Dissociative Identity Disorder

Simon Barker:


. . .

You can whinge about terminology all you like, but my Collins English Dictionary lists both "voltage" and "amperage" as words.


Trying to explain "voltage drop" is a lot easier than something like "difference in potential difference".

Dictionaries are very useful but they are not everything. I checked in the Concise Oxford Dictionary; it also contains the words "amperage" and "voltage". Is a dictionary a book of rules of language, or is it a representation of customary practice? I think the answer is somewhere between these extremes.


Let us look at another example - "footage". This is sometimes used to refer to period of run of cine film. I once read somewhere that celluloid film passes through the projector at a speed of approximately one foot per second, so the time and length become interchangeable. The term has stuck with electronically generated moving pictures. I suppose "secondage" does not roll of the tongue so easily, though it would be more to the point.


Here are some other examples of "age" appended to a unit name, which are or are not in popular usage.

In use                                   Not in use

mileage    distance            knottage  nautical speed

acreage  land area            chainage  distance

wattage  power                  joulage  energy

poundage  surcharge        dollarage  !

tonnage  cargo capacity    grammage  mass


We may need to form our own conclusions why some of these expressions have caught on and others have not.

Simon Barker:


. . .

You can whinge about terminology all you like, but my Collins English Dictionary lists both "voltage" and "amperage" as words.


Trying to explain "voltage drop" is a lot easier than something like "difference in potential difference".

Dictionaries are very useful but they are not everything. I checked in the Concise Oxford Dictionary; it also contains the words "amperage" and "voltage". Is a dictionary a book of rules of language, or is it a representation of customary practice? I think the answer is somewhere between these extremes.


Let us look at another example - "footage". This is sometimes used to refer to period of run of cine film. I once read somewhere that celluloid film passes through the projector at a speed of approximately one foot per second, so the time and length become interchangeable. The term has stuck with electronically generated moving pictures. I suppose "secondage" does not roll of the tongue so easily, though it would be more to the point.


Here are some other examples of "age" appended to a unit name, which are or are not in popular usage.

In use                                   Not in use

mileage    distance            knottage  nautical speed

acreage  land area            chainage  distance

wattage  power                  joulage  energy

poundage  surcharge        dollarage  !

tonnage  cargo capacity    grammage  mass


We may need to form our own conclusions why some of these expressions have caught on and others have not.