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I have always thought that it is appropriate to term two moving bodies coming into contact as a collision but the contact of a moving body with a stationary one ought be termed an allision. When I looked it up, Merriam Webster claims this only applies to ships. Is this distinction really important only at sea? Does anyone else use these terms to differentiate outside of a nautical context?
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Greetings benz72, and welcome to the forum.
I checked several online dictionaries, and you are correct that "allision" (which spellcheck not surprisingly flags) is pretty much a nautical term. I had never heard it before your post and had to look it up to be sure.
Don't know about other fields, but I can definitely say that in science the term "collision" is used whether both objects are moving, or only one is moving.
Not surprised about the nautical use though. The entire nautical vocabulary is fraught with special uses and unique terms. Probably because it goes so far back in history. Might have something to do with legal liability, but when I was stationary in my car and hit by a moving vehicle, the suits still called it a "collision."
benz72 said
I have always thought that it is appropriate to term two moving bodies coming into contact as a collision but the contact of a moving body with a stationary one ought be termed an allision. When I looked it up, Merriam Webster claims this only applies to ships. Is this distinction really important only at sea? Does anyone else use these terms to differentiate outside of a nautical context?
Thank You
Not that logic always applies to language, but your first statement has some basis in logic if you had a situation that needed to differentiate between the two types of collisions. If that use caught on in the language, most of the descriptivists here would not object with 'allision' being applied non-nautically. Your second statement is prescriptivist and few on this forum would claim that you always have to use it that way. (And, Heimhenge described how it was used in science-not how it must be used.)
But, maybe you should use it the conventional way in order communicate most clearly.
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