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Ok probably wrong technically but.....

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R1Geezer | 14:52 Thu 01st Oct 2009 | News
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We used to call them tidal waves, ie as in the Posidon adventure etc, so why have we suddenly got soonarmies? and while we are at it when did Nessalls become neslay? Important news
questions I'm sure you'll agree!
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My understanding is that things like the Severn Bore are "Tidal Waves", I guess at some point there was a big Tsunami and lacking a proper word someone in the media called it a Tidal Wave and it took hold.

I reckon it was the 70s it always seems to be the 70s

I also want to know when a PowerPoint presentation suddenly became a "deck" - that seems to have happened in the last year round my way!
Things change as we get older. Tidal waves were a real threat for the Japanese, so in the 1960s and 1970s they did a lot of research into their characteristics and a new science was born. The term Tsunami is a scientific term that has been popularised by TV documentaries.

Brands changing their names is a result of globalisation. In the dim and distant past we we able to anglise names as the brand advertising would be only seen in the UK. Now we call Marathons Snickers, Jif became Cif, Ulay became Olay and Nestles is pronounced Nestlay and Michelin should be pronounced Mishlan. This is because large brands have a global identity, and that has to be standardised worldwide.
And when did a symbol become an icon?
A location a venue?
A representation an avatar?
Brothers and sisters siblings?
etc, etc
English is a constantly evolving and vibrant language.
Innit tho?
jake-the-peg

Like you have a deck of cards, you can have a deck of slides. A PowerPoint Deck, is the full slide presentation, often supplied in accompanying paper form for participants to follow along with. Needless to say, it originated in New York Advertising Agencies about 10 years ago, and must have now permiated down to your company.
And in the English language you cannot construct a negative by using two positives.............yeah, right!
I know what it is, but given that mine is a large US multi-national I'm rather surprised to hear you say it's 10 years old -I'm pretty sure I've only heard it in the last year or so.
The term 'Powerpoint Deck' in use 2002

http://slate.msn.com/?id=2069119
I think the problem was that basically they weren't tidal waves. They were thrown up by earthquakes, not tides, so they were pretty much the only waves that weren't tidal. Nesslay was always spelt that way, so the change is just in pronunciation. Cif and Aviva and so on are deliberate changes of brand name.

The location of Nether Wallop is in Hampshire. This doesn't make it a venue. Siblings is shorter and more convenient when you mean brothers and sisters - if only they'd come up with a single word that means 'he or she'.
I was suddenly thinking the other day if one of those yachtsmen who circumnavigate the world on their small craft if they were in the region how they would be affected. I cannot see a wave enveloping them but surely they would be propelled at a great speed without knowing what was happening?
Not so, rov.

In the open ocean tsunamis present no problem to shipping or even small craft. They consist of small numbers (sometimes only one or two) of waves of extremely long wavelength and relatively small height, and ships and boats are scarcely affected by them in open water.

The problems begin when the waves approach gently sloping coastlines. The friction of the sloping sea bed causes the bottom of the waves to slow down. This makes the wave “pile up” on the top and increase rapidly in height. It finally "breaks", collapsing onto the shore with devastating effects. (The same thing happens to all waves, and the effect in miniature can be seen in the breaking of waves on any beach).

I was in the Maldives on Boxing Day 2005. You may know that nowhere on the Maldives is more than about 6 feet above sea level, and you may think that they wouild have been wiopeed out by the tsunami. However, the islands have no gently sloping coasts. They are coral islands and beyond the reefs they drop sharply away to deep water. The country suffered some casualties, though nothing on the scale of nearby India and Sri Lanka.

The island I was on was partially flooded, with the sea level first falling (looking as if the sea had been “sucked out”) and then rising, with extremes of about an extra metre or so beyond the usual low and high water marks. This occurred about three times in less than three hours and each cycle represented the individual waves generated by the undersea earthquake many thousands of miles away. The last wave passed about noon, and by late afternoon things had returned to normal. The only problems encountered by guests were some divers were “sucked down” in a channel separating us from a nearby island, and some snorkelers were knocked about a bit.

I was still having my breakfast when it started (about 9:00am) and saw the whole thing.
A v interesting account NJ. Perh I should have given more detail of our first-hand experience of actually being bang over the epicentre of the Great Kobe Earthquake:
http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/ChatterBank/Question813837.html

Not the same horrendous death toll as the tsunamis that you had a brush with (six and a half thousand dead, hundreds of thousand injured or homeless for many months).

And jno, some good points, but re "if only they'd come up with a single word that means 'he or she'". They have, if by 'they' you mean any sane, literate and aware speaker of English who hasnt been freaked out by pedantic piffle. That word is 'they' with plural agreement, except that my anti-prescriptivism doesn't extend to plurals like "Someone's going to fall down those stairs and break their necks"! I don't even like "Someone's going to fall down those stairs and hurt themselves". I am encouraged to see the use of "hurt themself" etc. establishing itself.

I too am disgruntled about "soonarmie". The Japanese term tsunami is as inaccurate as 'tidal wave' actually, since it means 'harbour wave', tho you can see why that usage evolved. Why did we have to adopot its technical use from Japanese seismologists? Quite apart from its not-much-less-inappropriate etymology, there seem to be a ridiculous number of articulatorily challenged people who can't pronounce it, including newsreaders and even seismologists. It could have been called a 'seismic wave' by analogy with 'tidal wave'.
A Tsunami is generated by undersea earthquakes or volcanic erruptions and are caused by displacement . A tidal wave tends to be a surge caused by astronomical or storm conditions.

The Poseidon was sunk by a rogue wave. It's still under debate as to what causes them.

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