On Tue, Jan 14, 2025 at 1:21 AM James Landau via tlhIngan-Hol < tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org> wrote:
Speaking of puns, I spoke with Marc Okrand on Facebook and mentioned some of the clever puns he's hidden in recently revealed words. I thought *mobIj* for "latch" probably had something to do with "jibboom", but Marc said he didn't see a connection between "latch" and "jibboom". Then I thought about it more, and noticed how *jIbom* also means "I sing". "I sing" sounds like "isinglass" . . . were latches traditionally made with isinglass, or put on isinglass windows or used with isinglass curtains?
I think what I'm about to describe is very likely a real coincidence (as in, unintended by Marc Okrand), but an Ising machine is a type of computing device which uses the Ising model (named after physicist Ernst Ising), and a latch is a circuit with two stable states, and there are in fact such things as latch Ising machines, but unless Okrand is *really* into electronics, I doubt this is the inspiration behind the word. Although, who knows, maybe he was looking for inspiration and just happened upon the term. -- De'vID