Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Dagnabbit

Othniel.

Here's how old I am. We had brontosauruses when I was a kid.

Then they took them away and replaced them with apatosauruses. It never sat right with me. The deal was, some 19th-century guy named Othniel Marsh found bones and arranged them into something he then called an Apatosaurus. And soon after he found more bones and strung them together and called it a Brontosaurus. And somewhere down the road everyone decided that they were basically the same critter, so they stuck with the first name, and made it official in the '70s.

Well, fine. I didn't love it, but I went along with it, because the school kids were nonchalant about having an apatosaur and no brontosaur, and they were wieldy with the metric system, and were annoying in other ways as well, and I didn't want to be that dagnabbity person.

But it festered. I happen to be exquisitely sensitive to the music of language. And if you've got yourself a beast that wouldn't even fit in my yard without folding up--and I have a double lot--you don't name him "apatosaurus." Just listen to the name. It belongs to a little scampery thing. A little hopping noodle of a dinosaur flitting through the woods with its tiny feet going apato apato apato and making eeping noises. Not an enormous thundering megadude who could quiver a whole swamp just by strolling by. BRON-TO. BRON-TO.


Apatosaurus, my fleshy fanny. Both names come from the Greek, of course. The Greeks were ancient, and thus closer in time to the dinosaur era and more familiar with the subject matter. Bronto-saurus means Thunder Lizard, as well it should. (Dinosaurs weren't lizards, but that etymological ship has sailed from every port.) And apatosaur? Goodness gracious. It means "sneaky fake lizard." Ain't that a fine how-do-you-do.

There isn't really any good reason to resurrect Apate, the goddess of Deceit, at all. You know that rental house across the street that had been blessedly vacant? And then one day the U-Haul pulls up leading a convoy of rustbuckets and all manner of crap starts coming out of them and going into the house? That's Apate's family. Her mother was Night, her father was Darkness, and of course they had a shitload of kids: Suffering, Doom, Carnage, Blame, Old Age, Strife, Retribution, and Violent Death. And the whole crew is going to be out on the front porch making noise 24/7 and nobody with any taste and discretion is going to think: I should name a noble dinosaur after one of these.

Nevertheless thanks to Mr. Marsh we have a splendid edifice of muscle and appetite with a dinky name. It's like if Dick Cheney went by "Skippy."

But now the Brontosaurus is back. The new powers that be have decided that the critters had slightly different collar sizes and could rightfully be considered separate items. If I run into one, I'm not liable to throw a tape measure around its neck. I'm just going to assume it's a Bronto, baby.

33 comments:

  1. And that big flying thing is called a pterodactyl, I don't care what my grandchildren say!

    This post is spot on and funny.

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    1. For twenty years, every time I'd say "apatosaurus" I do that little hesitation thing and use a Valley Girl accent, with the air quotes implied.

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  2. All's right with the world again. I never gave up Bronto in spite of the youngsters chiding me for my wrong-headedness. This'll show 'em.

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    1. They're smart though. They can probably tell the difference, the little wise-asses.

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  3. Sheesh, I never even knew the Brontosaurus had been ruled superfluous, never mind being put back in the game now. And I had a child who was big on dinos at one point in his life! I always learn something here.

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    1. You probably heard your kid talk about apatosaurs and just assumed it was one of your newer auxiliary dinosaurs and not the great swamp-stomper.

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  4. This was a staggeringly good read. Bless that darling, daring sensitivity of yours.

    And, my favorite putdown is, "I don't think so, Skippy." Goes for Othniel and Dick, alike.

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    1. Oh I love calling people Skippy! You can pack a lot of attitude into that.

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  5. 1. Dagnabbit. That's a fine word.
    2. Loved every word of that. You write how I think I am writing. Dabnabbit.

    Pearl

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  6. And I am a bronto of a woman. And today I am glad.

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  7. For twenty years, every time I'd say "apatosaurus" I do that little hesitation thing and use a Valley Girl accent, with the air quotes implied. ... So that was, like, what, twice?? I mean how many times does one speak of these things?

    Plus I never got the memo about Brontosaurus not being "real". What did they call it in Jurassic Park? Not the A-word. Not that. Right?

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    1. Oh gosh, I probably mention brontosauruses five or six times a year, anyway. Who doesn't? Now that Jurassic Park question is a good one. Guess I'll have to watch that again.

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    2. Definitely. But I just checked about the brontosaur. No, they did NOT have brontosauruses in Jurassic Park. They had Apatosauruses (in the novel). In the first movie, they replaced them with brachiosauruses. Those were similar in many ways, being fellow sauropods, but they had Cankles. I'm betting they substituted brachiosaurs just to avoid the whole bronto/apato imbroglio. (That was fun to write.) In bonus news: the movie also featured Othnielia. I'd not even heard of these, but they're obviously named after our hero.

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  8. 'bron' and brawn are homonyms, so there's that. Plus we have this associative/meaning thing that our brains do when we first encounter words. I used to read the word 'martians' and mentally pronounce it MARteeyans. When I found out the correct pronunciation I was irritated. They didn't come from a marsh, dammit. Hard to figure, like taste. Always enjoy your eloquent tracing out of the subjective.

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    1. My father was always horribly irritated by people mispronouncing things that they'd read, but not heard. Like people saying "boatswain" instead of "bosun." (Most folks know that one, though.) "Forehead" is supposed to rhyme with "horrid." "Falcon" should be "fockin." All of this is buried with him now, except that I still try, so as not to disturb his ashes. I think it all made him a lot unhappier than he needed to be.

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    2. I mispronounced many words when I was young, because I'd never heard them before, only read them. when I eventually went to school and heard the correct pronunciation, I thought it was a whole different word and had to ask what it meant. I got laughed at a lot. It didn't help that I was partly deaf and still am of course, but now I keep my mouth shut.

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    3. I still am prone to mispronouncing words that I've only read but not heard. Then I thought to Google "How to pronounce ___" and it would take me to short YouTube videos of the word being pronounced. Google rocks!

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    4. We all had trouble with "misled," right?

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  9. Now if they would just apologize to poor Pluto and promote him to a regular planet again. Calling him a "dwarf planet" seems awfully un-PC and rather supercilious.

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  10. As I recall, the problem with Pluto was that he didn't clean up after himself. If he could suck in some of the rocks around him, and clear a space for himself, he'd be right in 'em.

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  11. "Yo! Skippy. You wanna tell us where all your war profits are, or you want I should come over an' BRONTO on you...?"

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  12. "Flintstones, meet the Flintstones..."

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    1. Earworm download complete. Would you like to install now?

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    2. Speaking of mis-hearing, when I was a child, I thought that phrase was followed by, "...they're the mod-historic family" instead of, ". . . they're the modern stone-age family." Mondegreens, anyone?

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    3. Aaaand installation complete. Now I'm trying to come up with the rest of the lyric. It couldn't possibly have been "they're a page right out of history," could it?

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    4. Yes, and it ends with, "We'll have a gay old time."

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  13. I've never heard of Apatosurus, guess it didn't catch on downunder. Brontosaurus does sound so much better.
    I don't even care if they are the same animal or not. For all I know the smaller collared one was probably a junior, not full grown yet.

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    1. For all I know, too, but fortunately they gots experts to work on those things.

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  14. When I was a child, I misread the sign saying "Shoplifters will be prosecuted," as "Shoplifters will be persecuted." Spent way too much time in church as a kid, and I KNEW what persecuted meant. I also knew I would never shoplift.
    Nothing to do with dinosaurs, but your post brought back that memory for some reason.

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    1. I shoplifted. I got measles the next day. I believed in divine retribution for a few years after that, and then I was all, "ehh."

      Anyway, maybe we stirred loose your dinosaur memories!

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