Platypus
The world's weirdest animal, its connection to a Greek philosopher and a German meteorologist, and a modest proposal from yours truly that will revolutionise linguistics as we know it.
Do animals come any more weird than the platypus? It’s a mammal that lays eggs and has a bill like a duck’s. It locates its prey by electroreception, one of the few animals on earth to do so. Its eyes are more like those of a rare type of fish than a typical mammal’s and, despite its cute apearance, the male has a venomous spur on its hind foot that can leave you in pain for months (unless you’re a dog, in which case it can kill you).
So strange is its form that when the first preserved platypus body was transported from Australia to merry olde England, the scientists who unpacked it deemed it a fake created by sewing a number of animals together. And who could blame them?
Unlike its compatriots the kangaroo, wombat, budgerigar and koala, the platypus does not take its name from any Aboriginal language. It takes it from Greek: platús (‘broad, wide, flat’) and poús (‘foot’).
In fact, you may be surprised at the number of Australian species whose names sound like they might be Aboriginal but aren’t. They include the emu (Portuguese), cockatoo (Malay), bandicoot (Telugu, an Indian language), goanna (Spanish) and echidna (Greek).
Recent years have seen a concerted push to rename some species with their Aboriginal title. The former Shark Bay mouse (Pseudomys fieldi) is again the djoongari, while the water-rat (Hydromys chrysogaster) is once more recognised as the rakali.
Besides being the right thing to do, it has to be said that re-employing the original names has made things infinitely more mellifluous. I rarely say this, but go Australia!
Fascinating as all that is, however, it’s not what prompted this week’s newsletter. What did prompt it was my recent discovery that the name Plato comes from the same source as the platy in platypus. To get all epistemological for a moment, who knew!
Apparently, the old philosopher was also a wrestler. Impressed with his broad chest and shoulders, his coach, Ariston of Argos, dubbed him Platon. Plato then removed the n (why, I have no idea) and adopted the abbreviated name thenceforth.
Can you think of another common word that looks like it might have a similar derivation? Of course you can: plate (well done, you!).
According to etymonline.com, plate came to us via Old English, which took it from Old French, which took it from Latin, which likely took it from the Greek platys. We can trace the word back even further to the PIE root plat- “to spread”).
This genealogy is so common among English words that it surely deserves its own acronym. I propose OEOFLPIE (pronounced offle pie) and now look forward to a steady stream of well-deserved royalties coming my way. Message me for my bank details, linguists.
My second favourite instance of the word plate is when it occurs in the science of plate tectonics. (My favourite instance is when a dinner plate laden with food is placed before me. I’m not stupid.)
Plate tectonics is the theory of how subterranean movements slowly transform the Earth - building mountains, shifting continents and causing volcanoes and earthquakes to pop up in spots that often greatly inconvenience nearby humans.
My home country knows a thing or two about these phenomena. Every year Aotearoa/New Zealand experiences around 20,000 earthquakes and it is home to many dozens of volcanoes.
Most of the time this is of little consequence. But now and again, nature turns feral. In 2011, our second-largest city, Christchurch, experienced an earthquake that left 185 people dead and caused $40 billion of damage. Eight years on, in 2019, White Island erupted, killing 22 tourists and leaving 25 others with devastating injuries.
Before plate tectonics came along, continental drift was the usual term for the meandering of land masses. This was the name German scientist Alfred Wegener adopted in two seminal papers he published in 1912 at the tender age of 32. His theory was that about 200 million years ago, a supercontinent he called Pangaea began to break apart, and what we see today are its remnants, which look like a jigsaw puzzle that’s been solved by a tantrum-throwing two-year-old.
The theory was widely rejected at first, partly because Wegener’s explanation of what caused this movement was utter nonsense (he thought it was something to do with unknown forces pushing continents away from the poles towards the equator), and partly because his main area of scientific expertise was meteorology, not geology.
If there’s one thing scientists hate, it’s other scientists invading their sandpit and showing them up.
By the 1950s, however, science had a plausible explanation for what caused continental drift, and Wegener’s theory was accepted. Unfortunately for him, he never got the recognition he was due, having died in Greenland in 1930 during an expedition to resupply a remote research camp in the depths of winter.
Add his name to that long list of hardy souls throughout history who risked everything in the name of knowledge. Fools, damn fools, every one.
And in the timeless words of David Bowie, where have all Papa’s heroes gone?
Bits and specious
In 1906, Wegener and his brother Kurt set a new record for the longest ever continuous balloon flight: 52.5 hours.
There is no official term for a baby platypus but “platypup” has been suggested. It gets my vote.
Check out this brilliant work from Finnish illustrator Minna Sundberg mapping the relationships between Indo-European and Uralic languages.
Marketing departments are great at renaming unpleasant things so they sound lovely - or at least harmless. Reader Dennis Johns reports receiving a message from Singapore Airlines recently that his flight had not been delayed, but “retimed”.
“No one has ever been arrested for crime by the single policeman on the island.” Where on earth could such an amazing achievement have been recorded? Answer in the small print below.
Quote of the week
I like the duck-billed platypus
Because it is anomalous.
I like the way it raises its family
Partly birdly, partly mammaly.
I like its independent attitude.
Let no one call it a duck-billed platitude.
Ogden Nash