SHANGRALA'S
MISNAMED
MISFITS!
A misnomer is something misnamed. The English language sure has plenty of
these misfits! Clarity and efficiency are not at the heart of each term in
the English language. Some of these terms coined breed more confusion than
understanding. Whoever named these must have seriously run out of
imagination! These aren't toys, but they sure are misfits!
Here Are Some Of The WORST Names. Enjoy! :)
Funny Bone:
You know that feeling you get when you accidentally hit the back of your elbow?
That spot is called the funny bone, even though the intense, unpleasant sensation is
not funny, nor is it triggered by a bone. The pain is caused by the ulnar nerve
that runs along the humerus bone - and not the bone itself. Hence, the connections
to humor and bones are tangential at best.
The Oxford English Dictionary suggests the name funny bone stems from the
similarity of humerus and humorous. So, this term was born as a result of
confusion upon confusion upon confusion.
Black Pudding:
It's easy to imagine a delicious chocolate dessert with this name,
but don't let the name lead you astray. This Irish dish is no dessert.
It's a type of blood sausage made of a mixture of pigs' blood, lard,
ground oatmeal, and spices stuffed inside a casing. The dish is often
served as part of the famous English breakfast.
You'll also find other
kinds of sausage sold under the name pudding across the UK and Ireland,
such as white pudding or red pudding. So the next time you're in these parts
of the world, double-check that the dessert you think you ordered is, in
fact, not a type of blood sausage.
Red Panda:
Just like their monochromatic namesake, red pandas are cute, fluffy and adorable,
and they live on trees in central China. They are also known to munch on
bamboo, at times... thus the roots of this misnamed misfit!
That being said, these arboreal mammals are more closely related to raccoons
than they are to panda bears. Like raccoons, red pandas are omnivores. Also,
they have striped bushy tails and a 'mask' around their eyes. All of these
characteristics will help you associate red pandas with their real relatives
in the Mustelidae family, among which are raccoons, weasels, and skunks.
Black Box:
Whenever we hear of a terrible plane crash or malfunctions on airplanes, the
term black box is inadvertently brought up. As you may know, this is a
recording device installed on every aircraft. The black box collects all
sorts of important data about the airplane, and it is constructed in a way
that makes it very difficult to destroy. This makes the recorded information
accessible to experts and authorities whenever required.
The confusing part is that these 'black' boxes are not black at all. They are
painted in a bright orange color, which makes them easier to find.
French Toast:
Here is another culinary misfit! What is the name of a breakfast dish made
of a slice of bread dipped in a mixture of egg and milk and fried? We usually
call it French toast, but recipes from the past refer to this very dish as
Spanish toast or even German toast. And in France, people call this dish
'pain perdu', meaning 'lost bread.' So, where is this breakfast really from?
No one knows the precise origins of French toast, but one thing is certain:
there's nothing French in this delicious and simple breakfast. In fact, the
recipe seems to be older than the foundation of France itself. Historians found
recipes for 'French toast' that go back to the Middle Ages. Meanwhile, the first
recipe books that start referring to this dish as French toast are published much
later - around the 1870s.
Dinosaur:
Now here's one scientific misnamed misfit that continues spreading misinformation
everywhere - from kindergartens and crossword puzzles to universities. The term
dinosaur consists of two Greek words: deinos meaning 'terrible' and sauros, or
'lizard'. Still, these 'terrible lizards' that once ruled the planet have very
little in common with modern reptiles.
Paleontologists point out that dinos are more closely related to modern birds
than lizards. Unfortunately, it's probably too late to rename these ancient
animals now.
Greenland:
Here's a question that emphasizes the absurdity of this toponym. Which of these
two countries is greener - Iceland or Greenland? Logic and common sense won't
help you deduce the answer to this one, as of the two, Iceland is much greener.
Despite its name, Greenland is almost completely covered by ice.
The Greenland Ice Sheet takes up a whopping 1.7 million square kilometers of ice
- 80% of the country's total area.
Starfish and Jellyfish:
Let's dive into the fascinating world of marine misfits! We're sure you're aware
that seahorses are not related to horses, and sea cucumbers are not a kind of
cucumber. The two animals that cause the most confusion among kids and adults
alike are starfish and jellyfish. Neither of the two is a type of fish. As a
matter of fact, both of these animals are more distantly related to fish than
humans.
Starfish are echinoderms - invertebrates related to sea urchins and sea cucumbers.
Jellyfish, meanwhile, belong to an even more ancient animal phylum called
cnidarians. These gelatinous and often poisonous animals are relatives of corals,
sea anemones, and sea fans.
Hawaiian Pizza:
We've reached one of the most divisive topics in modern culture - whether or not
putting pineapple on pizza is a good idea. If you belong to the category of
people who love pineapple pizza, you may be tempted to thank Hawaii for the
unusual combination of savory and sweet flavors. And this would be a mistake.
That's because the Hawaiian pizza originated some 3,700 miles away from the
Pacific archipelago in Canada.
Panopoulos, the owner of the pizzeria that invented the Hawaiian pizza,
reportedly said it was named after the brand of canned pineapple used in the
original recipe.
Millipede and Centipede:
If you were to trust the Latin name, the centipede ought to have 100 feet,
and the millipede should have at least 1,000. And we get it, any number of
creepy insect legs exceeding eight seems like a million to us too... But
when you really pull out the calculators and start counting, things quickly
become more nuanced.
Centipedes can have anywhere from thirty to 354 legs. The number of legs
depends on the number of segments in the arthropod's body. Each segment of
the centipede has a pair of legs. Fun fact - the number of these segments
can only be odd, so no species of the misnamed misfit, centipede, actually
has 100 legs!
As for the millipedes, they have four pairs of legs per segment. Most species
of misnamed misfit, millipede, have only between 24 and 750 legs.
Atom:
For millennia, physicists have been searching for an indivisible
unit of matter that would still retain the natural properties of
a chemical element. The Greek philosophers Leucippus and Democritus
would call it an atom, which means 'indivisible' or 'uncuttable' in
Greek. And in the 19th century, the physicist John Dalton seemed to
have found the elusive particle.
Dalton noticed that certain chemical elements merged with each other
in specific proportions to form different materials. He decided to
call these basic units of weight atoms.
But, guess what? A century later, scientists found even smaller
particles, such as neutrons and electrons, proving that Dalton's
atoms were not really indivisible. Still, the misfit term had stuck,
even though it lost its original intended meaning.
Buffalo Wings:
Why would anyone name fried chicken after a buffalo? It looks and tastes
nothing like American bison... beef. That's because the buffalo in 'buffalo
wing' refers to the city and not the animal. This is why you sometimes see
the dish capitalized - Buffalo wings.
Buffalo, New York, is a city not far away from Niagara Falls. It also
happens to be the birthplace of buffalo wings. A family restaurant in the
city has been serving these spicy, crunchy chicken wings with a blue cheese
dressing since 1964.
Fun fact: the city itself is also a misnomer of sorts because the large
bison never lived in this part of the country.
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King Crabs:
King crabs are enormous arthropods that prefer to live in cold waters. These
massive creatures have a leg span equal to the height of an adult human and
weigh more than 11 pounds! So, they may as well be the kings of arthropods
size-wise, but crabs - not so much...
In fact, biologists sometimes refer to these animals as false crabs. King
crabs are more closely related to hermit crabs, and the latter have soft
bellies, unlike true crabs that have fully armored bodies. You can pinpoint
the resemblance between king crabs and hermit crabs by noticing the asymmetry
of the king crab's abdomen. In both animals, one claw is always bigger than
the other.
Walnuts, Coconuts, and Peanuts:
The world of botanical taxonomy is strange and mysterious. Take three foods
that we all call and think of as nuts: coconuts, peanuts, and walnuts. Which
of these three are true nuts? Make your guess. This was a trick question.
The answer for these misfits is 'none of the above.'
Peanuts are not nuts, they're technically legumes, making them related to peas.
Coconuts and walnuts are not nuts either. They're drupes, which are fleshy fruits
with a hard shell and a seed inside. Other examples of drupes are olives, coffee
beans, and dates.
Hard Drive:
Here's one confusing term straight out of the tech world. As you're surely
aware, your desktop PC consists of several components: the motherboard, the
casing, the RAM, the optical drive, the power supply, and the hard drive.
The confusing bit is that the hard drive itself, a single component of the
PC, is often mistakenly used to refer to the entire computer.
As you imagine, this can lead to quite a bit of confusion. If you tell your
internet technician that your hard drive failed to boot, the professional
will target this specific component, even though what you really meant to
say is, 'My computer failed to boot.' In the case of the latter, there could
be a much wider range of issues that you're dealing with - any of the
above-listed components of the system could be malfunctioning.
Hedgehog:
Do you remember the first time you read the word hedgehog? I do, and my
childhood brain imagined the hedgehog to be a massive boar-like creature.
Bob McKenty pointed out this misnamed misfit with great poetic mastery in
this verse:
No matter what their name alleges,
Hedgehogs aren't hogs or hedges
(Like kindred quadrupeds with spines
Who aren't porks and aren't pines).
The Big Bang:
The term Big Bang was coined by the physicist Fred Hoyle in 1949, and it was in
line with the early explosion theories of the origins of the universe. Over
time, physicists realized the image of an explosion does not reflect how the
universe expanded from an early state of high density and temperature to the
contemporary, ever-xpanding universe.
In this way, the Big Bang is the biggest misnamed misfit in physics, as it was
neither very big nor a bang. In 1993, Sky and Telescope magazine held a
competition for a better replacement term. Of the 13,099 suggestions, none were
able to supplant the Big Bang. So, we're stuck with it, at least for now.
Raspberries, Strawberries, and Blackberries:
Many fruits with 'berry' in their names are misfits because they don't match up
with the botanical definition of the berry. For example, one of our favorite
fruits - the strawberry - is not technically a berry, and neither are raspberries
and blackberries.
Instead, they are known as aggregate fruit - a type of fruit made up of
clusters of tiny seeds in a juicy shell.
Blueberries and avocados, on the other hand, are considered berries. Confusing,
we know, but it makes sense botanically speaking because berries are produced
from a single seed.
RAM Storage:
The RAM (or Random Access Memory) of your computer can sometimes refer to
both memory and storage. However, in most cases, storage is a different kind
of beast. Namely, storage is data on the hard drive. When you run out of
storage space on the hard drive, the computer can no longer store new data
in the long term.
Meanwhile, RAM gives the computer the ability to carry out several processes
and run several programs at the same time. For instance, it allows you to
play music and browse your favorite online shops simultaneously instead of
just running one app at a time.
Hence, maintaining the distinction between the
terms RAM and storage is quite helpful.
The War of a 1000 Days and The 100 Years' War:
Several historic events are misnamed misfits too. Wars are just one of many
examples of such confusing naming conventions. Here are a few examples:
* The War of a Thousand Days in Colombia began on October 17, 1899, and lasted
until November 21, 1902. Therefore, it lasted for 1,130 days.
* The Hundred Years' War carried on for 116 years too. The armed conflict was
between England and France during the Middle Ages from 1337 to 1453.
But not all conflicts are as inaccurate as these two examples. The Eighty Years'
War was a conflict in the Netherlands that lasted precisely eighty years - from
1568 to 1648.
Guinea Pigs:
Poor Guinea pigs have a perpetual identity crisis. That's because these fluffy
rodents are neither pigs nor from the Republic of Guinea. These rodents call
the Andes mountains of Per home, where they were caught and eaten as a delicacy.
So why the strange name? The first mentions of the term go back to 16th-century
England, where one guinea pig could be purchased for 1 guinea. Minted in Great
Britain from 1663 to 1814, the guinea was a coin that contained 1/4 ounce of gold.
As for the 'pig' part, it's difficult to say where it really comes from.
French Horn:
Let's briefly go over a few musical misnomers. For instance, both the French
horn and the English horn have very little to do with either of the two
countries. Both of these musical instruments are versions of the German horn.
But even the German horn is not misnamed as German. The instrument was invented
in England circa 1650 under the name hunting horn. The French would start calling
it the German horn, and the misfit name stuck.
White Chocolate:
Every chocolate bar contains two main ingredients - roasted and ground cacao
beans and cocoa butter. The proportion of these two ingredients determines
the intensity of the chocolate. The higher the percentage of cacao powder,
the more intense and bitter the chocolate. Other ingredients, such as sugar,
milk, dried fruit, and nuts can also be added to make milk chocolate or
flavored chocolate.
There's one exception to this rule - the so-called white chocolate. This type
of chocolate doesn't contain cacao powder, only cocoa butter and cream.
Therefore, many confectionery experts say that white chocolate is misnamed as it
isn't chocolate at all.
Canary Islands:
The Canary Islands were named after an animal. Do you know what it is?
The answer is tricky, as it's not the canary bird. The Atlantic archipelago
was named after man's best friend - canines. The Latin name of the Canaries
is Canariae Insulae, which is translated literally as 'Islands of the Dogs.'
As for canaries, the songbirds got named after the islands. Mind-boggling,
we know!
The Fibonacci Sequence:
The last mention on our list of misfits belongs to the famous math sequence
called the Fibonacci Sequence. The main rule of the sequence is that each
number in it equals the sum of the two preceding numbers. So, it goes as
follows - 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21... The sequence is named after the Italian
mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci, who lived in the 12th century.
We now know that the sequence was known among Indian scholars several
centuries earlier, so Fibonacci couldn't have been the author of this
mathematical rule. In fact, the text where Fibonacci laid out the rules of
this sequence was a collection of Hindu-Arabic arithmetic called Liber Abaci.
Therefore, Fibonacci probably just collected known rules and principles in a
handbook instead of inventing them.
References: Mental Floss
, Merriam-Webster
, RD
, San Diego Union-Tribune
, Nacel Open Door
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