Re: abutment = aboutement?

[jim stasheff <jds@math.upenn.edu>]

Vaughan Pratt wrote:
> I'm with Michel on this one:
>
> > Just a remark about "abutment": it translates the French "aboutement",
> > with a rather different meaning than "aboutissement".  The latter is
> > closer to the "ending" (of some process; with possibly a little shade
> > of "fatality" in it).
> >
> > The two words are related, and I don't know whether the mathematical
> > idea behind makes "abutment" good, or even better, but I just wanted
> > to mention the difference.
>
> Not a single abutment in any of the following YouTube videos posted by
> their proud aboutisseurs.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=aboutissement&search_type=
>
> Evidently G needed a word with the sense of "limit" or "completion" that
> didn't overload terms that already had technical meanings in that
> context while itself having a technical ring to it, which
> "aboutissement" seems to do nicely in French.  Something like "terminus"
> might serve this purpose in English.
>
> An abutment is an engineering construct for butting two things together,
> often in the context of bridges, whether over a river or between teeth,
> and seems quite unsuitable for this purpose.
>
> Vaughan
>
>
Mathematicians have a gift for language - not to worry about translation
consider translating `field' into
French
Russian
german
...