Re: abutment = aboutement?

[Vaughan Pratt <pratt@cs.stanford.edu>]

Meanwhile I count eight occurrences of "abut" and "abutment" in the (36
kilobyte!) main Wikipedia article on spectral sequences (there are a
dozen separate much shorter articles on particular spectral sequences,
along with a 15 kB article on derived categories).

On the other hand the algebra and geometry articles of the 1987
Britannica Macropaedia both prefer the term "limit" for what a spectral
sequence converges to, in respectively Peter Hilton's contribution
"Other aspects of homological algebra" to the algebra article, and the
geometry article's section on algebraic topology.

Since Wikipedia seems to be trumping Britannica these days, and no one
here has objected to established usage in mathematics trumping
linguistic suitability, the precise distance of "abutment" from the
optimal English cognate for "aboutissement" would appear to be academic,
an epithet reflecting the outside world's perception that raising moot
points is in our job description.

Vaughan

>> Thanks to Eduardo D and Vaughan P and Michel H for their misgivings,
>> which encouraged me to compose the above, despite the assurances
>> of Jim S that the 'abut*' usage is by now well entrenched.
>>
>> Fred