Calling all Greek/Latin experts!

[compilerbitch]

Hi all,

I have an urgent need for one or more new words for a mathematics paper I'm currently writing. We are trying to create a taxonomy of existing approaches to hardware analysis, but no actual accepted terminology currently exists. Tradition has it that new terms should probably derive from Greek and/or Latin, hence the plea for help from people-who-know-about-such-stuff.

Anyway, I'll describe the things we're trying to describe, so suggestions of good sounding relevant technical terms would be much appreciated!

Timeless, time free, not requiring consideration of time, time independent. Our best guess so far is achronous. Technically, an achronous model would represent the behaviour of a circuit without taking into account the absolute time(s) at which signals change state.

Non-achronous, something denoting the opposite of the previous case, technically models of circuit behaviour that do take into account absolute time.

'Absolute time', here I'm looking for something that would fit into the same bit of a sentence as 'achronous', but that means 'depending on absolute time'.

'Stretchy time'

'Rigid time'

'Independent time'

'Relational/related time'


'Unknown time' (variants including 'unknown within a range' and 'completely unknown' would be handy)

'Sliced-up time' where slices may be arbitrarily thick.

'Sliced-up time' where slices are of equal, regular duration (think 'clock ticking').

'Ordered time' (here, I mean order in the sense of partial/total order, e.g. 1,2,3,4... rather than something political)

It would be a good idea to avoid existing terms, e.g. synchronous, asynchronous, because I'd rather have distinct, new terms that won't have existing overloaded meaning though they should still be intuitively meaningful. Also, nothing too long -- we really need single words rather than phrases.

The world of science thanks you in advance!

---

Edit: It's looking like achronal is in pole position at the moment. It's already in use in my current draft, which you can see here if you have the stomach for a heavily mathematical 31 page bludgeon-of-a-journal-paper.

Comments

[shreena.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I'll be watching the comments on this with interest. I'm currently writing a chapter on Augustine and time and one of the problems that I'm having is that he doesn't appear to have different words for things like atemporality Vs eternity and, as far as I can tell, most ancient writers don't seem to make anywhere near as many temporal distinctions as we do. I'm only just starting to research the vocab bit of this chapter so I don't as yet have anything much to add but I'll come back to it.

[andrewwyld.livejournal.com]

Quantum mechanics uses time-independent and time-dependent for the Schrödinger equations -- could those be helpful for the first two?

For "sliced" I recommend partitioned.  I don't think you will find a single word for this, though.  As for the clock ticking idea, I don't know if you could use periodic at all?

[caramel-betty.livejournal.com]

I suggest leaping on cerberuspuppy (leave a message for him in his blog or something), as he teaches Greek and Latin. Also, I like the idea of leaping on him. *coughs*

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

I think you're after:

• Spiritual;
• Temporal;
• Agnostic;
• Profane

Which is silly, but fun.

So try playing with 'temporal' a bit, and find a tame classicist to shek your working...

1. Antemporal;
2. Contemporal;
3. Temporal;
4. Variotemporal;
5. Presbytemporal;
6. Paratemporaneous;
7. Co-temporal;
8. Anatemporal (or 'Temporally-agnostic');
9. Tempotonic (being composed of tones, or slices of time);
10. Harmonic or metronomic;
11. Temporostructural;

[hsenag.livejournal.com]

Might be worth looking at the publications of these guys: http://www.haskell.org/yampa/ - from what I can remember of their work, they have to handle some of this kind of thing too.

"Tomos" is Greek for Slice, hence...

[magicdragon2.livejournal.com]

"Tomos" is Greek for Slice. Hence atom, thing so small it can't be sliced. Hence Tomography.

You may want to use my new coinage: CHRONOTOMIC (time-sliced) or maybe TOMOCHRONIC.

I'd love to know even more about your paper in progress!

Jonathan Vos Post
ex-Adjunct Professor of Mathematics, Woodbury University
ex-Adjunct Professor of Astronomy, Cypress College
PhD (All But Degree) Computer Science, UMass/Amherst
over 70 computer science and software papers published

[yannnis.livejournal.com]

Here are some thoughts. Most likely wrong but hopefully could sparkle some ideas..
(I would need to better understand the exact context and meaning of where each of them is to be used to try and give some more accurate/relevant terms).

Timeless: άχρονο~without specific time/timing (achronous/achronal?), διαχρονικό~time independent/always valid regardless time (diachronic ?), ανεξίχρονο~time independent (anexichronous?), αϊδιος?, etc.

Non-achronous: χρονικό~some facts that took place during a specific period (chronicon?/chronal?)

'Absolute time', here I'm looking for something that would fit into the same bit of a sentence as 'achronous', but that means 'depending on absolute time': ??

'Stretchy time': χρονιος~after a long time,late,long-delaying,tardy (chronic/chronious), εγχρονιζω~to be long about a thing,delay,become chronic

'Rigid time': μονόχρονα~of one time, of the same time or measure (monochronous)

'Independent time': αυτόχρονος~being its own time (autochronous)

'Relational/related time': ??

'Unknown time' (variants including 'unknown within a range' and 'completely unknown' would be handy): ?

'Sliced-up time' where slices may be arbitrarily thick: χρονοδιαιρετά/χρονοδιαιρέσεις (chronodivisions?), ανισόχρονα~of unequal times/durations (anisochronous), ετερόχρονα~of different times (heterochronous)

'Sliced-up time' where slices are of equal, regular duration (think 'clock ticking'): ισοχρονικά ΧΥΖ ~ ΧΥΖ of the same duration (isochronous ΧΥΖ)

'Ordered time' (here, I mean order in the sense of partial/total order, e.g. 1,2,3,4... rather than something political): εγκαιρος~timely (?)

If you are really serious about this I could probably try ask some greek-linguists..(but then again I am also not sure how urgent is your urgent need and if I could get that done in time ;).

[dr-strych9.livejournal.com]

Your concept of "absolute time" might be well-informed by first reading On the Chronometry and Metrology of Computer Network Timescales and their Application to the Network Time Protocol (http://www.cis.udel.edu/~mills/database/papers/time.pdf) by David L. Mills. You may find his use of the term epoch to be worth reuse.