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October/November 2003 |
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Words |
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Buffalo Water Tops Potpourri The Timor Sea Symposium in Darwin in June was an excellent event. Everyone I spoke to was full of enthusiasm for the range and quality of papers. These PESA-style technical conferences are really working extremely well for our exploration community, facilitating a very important exchange of ideas and information. For me, there was also a wealth of information for Words. I have already discussed the confusion over the pronunciation of 'Petrel Sub-basin'. Next month we will discuss the curious notion that Amadeus, as in the Central Australian basin, has some connection with the German composer, and that film of the same name. There was a plethora of other items too, with links back to recent Words columns. John Bradshaw injected a lively lecture on the idiocy of re-injection—as a word that is, not as something he and Andy Rigg propose to do with carbon dioxide. 'How can you re-inject something,' John asked quite precisely, 'unless you've already injected it and withdrawn it?' Another friend (nameless because of a senior memory moment) spoke with passion about the use of 'quality' as a synonym for 'good'. As in The well did not encounter quality reservoir. My friend's reddest-face passion was reserved for quality weather. I nodded appropriately, but found myself less certain when thinking about it later. Certainly quality has been an English noun for a thousand years or so, without any record until recently of its use as an adjective. However, the word has been used by itself for centuries to express goodness or nobility (that is, the highest quality), as in He showed his quality. While this is less common now, we all understand clearly the unspoken 'high' when we speak of someone being (say) 'a player of quality'. It is a small step to applying this to objects, as in The weather has quality, to use the word correctly. Modern use as an adjective might then be seen as back-formation from this largely archaic usage—though I suspect that probably flatters the modern trend. That said, quality time is a widely used and clearly understood modern expression, and wider application of quality as an adjective is inevitable. We
also push the envelope a little by making adjectives for 'quality' from
the property we are describing, as in reservoir quality, for example.
I'm happier with the term when quality remains a noun, as in …sands
of reservoir quality. I'm less comfortable when the jargon builds
complex adjectives, as in …reservoir quality sands—though
this particular term is useful and will be used. The newspapers and radio seemed suddenly overtaken that conference week with the great Aussie hypocoristic, which we discussed in the April/May PESA News. There were Brissies and hammies and Natties everywhere I looked and listened, and it hasn't stopped since, as though some national pandemic was in play. Most of it seems to me to fall outside the traditional notion that the hypocoristic conveys closeness or affinity between speaker and object. In some instances, the informality seems inappropriate. When we go to Brisbane on a holiday, Brissie fits the moment. Not so when fire breaks out at the BP oil refinery there, and Oil and Gas Today reports 'Fire at Brissie BP refinery'. In many instances, the usage seemed at least an affectation and probably a laziness. Hammies. These are not what Aussies used to call hem semmiches. These are what AFL footies stretch and pull. Fishies. This is not baby talk for fish but Aussie hypo-speak for fishermen. This is doubly confusing because fishers has also recently emerged. Peaky. This is how gold looked to the Financial Review (Finnie?), in contrast to oil, the price of which was adjudged to be firm. Nattie. 'Nattie was up for the day', the young woman said, and listeners to the ABC Drive program in Perth could have been forgiven for thinking that this was a story about young Nathaniel. Not so. This was the Hartley Poynton spokeswoman discussing the share price of one of the banks—presumably her favourite, given such affection! Sandies. This was a false alarm on the hypo-meter, but it got my attention and was a high point of the conference for 'Words'. I had begun to nod off in a lecture, as is my well-known want, when I heard something about sandies. I was instantly awake, lest someone was feeling affectionate about sandy beds and a double entendre was about to be. Not so, it seemed, and I had nearly nodded off again when I heard a reference to 'the group Sandies Upward'. That was a new one to me, I had to admit. I was familiar with Sandy Shore, of course. I even knew Muddy Rivers. But I'd not heard of Sandies Upward. They were, it turned out, part of 'a cryptic succession' and I was wide awake and ready for anything. Not since the 'faults daylighting' at SEAPEX 2000 in Singapore have I been so expectant of the closing moments. I wasn't disappointed. We were swept along with much ado about 'fines versus coarses'—a sort of conflicted deposition, if you will—to a final exaltation for 'an integration of data into a simple philosophy'. I wanted to leap to my feet and cheer, but my legs were asleep. Nothing gets an old orator going like getting down and dirty in the coarses—and the coarser the better—and coming forth with a philosophy. A simple one, at that. In vino veritas, a common factor. I arrived home to the WA Premier's announcement about Ningaloo. Not since the Reformation in Eastern Europe has the term 'icon' been so widely used. Inevitably, it became an adjective too. 'We have preserved the iconic nature of the landscape' announced the WA Government site. Another site noted with pride that 'Our species has become a geophysical force'. That geophysical reference reminds me of the headline in the West Australian on July 24th this year, about the male Zeus bug Phoreticovelia disparata. This water skater rides on his partner's back for about a week, while they copulate and she provides him with food. Then he hops off and looks for another mate. The headline: Love bugs eat en route and leave! (I don't make them up; I just report them. For those wanting a more cerebral moment, my other favourite concerned actress Penelope Cruz's successfully suing New Idea for libel over claims she was unfaithful to partner Tom Cruise. Pene for your torts on a tall tale, wrote the Australian in the July 17th edition.) All of this reminds me of my recent project with produced water at Buffalo oilfield in the Bonaparte Basin. The project title was 'Buffalo Water' I thought this a wonderful new expression. It sounds so clearly a derisive term from the prairies, a sort of first step towards a declaration based on more solid bovine output. The client suggested we change the project name to Buffalo Brine, but I said 'Buffalo water' to that. Peter Purcell |
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