Today, browsing in Bertrand Russell's _Nightmares of Eminent Persons_, I noted that in "The Mathematician's Nightmare" the mathematician was a Professor Squarepunt. That reminded me of an anecdote that surfaced in my early researches on Poincare (how the hell do you put accents in a comment?): Little Henri's precocious mathematical interests included wondering about his family name. How, he asked, could a point, with no extension in space, have a shape, such as square? His father explained: The name meant poing-carre, not point-carre; their ancestor had a square *fist*. No doubt Russell was twitting Poincare, tho the pun "punt" seems rather feeble.
According to Quine (_Quiddities_ s.v. Language Reform), the g in "poing" was a pedantic 16th-century insertion. That brings the spelling closer.
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Date: 2014-07-14 01:23 am (UTC)According to Quine (_Quiddities_ s.v. Language Reform), the g in "poing" was a pedantic 16th-century insertion. That brings the spelling closer.