On Wed, 25 Oct 2017 06:58:19 -0700, Felix Malmenbeck <felixm@kth.se> wrote:
== SIr'o' ==
(noun) I'm fairly certain that this means "mycelium", in part because there's a pun (look up "mycelium" on Wikipedia and >you'll find it quite quickly), and also because it works with all of the examples.
However, the examples are also consistent with something like "network", "structure" or "plane"; perhaps by analogy it has >come to mean both.
From episode 4 ("The Butcher's Knife ..."):
"This ships spore drive travels on a network of mycelium that's spread across the entire galaxy."
{qIb naQ velbogh 'atlhqam SIr'o' leng Dujvam SanmIr QuQ.}
"... when it exited from the mycelial plane."
{... 'atlhqam SIr'o' mejDI'.}
Based on the text of the Wikipedia article, "shiro" and "mycelium" are synonyms (both meaning a mass of hyphae). Given that, I suspect this might be a case of Okrand telling Lieven "just transliterate the English word" rather than a pun. Thus, the whole phrase <'atlhqam SIr'o'> probably means "mycelium", with <'atlhqam> included to contextualize the transliterated English word (well, Japanese loan-word) "shiro". So it's "fungal shiro" as opposed to some other kind of shiro (for example, the Ethiopian stew I just now learned about while googling "shiro").