08.20.08
If Pluto had been bigger than Plato, one of them would still be a planet
The following represents why I love words, and why I love true word people:
Nancy over at the Fritinancy blog snarked yesterday about a recent press release using the phrase “plutonic relationships” when more than a few of us know that the subject was actually “platonic relationships.”
Nancy’s sharp introduction to the malapropism was . . .
If Men Are from Mars … and women are from Venus, are some relationships from Pluto?
Ensuing comment from “WIIIAI” from the Whatever It Is, I’m Against It blog:
Evidently many people wish to hook up with someone who looks like a cartoon dog, or possibly someone who is small and icy, with an eccentric orbit, who thinks they’re a planetary celestial body, but really aren’t.
Ensuing comment from “Q. Pheevr” from the A Roguish Chrestomathy blog:
The thesis expressed in [Nancy’s] quotation from Blubet, with its reference to “a hidden sexual desire or chemistry that secretly sparks between them,” actually resonates rather nicely with the OED’s definition of the geological sense of the word ‘plutonic’: “Pertaining to or involving the action of intense heat at great depths upon the rocks forming the earth’s crust; igneous.”
Ensuing comment from yours truly who non-humbly had to jump into the fray, herein semi-humbly presented:
Further to Q. Pheevr’s point, I suspect that “plutonic” relationships may actually source back to “plutonium” and not “pluto” (neither former planet nor dog). My evidence is that like plutonium, platonic relationships have half lives.
All this can be summed up as a matter of preference in these matters of love, of course: You say pla-tato, I say plu-tuto; let’s call the whole thing off.
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