For your edification:

[conuly]

The word is pom-pon. There's an N at the end.

Oh, and those apes? Are orangutans. They may drink tang, but it's not part of their name.

GET IT RIGHT!

Thank you. This has been a public service announcement.

Comments

I agree about Orangutan but are you sure pom-pon & pom-pom aren't both right?

[ser-kai.livejournal.com]

3 entries found for pom-pon.
pom·pon Audio pronunciation of "pom-pon" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (pmpn) also pom·pom (pmpm)
n.

1. A tuft or ball of material such as wool or ribbon, used as a decoration, especially on shoes, caps, or curtains.
2. A small buttonlike flower of some chrysanthemums and dahlias.
3. pompom A ball of fluffy material, such as feathers or strips of colored paper, that is waved by cheerleaders and sports fans.

Re: I agree about Orangutan but are you sure pom-pon & pom-pom aren't both right?

[moggymania.livejournal.com]

Yep, it's always been written as pom-pom in articles, novels, and so forth as far as I can remember. I've never read it as having an "n" at the end before Conuly's entry, either, and that's the kind of thing I'd have noticed.

So it might be a descendant of "pompon" (no hyphen for it in Websters), but it's one that appeared a very long time ago, enough that even I'd say it's an accepted form.

Re: I agree about Orangutan but are you sure pom-pon & pom-pom aren't both right?

[conuly]

POSITIVE. The dictionary is flatly wrong. Because I say so. I shall not be moved!

Re: I agree about Orangutan but are you sure pom-pon & pom-pom aren't both right?

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

When I've seen them in catalogues for cheerleaders, they were pom-pons.

The flowers I think are Pom poms.

Re: I agree about Orangutan but are you sure pom-pon & pom-pom aren't both right?

[ser-kai.livejournal.com]

*laughs* You amuse me, sometimes. Probably because it's like looking in a mirror.

Re: I agree about Orangutan but are you sure pom-pon & pom-pom aren't both right?

[conuly]

I try :)

We all have our little hang-ups, and this one is mine. One of mine, anyway.

Okay, I never saw a catalog for cheerleaderish things...

[moggymania.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I've never seen (actually never even considered the theoretical existence of) catalogs for cheerleaders before... I was just going off the spelling I saw in fiction books growing up in fiction books starring kids/teens, with "pom-pom" usually being in reference to cheerleaders. :) My guess is that it has been an alternate spelling for so long that published authors automatically used it for both concepts as well.

Re: Okay, I never saw a catalog for cheerleaderish things...

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

I was in HS way before online shopping. Although I wasn't a cheerleader in HS, I had seen the catalogues they ordered stuff from.

Wow, I just googled pom pons and the internet is chock fulla pom pons. (Including a site that said, yes, it's pom pons, no, we won't bother going into why it's an N. Huh?)

Re: Okay, I never saw a catalog for cheerleaderish things...

[conuly]

Because it's French, basically, and that's how the word is spelled. That's how I always understood it, anyway. There's not much to explain.

Re: Okay, I never saw a catalog for cheerleaderish things...

[rho]

Well gosh. I'm glad that all the other English words of French origin have retained their exact ancestral form.

Yes, I know I'm being facetious. I think that the interesting thing here isn't so much how the word is spelt, but the prescriptivist/descriptivist argument. I don't think that there are many people here who would deny that pompon was the original form, but that pom-pom is now widely used (over 4 times as many google hits for pom-pom as for pom-pon).

The question is, how long do we wait after a word has mutated before we accept the newer version as "correct"? Clearly we have to do so at some point, or we'd all be speaking proto-indo-european (or some earlier, unknown language). Equally clearly, we don't want to legitimise every single mistake that anyone ever makes. Somewhere in between the two extremes is a line to be drawn, and it isn't exactly clear where the line is, and it's one of those things that perfectly reasonable people can disagree on.

As you may surmise from my facetious opening, I tend to be of the descriptivist camp, and am perfectly happy to see pom-pom, et al. If a usage becomes more widespread tha the original, then I'll admit that it can be viewed as correct, even in cases when I don't like it (so for instance, I'm accepting of people using "less" when refering to countable items rather than "fewer" even though it drives me nuts).

(In this particular case, I'm also curious if it's a regional thing at all. I'm fairly sure that I've never seen "pom-pon" other than on the Internet. Though this may just be because it's not a particularly common word, no matter how you spell it. (I'd also say that I've never heard it either, but I'm not sure my hearing is good enough to discern that sort of minor difference, when context is leading me one way in particular.)

[innerbrat]

Seeins as how it's not even an English word, the following spellings are all acceptable and valid variants:

orangutan
orang-utan
oran-utan
orang-outan
ourang-utang

Re: Okay, I never saw a catalog for cheerleaderish things...

[conuly]

1. I'm a descriptivist. Most of the time. Spelling's not one of those areas, though... I figure that if spelling were meant to make sense, it would already, but as it doesn't, we ought to go whole-hog and stick with the original spellings of words.

Mostly because I'm miffed that nobody takes my diabolical plans to reform English spelling seriously.

2. *ignores most of the rest because I tend to agree*

Huh. I should show you my "insulted their religion" rant one day. I think you weren't on my friends list then. It was... a bit scary. Two people defriended me. One claimed that nobody has ever been judged unfavorably for speaking the standard (i.e. correct!) dialect instead of the local one. I'm still not sure what world she's living in.

3. In this particular case, I'm also curious if it's a regional thing at all.

Just a pedantic one. This? Is my childhood. Heaven forfend you ever say "If I was..."! You'd get yelled into the middle of next week! (Which I believe is the only explanation for my mastery of the English subjunctive. It's apparently a tense you can't use properly unless you grew up with a somewhat crazy intellectual snob or two.)

[conuly]

Of course it's an English word. It's in English dictionaries, isn't it?

[innerbrat]

with all of the above spelling variations, yes.

Re: Okay, I never saw a catalog for cheerleaderish things...

[wakasplat.livejournal.com]

1. I'm a descriptivist. Most of the time. Spelling's not one of those areas, though... I figure that if spelling were meant to make sense, it would already, but as it doesn't, we ought to go whole-hog and stick with the original spellings of words.

þæt makes sense... ;-)

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Ah the fun of words that have been transliterated.

Re: Okay, I never saw a catalog for cheerleaderish things...

[conuly]

Man, if only we could have a useful letter for th again....

Re: I agree about Orangutan but are you sure pom-pon & pom-pom aren't both right?

[nerdinium.livejournal.com]

Homestar Runner spells it Pom Pom:

http://www.homestarrunner.com/characters2.html

So there! :)

[beccak1961.livejournal.com]

Google takes pom-pom without asking me if I mean "pom-pons", good enough for me:) I use Google for most of my spell checking.

Okay, Ms. Descriptivist ...

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

Google gives 3,090,000 hits for pom-pom and 698,000 for pom-pon. (Also 627,000 for pompon and 626,000 for pompom).

And I'd argue it's an issue of pronunciation, not spelling.

Re: Okay, Ms. Descriptivist ...

[conuly]

*blinkblinkblink*

If I'm steadfast enough not to accept the dictionary as proof (after all, I said it's one way, didn't I?), why would I accept google?

Re: Okay, Ms. Descriptivist ...

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

I tend to accept Google as a much more reliable descriptivist tool than the dictionary, since it makes it much clearer what the relative usage level of each word was.

Re: Okay, Ms. Descriptivist ...

[conuly]

Yes, but in this case I'm being, in my own words, "the oppressor", i.e. prescriptivist. So, again, google? I ask you!

I agree about Orangutan but are you sure pom-pon & pom-pom aren't both right?

[ser-kai.livejournal.com]

3 entries found for pom-pon.
pom·pon Audio pronunciation of "pom-pon" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (pmpn) also pom·pom (pmpm)
n.

1. A tuft or ball of material such as wool or ribbon, used as a decoration, especially on shoes, caps, or curtains.
2. A small buttonlike flower of some chrysanthemums and dahlias.
3. pompom A ball of fluffy material, such as feathers or strips of colored paper, that is waved by cheerleaders and sports fans.

Re: I agree about Orangutan but are you sure pom-pon & pom-pom aren't both right?

[moggymania.livejournal.com]

Yep, it's always been written as pom-pom in articles, novels, and so forth as far as I can remember. I've never read it as having an "n" at the end before Conuly's entry, either, and that's the kind of thing I'd have noticed.

So it might be a descendant of "pompon" (no hyphen for it in Websters), but it's one that appeared a very long time ago, enough that even I'd say it's an accepted form.

Re: I agree about Orangutan but are you sure pom-pon & pom-pom aren't both right?

[conuly]

POSITIVE. The dictionary is flatly wrong. Because I say so. I shall not be moved!

Re: I agree about Orangutan but are you sure pom-pon & pom-pom aren't both right?

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

When I've seen them in catalogues for cheerleaders, they were pom-pons.

The flowers I think are Pom poms.

Re: I agree about Orangutan but are you sure pom-pon & pom-pom aren't both right?

[ser-kai.livejournal.com]

*laughs* You amuse me, sometimes. Probably because it's like looking in a mirror.

Re: I agree about Orangutan but are you sure pom-pon & pom-pom aren't both right?

[conuly]

I try :)

We all have our little hang-ups, and this one is mine. One of mine, anyway.

Okay, I never saw a catalog for cheerleaderish things...

[moggymania.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I've never seen (actually never even considered the theoretical existence of) catalogs for cheerleaders before... I was just going off the spelling I saw in fiction books growing up in fiction books starring kids/teens, with "pom-pom" usually being in reference to cheerleaders. :) My guess is that it has been an alternate spelling for so long that published authors automatically used it for both concepts as well.

Re: Okay, I never saw a catalog for cheerleaderish things...

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

I was in HS way before online shopping. Although I wasn't a cheerleader in HS, I had seen the catalogues they ordered stuff from.

Wow, I just googled pom pons and the internet is chock fulla pom pons. (Including a site that said, yes, it's pom pons, no, we won't bother going into why it's an N. Huh?)

Re: Okay, I never saw a catalog for cheerleaderish things...

[conuly]

Because it's French, basically, and that's how the word is spelled. That's how I always understood it, anyway. There's not much to explain.

Re: Okay, I never saw a catalog for cheerleaderish things...

[rho]

Well gosh. I'm glad that all the other English words of French origin have retained their exact ancestral form.

Yes, I know I'm being facetious. I think that the interesting thing here isn't so much how the word is spelt, but the prescriptivist/descriptivist argument. I don't think that there are many people here who would deny that pompon was the original form, but that pom-pom is now widely used (over 4 times as many google hits for pom-pom as for pom-pon).

The question is, how long do we wait after a word has mutated before we accept the newer version as "correct"? Clearly we have to do so at some point, or we'd all be speaking proto-indo-european (or some earlier, unknown language). Equally clearly, we don't want to legitimise every single mistake that anyone ever makes. Somewhere in between the two extremes is a line to be drawn, and it isn't exactly clear where the line is, and it's one of those things that perfectly reasonable people can disagree on.

As you may surmise from my facetious opening, I tend to be of the descriptivist camp, and am perfectly happy to see pom-pom, et al. If a usage becomes more widespread tha the original, then I'll admit that it can be viewed as correct, even in cases when I don't like it (so for instance, I'm accepting of people using "less" when refering to countable items rather than "fewer" even though it drives me nuts).

(In this particular case, I'm also curious if it's a regional thing at all. I'm fairly sure that I've never seen "pom-pon" other than on the Internet. Though this may just be because it's not a particularly common word, no matter how you spell it. (I'd also say that I've never heard it either, but I'm not sure my hearing is good enough to discern that sort of minor difference, when context is leading me one way in particular.)

[innerbrat]

Seeins as how it's not even an English word, the following spellings are all acceptable and valid variants:

orangutan
orang-utan
oran-utan
orang-outan
ourang-utang

Re: Okay, I never saw a catalog for cheerleaderish things...

[conuly]

1. I'm a descriptivist. Most of the time. Spelling's not one of those areas, though... I figure that if spelling were meant to make sense, it would already, but as it doesn't, we ought to go whole-hog and stick with the original spellings of words.

Mostly because I'm miffed that nobody takes my diabolical plans to reform English spelling seriously.

2. *ignores most of the rest because I tend to agree*

Huh. I should show you my "insulted their religion" rant one day. I think you weren't on my friends list then. It was... a bit scary. Two people defriended me. One claimed that nobody has ever been judged unfavorably for speaking the standard (i.e. correct!) dialect instead of the local one. I'm still not sure what world she's living in.

3. In this particular case, I'm also curious if it's a regional thing at all.

Just a pedantic one. This? Is my childhood. Heaven forfend you ever say "If I was..."! You'd get yelled into the middle of next week! (Which I believe is the only explanation for my mastery of the English subjunctive. It's apparently a tense you can't use properly unless you grew up with a somewhat crazy intellectual snob or two.)

[conuly]

Of course it's an English word. It's in English dictionaries, isn't it?

[innerbrat]

with all of the above spelling variations, yes.

Re: Okay, I never saw a catalog for cheerleaderish things...

[wakasplat.livejournal.com]

1. I'm a descriptivist. Most of the time. Spelling's not one of those areas, though... I figure that if spelling were meant to make sense, it would already, but as it doesn't, we ought to go whole-hog and stick with the original spellings of words.

þæt makes sense... ;-)

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Ah the fun of words that have been transliterated.

Re: Okay, I never saw a catalog for cheerleaderish things...

[conuly]

Man, if only we could have a useful letter for th again....

Re: I agree about Orangutan but are you sure pom-pon & pom-pom aren't both right?

[nerdinium.livejournal.com]

Homestar Runner spells it Pom Pom:

http://www.homestarrunner.com/characters2.html

So there! :)

[beccak1961.livejournal.com]

Google takes pom-pom without asking me if I mean "pom-pons", good enough for me:) I use Google for most of my spell checking.

Okay, Ms. Descriptivist ...

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

Google gives 3,090,000 hits for pom-pom and 698,000 for pom-pon. (Also 627,000 for pompon and 626,000 for pompom).

And I'd argue it's an issue of pronunciation, not spelling.

Re: Okay, Ms. Descriptivist ...

[conuly]

*blinkblinkblink*

If I'm steadfast enough not to accept the dictionary as proof (after all, I said it's one way, didn't I?), why would I accept google?

Re: Okay, Ms. Descriptivist ...

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

I tend to accept Google as a much more reliable descriptivist tool than the dictionary, since it makes it much clearer what the relative usage level of each word was.

Re: Okay, Ms. Descriptivist ...

[conuly]

Yes, but in this case I'm being, in my own words, "the oppressor", i.e. prescriptivist. So, again, google? I ask you!