Parallax

[Dr. Goodword]

• parallax •

Pronunciation: pæ-rê-læks • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: The change of an object's appearance, position, or direction due to the observer's change of position.

Notes: Remember to double the L in this word, not the R. Other than that, you should have no problem with the spelling. The adjective accompanying today's word is parallactic or, rarely, parallactical. The adverb is parallactically.

In Play: Parallactic effects are usually small: "Smartphones correct the tiny parallax error in old photography caused by the displacement on old cameras of the viewfinder and the lens." They are also affected by distance: "The closer an object is to its observer, the easier it is to detect the effect of parallax, so the more distant stars are less affected by parallax than the closer ones."

Word History: English borrowed today's Good Word directly from French parallaxe, which took it from Greek parallaxis "change, alteration". Parallaxis is the action noun from the verb parallassein "to alter, alternate", comprising para- "beside, near; against" + allessein "to change, exchange". Allessein is a verb created from allos "other", a word inherited from PIE al- "beyond", which also went into the making of English else. In Latin it emerged as alter "other (of two)", which English took and converted to a verb. It appears in several other borrowings, such as alternative and alternate. Latin also created uls, ultra "beyond" out of the same PIE word, which English helped itself to along with several derivations from the Latin word for its ulterior and ultimate. (Today's Good Word is yet another gift from one of our long-time sustaining contributors of them, William Hupy.)

[Slava]

Of course smartphones are just doing what a good old single lens reflex camera does. They provided WYSIWYG photographs first.

That's pronounced whizzy-wig, by the way.

3/11: Now that I've edited the subject line, the rest of this thread will be incomprehensible to future generations.

[bnjtokyo]

Slava, what happened to the other "l"? After all, the Good Doctor did warn us about it.

[Slava]

Good question. I sure didn't edit it out of the reply, all I did was click on reply, so how did it disappear? Is there an anti-l gremlin between me and the Agora?

[David Myer]

Paralax is entirely different. That's when your stomach turns to liquid at the prospect of jumping out of an aeroplane.

[damoge]

David, stomach?
Thought it was someplace a bit farther along the trail...

[Dr. Goodword]

Please don't blame Slava for the missing L. After warning you all to double it in this word, I carelessly omitted it when I first posted it. When I returned later, I noticed it and repaired it.

[David Myer]

Good point, Debby. I winced a little even as I first typed it, but decided to stick with it because I couldn't think of a suitable single word for the next bits. Colon wouldn't have read sweetly. Perhaps bowels would have done it, but that's hardly a sweet word either.

[Slava]

Well, at least the missing l has led us down the rabbit hole of punning.

Perhaps we should just say that paralax is what happens to the sphincter at the thought of jumping out of a plane. I wonder if imodium™ would help.

[damoge]

How about "gut(s)"?

[bnjtokyo]

Dr Goodword, Japanese has a proverb that is apropos: "Even monkeys fall from trees" (Saru mo ki kara ochiru)

[David Myer]

Yes Debby. Guts will do nicely.

And yes, bnj, I like your Japanese proverb.

[George Kovac]

SPELLING: THE TENTH CIRCLE OF "L"?

Why even have double consonants, which only challenge our spelling skills, e.g., “occasion?”

If the occasional function of a double consonant is to signal a change in the pronunciation of its preceding vowel (e.g., “hummus” is tasty, “humus” tastes like dirt), wouldn’t it make more sense to have some distinguishing mark (or doubling) on the vowel? But in "parallax" the doubling of the "L" is arbitrary--it does not change the pronunciation of its neighboring vowel. So why bother?

As to the double “LL” in particular, it causes mischief in more than one language. In Barcelona, a major thoroughfare is called “Avinguda del Paral·lel.” The story goes that it is the only street in the city which is parallel to the equator. In Catalan and Spanish, a double “LL” is pronounced like the English “Y” in “yes.” A single “L” is pronounced like the English “L.” But in Catalan a double “LL” is sometimes pronounced like the English “L.” When this happens, Catalan imposes a dot between the two “LLs.” Most keyboards don’t easily offer dots except as a special symbol, and a period is not a good substitute. Why doesn’t Catalan use just a single “L” for this avenue? In Spanish, the word for “parallel” is “paralela”—with a single “L.” But in Catalan, it is “paral·lel”—a dotted double “L.”

[George Kovac]

I thought we should invite Ogden Nash into this conversation. Here is one of my favorites of his poems, that I learned as a child:

The Lama

The one-l lama,
He's a priest;
The two-l llama,
He's a beast.
And I will bet
A silk pajama
There isn't any
Three-l lllama.

[bbeeton]

But the footnote, appended later by Mr. Nash, was omitted:

"The author's attention has been called to a type of conflagration known as a three-alarmer. Pooh."

Mr. Nash was a well-appreciated denizen of my birth city, Baltimore, and his "trashery" was a treasured part of my childhood, and no doubt a large contributor to my delight in punnery.

This particular footnote took on additional significance after I moved north to attend college, and observed occasional interruptions of Boston Pops' performances when Arthur Fiedler vacated the podium to go witness a local conflagration.