Miasmata

[pat]

Miasmata, a 'common' word played by 12 people out of 302. Really?

[mkenuk]

...and taramasalata managed 14.

Do we need to say more?

[pat]

I think there's a difference between the two, Mike.  I think a lot of people who failed to play taramasalata probably did so because they didn't spot it rather than because they didn't know the word, whereas I suspect miasmata is known by far fewer people.

[mkenuk]

Sorry, Pat, you can put me down as one who didn't know the word and therefore didn't find it.
I'm not very good at names of food and ingredients.
I'll just have to take your word for it that it is likely to be known by lots of people. My visits to Greek-speaking countries took place many years ago.

I fully agree with you about miasmata. I assume this is a Greek plural form.
I would have thought that miasma was a 'non-count' noun which wouldn't normally have a plural.
COD, however, does give miasmas, ie with the regular English plural inflexion.

Interestingly, in another recent game automata, a similar plural form, was given 'uncommon'
COD, by the way, gives both automatons and automata as the plural of automaton.

[Jacki]

Well I'd say a giblet is known to more people than taramasalata. As for miasmata I don't even know what it means. I have heard of miasma.

[pat]

Sorry, Pat, you can put me down as one who didn't know the word and therefore didn't find it.

Maybe I'm wrong then, about people knowing it. I assumed that as a vegetarian with no interest in food other than as fuel (me) knows the word it must be quite well known!

[tpc]

my wife (redridinghood) used to drive an early (1990) Mazda Miatas. Her friends used to jokingly referred to it as her “Miasma”.

[Alan W]

This is another example of a plural from a classical language which has fallen out of use in English. Combine that with the fact that miasma is rarely pluralised, and miasmata is definitely rare.

The News on the Web corpus is probably representative:

miasma 1810
miasmas 87
miasmata 37

Except that this greatly overstates the usage of miasmata, since almost all of those 37 occurrences are referring to the name of a computer game - capitalised, so irrelevant for our purposes.

Many of those plural uses, of either form, are referring to now-discredited theories of disease transmission. For example, this from the New Yorker in June 2020:

In 1854, John Snow, the British health researcher, began studying a cholera outbreak on Broad Street, in the Soho section of London. At the time, most people, scientists included, believed that the cause of the epidemic was "miasmata," or foul air. Snow was a skeptic.

From now on miasmata will be treated as rare.

[Alan W]

Also queried during this discussion was whether taramasalata should remain a common word.

Sometimes this Greek fish roe dip is also called just tarama in English. Tarama is accepted in Chi as a rare word. If I remember rightly I played tarama in the puzzle that started this all off and then assumed that taramasalata was two words (it isn't), so didn't attempt it. Apparently it can also be written taramosalata, which Chi allows as a rare word. I don't doubt that those rare words should remain as rare. The question is, should taramasalata be rare too?

It seems that taramasalata is not used that often in publications or websites. For example, just 32 occurrences in the 1.9 billion word Corpus of Global Web-Based English. Also, it seems to be used about 10 times as often in Britain and Australia as in the US. Is Greek food less popular in America? It's also worth noting that writers occasionally feel the need to explain what it is. For example, "...digging into large bowls of salty taramasalata dip (fish roe spread) and garlicky tzatziki..." from the Tampa Bay Times in February 2020.

I'll change taramasalata from common to rare.

[Jacki]

Very good decision.