29 Jun
2009
29 Jun
'09
10:52 a.m.
From: Ethan Dicks
Sent: Monday, June 29, 2009 8:40 AM
On 6/29/09, Michael Lee <mikelee at tdh.com>
wrote:
>> I'm sorry I know this is off topic, but
why did the Atari group call
>> themselves SCAT!?!
> The www.chiclassiccomp.org website is back up.
Temporary server issue.
> As for the name, it's just the acronym right?
> SCAT - Suburban Chicago ATarians
Besides the obvious modern dirty meaning of the word,
there is another.
??????
The use of the word "scat" to mean "ordure, dung" goes back several
centuries.
It is a learned borrowing, from the ancient Greek _skOr_, _skatos_,[1] of the
same meaning (with and without the overtones of the related Germanic words).
Scholars needing to refer to the subject simply borrowed the stem of the
Greek word, at a time when English-speaking scholars regularly learned both
Latin and Greek to a comfortable reading level by their early teens.
[1] The "O" represents the Greek letter _o mega_. Traditionally, Greek words
are cited in the nominative and genitive singular (the latter to show the
stem, which may be obscured in the former). I've left off the accents
for simplicity.
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
(206) 342-2239
(206) 465-2916 cell
http://www.pdpplanet.org/