[TML] Motivational Poster of the Day

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 10/9/07 2:10 PM, "Patrik Holmstrom" wrote:

> On 10/9/07, Leslie Bates <lesbates_traveller at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Okay, here's another thought. Apart from SF tradition,
>> why call the heavier man portable laser weapon a laser
>> rifle? We're not imparting a spin to a stream of
>> photons.
>> 
>> Why not call it a laser musket?
> 
> Mostly because the English language doesn't have a convenient word in
> common usage for a 'longarm' like the other Germanic languages do
> (German 'gewehr, Swedish 'gev?r', et cetera). If laser weapons
> initially tends to be bulky I can see 'laser weapon', 'laser gun' (by
> default to the horror of the USMC) or some acronym possibly catching
> on. 'Laser musket' is probably not a good bet since it's archaic and
> specific to smoothbore longarms.

I think it could be argued that standard (American) English usage is that
"rifle" *is* the generic term for "longarm".  Note, I don't say technically
accurate, just standard usage.

The big issue here is that both rifles & muskets fling a hunk of metal thru
a cylinder.  Laser guns don't.  Properly, it should have it's own word, but
people tend to be lazy about such things.  It looks like a rifle, so we call
it one.  And the marketers have reason to stick with the familiar.

People often refer to "photocopier" as "Xerox" no matter what brand.  It's
not accurate, but it's 2 syllables instead of 5, and it was the 1st, so
everybody knows it.  I could see the same with laser guns, the 1st becoming
a generic name, altho the purists and that company would fight it.