Complex Numbers

Navy

Navy
an entry for "Journalistic Intentions"  [18+]

Of all the weird, strange, or just plain incomprehensible names for colors, "navy" stands out as one that almost makes actual sense... from a certain point of view. Under certain ideal conditions, the ocean appears that deep, dark blue color, for reasons I can't be arsed to go into right now but you're right; it does involve physics.

But our word, navy, comes from a Latin word that referred more to ships than the ocean. Still, you know, you can't have a ship without something to float it in. Which reminds me that another word from the Latin navis is navigate, whose meaning should be limited to finding one's way around on a body of water. But, naturally, it's not, because we're pretty good at making new meanings for old words, and new words for old meanings.

Take, for example, space. Thanks to years and years of science fiction, we know what a vessel that carries things around in space is: a spaceship. And again, that makes sense from a certain point of view. But the harsh reality is that if we do get to the point where we have spacecraft transporting people or things around out there, the vessels will have far more in common with a submarine than they do with a ship. And, by naval convention, submarines are always boats, not ships.

"Spaceboat" just doesn't have the same ring to it, though, does it?

Don't ask me to define the difference between boats and ships further. My dad was a sailor, and I never fully understood the distinction he made, when he bothered to make one. Near as I can tell, a boat goes out from port or ship and returns to the same port or ship, while a ship carries cargo and/or passengers from one port to another (hence the verb "to ship," which also refers to sending parcels by road or rail). But by that definition, a ferryboat should be a ship, but it's not (I sidestep this by calling it a "ferry"). A ship can carry a boat, but a boat can't carry a ship, though a tugboat can push a ship, despite "tug" having the connotation of "pull."

Anyway. The other thing we get from science fiction is the use, in spaceships, of a "navigator," like on the original Enterprise. Properly, this should be "astrogator," but that would just lead to alligator puns (though some SF does use this term), so probably best to repurpose the word. And don't get me started on the etymology of "bridge," as in a spaceship's control room, which takes its origin from Mississippi River steamboats... dammit, I said don't get me started.

Still, sometimes it bugs me that landlubber GPS uses "navigation." I mean, we want fewer people not paying attention and driving their cars into lakes, right? But again, there's not much to choose from in terms of better words. "Orienteering" is the process of finding one's way around on land, but that doesn't really work in cars or trucks, does it? So we're stuck with navigation.

But even that makes more sense than calling a web browser a "navigator." Which you don't see much these days in English, but one early web browser was Netscape Navigator. And the French word for browser is "navigateur." This wouldn't bother me so much if the defining metaphor of the Internet weren't a spiderweb, rather than an ocean.

You could say all the contradictions give me the blues.