Nuclearly (minicast)

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Welcome to another minicast from A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

This summer we’re running through some unfinished business by airing a few calls that we couldn’t fit into a regular episode. We’ll be back with full brand new shows in the fall.

Carol called us from Tucson, Arizona. She’s a biologist and one of her colleagues keeps criticizing her use of an adverb that she made out of an adjective. So she asks, is it okay to just add an L-Y to a word to make a brand new adverb? Can you really just add prefixes and suffixes to make a new word to suit your purposes? We hash it out.

We’ve had this controversy now for several years, so I was calling you to see if you could weigh in on it. Nucleary. N-U-C-L-E-A-R-L-Y, right? That’s correct. Nuclearly localized, meaning near the nucleus. Or it’s localized inside the nucleus. Oh, I see. In the nucleus. And it has nothing to do with radiation or anything like that. No, no, not at all. Okay.

Well, there’s good news, and then I’ve got an opinion for you, and I don’t know which one you’re going to like more or less. The good news is that it is indeed a word. However, and it’s a big however in all capital letters and kind of blaring bold red text. However, it’s only in one dictionary. It’s in the Oxford English Dictionary. It is listed there with some definitions and sub-definitions that are pretty much as you use them. They’re all technical uses, meaning they’re in different fields of science, including biology. And my big however, though, is why not? Why not not use it? Why not use nuclear localized? I mean, if you can get this reviewer to start paying more attention to what you’re saying rather than your use of the word nuclearly, then maybe it’s worth it. Right, right.

Well, we always change it if they ask us. Oh, you do? Okay. I didn’t know if that was something that they left up to you. I don’t know. Well, sometimes it’s not called into question. I see. They let it go. If they send it to whoever this person is who doesn’t like it, then I always hear about it. Okay.

Yeah, this word has a history of more than 70 years of usage, back to the 1920s, late 1920s. So you’re perfectly fine to use it. It’s just if it comes up, you know, it’s not the name of one of your children or anything like that. It’s the kind of word you can change and it shouldn’t harm the content of your paper, right? Yeah. It’s sort of like, you know, you can certainly make adverbs out of adjectives, but there are some words that are kind of weird. I mean, like holy as an adjective, you know, H-O-L-Y. Right. The adverbial form is holyly. You know, or chilly, you know, which it is not in Tucson. But if it were chilly, or if your reviewer was talking to you in person and not being very friendly, I suppose you could say he was speaking chillyly. Yeah, so I mean, it’s…

Yeah, I’ve often wondered if the objection is that it’s just so hard to say. You know, if you tried to say that word five times really fast, you couldn’t do it. Well, that was a question I had for you. Do you present these papers at conferences? Do you have to read that word aloud? You know, I think that I probably use it in verbal speech sometimes. Really? But maybe not several times in a talk or something like that. Right. Yeah, I think I use it. But I can say it. It’s not that I use it. Oh, I see. Okay, it comes off your tongue just fine then. Yeah. Say it five times fast. I’m not even going to try that one. No? Okay.

Well, anyway, we’ll leave you with this tidbit. It is indeed a word. You’re fine in using it in terms of it, you know, whether or not. Their dispute with this word is unfounded. Okay. But just to stop them from paying attention to the wrong part of your paper, I see no reason to go on using it. Right. Well, thanks for your advice.

Okay, Carol, I have to ask. Does anybody in your lab say nuclearly? Nobody in my lab. Okay, just asking. Yeah, yeah. All right. All right. Well, this was fun. This was an interesting conversation about recombinant grammar. Yes. Well, thank you very much for calling. Thank you. Okay. Take care. Bye-bye.

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For A Way with Words, I’m Grant Barrett in New York City. Before we go, I want to tell you that A Way with Words is independently produced and distributed. That means we depend on you to help pay for the cost of producing the show. So consider making a contribution to help this program keep going strong. Just go to waywordradio.org/donate. And thanks.