Does a star mass?
I sometimes use the word "mass" as a verb, like, "That star masses 20 times that of the Sun". I know it sounds funny, but astronomers say it that way all the time. My friend Cindy Taylor, also an astronomer, took me to task for this some time ago. She thinks we shouldn’t use it that way.
She has a point. I wouldn’t say "The car lengths 2 meters", so why would I say "The car masses 1500 kilograms"? The problem is, we don’t have a good verb for "mass". We can say "the car weighs 3000 pounds, " but what do we use for kilograms?
This brings up the whole mass versus weight issue, and whether you can use kilograms as a weight (I think it’s OK as a shorthand if it’s understood this is in one Earth gravity; on the Moon the weight is less but the mass is the same, so it can be confusing). But even without that added complication, what do we say when a star has a mass of 1030 kilograms? I guess we say it just like that: The star has a mass of 1030 kilograms. As an astronomer I suppose that’s fine, but as a writer I have an issue with that: it’s limiting. I need to use synonyms sometimes, or else things get boring. There is something a little more poetic in saying "The star masses 1030 kilograms." It’s more adjective-friendly, too: "The star masses a whopping 1030 kilograms." Cool!
English is many things, but one of its more endearing qualities is that it’s fluid. It changes, adapts, evolves. Slowly, sometimes, but inertia is a property of not just mass. So maybe it’s time for English to take this tiny step forward, and learn how to mass.
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:01 pm
The OED lists “mass” as a verb, with many definitions but including the one you mention – to have a particular mass. Interestingly, the OED’s earliest reference to this is only as far back as 1983, so it’s apparently a very contemporary usage, but I have nothing against it.
The only counter-example you bring up is “length,” but there are examples of measurement-related nouns that double as verbs – the most obvious example that comes to mind is “span.” A bridge spans, and it also has a span of x length.
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Phil,
This reminds me of a comment I left some time ago that maybe you missed
: When you say, e.g., Eta Car ejected 20 octillion tons of gas, do you mean metric tons, which we might think of as a mass of 1000 kg? Or do you just mean the equivalent mass of a standard ton at standard gravity?
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:24 pm
I see no problem with that usage. People aren’t known for the habit of saying “The car lengths 2 meters”, but that’s just convention. There’s no good reason why they couldn’t use it that way; there’s no good reason not to use mass as a verb when it’s simply a convenient way to say “It has a mass of…”
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:29 pm
So the metric system only applies off-planet, eh? I knew you yanks were convinced that the USA is the only country on Earth, but that’s a bit extreme even so…
(I kid because I love, really!)
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:34 pm
I tend to be conservative about creating new usages – especially creating new verbs. It happens a lot and it’s often pretty ugly. This particular usage is not particularly bothersome, but I’m not sure I agree that “to mass” is more “adjective friendly”. In your example, what would be wrong with “the star’s mass is a whopping….”?
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:35 pm
@Eric
Hmmm? Well, presumably Eta Car has much stronger gravity than the Earth’s.
. The math is left as a homework assignment. I was just wondering if Phil was using tonne as a mass or ton as a weight, haha! And if it was a weight, then is it under Eta Car’s g?
Love from Brian :-*
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:38 pm
I like your usage. I absolutely hate it when someone uses “weighs” with kilograms. Especially someone who ought to know better. A NASA scientist said, in a TV story on the Moon landings, that the EVA suit for the moon “weighs (however many) kg on Earth, but only (whatever) kg on the moon. Aaarrrggghh!
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:39 pm
For what little it’s worth, I agree with Cindy.
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:43 pm
I’m a professional astronomer – I have *never* heard of a star massing – what an abomination of the english language!
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:44 pm
PS – I have also never read it in a journal article (or would have allowed it through as a referee) -
Phil – do you have a reference where this has been used?
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Brilliant Solution?
Just say, “The star’s mass’s 10^30 kg.” Almost the same and grammatically sound!!
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:54 pm
@ Cusp: Phil is trying to coin this usage, for reasons that make sense to me (although I’m definitely not a professional astronomer, so perhaps I don’t count).
Thanks for this post, it’s a very interesting idea, and the whole mass/weight thing is something that I’d be happy to see a more general understanding of.
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Saddening enough to think I weigh almost 100 kilos, especially considering I’m a rather short woman. Discovering that this is in fact my mass, and my weight must be expressed in pounds — well, that’s nothing short of depressing. (I’m Australian. What’s a pound?)
Phil, may those of us who live in metric countries use kilograms for mass *and* weight, please?
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:11 pm
My take: it’s fine for astronomers to use ‘to mass’ this way (the same way that jargon gets bandied about in any profession), but the public should be spared it: most people don’t know the difference between mass and weight so it won’t really add anything to the language. “Has a mass of” has only a few more syllables and doesn’t grate on the ears of people who understand a different meaning of “to mass”.
“The cluster is massing with stars massing 5 times that of the Sun.” Shudder…
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:17 pm
It is not going to win any beauty contest, but at the same time it is much less objectionable than your typical modernism.
BaldApe’s disgust leads me to a question, though: is pound a unit of mass, or a unit of force? (Not that I would ever use non-SI, and neither should NASA.)
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Sorry I may be missing the point here, but where I have lived for the past 40 years, Kilograms is most certainly used for weight as well as mass.
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Of course a star masses.
However, if we jargon our speech we must also parallel our normal language, or our core competencies will not synergise.
Yay – this post how many verbs?
Ronan
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:35 pm
How much mass does a massive mass amass, if a mass of massive masses amass mass?
(Apologies if I’m being kind of a masshole.)
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Pounds have been redefined based on the kilogram, making them a unit of mass now anyway.
(Pounds-force, lbf., are used for ‘weight’ and on earth gravity, in general a one lb. mass will weigh 1 lbf. )
As for using mass as a verb, if that is standard astronomical usage, use it!
Never let English major’s prevent the evolution of the language.
That would make life as a linguist very boring…
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:40 pm
@ Cusp: what an abomination of the english language!
I heartily agree! Everybody knows that should be English language.
(Not to be picky, but you asked for that
)
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:41 pm
In the metric (non-stone age) system, force is measured in Newtons provided you are using meters and kilograms, or in dynes if you are using centimeters and grams.
In the Stone age system we can’t seem to grow out of, pounds are units of force (the force that accelerates a mass of one slug at one foot per second squared). The slug (what a lovely unit!?) is the unit of mass. At sea level, a slug would weigh 32 pounds.
I actually heard the slug used once. In the movie An Officer and a Gentleman, there was a scene showing an aerodynamics class. Of course the patriotic US military can’t be bothered to learn some foreign measuring system, so they used English units. (Did I say “foreign?”) In any event, the slug is the appropriate unit of mass, and they actually used it.
Seems the script writers actually bothered to research this one. Good on ‘em!
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:42 pm
All astronomers or just American astronomers?
I have noticed than many Americans have the habit of “verbizing” nouns. I was amazed to hear that a colleague of mine had recently “funeralized” his mother, (no kidding!), and certainly there are many in the computer industry that like to “componentize” a process or system. There are many more examples of this where perfectly reasonable alternative phrases exist (holding a funeral, anyone?) but since they take a few more words to say, some prefer the lazy way out.
Is it too late, or is verbizationalism here to stay?
BTW: Massing as a verb means “gathering together” as in “massing the troops on the border”. A singular sun doesn’t “mass”, though I guess you could say that the individual molecules “mass together”.
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:44 pm
To mass, or not to mass–that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to weigh
The slings and arrows of outrageous language
Or to take arms against a sea of units
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep–
MASSive apologies to Bill
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Crap! I missed the chance to use en masse in there somewhere.
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:46 pm
“Pounds have been redefined based on the kilogram, making them a unit of mass now anyway.”
So if pounds are mass, and kilograms are weight, what changes when you go to the Moon?
Gods! It’s really not that hard to keep straight! Just make all elementary teachers pass a year of elementary physics and calculus, and get the English system out of the elementary schools. Then at least the next generation won’t sound like idiots.
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:53 pm
To mass, perchance to gravitate?
Ay, there’s the rub.
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:55 pm
You’d better not visit Australia then, you’d be cringing every time you went into a shop! Everything here is “weighed” in grams & kilograms
December 2nd, 2007 at 3:03 pm
mr_subjenctive:
Still hilarious regardless.
to verb – to change a noun into a verb.
Example:
http://fenris.ca/~paul/theabysmal/verbing%20weirds%20language.jpg
December 2nd, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Cusp, after Cindy told me about this, I started listening to other astronomers and heard “mass” used as a verb many times. I doubt you’d see it in ApJ or AJ, but then they have lots of weird standards on how to write things (like, use as many clauses as possible in a paragraph so the reader loses track of what you are saying).
brian, as far as “octillion tons” goes, given the uncertainty in the measurement, imperial or metric tons makes no difference (a metric ton is 1000 kg or 2200 pounds (in Earth gravity, sigh)). Think of it as an inertial mass if that makes you happier.
December 2nd, 2007 at 3:05 pm
> Phil, may those of us who live in metric countries use kilograms for mass *and* weight, please?
No you don’t. You use kilograms incorrectly for weight; the proper unit is a newton.
December 2nd, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Centipede, don’t make her say she weighs a kiloNewton…
December 2nd, 2007 at 3:14 pm
I guess the incorrect usage of kilos for weight must be the reason why the USA, although one of the very first countries to sign on to the metric system (believe it or not) they have singularly failed to adopt it.
At least the embarrassment over the failure of the Mars Climate Orbiter mission because of measurement system mix-ups has ensured the space industry is fully metric!
December 2nd, 2007 at 3:21 pm
Anyway, weight is a remnant from before we learned the difference between force and mass. The conventional aspect of it (namely that it is evaluated here on Earth) is not going to catch many people out. For that reason I am very happy for cosmicfroggy to measure her weight in kilograms. Not that she needs my approval.
December 2nd, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Well in engineering classes I learned to properly use kilograms and slugs for mass, newtons and pounds for force. I am from Québec, Canada where day-to-day life is mostly SI and engineering life is somewhat SI (pretty much half and half, actually).
I am surprised none of your readers’ comments so far pointed at a great app for unit conversions:
http://joshmadison.com/software/convert/
I use it almost daily (at work) and it does have a unit in there, not quite sure if it is SI-approved, that I also learned in school: kilogram-force, abbreviated kgf. Of course that means the weight/force of one kilogram at one g (Earth’s).
As for the subject of verbalization, it does seem lazy to me. I certainly give a blank stare at a doctor who would tell me I mass too much! Stop massing or you’ll heartattack!
December 2nd, 2007 at 3:33 pm
I for one refuse to abuse my green grocer, baker or butcher (he’s got a knife you know) for using kilograms when they sell me stuff.
December 2nd, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Be a bastard and use moles as your unit so what if that’s a bit out of scale.
December 2nd, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Verbing nouns is a fine writerly tradition going back centuries. Stick to your guns, Phil!
(At least in English. Other languages tend to be stricter, but we Anglophones like to play fast and loose.)
December 2nd, 2007 at 3:56 pm
In computer culture (hacking, in the old school meaning, in particular) it’s often considered perfectly acceptable to verb any other word. It’s partly a humor or slang thing, but the prinicple tends to extend to other forms of overextending language rules where they are usually discouraged. It might be in part because most systems or programs are encouraged to be consistent all the way up and all the way down, so why wouldn’t there be a reasonable rule for converting between word types when it makes sense? This can often get taken pretty far, “I installed the new graphic card in that box wihtout one” can become “I regraphic carded it”. I doubt there’d be confusion over “It lengths 5m”, much less “It masses 5kg”.
I’m not even so sure things are exactly sold by “weight” rather then “mass” – if gravity were different (it was being sold on the moon or a place on earth with different g, perhaps) they’d probably still expect payment per mass rather then weight, no rebates for lower gravity. Scales do estimate said mass based on weight at 1 Earth gravity, but beyond implying that you are it could very much simply be considered estimated mass.
December 2nd, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Count another professional astronomer voting “Nay”. I personally don’t use mass as a verb (then again, I don’t like to verb impact either [ahem]), though I have heard some astronomers (both pro and am) use it that way. But definitely not “all the time.” Maybe I am just old-fashioned, but I submit that a satisfactory substitute to “the star masses a whopping gazillion kg” is “the mass of the star is a whopping gazillion kg”. The word “masses” is too useful as a plural to allow it to be hijacked for a verb (“the masses of the asteroids add up to a piddly fraction of the mass of the Sun”).
December 2nd, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Could we also decide to use Km/h rather than Kph?
Please?
December 2nd, 2007 at 4:22 pm
What does my thesaurus suggest…
The star assembles a whopping 10e30 kg.
The star marshals a whopping 10e30 kg.
The star gathers together a whopping 10e30 kg.
The star musters a whopping 10e30 kg.
The star rounds up a whopping 10e30 kg.
The star mobilizes a whopping 10e30 kg.
The star rallies a whopping 10e30 kg.
Nah.
The star masses a whopping 10e30 kg. Catchy!
All Mac users, check out Dashboard’s “Unit Converter” widget, it’s quite useful. Just stumbled upon the “Versatile Unit Converter” which “manipulate[s] units symbolically, and lets you enter whichever unit you need in the form of a mathematical formula.”
December 2nd, 2007 at 4:23 pm
English professor weighing in. Joshua is correct. The tendency to ‘verb’ nouns is characteristic of English and goes back centuries. Our cooks cook, our bakers bake, our gardeners garden. We smoke our smokes (where permitted by law), dish up our dishes, and fish for the fish to dish up in our dishes. The churched mass at mass (at least during the Easter and Christmas seasons), and I don’t see any massive objection as to why a massy object cannot mass, too.
December 2nd, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Thomas Siefert, it is actually EU law for grocers to sell in units of (kilo-) grams. I remember when said law came into effect in the UK a few years ago: as you might have expected, it was mayhem. Now people tend to agree it is a superior system. Next up: Pound Sterling!
December 2nd, 2007 at 4:36 pm
On my unit converter widget (Mac) the units of mass are all collected under the header “Weight”. Sigh…
December 2nd, 2007 at 4:49 pm
No likee.
However, I *might* be prepared to negotiate if in your turn you take up arms against the execrable ‘degrees Kelvin’ that infest the literature. Degrees Fahrenheit, obsolete but fine; degrees Centigrade, obsolescent but fine; Kelvins, the SI standard and a fundamental unit like kilograms, moles, and candelas; degrees Kelvin, nix.
December 2nd, 2007 at 4:51 pm
I’m not an astronomer, but I am an editor. As such I come across quite a lot of ‘verbing’ that is unnecessary because actual verbs exist to do the job (you don’t need to say ‘lengths’ for example, because ‘measures’ works just fine). But, as Elf Eye rightly points out, there is a tendency to ‘verb’ nouns in English and when that springs from a gap in the language and not the writer’s vocabulary, I think it is justified. Masses (v.) sounds right and the argument for it is reasonable. Print it, I say.
December 2nd, 2007 at 4:51 pm
You all have embiggened me.
December 2nd, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Forgot to say, I think the scientific (physicist?) community is off on a bit of a wild goose chase in trying to insist the the verb ‘weigh’ refers to force when pretty plainly the common usage refers to mass. When we say a bag of sugar weighs a kilogram (or, in the less developed world, a couple of pounds), we are talking about the amount of sugar, i.e. its mass.
If, for some reason, I took the bag of sugar to the moon, I’d think (and I think English speakers generally would think) of it as still *weighing* a kilo, but *feeling* a lot less heavy when lifted.
That linguistic fluidity works both ways.
December 2nd, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Yeah, the only way to convert the US to metric would be by government enforcement, and there is no way either party or any president is likely to sponsor such an unpopular move.
It can be done, and in the long run it really is no big deal, and the next generation to come along doesn’t know what all the fuss was about. But I don’t see it happening in the US in my lifetime.
I was on the very cusp of the switch from degrees Fahrenheit to degrees Celsius in the UK. I have always been more comfortable with understanding most temperatures in F rather than C though, oddly enough, once you get below freezing, I’m still better at C even after a decade in the States (I guess because I’ve never had to live through a northern winter!). My brother, being only three years younger, doesn’t do Fahrenheit at all, and never has done.
I also remember going on vacation in Australia where I rented a car at took a week to drive from Adelaide to Sydney (highly recommended, BTW). At first having to do everything in Km and Km/h was very strange, but after only a few days on the road, it easily became second nature.
Yeah, there may be immediate economic reasons not to attempt a wholesale switch to the metric system (though many industries would actually prefer to do it and get it over with), but emotionally it is usually overblown.
Maybe now that we are supposedly friends again with France, we should take the opportunity to try. Bush legacy anyone? It can’t possibly make things worse than they already are for him!).
December 2nd, 2007 at 5:15 pm
I try not to say “xxxx weighs xxxx kg” simply because it’s wrong, and I’m a physicist. Sometimes my students pull me up on it, too. And BTW, I weigh almost a kN, too. Although I’m a rather tall man (1.93 m).
December 2nd, 2007 at 5:21 pm
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/12/02/attending-mass/#comment-142095
“Never let English major’s prevent the evolution of the language.”
Should we let them have any influence on the use of apostrophes?
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/12/02/attending-mass/#comment-142097
“I actually heard the slug used once.”
The slug’s pretty widely used in aerodynamics – or at least, it was.
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/12/02/attending-mass/#comment-142120
“Scales do estimate said mass based on weight at 1 Earth gravity, but beyond implying that you are it could very much simply be considered estimated mass.”
Depends on the type of scale. Spring scales measure weight, balances measure mass. Take a spring scale calibrated for weight in middle or polar latitudes to the equator (where gravity is slightly less) and it will give a smaller reading even with the same object dangling from it.
December 2nd, 2007 at 5:25 pm
So until the US adopts the metric system, should we refer to Newton,
Massachusetts as Pound, Weightachusetts?
And which is worse, verbing a noun or nouning a verb.
December 2nd, 2007 at 5:37 pm
I think my non-sequitor alert just went off.
One does not say, for example, “That bag of sugar weights one pound”, rather it is said, “That bag of sugar weighs one pound”. There is no corresponding equivalent of “mass” to use as a verb in this instance.
I am reminded of a fumblerule – “Don’t verb nouns” (my personal favourite fumblerule is, “It behooves the author to not use archaic expressions”).
December 2nd, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Cool word, fumblerule…like “you should be careful to never split infinitives”.
But, pray tell, what does behoove mean?
December 2nd, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Crux, I think it refers to the process of adding hooves, as in “the ancestors of the horse originally had toes, but they were behooved several million years ago”. Clearly, an expression dating back to the Pliocene (or whenever it was) is pretty archaic.
December 2nd, 2007 at 5:50 pm
@LarrySDonald, but everyone else to.
I’m a tech writer in IT and I know the tendency of that field to verb nouns, noun verbs, and sprout up neologisms like mushrooms after a late summer rain. “Mass” as a verb doesn’t bother me. “Obsolete” as a verb does. Verbing an adjective is just one part of speech too far for me, especially since the perfectly good word “supercede” exists.
Oh, this whole discussion also reminds me of my 6th grade science teacher, who taught us that mass and weight are exactly the same thing. I was a precocious brat who read collected Asimov science articles, so I stuck my hand up and told her the difference between the mass and weight of the Earth.
Really, it’s amazing I survived to adulthood without someone drowning me.
December 2nd, 2007 at 5:51 pm
@LarrySDonald, but everyone else too.
I’m a tech writer in IT and I know the tendency of that field to verb nouns, noun verbs, and sprout up neologisms like mushrooms after a late summer rain. “Mass” as a verb doesn’t bother me. “Obsolete” as a verb does. Verbing an adjective is just one part of speech too far for me, especially since the perfectly good word “supercede” exists.
Oh, this whole discussion also reminds me of my 6th grade science teacher, who taught us that mass and weight are exactly the same thing. I was a precocious brat who read collected Asimov science articles, so I stuck my hand up and told her the difference between the mass and weight of the Earth.
Really, it’s amazing I survived to adulthood without someone drowning me.
December 2nd, 2007 at 5:53 pm
(sorry, can you please delete this post and the one where I wrote ‘to’ for ‘too’? It was just too embarrassing to let stand.)
December 2nd, 2007 at 6:17 pm
As Calvin once said to Hobbes:
“Verbing wierds Language.”
December 2nd, 2007 at 6:51 pm
PK said: Next up: Pound Sterling!
What have you got against poor Sterling? Leave him alone!
Also, it has already been mentioned a couple of times, but “Verbing weirds language” is one of my favorite C&H strips.
Finally, I think the reason so many like the verb usage of mass is that it makes the sentence/phrase active rather than passive voice. As a science/math teacher, I like it.
December 2nd, 2007 at 6:56 pm
¡Please mind your vectors and scalars!
Zerothly, I see nothing wrong with using mass as a verb.
Well now, we must always use grams, perhaps with a prefix like micro or mega, for mass. For force, we must use Newtons of Dynes, perhaps with a prefix. This is important.
December 2nd, 2007 at 7:07 pm
In the chemistry classes I’ve taken, mass has been used as both an intransitive and transitive verb. Transitively, it was used to mean “measure the mass of.”
December 2nd, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Ok, as the Cindy who Phil mentioned, I have to give a little bit of background. I’m currently a high school physics and astronomy teacher and so I have to read quite a few lab reports. It curls my toes when kids use “mass” as a verb. Of course I also have to deal with typos that they don’t catch such as “canon” instead of “cannon” on the projectile motion lab.
Using mass as a verb in my opinion puts us in the same league as business consultants that create new verbs. Ugh, it’s as bad as “leverage”.
So far, I don’t think any of my students have found this blog. But I guess I’ll give them some credit if they point back to this blog.
December 2nd, 2007 at 7:26 pm
@Antiquated Tory (mostly)
I think the reason techies consider supercede a somewhat imperfect word is that it seems uncalled for to have two seperate and quite different terms rather then baking them all into a word (Which could be either set naturally, x will supercede/x is superceded would do equally well). This is not at all the tendency of language and makes linguists and writers cringe a lot. I’m not exactly saying that’s how it should be, but that’s (at least to me) the reason it feels inelegant to not have a root word for the concept and then allow it to be used, possibly with pre- and postfixes, for all concepts related to it (unobsolete, deopsoleted, reopsolete .. and so on) including it’s verb form. Having both feels like keeping two nearly identical funtions in their entirety rather then rewriting a third version that encompasses both. It is often a form/function thing, which is why I’m not surprised those who cheerfully torture it aren’t exactly a writers best friend.
December 2nd, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Is this why astronauts are so much stronger in orbit than the rest of us stuck down here on Earth? I’ve often wondered how they can maneuver a 5 ton solar array with their bare hands while assembling the space station.
December 2nd, 2007 at 7:57 pm
This is the unavoidable future of the English language! This and acronyms for platitudes! FWIW.
December 2nd, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Suggestion: use “whop” as the term. As in “The star has a massive whop of 10 quintillion kilograms” or “This moon whops…” and so on.
December 2nd, 2007 at 8:07 pm
If Phil can “blog”, then I see no reason why a star cannot “mass”
December 2nd, 2007 at 8:36 pm
This concept of metric (gram) units for mass, but imperial for weight (pound),
is quite a misconception. The gram is used for both, and using pounds and
ounces for weight is no less misguided than using pounds and ounces for
mass
– Regner Trampedach (Astronomer at Aarhus University, Denmark)
December 2nd, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Yeah, the only way to convert the US to metric would be by government enforcement, and there is no way either party or any president is likely to sponsor such an unpopular move.
Given that the US is either the last country still using (modified) Imperial units, or very close to the last country doing so, the required interaction with the rest of the world will eventually force the issue.
It is worth noting that the Imperial units that the US uses are NOT the same as the original Imperial units used in England and places like Canada (until 1974!). A ton, for example is 20 hundredweight, or 160 stone, or 2240 lb in the Imperial system. The US shortened it for convenience, and hence there are long (original) tons, and short (new improved flavour) tons. A US gallon is short 32 ounces because a US pint is short 4 ounces – a fact that is a travesty to beer drinkers from other countries.
So if the US could bastardize a measurement system that was already in place, surely the conversion to metric won’t kill anyone.
December 2nd, 2007 at 8:46 pm
A metric tonne is much closer to the original ton than it is to a short ton.
December 2nd, 2007 at 9:17 pm
After reading Steven Pinker’s “The Language Instinct” and “The Stuff of Thought”, I conclude that Elf Eye hits the nail on the head with a properly massy hammer – mass as a verb is meet and proper.
On the subject of metrification and aerodynamics: in my career as an aerospace engineer (stability and control as well as aerodynamics), my experience is that the system of units used depends on the customer. Army missile people tend to want MKS, but just everybody else in US aeronautical engineering uses English units with slug as the mass unit and pounds as the unit of force, with one slug being the amount of mass that weighs g lbs in a standard 1-g gravity field. Of course, our analyses often need to produce output in such colorful units as nautical miles for distance and knots (nautical miles per hour) for speed. And I’ll never forget a real-time range safety display used at White Sands Missile Range that had downrange distance in km and altitude in feet. All in all, I think that the perceived need for metrification in the US is overblown, and in many ways I find that the units in the English system are more useful than the metric units (primarily by being finer grained). YMMV …
December 2nd, 2007 at 11:16 pm
Supercede doesn’t have quite the same meaning, but there is a phrase with all of (shock, horror) two words that does:
“make obsolete”
Wonderful thing the English language, if only people spent a little more time learning it.
December 2nd, 2007 at 11:59 pm
One of the things that makes English a wonderful language is the fact that “supercede”, “make obsolete” and “obsolete (as a verb)” all make sense and allow an author to make the statement he or she wishes to make without being hamstrung by particularly narrow or binding rules that are themselves more often than not exemplified more by the exceptions to their application than by their strictest interpretation.
Such as the badness of a run-on sentence.
December 3rd, 2007 at 12:03 am
To the Australian who wondered what’s a pound. I recall in studying German they have an interesting word called a “pfund” which was 500 grams, so it is bigger than a pound but close enough for government work. I also believe the metric ton or “tonne” is pretty close to the U.S. ton, but could be wrong on that one.
As for metrics only work in space comment; There is an english way to express it (as mentioned in other posts) but of course space is the venue of science, we don’t have casual knowledge of it so of course it will be expressed in the system of units used by scientists.
December 3rd, 2007 at 12:16 am
Phil, I’ve been around professional astronomers for 7 years now and don’t ever recall an instance where I was irked by someone using “masses” as a verb. I’ll have to strongly disagree with your usage here.
Also, can we all stop saying “extincted”? It’s like nails on a chalkboard! “Extinguished” is the correct usage.
December 3rd, 2007 at 12:38 am
Supercede is considered incorrect by some – it should be supersede. Getting away from weights & measures, my pet hate is ‘due diligence’ for research. You can carry out a task WITH due diligence, but to do due diligence? YUK!
December 3rd, 2007 at 1:03 am
Who says “extincted”?!
December 3rd, 2007 at 1:26 am
@ bassmanpete
“Due Diligence” comes from legal terminology that started up in the 1930s, as part of a set of actions a broker could take to protect themselves from investor lawsuits.
The act of due diligence is, in that sense, a singular act in and of itself. IOW, a noun, rather than a compound adverb.
But it bugs me, too.
December 3rd, 2007 at 1:46 am
Whoa! What a can of worms, Phil. Seems like you need to travel the world as much as your book does and get all your International weights and measures straight
My first three reactions were:
1. Metric tons are supposed to be spelled “tonnes”, so the distinction OUGHT to be clear.
2. +1 for the “kg can be weight” crowd. I’m very fortunate to be a 42-year-old from England who’s into science and has been to the USA, so I understand temperature in C and F (and Kelvin), weight in kg and lb (or even #), length in m or ft, km or miles, volume in cc, litres/liters, fl. oz., ounces, pints (both sides of the pond) and even dates written in the hysterically illogical m/d/y format (for the record, I don’t like d/m/y either, though it’s marginally better. yyyy-mm-dd is the ONLY true date format, the Japanese have it right).
3. “slug”??!!
Then, as usual, I read all the comments and realised that I arrived late. Is there any coffee left?
December 3rd, 2007 at 2:06 am
Interesting discussion.
Although I’m wondering about this two metre, 1500 kg car. Sounds like it might have a tendency to fall over. Is there really such a car?
Oooh, wait, is it the Eta Car?
December 3rd, 2007 at 2:31 am
Understanding weight as a force may be scientifically correct, but please, no one actually uses it that way outside a lab. Just remember how to weight something the traditional way with scales and counter-weights: you determine the mass, not at all the weight.
Using a silly unit for weight to distinguish it from mass just combines snobbery (‘I know something you didn’t think of…’) with ignorance (‘…but actually I’m wrong’)
December 3rd, 2007 at 2:38 am
I’m with David at 4.57pm up there. I really don’t really see what the problem with ‘weigh’ is.
Can’t somebody ping Language Log about this?
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:16 am
@David: You were complaining about “Degrees Kelvin”, and that’s quite appropriate. I’ve seen even more egregious mangling of units from time to time, the worst IMHO, is “Knots per hour”.
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:34 am
Yes we are all out but I could use a refill, get me some while you are at it please.
I currently live in the UK, I still bump into people that insist on using Fahrenheit, Stones (for weight) and curses the EU for eventually getting them to give up the Pound Sterling (even saying that it made more sense before it went metric).
Coming to the UK after living all of my life in other Metric countries, it is sometimes a bit of a cultural shock to discover how stubborn people can be about outdated measure formats.
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:42 am
As a physicist I clearly distinguish between force and mass.
But weighing things in a grocery or at your local baker or butcher for century was nothing but comparing masses!
If you use typical old mechanical scales for “weighing” a kg flour will give you the same amount on moon or on earth, because you compare the mass of the flour with a standard.
so for me it is absolutely ok. to use the kg to weigh things in a shop (as it is done e.g. in the whole EU.
For the Americans to go metric: Well I guess the industry will sooner or later to compete on the international market. Science has already done it.
For the daily life I do not think it is that much important. The only thing important should be being able to convert between both systems for the basic units like lengths, weight, volume and maybe temperature.
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:50 am
I’m not going to wade through all 85 comments but English has NO morpheme for making a simple verb out of a noun (we borrowed -ize, but (a) lots of people hate it, too – you can’t win, and (b) it adds meaning not wanted here) – but that doesn’t mean we can’t do it. It means that it’s very easy to do it and that we have been doing it for centuries. Many centuries. It’s the way English works.
Just consider the words bank, ring, arm, field, head, finger, toe, dog, hunt, eye … for ten off the top of my head.
It’s English. It’s one of the joys of a relatively non-inflected language.
“Verbing Weirds Language only if you’re expecting it to work in a simple way. This is a special case of the more general truth that Language Weirds.”
—John Lawler, University of Michigan
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:58 am
[...] Dezember 2007 von kamenin Drüben im Bad Astronomy Blog diskutiert Phil Plait gerade über einige Feinheiten der englischen Sprache, nämlich ob er z. B. über einen Stern sagen kann, er ‘masse’ ein Anzahl Sonnenmassen [...]
December 3rd, 2007 at 4:03 am
Of course, astronomers are totally perverse (at least when I was a physics undergraduate) because they measure length in centimetres and mass in grams…
I also must say that I have a soft spot for the nautical mile, since it is (roughly) one minute of latitude along a meridian. This is quite useful for navigation. Units are chosen such that they make life easiest for people using them (hbar = c = G = 1 anyone?). This is a good reason to go metric in daily life, since most people are more comfortable calculating in base 10 than in base 2 with a conversion to base 10, plus all the exceptions.
In response to other posts:
I disagree with KMR about the finer graining. On a vernier calliper you can go down to thenths of millimetres, and grams are smaller than (sixteenths of) ounces.
The Dutch “pond” is indeed exactly 500 grams, and one “ons” (presumably from “ounce”) is 100 grams. I suspect these were redefined from whatever it was before the Netherlands went metric.
“Knots per hour”: is that the ship’s acceleration?
December 3rd, 2007 at 4:09 am
for the verbing: I remeber my English teacher in school mentioned it also as one of the great advantages of English language. Even for non native speakers it is not to hard to catch.
BTW IMO there are AFAIK worse things than verbing……;-)
December 3rd, 2007 at 4:29 am
Troy
-To the Australian who wondered what’s a pound. I recall in studying German they have an interesting word called a “pfund†which was 500 grams, so it is bigger than a pound but close enough for government work…
Yes you are right. There is a “Pfund” in Germany which is 1/2 Kg or 500 g.
It is still used if you go to the bakery or butcher. Even “a quarter” (125 g) and “a half (pound)” (250 g) is still used by many people. The shops themselves are not allowed to use thes. They always show prices for kg or g.
Especially for some things it will only die out hard, because the standard pack size is like “1 Pfund” (for coffe) or 1 half (like butter).
I guess the Pfund was redefined after the kg was introduced.
December 3rd, 2007 at 5:37 am
“masses” is a perfectly cromulent word.
December 3rd, 2007 at 5:44 am
PK: >I disagree with KMR about the finer graining. On a vernier calliper you can go down to thenths of millimetres, and grams are smaller than (sixteenths of) ounces.
Although I’m generally in favour of the metric systems, I must point out that what KMR was really saying was that the old units are closer to body dimensions and other comparators that are familiar in everyday life. For example, “8 inches” is easy to imagine IF you know how long an inch is. “20 cm” is not so easy, even if you know what a cm looks like. Lots of everyday objects are around this size, so it can’t be denied that in everyday use, inches are more convenient.
OK, Devil’s Advocate mode disengage
December 3rd, 2007 at 5:46 am
It would be lovely to be able to say “a star iners 20 Suns”. I guess a more reasonable alternative is “balances”. Ok, so English is my second language
December 3rd, 2007 at 5:55 am
Malte, I was thinking about this some more, and realised that while one might quibble about Phil’s solution, there is a real problem. Colonists on the Moon will find that the amount of flour in a loaf of bread will not change, but their ability to carry it home from the shops will. They may well therefore need one word to describe measuring mass and another to describe measuring weight. That will mean changing the language, which always feels awkward for a while.
The alternative is that Lunar colonists will just rapidly get used to the low gravity and go on linguistically confusing mass and force like the rest of us, just with a different conversion factor.
One thing’s certain, though. They will still be unable to decide who’s more annoying: people who make errors of language, or people who point the errors out.
December 3rd, 2007 at 6:28 am
While I agree with Calvin that verbing weirds langauge, the purpose of language is communication. So it seems to me that changes that enhance communication should be adopted, and those that hinder communication should be glorped. Growing the language may sometimes make me feel nauseated, but people will vote with their mouths. This change appears to have mass appeal.
December 3rd, 2007 at 6:34 am
Mike Torr, before I had to convert from metric to imperial on a regular basis (my wife is American and numbers aren’t her friends), I always had to convert inches to centimetres before it made intuitive sense to me. Now, after many of these calculations, I find I developed an intuitive feel for imperial length measures. So convenience on the every-day scale is largely a matter of what you grew up with. The good news is that conversion takes a relatively small amount of time.
December 3rd, 2007 at 6:57 am
I have no problem with using “mass” as a verb for this sort of thing. It’s a fairly common convention in recent times, and language evolves, so I couldn’t care less.
I do wonder about people who insist that weight is a property only to be found in a gravitational field, though, and that it varies with different gravitational fields. Sure, “weight” — as one of its meanings — refers to the amount of force with which things are attracted gravitationally. But that is only one of its meanings, and perhaps the most parochial one at that. “Weight” and “to weigh” are very old words in English, and predate the concept of gravity by a long shot.
It’s perfectly acceptable to use the verb “to weigh” to refer to how much stuff is in something — how much mass it has, in other words. Arguably, that’s what most people have used “to weigh” for in the history of the verb, anyway. When I am buying ketchup and am looking at the “Net Weight” on the label, for example, I want to know how much ketchup is in the bottle, not how strongly it’s attracted to Earth or how much damage it will do if I drop it on my toe.
The whole “controversy” seems to be cooked up by people who insist that “weight” is something with one, and only one, meaning that describes a force — and that “mass” is a different thing entirely. Neither is true. (Yes, there is a specific meaning of “weight” that requires gravity. But it is not the only meaning of “weight”, and never has been.)
December 3rd, 2007 at 8:51 am
As a scientist you defend the difference between mass and weight. As a writer, however, you say that it is ok to be less precise. Language is fluid and may be poetic but I have read all of the following examples in the recent past:
Slay trial postponed…
Grow your business…
Have you been gifted lately?
The star masses a whopping 1030 kilograms.
There are lots of similar examples and each one is jarring when encountered. They detract from the flow of the piece and to me, indicate a writer unwilling to take the time to find a better way of saying what you intended. Surely, Phil, you do not fall into this category!
In the words of the immortal Calvin and Hobbes,
“Verbing wierds the language.”
December 3rd, 2007 at 9:51 am
Gee BA, seem you struck another controversial note there, everybody is going literate on your derrière.
December 3rd, 2007 at 10:06 am
To me the verb ‘to mass’ implies pretty much the same as ‘to assemble’, so ‘the star masses 10^31 kg’ would mean that the star has pulled together, or possibly added to its mass, 10^31 kg. As another example, “The army massed 10,000 soldiers” would not imply that the army was now using ‘soldiers’ as a unit of mass, merely that the army consisted of 10,000 soldiers (of varying masses, no doubt).
‘To weigh’ is perfectly acceptable most of the time as the context makes it clear what is meant. ‘Weight’ in English seldom refers strictly to the force an object exerts due to its gravity outside of the high-school physics classroom. Even in science, we talk about ‘atomic weights’ and ‘molecular weights’ in chemistry, for instance, when the context clearly implies mass.
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:30 am
Ah, the internet. Home of grammar Nazis everywhere.
Let’s look at it pragmatically. “The star masses twice as much as the Sun” is a nice, active voice sentence, but annoys the anti-verbers. “The star weighs twice as much as the Sun” works because of the fudgy nature of the word ‘weigh’ but annoys the mass-weight dichotomists. “The star has a mass that is twice that of the Sun” is as technically accurate as possible, but verbose, somewhat clunky, and passive voice.
Pragmatism: are you being paid by the word? If so, go for the last one. If not, then use whatever formulation flows best in the prose and is most likely to be correctly understood.
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:50 am
There’s a slight problem with using kilograms and newtons on earth; it’s actually *more* complicated that our “outdated” imperial system. A 1 lb object under a 0.8 g acceleration weighs 1 * 0.8 = 0.8 lbs. A 1 kg object under a 0.8 g acceleration weighs 1 * 9.8 * 0.8 = 7.84 newtons. If we normalized the kg and newton units to, say 1 kg weighs 10 newtons, it would be fine. But otherwise I don’t like it, and will either go with a 1 kg object weighing 0.8 kg at 1 g, or a 9.8 newton object weighing 7.84 newtons at 0.8 g.
And I don’t have a problem with a star massing 10 brazillion tons. I do have a problem with obsoleting something, but just because it sounds funny. And I’ve never heard “obsolete” as a verb until just now, for the record.
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:56 am
Science fiction has long used “mass” as a verb, by analogy with “weigh” and “weight,” in the language of spacefarers. Heinlein uses it all over the place.
It may be that Phil picked up the habit of using “mass” as a verb from a lifetime of reading SF.
December 3rd, 2007 at 12:16 pm
I found an example from science fiction. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein, published 1966:
“I’m not short, I75 cm., but she was taller—I80,I learned later, and massed 70 kilos, all curves and as blond as Shorty was black.”
December 3rd, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Grammar Nazi weighing in. Centipede, I can’t help myself: The sentence “The star has a mass that is twice that of the Sun†is written in the active rather than the passive voice. The passive is created when a form of the auxiliary verb ‘to be’ is paired with the past participle. In the above sentences, both ‘is written’ and ‘is created’ are examples of the passive voice. The two verbs in the quoted sentence, however, are both examples of the simple present. OK, now I will scuttle over to Pharyngula before somebody throws something at me.
December 3rd, 2007 at 2:02 pm
From an old Calvin and Hobbes strip: “Verbing weirds words!”
December 3rd, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Please, oh please stop quoting Calvin and Hobbs without first skim-reading the first 100-odd responses!
December 3rd, 2007 at 2:26 pm
And yes, using two instances of “first” in the previous post is grammatically correct.
December 3rd, 2007 at 2:48 pm
> Grammar Nazi weighing in.
Yes, I know. It merely sounds passive, and my fault for forgetting the word “sounds.” It is, however, still wordier and clunkier than the other examples.
Hmm. If there are Grammar Nazis, then are there Grammar Neuremburg Trials?
“You stand accused of grammaring! How do you plead?”
“Grammaring? Verbing weirds words! Wait… um… I was only following Strunk and White?”
I suppose rather than hanging, though, if the Grammar Nazi is verdicted guity then I suppose his punishment would be copy-pasting neologisms on corporate intrablogs to leverage the enterprise to new paradigms of operational excellence by stepladdering ordinary, traying nouns into jetting verbs of powerfulness.
December 3rd, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Centipede, you own me an afternoon cup of coffee, and possibly a new monitor.
December 3rd, 2007 at 4:16 pm
Thanks Crux Australis. For a while there it was deja vu all over again!
I think I have learned more about weights and mesures today than I ever have before. But being a Murrican, I am still not sure how many miles there is in a liter.
Perhaps someday we will all meet together and settle the mass/weight issue over a tun of wine. At around 260 gallons (US or Imperial??–don’t ask, don’t tell) I think a tun would be barely enough.
NOW–what really gets me peeved is the trend of the twenty-somethings around here saying the following:
My Bad!
On Accident!
No Problem!
Geez! I am starting to sound like my grandma the english teacher!
December 3rd, 2007 at 4:20 pm
And before anyone says so: I am off to the penalty box for excessive use of exclamation points.
December 3rd, 2007 at 4:41 pm
2.4*10^(-13) miles^3 in a litre.
December 3rd, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Mike Torr (1:46 am) – Rest assured that YYYY-MM-DD IS the standard date format per ISO 8601:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601
This is great for filing computer files (at the beginning of the filename) – gotta try it to love it.
December 3rd, 2007 at 6:11 pm
I have come to this discussion rather late and feel like I hardly need to add anything; however, as an editor (who recently worked on an astronomy book) I would like to put in my vote for not using mass as a verb. From a reader’s point of view, “the star’s mass is xx kilograms” scans just as well as “the star masses xx kilograms”. It avoids the confusion that might arise from having two meanings for the verb “to mass”, as well.
The English language is constantly evolving, but there is no need to force unnecessary changes.
On another subject, I was in hospital yesterday for minor surgery and I wondered when the “s” was taken out of the word “anae[s]thetist”?
December 3rd, 2007 at 7:36 pm
> Centipede, you own me an afternoon cup of coffee, and possibly a new monitor.
~
[]D
December 3rd, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Astronomers might weigh stars in tons or tonnes, but I gather physicists weigh them in meters, as in “That star masses 1.5 kilometers.” I gather that the distance is the Schwarzschild radius, and if you measure time in meters as well you can really simplify orbital calculations. Of course, dimensional analysis goes by the boards.
I’ve got no problem with “mass” as a verb. Humans find verbs and nouns extremely flexible, and a word usually has many grammatical roles. I gather this is even worse in Chinese than English since Chinese is more strongly positional and much less inflected than English.
There are a lot of idioms involving common measurements. A sailor might say “The SS Slowboat makes 10 knots on the high seas” which sounds like the ship has taken up macrame.
Also, Americans shouldn’t be so smug about being non-metric. Try buying a half gallon of soda or a fifth of a gallon of liquor. Liquids, except for milk and a few other such products, are sold in liters. Look at your next supermarket receipt and see if you’ve bought one pound eight ounces of cheese. My supermarket says 1.50 pounds because the standard is now pounds and hundredths, not ounces. (I assume that the scales are piezoelectric and so measure weight, not mass).
I’m not surprised to find that Germans have a half kilo measure. The French have been using livres since before the Revolution, and they still do. Interestingly, they buy their computer screens in pouces, thumbs, which are American inches. Look at a French computer ad, and you might find centimeters in the fine print, but the screen size is in inches.
December 4th, 2007 at 9:01 am
AndreH said “If you use typical old mechanical scales for “weighing†a kg flour will give you the same amount on moon or on earth, because you compare the mass of the flour with a standard.”
Depends. Are we talking about a spring scale (force) or a balance (mass)?
December 4th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Bald Ape said:
“I like your usage. I absolutely hate it when someone uses “weighs†with kilograms. Especially someone who ought to know better. A NASA scientist said, in a TV story on the Moon landings, that the EVA suit for the moon “weighs (however many) kg on Earth, but only (whatever) kg on the moon. Aaarrrggghh!”
Hey, what’s the problem?
People say “molecular weight” when they actually mean “relative molecular mass” quite frequently. As a biochemist in the UK, I use kg as a unit of weight at the Earth’s surface, because it is SI. At the Earth’s surface, mass and weight are equivalent.
I would never try weighing out 235.4 Newtons of urea, for example! No, it would be 24.024 kg.
The opposite occurs in the US, too. The pound is used to mean both mass and force.
December 6th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Sergeant Zim, Knots per hour is completely valid although an unusual and perhaps somewhat rare unit of acceleration!
July 3rd, 2008 at 3:21 am
nevada dog breeders
[...] if I”m not wrong, then lets see you with your pet(s), or, if you have no pets, then lets see you with someone else”s pets or with a stuffed pet! Originally posted at 1:29PM, 28 January 2007 PDT ( permalink ) chrismaverick (a group [...]
October 6th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
[...] those of you who want to complain about my use of mass as a weight, read this, and acknowledge my superior logical [...]
October 21st, 2008 at 4:36 pm
I think all of you make an elephant out of an ant. Around the world, other than the English Speaking one, People weigh themseves and other opbjects in Kilograms, grams, decigrams and hectogrames, etc. and they know precisely what is meant. They are a mass, and their “weight is x kilograms;they don’t use another unitfor weight. The reason they do this is more than likely that they never expected to leave their planet and thus they are happy with their choice..