Expropriate

On the other hand, misappropriation (i.e. jokes) can increase the educational power of words. In Filthy English, Peter Silverton tells a story about his tutor trying to teach his class the functions of the hypothalmus in the brain. "It controls the four f's. Which are? Feeding, flight, fight, and... sexual behaviour." In this case the suggestion of a taboo word in a classroom makes it all the more memorable.

In biology, some of the easiest taxonomic classifications to remember are the ones that play on a common name or word. If I told you there was a genus of slime-mold beetle called Agathidium, I can imagine you would simply nod your head and agree, and promptly forget the word. But if I told you that there were species in this genus called bushi, cheneyi, rumsfeldi, and vaderi, named respectively after Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Darth Vader, I believe you would be more likely to remember them.

And Miller and Wheeler, the biologists responsible for Agathidium bushi, are far from the only ones who do this. The biologist Erwin called a genus of beetle Agra so that he had a whole order of puns to use: phobia, vation, cadabra. Marsh did the same with the genus braconid Heerz: lukenatcha, tooya...

Taxonomists who play with names like that may have been doing so with mischeivous intentions, but they inadvertently make the academic nature of their work more accessible to laymen. As Richard Fortey has pointed out, taxonomy by nature appeals to a certain sort of mind.

Misappropriation of words is all very amusing, a bit like the antiques restorer who adds dirty imagery into china paintings. You could call it innappropriate if you are very conservative about the correct use of language. But much more wonderful and amusing is when it happens by accident. Or when it is expropriated, so that the words of someone else (ancestors?) become seemingly meaningless names. Unlike finding two meanings for a word, you find two words with one meaning, like a little butter spread on too much bread.

There's a great name for this unnessesary use of extra words: it's called a pleonasm, which sounds to me like a steam-punk engine the belches out pointless strings of words. From the Latin 'pleonasmus', from the Greek 'pleíōn' meaning 'more', from the Indo-European 'pelǝ-' meaning 'full'. It seems that the meaning of this word over-flowed.

The name Rock of Gibralter refers specifically to (surprise, surprise) the giant rock in the middle of the peninsular known as Gibralter; but, what does Gibralter mean? The word is a heavily palatized form of the Arabic name for the island, Jabal Tariq. Tariq is a person, and Jabal is 'rock of'. If Tariq was still alive, perhaps he would be honoured to know the mountain has been named after him, twice!

But we all know that English speakers are particularly good at doing this. The first example that jumps to mind is the River Avon. Close on it's heels are the River Tyne, and the Humber Rivers in Canada. 'Avon', 'tyne' and 'humber' are all derived from proto-Celtic words for water flows.

If I were to tell you that an '-ey' on the end of word is an old Saxon suffix meaning 'island' would you be able to spot the redundant island names up north?

My personal favourite mountain names are the trio of mountains called Pinnacle Peak (Arizona), Mount Pinnacle (Virginia), and the beautifully understated Hill Mountain (Wales). Though redundant names for mountains and rivers seem to be fairly common (Loch Lochy, Laguna Lake, Lagos Lagoon, Pendle Hill, Summit Peak, Table Mesa), they are fairly understandable as original meanings become obscured in an evolving language.

Much more confusing is the continuous use of redundant phrases and collocations. Such as those redundant pairings in legal terminology that were left over from the the Norman conquest of Britain. It had been necessary for terms to be paired in French and English because not everyone spoke French. Then we find ourselves left with phrases such as 'aid and abet', and 'cease and desist'.

There's a list of them here that makes for fairly entertaining reading. When you consider that people qualify an acronym with a word from the acronym, it does make you wonder why bother using one word when two will double the quality.