Date: 2003-11-11 10:34:00
Tags: random, language
pet peeve word of the day
My pet peeve word of the day is webinar. Presumably this comes from the combination of "web" and "seminar", ie. a presentation about something delivered via the internet. The etymology of the word "seminar" is the latin seminarium, which means "nursery".

Google shows about 243,000 hits for the "webinar" search term. Clearly it has caught on. But why? What makes the presentation delivery mechanism so special that it has to be embedded into the generic name for the event? What do you call a presentation that is delivered both live in person and over a computer network? Or perhaps simultaneously broadcast over two different mediums? (Oh right, that's called simulcast.)

I suspect that eventually people will remember that the medium is not the message, and we can return to calling presentations presentations. The word "webinar" will be relegated to just another entry in dictionaries of obsolete computer terms.
[info]tandrews
2003-11-11T17:30:11Z
Yeah, it also just sounds goofy, like it's the product of some desperate sci-fi screenwriter trying to come up with a name for a new alien race. ("Captain, allow me to present Ambassador Klorg, representing the Webinar of planet Gortex.")
[info]catherine81
2003-11-11T20:34:35Z
how about "irregardless"? :) isnt the english language great?
[info]ghewgill
2003-11-11T20:57:06Z
Oh, definitely. Unfortunately "irregardless" is actually a word according to m-w.com, even though I don't think it should be. (And my opinion matters! :)

[info]nugget has a great list related to this on his Pullet Surprise page.
Greg Hewgill <greg@hewgill.com>