apply to the notion of what we currently refer to as megamorphic
sends, except in the narrow sense of "too many possible targets of
this send to fit in this PIC".
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