(Click here for bottom)

EO
Electro-Optic.

Typical materials: KTP, KD*P, LiNbO3, LiTaO3.

[phone icon]

EO
End (Telephone) Office. These are connected to individual subscribers through a number of local loops. Local calls are typically those involving different subscribers with the same EO. (Before divestiture, these were called class 5 offices. Smaller class numbers corresponded to higher levels of the switching-office hierarchy.) Cf. TCT.

The bandwidth for local calls is much larger than for longer-distance calls. Thus, there's little point to a 19.2 modem unless you're dialing up a nearby computer. Make that a 33K modem. No wait, better 56K, yeah. Oh, is DSL available in our area now?

EO
English Only. The initialism isn't used as an imperative, as far as I know. It's a common shorthand, used by ed researchers and school staff in the US, for students (usually pre-college students) whose native language is English. The designation is not entirely accurate, since many ``EO'' students are bi- or multilingual to some degree, even before formal instruction in a foreign language is begun. The contrastive term is ELL.

It's probably not fruitful to examine the precise implications of either term. The reality is that the terminology and the research associated with it are usually based on certain approximations or ethnic assumptions. In many contexts, EO and ELL are really just neutral-sounding ways of saying non-Hispanic and Hispanic, or something like it. What ``Hispanic'' means is similarly approximate. You'd like to think that these approximations or stereotypes are recognized as such by researchers, but I have reasons to doubt it. One reason is that published research frequently fails to explain how the grouping was done, as if this were unproblematic. Another reason is personal experience. For example, a friend of mine was apparently awarded funding (for study in a graduate psychology program) at least partly on the basis of his self-description as Hispanic. When he showed up to start school and they discovered that he has white skin and speaks without a foreign accent, some on the faculty felt they had been deceived. They had apparently wanted and expected someone who looked and sounded ``Hispanic.'' They were certainly deceived -- by their own ignorance.

EO
Essential Oil. Oil distilled from a plant part. ``Essential'' in the sense that it contains the essence of the odor of the plant. In fact, the fragrance is probably a large number of esters that distilled out with the oils. Essential oils were traditionally used in perfumes and soaps, but it's a lot cheaper to use artificial fragrances (FO's).

EO
Executive Order. Frequently misspelled E0.

EOA
End Of Address. ASCII 02 (CTRL-B). ASCII character is also used for STX.

EO/AA
Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action. As in ``the University is an EO/AA employer.'' A Canadian and South African form is EE/AA. ``Equal'' -- that sounds kinda mathematical. It's probably a very carefully defined term. Now ``affirmative action'' -- that sounds a bit political. Don't you wonder what politically daring things the glossarist has written at the AA entry?

EO/AAE
Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.

EOB
Executive Office Building. Part of the White House complex; within the fence but separated from the White House West Wing by a small street.

EOB
Explanation Of Benefits. From your health care provider; a list of repairs performed, and such.

EOC
Embedded Operations Channel.

EOC
Emergency Operations Center.

EOC
End Of Course. North Carolina (see NCDPI) has a specific use for this term: ``The North Carolina End-of-Course Tests are used to sample a student's knowledge of subject-related concepts as specified in the North Carolina Standard Course of Study and to provide a global estimate of the student's mastery of the material in a particular content area. The North Carolina End-of-Course tests were initiated in response to legislation passed by the North Carolina General Assembly -- the North Carolina Elementary and Secondary Reform Act of 1984. ... [S]tudents enrolled in the following courses are required to take the North Carolina EOC tests: Algebra I, Algebra II, Biology, Chemistry, English I, Geometry, Physical Science, and Physics.'' Since 2006, EOC tests are also administered in Civics and Economics (treated as a single subject area; don't ask me why) and U.S. History. On the same page, I saw EOC used in the sense of EOC test, and I've seen an NC schoolteacher refer to EOC courses (courses subject to EOC's). There are limits on the class sizes of EOC courses.

EOD
End Of Discussion. Email usage modeled on EOM.

EOD
Explosive Ordnance Disposal. That is, the disposal of UXO.

EOE
Equal Opportunity Employer. I've seen ``Equal Opportunities Employer'' in British ads (directed to a trans-Atlantic labor market), which reflects the British tendency to use plural forms for attributive nouns.

The alternative EEOE is very useful if you're trying to even up your line lengths with a nonproportional font.

E&OE
Errors and Omissions Excepted.

That's excepted, not accepted!

EOF
Emergency Operations Facility. I've also seen ``Emergency Operating Facility.'' A facility of the US EPA for handling environmental emergencies. The EOF, the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), and one or more Emergency Relocation Sites (ERS) are under authority of the EPA Emergency Coordinator (EC). The Director, Chemical Emergency Preparedness and Prevention Office (CEPPO), also serves as the EPA EC.

EOF
Emergency Operations Facility. Since TMI, the NRC has required each nuclear plant licensee to operate an EOF, satisfying various location, habitability, and other requirements, for ``continued evaluation and coordination of all licensee activities related to an emergency having or potentially having environmental consequences.''

EOF
End Of File.

EOG
ElectroOculoGra { phy | m }. Measurement of eye movement.

EOI
Earth Orbital Injection.

EOI
End Of Interrupts.

EOIR
Electro-Optic InfraRed.

EOKA
Ethnikí Orgánosis Kipriakoú Agónos. Greek for `National Organization of Cypriot Struggle.' Terrorist group first organized ca. 1955 by Col. Georgios Grivas of the Greek Army, and supported by Archbishop Makarios III. The goals of EOKA were departure of British troops and union with Greece. They also fought with their Turkish Cypriot counterparts. Makarios eventually announced he would accept independence for Cyprus rather than union with Greece, and in 1959 Grivas disbanded EOKA in exchange for a general amnesty of its members. The British left in 1960.

Grivas later commanded the Greek Cypriot National Guard until he was recalled by the Greek government. In 1971 he secretly reentered Cyprus and created EOKA B to restart the struggle for unification. Grivas died in January 1974 and Makarios officially proscribed EOKA B in April. That Summer Makarios was ousted, and Turkish troops invaded and partitioned the island.

EOL
End Of Life. Not a navel-gazing exercise, but the communication satellite people's term for that moment, about ten to fifteen years from placement, when a satellite runs out of the fuel it uses to stabilize its orientation. Other, non-rocket scientists use the term.

EOL
End Of Line. As far as I know it refers only to digital representation of text. The acronym is apparently not attested in the railroad or nightclub context. In the case of more risky linear behaviors (powder cocaine, high-wire), the phrase itself might be morbidly equivocal. Cf. BCNU.

EOL
English as [an|the] Official Language.

EOM
Electro-Optic (EO) Modulator.

EOM
End Of Message. ASCII 03 (CTRL-C). ASCII character is also ETX.

EOM
Equations Of Motion. Time-evolution equations.

EOMB
Explanation Of Medicare Benefits.

eon
You could wait that long to get a clear EOMB.

EON
East Old Norse.

EOP
Equal Opportunity Program.

EOP
English for Occupational Purposes. One ESP.

EOR
Enhanced Oil Recovery.

EORTC
European Organization for the Research and Treatment of Cancer.

EOS
Earth Observing System. NASA project.

EOS
Electrical OverStress. See what the EOS/ESD Association has to say.

EOS
Electro-Optic[al] Sampling.

EOS, eos
Equation Of State.

EOS/ESD Association
Electrical OverStress (EOS and Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) Association. On the web here.

EOT
End Of Tape. That's magnetic tape, young feller. Serial recording media from the age of dinosaurs.

EOT
End Of Thread. Email usage that may be regarded as modeled on, extending, or reinterpreting EOT.

EOT
End Of Transmission. ASCII 04 (CTRL-D).

E.O.V.
Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum. Latin: `Letters of Obscure Men.' The title of a work by Ulrich von Hutten that is one of the landmark events in the history of slumming. It's a satire of the intellectual ferment as the Renaissance was coming to Germany in the sixteenth century.

EP
Eastern Province (of Saudi Arabia).

EP
Electronic Publi{cation|shing}. Literature distributed on a medium that can only be accessed electronically -- disks and discs of various sorts, and inter- and intranets. According to the BISG (q.v., it's beginning to have a significant imapct on paper publishing volume. September 26-27, 1997 there was a conference SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING AND COMMUNICATION IN THE ELECTRONIC ENVIRONMENT at the University of Toronto at Scarborough.

EP
Elementary Particle[s] (physics). Same as HEP.

EP
Emulation Program.

EP
European Portuguese. Portuguese as spoken in Portugal as contrasted with Brazil. Portuguese is the official language of Mozambique, Angola, and some smaller former colonies in Africa (see this detailed page), but only minorities speak it as a first language. It seems that the long-term prospects are good only for some Portuguese creoles in isolated places. In Asia, the largest concentrations of Portuguese speakers are in Goa and Macao, and the number of speakers is declining rapidly in Goa.

Back in 1994 or so, I met an incoming EE graduate student from Malawi (.mw), who was surprised I had heard of his Parameceum-shaped country. Under the generally benevolent dictatorship of Hastings Banda, that southern African country was politically nonaligned (in contrast with the most prominent members of the Nonaligned movement, which were aligned against the West). Malawi also happened, unusually for the region, to achieve national self-sufficiency in food. Eventually you're going to wonder -- why am I telling you this at the EP entry? Go ahead, wonder. Once the soccer team of this tiny nation beat the Egyptian national team, sending Egyptians to their atlases in droves, at least in the imagination of Malawians.

Malawi's neighbors were all, sooner or later, Soviet clients in the Cold War. They received advisors, and various kinds of aid and advanced technological equipment. Many southern Africans, particularly those who received scholarships to Russian universities, must have learned Russian. At the college in Malawi attended by the EE student mentioned above, it happened in the early 1990's that there was a need to get a translation of a Russian technical manual. They called around to cities in the various neighboring countries, but couldn't find anyone who claimed to know Russian.

EP
Evoked Potential.

EP
Extended Play. Designates a phonograph-record format. The last gasp of the dying phonograph tradition (vide LP) just before pop labels shifted to CD.

EP
Extended Play. Refers to slowest speed used with VHS videocassettes. EP is also called SLP for Super Long Play.

EPA
EicosaPentanoic Acid.

EPA
Enhanced Performance Architecture.

EPA
(US) Environmental Protection Agency.

They apparently have a ``Green PC'' program, and are pushing for a goal of less than 30 W power consumption for a computer in stand-by mode. I haven't tried to track this down.

EPA
Environment Protection Authority. A government agency in some Australian states, including Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia, and Western Australia.

EPAC
Emergency Preparedness Advisory Committee.

EPAct
(US) Energy Policy ACT of 1992.

epact
The moon's age in days at the beginning of the calendar year. In other words, the number of days by which the last new moon precedes the beginning of the year. A standard parameter for church-calendar calculations.

EPB
(US) Economic Policy Board.

EPC
Error Protection Code.

EPCIA
European Passive Component Industry Association. Under the aegis of EECA. Passive electronic components.

EPCOT Center
Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow (theme park at Disney World (WDW). Some of the alternate expansions: ``Experimental Polyester Costumes Of Tomorrow'' and ``Extremely Profitable Corporation Of Today.''

EPEC
EnteroPathogenic E. coli.

epenthesis
I thought this entry would go well in here, between the one preceding and the one following.

Okay, okay: epenthesis is the insertion or the development of a letter within the body of a word. It typically refers to such letters arising between the components (bases and affixes) of a word. Examples include the Latin words monitor and monstrum. Both have the stem of the verb monere (`to warn') and a suffix. The first suffix, -tor, is a well-known agentive ending, here attached with an epenthetic -i-. The second suffix, with the sense of `accomplishing' or `with,' has as its simplest forms -ter, -tra, and -trum (in masc., fem., and neut., resp.), obviously following a first-second declension pattern. The epenthetic -s- was common following n, e, or i. (Demonstrate is derived from monstrum, the latter in the sense of `portent.')

Epenthesis also, less frequently, refers to insertions elsewhere than between the component morphemes of a word. Epenthesis in the dead (yes, dead) languages is noticeable primarily through spelling. In living languages, epenthesis may more often refer to sounds rather than letters. A good example of both of these points is athlete pronounced as ``athuhlete.''

epenthetic
Of or pertaining to epenthesis.

Here are some examples of epenthetic consonants:

  1. Congolese, Togolese
    I can't find another instance in English of an -ese adjective ending immediately preceded by an epenthetic l. All the most common -lese adjectives, as well as the less common I can find, are constructed from nouns or adjectives ending in l: Senegalese, Nepalese, Cinghalese/Sinhalese/Singhalese, Marshallese, Tyrolese (Tyrolean is much more common), Bengalese (Bengali is much more common), Angolese (Angolan is much more common), legalese, journalese, novelese, officialese.
  2. Balinese, Faronese, Javanese, NASAnese
    Apart from these, -nese adjectives associated with peoples or regions are typically formed from nouns that end in n (Bhutanese, Cantonese, Ceylonese, Japanese, Milanese, Nipponese, Pekinese [Pekingese], Sudanese, Taiwanese) or by shortening of the source nouns to roots that end in n (Chinese and Indo-Chinese, Guyanese, Veronese, Viennese). Lebanese would count as a more extreme instance of the latter case. The construction of Faronese involves some shortening, of course (Faroe Islands), but I'm not sure if the lost e represents a change in pronunciation of the vowel. I suppose one might argue that Javanese is really constructed from the adjective Javan. If so, it would represent a different kind of exception, in not being constructed from a noun as is usual.
  3. aileron
    This is constructed in the French from aile (`wing') and the diminutive ending -on.
  4. demonstrate, monster
    The -s- was inserted in Latin; see epenthesis.
  5. agiotage, egotism, egotist
    The -t- comes from French, where its insertion seems to be modeled on pairs like ballot and ballotage (the t is silent in the first word but pronounced in the second). For an unusual instance that is somehow of German origin, see terrariatology.

The -s- in prosthesis, incidentally, is not an epenthetic consonant. The words prosthesis and prothesis, although they share some meanings, have different initial morphemes.

EPF
Employees' Provident Fund.

EPFL
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. The German name is ETHL. Only in English is the country given explicitly -- `Swiss Federal Institute of Technology' (once again proving the suppleness and superiority of this language).

EPG
Entrails of the Pepsi Generation. Continuation of a zine that was called Profuse Discharge.

ephebophile
Sexually attracted to young teenage boys. Let's put it this way: this is not a term people use to express alarm at the sexual precocity of their middle-school daughters.

ephedra
A genus of low evergreen shrubs that grow in very hardscrabble lands (in a word: deserts), and also in the Scrabble tablelands.

But this isn't just useful in Scrabble,® you know. Late in the nineteenth century, S. Nagai extracted an alkaloid (2-methylamino-1-phenylpropanol) from Ephedra vulgaris, naming it ephedrine in 1887. (The initial extraction yielded too little of the chemical for much analysis. Nowadays the preferred source is E. sinica.) Another common alkaloid in many Ephra species is pseudoephedrine.

ephedrine
An alkaloid (2-methylamino-1-phenylpropanol) originally extracted from ephedra, q.v. The name of the drug is spelled the same way in French, Ephedrin in German, and efedrina in Spanish. There's a slight coincidence associated with the name, particularly in those languages that use a ph spelling for an etymological phi.

The name ephedra of the plant source was coined on the basis of the Greek ephédra, `sitting upon,' from epí (`upon,' in various senses) + hédra (`seat, base'). [I think that's because it's a squat plant, but I'm not sure. It would be unpleasant to sit upon.]

Anyway, ephedrine is a stimulant that in some of its pharmacological action resembles adrenaline. The name of the hormone adrenaline comes from the fact that it was first extracted from adrenal glands. The adrenal glands sit atop the kidneys (renes in Latin), hence the name. By a similar etymology, the adrenal glands were also called suprarenal glands, and adrenalin called suprarenin. In addition to these Latin constructions, there is a Greek one, from epí (`upon,' remember?) + nephrós (`kidney'), whence epinephrine.

In other words, epinephrine and ephedrine have similar action and similar names, but the name similarities are mostly accidental. The initial e's come from a common root epí, though this is almost arbitrary. The ``ph'' in ephedrine represents aspiration from the second word applied to the pi of the first (with the iota elided before the initial vowel of the second word), while the ``ph'' in epinephrine is from the Greek word for kidney. The ``ine'' is the only noncoincidental element: it indicates that the substances are alkaloids, and many pharmacologically active substances are alkaloids.

Actually, the chemical structures of ephedrine and epinephrine are somewhat similar as well. The epinephrine entry has my ASCII art for both the epinephrine and ephedrine molecules.

EPHOS
European Procurement Handbook for Open Systems.

EPI
Effective Pair Interaction[s].

epi
EPItaxially grown material. [Pronounced ``EHpee.''] Implicitly: grown epitaxially on single-crystal material, so as to be single-crystal as well.

EPI
Expanded Program of Immunization. Immunization program of UNICEF.

EPIA
European Packaging and Interconnection Industry Association. Under the aegis of EECA. Electronic packaging; not cardboard.

It's been suggested to me that the acronym should be EPIIA, and that in that case the acronym is misalphabetized. Maybe it should be, but contrariwise it isn't, so it's not. That's logic.

EPIC
Electronic Privacy Information Center, established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues and to protect privacy, the First Amendment, and constitutional values.

EPIC
End Poverty In California. A Depression-era movement based on Upton Sinclair's proposal that the state of California take over idle factories and farmland, and have these be operated by workers' cooperatives. The movement's plan was to get Sinclair nominated as the Democratic party's candidate for governor in the 1934 election (which it did) and elected governor (which it didn't). A Governor Sinclair could hardly have implemented his proposed program, given the constraints of the US Constitution and the California legislature. In any case, many less-radical Democrats voted for Commonwealth Party candidate Raymond L. Haight, who won 13% of the vote, and Republican Frank Merriam won with 48% of the vote. (Sinclair won 37% of the vote.)

EPIC
Enhanced-Performance Implanted CMOS. Seems to be a TI tm for CMOS.

EPIC
Erosion Productivity Impact Calculator. A mechanistic crop simulation model. There was a cluster of articles using the EPIC model in the April 15, 1992 issue (vol. 59, nos. 1-2) of the journal Agricultural and Forest Meteorology.

EPIC
European Photon Imaging Camera. Oooh! Photons! Write it up! Give me a thousand column-inches!

epicondylitis

EPICS
Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System. It's a widely-used ``set of software tools and applications which provide a software infrastructure for use in building distributed control systems to operate devices such as particle accelerators, large experiments and major telescopes. Such distributed control systems typically comprise tens or even hundreds of computers, networked together to allow communication between them and to provide control and feedback of the various parts of the device from a central control room, or even remotely over the internet.''

``EPICS uses Client/Server and Publish/Subscribe techniques to communicate between the various computers. Most servers (called Input/Output Controllers or IOCs) perform real-world I/O and local control tasks, and publish this information to clients using the Channel Access (CA) network protocol. CA is specially designed for the kind of high bandwidth, soft real-time networking applications that EPICS is used for, and is one reason why it can be used to build a control system comprising hundreds of computers.''

EPIK
English Program In Korea. Specific name of an EFL program (mostly for primary and secondary schools) run by the Center for In-service Education at Korea National University of Education. It's a lot like the army: you're employed by the national government, which provides housing (though this is also common for foreigners who work for a private hagwon); after a brief period of basic training (10 days), you are ordered out to a posting (you're allowed to state a geographic preference that KNUE is allowed to take into consideration); you get special hardship pay (100k KRW/mo.) for working in an outlying province or a rural area, and there are special incentives for re-upping after each one-year tour of duty. Actually, what it's most like is a civil service with foreign employees -- in many countries, superior officers of the civil service post lower-ranking employees to different areas as they deem appropriate (or vindictive, as the case may be).

epinephrine
The name given to artificially synthesized adrenaline. The name epinephrine was constructed as a Greekish calque of the Latinate adrenaline. Both imply an alkaloid (typical sense of -ine) originating in glands adjacent to (ad-, epi-) the kidneys (renes, nephrós).

  H---O           O---H
       \         /
        \       /
         C-----C
        /  ___  \
       /  /   \  \
  H---C  (     )  C---H
       \  \___/  /
        \       /
         C-----C     O---H
        /       \   /
       /         \ /
      H           C     H
                 / \   /
                /   \ /
               H     C
                    / \
                   /   \ 
              H---N     H
                  |
                  |
                  CH
                    3

For comparison, here's ephedrine. The linked entry also goes into excessive detail (for your convenience, of course) on the etymologies of these similar names.

      H           H
       \         /
        \       /
         C-----C
        /  ___  \
       /  /   \  \
  H---C  (     )  C---H
       \  \___/  /
        \       /
         C-----C     O---H
        /       \   /
       /         \ /
      H           C     H
                 / \   /
                /   \ /
               H     C
                    / \
                   /   \ 
              H---N     CH
                  |       3
                  |
                  CH
                    3

Obviously, both of the molecules above are optically active. If you think I'm going to try to represent the stereoisometry, you must be doing drugs.

EPIP
Electrons Per Incident Phonon. A kind of quantum efficiency or yield for photoemission.

EPIRB
Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon.

EPK
Electronic Press Kit. An hour or so of short soundbytes of actors answering cream-puff questions and clips from the movie or TV show being p -- promoted.

EPL
English as Primary Language.

EPL
English Premier League. Officially, the title is Barclays Premier League. Barclays is the ``Official Title Sponsor.'' If they want me to call it that, they're going to have to sponsor me directly. It's typically referred to as ``the Premier League'' or ``the Premiership.'' EPL is distinctly a minority usage; it occurs in reporting by scattered foreign sports news sources like the Washington Times, the Australian Associated Press, the Malay Mail, Bernama (``The Malaysian National News Agency''), The Standard (Hong Kong), This Day (Nigeria), and the South Wales Echo. (Well, it is foreign. Wales isn't English, see?) It stands to reason: you insert the locative where it's less likely to be understood implicitly. I can't explain why EPL has occurred in reporting in The Star (Sheffield). A reporter from elsewhere, perhaps.

EPL
English Proficiency Level.

EPLD
Erasable Programmable Logic Device. A PLD programmed using EPROM switching arrays. These come in ceramic packages. Essentially the same PLD's are available in cheaper windowless plastic packages, in which the same floating-gate can be programmed only once. These are called one-time programmable(s) (OTP).

[column]

E Pluribus Unum
Latin: `From Many One.' UB is having a series of conferences on diversity by that name. The next one is E Pluribus Unum II.

EPM
Electron Probe Microanalysis.

EPM
Empirical Pseudopotential Method.

EPMA
Electron Probe MicroAnalysis. Same as EDX. Visit this description by Christopher Walker.

EPO
ErythroPOietin. A glycoprotein secreted by the kidneys that stimulates the production of red blood cells. The name is derived from the earlier term erythropoiesis for production of red blood cells (erythrocytes, from Greek roots for `red' and `cell'), using the Greek root poíêsis (`creation'). EPO was one of the hematopoietic cytokines whose genes were cloned and which became available from many labs in the mid-1980's. It was originally used to treat anemias, but also quickly came to be used to enhance performance in endurance-sport competitions. (People who enhance their performance in some other way than by taking EPO probably regard EPO-doping as a form of cheating.) In this application, it is normally given in injections over a 6- to 8-week period. The synthetic hormone is easy enough to detect in blood tests, but tricky to distinguish from the endogenous natural version. It is possible, even too easy, to overdo EPO-doping, because it ultimately makes blood viscous. Between 1987 and 1990, 20 Belgian and Dutch bicycle racers not apparently in poor cardiac health died from nocturnal heart attacks.

EPO
European Patent Office Others here.

eponym
Traditionally, an eponym is a person whose name is (at least supposed to be) the basis of the name of a thing. Romulus is the eponym of Rome, Amerigo Vespucci, God help us, is the eponym of America. Notice that conventional usage makes the person, and not the person's name, the eponym. That sounds a bit jarring etymologically, but eponymist (attested around 1860) didn't catch on, or at least didn't stay caught on. Having the term refer to the person rather than the name does offer some more streamlined constructions, allowing us to say, for example, that the late Sam Walton is (not normally ``was'') the eponym of Walmart.

Note that eponymus is not the adjective eponymous but rather the Latinized version of the Greek noun epónym (which meant `eponym'). It seems to me that one encounters the adjective eponymous most often in connection with literature: an eponymous story is one named after one of its characters. This usage doesn't make clear whether the eponym is the source of the name or the thing named, so one can expect many people to get the relationship backwards.

An eponym is a name-giver; another kind of name-giver (or usually name-giving) is antonomasia. In antonomasia the name of an exemplar (positive, or negative, or neither) is given to similar entities. An eponym is given to one or many different entities that are usually not similar to the eponym but rather the creation or gift of the eponym.

eponymism
The practice of accounting for names (esp. places and nations) by positing prehistoric eponyms. If one is accounting for belief in a god, then the same practice is called euhemerism.

Eponyms
There's an online biographical dictionary of medical eponyms at <whonamedit.com>. That's fortunate, because our eponyms entry hasn't caught fire the way our Nomenclature is destiny entry has.
Saint Audrey (d. 679)
Saint Etheldreda (Æthelthryth, if you can pronounce it). Known more pronounceably as Saint Audrey. Her problems probably began with the fact that her father was named Anna. When you're king of East Anglia, I guess anything goes. [For sad confirmation of this statement, see random nonsense in the Stark Effect entry.]

The confused daughter, Ætheltherrrrrr ... Audrey, was married for three years but claimed the marriage was never consummated. That guy died. Probably of embarrassment. Then she married Ecgfrith [sic], and refused to consummate the marriage, but instead entered a double monastery founded by her aunt Æbbe. A double monastery is a place to which men and women can retreat to avoid each other together. This in itself is a bit like marrying and then joining a monastery.

I think maybe she was just afraid that with a name like Ecgfrith, her second husband, who became king of Northumbria, would continue for another generation the cycle of nomenclatural violence.

Eventually, she founded her own double monastery on the island of Ely and became abbess there. After she died the monastery held an annual ``Saint Audrey's Fair,'' where they sold low-quality lace neckties (please visit the completely irrelevant bowtie entry).

It was said that in her youth, Audrey had liked fancy necklaces. It was also said that it was her habit of wearing fancy necklaces that led to the throat tumor that killed her. This was in the days before modern medical diagnosis. This was also in the days before modern advertising. Then again, I don't know -- maybe there was an insinuation here that you should wear really cheap neckwear if you don't want to die of a throat tumor. Or maybe Audrey liked fancy neckwear because it hid an ugly tumor that eventually killed her. All this is lost to history. Maybe you probably think I'm making all this stuff up. Just the speculations.

This shlock lace they used to sell was called Saint Audrey's lace, or perhaps Saint Audrey lace (using the attributive noun rather than the possessive form), and became shortened in speech to 't Audrey lace. Eventually, 't Audrey was taken as a general modifier, becoming our word tawdry.

Lázló J. Biro and Georg (György) Biro. I'm not sure why one brother's name is normally given in German.
Invented the ball-point pen in 1938. Eponymous because in Argentina (.ar) at least, one word for ball-point pen (negligible further information at this entry) is birome, presumably from an old trademark.

Thomas Bowdler
Published The Family Shakespeare in 1818, containing nothing ``unfit to be read by a gentleman in the company of ladies.'' Verballhornung. performed a similar service, if that's what you'd call it, for German literature.

Charles Cunningham Boycott (1832-1897)
As reeve for property of Lord Erne in County Mayo, he was one of the first targets (in 1880) of a project that Charles Parnell originally called ``social ostracism.''

Louis Braille (1809.01.04-1852)
Blind from the age of three. He invented his raised-dots system in 1829. Because French doesn't use the letter w, the systematic progression of dot patterns goes smoothly from u and v to x, and the w has an unexpected pattern.

James Thomas Brudenell, seventh earl of Cardigan (1797-1868)
The British general who led the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean war. They should have named some kind of pointless, misguided bloodletting for him, but there's competition for that, so he got a sweater.

[column]

Caius Iulius Caesar
Softened up the republican form of government of republic, so that his successors became dictators in all but name, and Caesar came to mean `emperor.' The word was borrowed by German in close to its original pronunciation (Kaiser). In the Russian etymon (Tsar), the /k/ sound of the ``c'' has evolved into the /ts/ of earlier vulgar-Latin pronunciation.

Bartolomeo Eustachi (1510-1574)
Discoverer of the eustachian tube. Because the eustachian tube is soft, it tends to function as a valve. It happens to work as a one-way valve, releasing pressure in the middle ear (since the air there has nowhere else to go, it expands into the eustachian tube and opens it up. When pressure in the middle ear is low, however, there is no complementary mechanism to force open eustachian tube and pressurize the ear. As a result, the ear drum (tympanum) bows inward and hurts. That's why descent in aircraft can be much more painful than ascent. Use [dive flag] the Valsalva or Frenzel maneuvers, described at this diving page on barotrauma.

It has been suggested that news of this tube, first published in 1564, gave Shakespeare the idea of the poison-in-the-ear murder method in ``Hamlet'' (first performed no later than 1602).

Gabriele Falloppio (1523-1562)
He discovered the human oviduct, which conducts eggs from the ovary to the uterus. He called it a tuba, meaning trumpet, which correctly suggests the funnel shape of this extension from the ovary (there are two, one for each ovary). However, the sense of the word was misconstrued, and it came to be called the aquaeductus Fallopii and now Fallopian tube. Fallopian tuba would be closer (and more colorful). He often has the honor of being named in lower case.

He made a number of other contributions to anatomy, mostly human. (He did some lion dissections and disproved Aristotle's contention that lion bones have no marrow. Great: it took two millennia to get that far.)

Joseph Ignace Guillotin (1738-1814)
As a deputy in the Estates General, he proposed mechanized decapitation to the Constituent Assembly in 1789. He promoted it as fast and therefore humane. It was adopted in 1791, in time for the bloodbath. It was fast and therefore efficient. Similar equipment had been used previously in Scotland, Germany and Italy, but nowhere so much. Here's some more extensive information. There's an article here on capital punishment, transcribed from the Catholic Encyclopedia, that contains some information on guillotines. [One might expect this item, because it is transcribed from a text not on the notoriously inaccurate internet, to be a bit more accurate. I really can't judge for the guillotine data, but the comments on capital punishment among Jews in this same article is somewhat confused for being based only on texts canonical to Christians, and ignoring the well-known legal material contained in the Talmud.] (Note also that Biblical names are apparently in Douay transliteration, which some may find unfamiliar. Not exactly a surprise.)

The feminizing e was reportedly added, incidentally, to make it rhyme with machine. Is this supposed to mean that it would have been too flip to make it rhyme with machin (`gadget')? More likely both -ne's just helped the scansion. Since I haven't heard any of these songs, I couldn't say whether the added e on Guillotin just makes the in sound to rhyme, or whether, as the French do in many songs, they pronounce the final e as well.

Arnold Henri Guyot (1807-1884)
Swiss-born American geologist and geographer. A guyot is a submarine mountain with a flat top -- an island manqué, or a failed island.

Joseph Aloysius Hansom (1803-1882)
Invented the ``Patent Safety Cab'' in 1934. These came to be called Hansom cabs or occasionally just hansoms. He was also an architect.

Yaakov ben Isaac
As this patriarch's name evolved into Modern English, the initial /j/ (``wye'') sound evolved into the English ``J.'' (For Jacob, son of Isaac.) In some other languages, however, the initial sound did not undergo a shift, but the /k/ became vocalized into /g/ or (the more glottal) /[gamma]/. Thus, we have the Spanish town name Santiago (Saint Jacob) and Shakespeare's Italian villain Iago. Crossword puzzles often pretend that ``Iago,'' by metonymy, now means villain. I pretend the same thing, allowing me to place entry here.

A common nickname for people named Santiago is Chago. Just a phonetic skip and a jump from Iago and Chago is Diego. This was deformed into Dago in English, a derogatory word for a Spaniard, Portuguese or Italian.

Ancel Benjamin Keys
K rations named after him. (Yeah, it's a marginal case of eponymy.)

Mikhael Timofievitch Kalashnikov (b. 1919)
The gun is officially called the AK-47. Both his late wife and his gun were named Kalashnikova. It was his baby -- I don't know why they didn't call it Kalashnikovna.

John Loudon McAdam (1756-1836)
Pioneered improvements in road construction. Remade British roads using crushed stone bound with gravel, and raised with a crown (road center higher) for improved drainage. The `mac' in `tarmac' is from his name. `Tarmac' was originally a trademark kind of tarmacadam (crushed stone and gravel with tar binder). Maybe you should visit The World Famous ASPHALT MUSEUM.

Charles Macintosh (1766-1843)
Patented in 1823 a method of waterproofing garments announced by James Syme (1799-1870), after which Syme regularly gave lectures on clinical surgery. I don't have all the details on the situation, but it may have to do with the fact that outside the US, patents are issued to whoever applies first. Then again, maybe they were friends. Macintosh developed the method further, and coats so treated came to be called mac[k]intoshes.

Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)
Aw, you already know the story.

But do you know the dénouement? In order to prevent American soldiers (doughboys) from contracting stomach illness from unpasteurized milk, in WWI France, officers warned the troops not to drink the local milk. One soldier who explained his refusal of milk profered by one farmer found that he was speaking to a grandson of Louis Pasteur. (I heard this story very long ago, so it might be beer that the soldier refused. This strikes me as implausible.)

The AEF entry might be of some related interest. Proceeding on an osculating tangent, we note that Walter Matthau served in France during WWII (in a unit commanded by Jimmy Stewart). Matthau had a couple of years of high school French, so he was the interpreter. One day, when they were stationed near Lille, he walked into a place that seemed to be open for business, to buy a meal. [I guess K-rations didn't cut it. K ration is almost an eponym itself.] He was told that they didn't serve food to Americans, but he could buy a beer.

[Observe that René Magritte (1898-1967) was born in Belgium, and Max Ernst (1891-1976) near Cologne. Could we have a surrealist triangle here?]

So Walter bought a beer and a pretty young person approached and asked if he would buy her a beer. Walter asked if she was thirsty. This is the kind of fool persiflage you engage in if you spent too much valuable high school time repeating La plume de ma tante and similar rubbish. When she invited him to sleep with her, he said `perhaps' (``all this in French,'' as Walter pointed out to Jay Leno). I admire the courage of Walter Matthau in revealing such profound imbecility to a national audience. However, as he had failed to note upon entering, this was a brothel, so the pretty person did not take offense.

As a flustered Jay Leno pointed out, the fastidiousness of the establishment in not serving food to American soldiers was puzzling. Perhaps Walter should have taken a third year of high school French.

Henry Shrapnel (1761-1842)
English artillery officer; inspector of artillery from 1804. Invented the shrapnel shell.

During the Great War (WWI), my grandfather (an officer of the Kaiser's army) was strafed while taking a nap. His ration book was tucked in his cap, which he was using for a pillow. After the attack, his ration book was in tatters.

Éttienne de Silhouette (1709-1767)
As French Finance Minister in 1759, Silhouette attempted to stanch the hemorrhage of the royal budget by curtailing the lavish spending of the court. For his trouble, he got opprobrium and the boot. By a kind of antonomasia, his name, associated with parsimony, was given to a kind of featureless black outline-drawing notable principally for cheapness.

For another person whose name became associated with cheapness, vide Audrey supra. For an earlier French Finance Minister who also contributed to the ultimately (1789) fruitless efforts to stabilize royal finances, see Bullion. It may be their failure that was chiefly responsible for making an eponym of Guillotin.

Alessandro Volta
Discovered the electrochemical cell. He's got a regular entry elsewhere in the glossary, mostly about coincidental (i.e., noneponymous) occurences of ``Volta.''

EPOS
Electronic Point-Of-Sale.

epoxy
A low-molecular-weight organic liquid resin containing epoxide groups. An epoxide group is a three-membered ring of two carbons and one oxygen (obviously, the group attaches via one of the carbons). Epoxy glue comes in two tubes. One is the resin in monomer form, probably with a solvent to improve flow properties and reaction speed, and a curing agent such as DETA (typically also in solution). Instructions call for the two to be mixed. When this is done, the curing agent (the polymerizer) rects with the oxygen to open the epoxide groups and produce cross-links between different monomers.

EPP
Enhanced Parallel (data communication) Port.

EPR
Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen. Authors of an article on the ``reality'' of conjugate variables in quantum mechanics.

EPR
Ejército Popular Revolucionario. Mexican Revolutionary Popular Army, that made its first appearance in Spring 1996.

EPR
Electron Paramagnetic Resonance -- same as ESR.

Here's some instructional material from Virginia Tech.

A web resource that keeps a list of links to some EPR sites is the EPR/ENDOR Research Group at Northwestern University.

A web resource concerned with spectrum databases is in Bristol.

The NIEHS provides a Spin Trap Database.

EPR
Ethylene Propylene (copolymer) Rubber. When you consider another EPR, as well as XPS and XPS, you begin to think there is some collusion between polymer chemists and spectroscopists. There is, but it's such a tightly held secret that not even the conspirators are aware of its existence.

EPRI
Electric Power Research Institute. In Palo Alto.

e-Print archive
At <http://arXiv.org/>. Has been hosted by LANL, now to be hosted by Cornell University.

EPROM
Erasable Programmable ROM. This term is used instead of RAM (for RWM) to indicate that the write process is more involved than the read process. Except in EEPROM's and Flash PROM's, erasure usually involves exposure to UV light. (Hence the alternate name UVEPROM). There are special boxes for this, but maybe you should tell your boss that if he wants the project done faster, he should send you to the Caribbean, where the bright sun speeds the erase stage. The UV light excites electrons out of the electronically isolated floating gates. A decade without UV will begin to do the same thing.

EPS
Earnings Per Share.

EPS
Electrical Power System[s].

eps, EPS
Encapsulated PostScript.

EPS
Eumetsat Polar System.

EPS
European Physical Society; there're two servers-- Lausanne and Amsterdam, with somewhat different contents.

EPS
Expandable PolyStyrene. Also, ironically as it must seem to some EPS members, this is also written (XPS). (cf. XPS).

EPSCS
Enhanced Private Switch-Controlled System.

EPSDT
Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic, and Treatment Services.

EPSDU
Experimental Process System Development Unit.

EPSF
Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) {Format | File}.

EPSI
Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) Interchange.

EPSRC
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. One of the UK's seven research councils. The research councils report to the Office of Science and Technology within the Department of Trade and Industry.

EPVA
Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association, ``a non-profit organization dedicated to serving the needs of spinal cord injured veterans residing primarily in New York, New Jersey, Eastern Pennsylvania and Connecticut.''

EPW
Enemy Prisoner of War.

EP2DS
Electronic Properties of Two-Dimensional Systems. In 1997, #12 is in Tokyo. Abstract receipt deadline May 16, 1997.

EQ
Encephalization Quotient. A measure of brain size normalized to body size in such a way that an EQ of 1 implies a brain size consistent with the average of relevant comparison animals of the same size. Precisely, it is
              log[ brain mass ]
    EQ == N * ----------------- ,
              log[ body mass ]
where N is chosen so = 1.

Don't ask which logarithm. It doesn't matter, because

             log b
	        c
    log b =  -----
       a     log a
                c
for any positive a, b and c.

However, units do matter; so long as the unit you use is always smaller than the smallest brain mass, the EQ is positive and changing units does not change the ordering of EQ values, but magnitudes of EQ differences are essentially meaningless.

Used by Harry J. Jerison: ``Issues in Brain Evolution,'' in R. Dawkins & M. Ridley, eds. Oxford Surveys in Evolutionary Biology, 2, pp. 102-134 (1985).

EQ
No expansion, precisely. The term ``emotional intelligence,' coined in 1990 by Peter Salovey and John Mayer, is often abbreviated this way to indicate some parallel with IQ. Before 1990, EQ stood for Educational Quotient.

The Utne reader also calls it E-IQ and offers to compute yours. (No thanks, I just don't feel good about this.)

eq.
EQuation.

EQEC
European Quantum Electronics Conference. Sponsored by the OSA.

EQL
EQuaL[s].

EQL
Equipment Qualification List.

EQL
EQuity Liability.

eqn.
EQuatioN.

EQR
The Electronic Industries Quality Registry.

[column]

E.Q.R.
EQues Romanus. Roman cavalryman -- specifically a knight, member of a distinct order in the Roman commonwealth, between the senate and the plebs.

Equ
Equuleus. Official IAU abbreviation for the constellation.

equally as
This collocation of words rarely occurs in the speech or writing of any person sensitive to English. It is a graceless substitute for the following:
  1. as
  2. just as
  3. equally [sometimes in a different construction]

Confusion among these may have given rise to the ugly combination that is the head term of this entry.

To take a typical example (do not say this):

* The new politicians are equally as corrupt as the old politicians.

Instead, prefer any of the following:

The new politicians are as corrupt as the old politicians.
The new politicians are just as corrupt as the old politicians.
The new politicians and the old politicians are equally corrupt.

Yes, that's prescriptive. And while you're at it, elide one of the politicians.

equipments
A solecism. The word equipment is uncountable in English. I can't recall any instance where a native speaker of English ever found a good reason to use it countably. (Cf. informations.) Equipment is approximately equivalent to gear -- it is tools, typically for a common, understood purpose. Not that you asked, but I've also never encountered ``equipment'' used as the name of the action of equipping.

EQW
Emitter Quantum Well. In an HBT, a quantum well between emitter and base.

(Click here for top) Previous section: E&M (top) to ENYOEHC (bottom)

Next section: ER (top) to Es war einmal (bottom)

[ Thumb tabs and search tool] [ SBF Homepage ]

























If your browser has brought you directly to this message, you have followed an outdated link. Click here now and we will try to direct you to the appropriate file.





















Space above was intentionally left free of glossary definitions so that links to bottom of document can appear at the top of the screen display.

© Alfred M. Kriman 1995-2011 (c)