Friday, February 22, 2013

Meting* + Meetin*, Meeting* + Metin* (for Meeting* or Meting*)

Apparently, the word metin means "text" in Turkish; therefore, I believe the caption to this picture refers to the epigraph on the statue, which loosely, if in a rather fanciful fashion, translates to: "Yurdanur Iskitler, swans sculpture park opposite the water fairies dance." This is one work of art I'd sort of like to meet, even if actual swans and fairies happened to be afoot. I love it when ugly ducklings turn out to be swans, and when fairies are not ugly names for graceful men, but little winged ballerinas flying through the air (sometimes but not always the same thing). Meting* + Meetin* garners five hits in OhioLINK and 242 in WorldCat. Meeting* + Metin* gets six and 99. Just Meting* alone produces 127 records in OhioLINK and "too many" to display in WorldCat, but many of the hoped-for "typos" in this case are probably proper names or, conceivably, the gerund form of the verb "to mete." For some reason, I get zero hits in OhioLINK on Meeting* + Met* (is "met" some sort of unknown Boolean operator or something??), though meting out an extra i to the second component yields 28. These results proved unsatisfying as well, however, revealing words like metier, meticulous, metidja, the Indian tribe Métis, etc. Swan that note, and fair[l]y or not, I'll leave it to you to figure out if such things exist in your own catalogs, and daydream instead over walks in the park and other happy thoughts on this late-winter, almost-spring day.

(Metin Yurdanur'un Kavaklıdere, kuğulu park karşısındaki su perilerinin dansı heykeli, 2008, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

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