A curiosity--how many people knew that ASCII meant "those without
shadows"?
ascian \ASH-uhn or ASH-ee-uhn\ (noun)
: one that has no shadow; specifically : an inhabitant of
the torrid zone where the sun is vertical at noon twice a
year
Example sentence:
"They are mysterious to me, these ascians," said Balrone,
"for twice each year, at the very instant of noon on the
equinoxes, their shadows vanish, and they appear to me to be
enchanted."
Did you know?
When 17th-century British author and philosopher Nathanael
Carpenter wrote a two-volume _Geography_ in 1625, he
occasionally indulged his poetic persona, including within
the pages of that volume some original verses. But it was no
mere flight of fancy that prompted him to call the
inhabitants of equatorial lands "ascii." He surely knew that
the word (which is the plural of "ascius") came from a
Latin term for "those without shadows" (it traces from the
Greek "a-," indicating absence, plus "skia," meaning
"shadow"). He also must have known that there was nothing
mystical about such shadowlessness. At the spring and fall
equinoxes at the equator, the sun is, for a few moments,
directly overhead, and nothing below casts a shadow during
that time.
-- business: medavis2@us.ibm.com, mark@unicode.org personal: mark@macchiato.com, http://www.macchiato.com --
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