[time-nuts] Loran?

[GandalfG8 at aol.com]

In a message dated 20/12/2010 17:29:18 GMT Standard Time,  
albertson.chris at gmail.com writes:

The  Oxford dictionary has "radar", "loran" and "scuba" all listed in lower 
 case.

Also according to them "radar" never was an acronym.  It is  a coined
word.  Technically to be an acronym the it must be spelled by  the
first letter of several other words.  "SCUBA" is an acronym  but
"scuba" is now a common English word that has displaced the old  1950's
vintage "SCUBA" in modern usage.  But "radar" was never  an  acronym.

The Oxford English Dictionary takes the view that  the  English
language changes  with time.    You can  disagree.  Many people do and
claim English has fixed rules that never  change but if you do then you
will have to pick a date for when it was  "correct" and then explain
how it could be incorrect before that  date.




--------
S'funny, I was always under the impression, from many years back, that  it 
WAS an acronym, "radio detection and ranging" comes to mind.
 
The following Wikipedia comments would seem to confirm that,  although they 
also suggest it's lost its capitalisation somewhere  along the way, much as 
you comment for SCUBA, so I guess it might even  be considered optional:-)
 
-----------------
The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the _U.S. Navy_ 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Navy)  as  an _acronym_ 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym_and_initialism)  for  radio detection and ranging._[1]_ 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar#cite_note-0) _[2]_ 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar#cite_note-1)   The term radar has since entered the English and other languages as 
the  common noun, radar, losing all of the capitalization. In the _United  
Kingdom_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom) , this technology was 
initially called RDF (range and direction  finding), using the same acronym 
as the one for _radio direction  finding_ 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_direction_finding)  to conceal its ranging capability.
------------------
 
Most modern languages change with time, nothing new there, but it's perhaps 
 never a good idea to be too pedantic, especially when quoting  another's 
opinion:-)
 
regards
 
Nigel
GM8PZR