Re: Usanian definition

From: Wade T.Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Date: Sat 23 Nov 2002 - 01:50:07 GMT

  • Next message: Bruce Howlett: "Re: memetics-digest V1 #1215"

    On Friday, November 22, 2002, at 07:08 , joedees@bellsouth.net wrote:

    > I once knew a gay fellow who stoutly maintained that he was a
    > Uranian. When asked what that meant, he would smile sweetly and
    > reply, "It means that I come from ur anus."

    'From', or 'in'?

    Anyway, here's another source-

    http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Usian&printable=yes

    Usian
     From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

    The word Usian is one of the many attempts to create an adjective--specifically, a demonym--for United States nationals, as an unambiguous alternative to "American", which is the term usually used. Mentions of the word, and proposals to use it (or close variants), have been around at least since the first half of the 20th century. The usage of "Usian" is not common.

    Use of the word has been practiced and advocated to distinguish U.S. nationals from people living in other countries in the Americas. The concern that motivates use of the word is that, since "America" is part of the names of both North America and South America, it follows that
    "American" means, or ought to be understood to mean, "inhabitant of the Americas".

    Other words that have been suggested for the same purpose are Columbian, Columbard, Fredonian, Frede, Unisian, United Statesian, Colonican, Appalacian, Usian, Washingtonian, Usonian (among whose users was Frank Lloyd Wright), Uessian, U-S-ian, and Uesican (in approximately historical order from 1789 to 1939, according to Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage).

    Other examples observed in the field:

    • "Usanian"
    • "USAian"

    It should be noted that several of these terms have direct parallels in languages other than English:

    • "United Statesian" directly parallels Spanish estadounidense.
    • "Usonian" made its way into Esperanto as usona.
    • "Usanian" clearly derived from the Ido word 'Usana'.

    See also: Cultural imperialism, Ethnocentrism

    External Link

    http://www.electriceditors.net/edline/vol4/4-9.txt

    Retrieved from "http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Usian" The page was last modified 06:57 Oct 13, 2002.

    =============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat 23 Nov 2002 - 01:52:48 GMT