Mea Culpa: Rifling about

Susanna Richards hunts down the past week’s errors and omissions in The Independent

An editor encounters an unexpected etymology (Getty)

Police tase 95-year-old with dementia holding steak knife” was the headline of one of our news in briefs last week, leading Roger Thetford to write to us to query the use of “tase” as a verb. When I looked it up, I was greeted with a marvellous account of the origin of the word “Taser”. It appears that it is an acronym loosely derived from the title of a book published in 1911: Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle (or Daring Adventures in Elephant Land). Further, it seems that “tase” is indeed acceptable, and is simply a back-formation from the name itself. A stunning revelation, to steal Roger’s joke.

On a similar tack, Mick O’Hare pointed out a misspelling in our report of a boxing match, in which we wrote that one contestant was “most definitely not phased by the crowd”. Shouldn’t that be “fazed”, asked Mick, and he is correct. The two words have completely different roots: “phase” comes from the Greek word for appearance (relating to how the moon appears at different times), while faze is from the 15th-century Kentish word feeze, meaning “to frighten, alarm, discomfit”.

Interestingly, the name of the “phasers” used in Star Trek is also an acronym, of “phased energy rectification”. I’m always impressed at the amount of thought that goes into the creation of these worlds.