Common vs. Uncommon pangrams form March 18th

[DragoMuseveni]

I'm flabbergasted by two things:

• "polypropylene" is considered a "common" word
  
• its root word "propylene" is considered "uncommon"

I doubt anyone without a background in chemistry knows either word. But I'm further confused as to how adding the "poly" prefix to an alleged "uncommon" word suddenly makes it "common".

[Roddles]

I would suspect anyone using ropes in almost any context (boating, trucking, camping, etc.) would know about polypropylene. Propylene, on the other hand....

[Maudland]

I got propylene (somehow - a vague bell) but wouldn’t have come up with polypropylene in a million years. But then I don’t have much use for ropes - not even for etc…

I always assume that if it’s a scientific word (or scientific sounding word) I’ve missed, it’s down to me. It’s one of my weak fields. But l’d also be happy not to see it as a seed word again! Only 3 common words played by fewer people. And propylene only played by 10 fewer, so not a great difference.

[DragoMuseveni]

I'd still argue that "pronely" is a far more common a word than "propylene" or "polypropylene" (outside of chemists and mariners, apparently).

[guyd]

I'm not a chemist, but polypropylene sprang immediately to my mind when doing that puzzle. Given how many everyday articles from clothing to shampoo bottles (and ship's ropes) are made of this material, I do not think that the word is uncommon, we are surrounded by the stuff.

[Alan W]

Sometimes these surprising classifications are done just to provoke hitherto silent forumites to post a comment: welcome aboard DragoMuseveni!

I'll review this issue in due course, but I would argue that it's not inconceivable for a poly- word to be more common than its base word. Consider polyester and ester.

[TRex]

I'll review this issue in due course, but I would argue that it's not inconceivable for a poly- word to be more common than its base word. Consider polyester and ester.

But, IIRC, both polyester and ester are common words in Chi. 

[Maudland]

I'm not a chemist, but polypropylene sprang immediately to my mind when doing that puzzle. Given how many everyday articles from clothing to shampoo bottles (and ship's ropes) are made of this material, I do not think that the word is uncommon, we are surrounded by the stuff.

The substance might be common, but that doesn’t mean the word is. I’d say things eg shampoo bottles are made of plastic. Although I wouldn’t be sure about clothes! But then, I admit my scientific ignorance. I don’t know much about materials science or chemical engineering.

[Alan W]

I agree with Maudland: if we were familiar with the names of all the plastics and chemicals surrounding us, we'd have little room in our brains for anything else!

I don't think polypropylene is as obscure as some of the plastics in our lives, but I'm not really surprised that some people don't know the word. In the Corpus of Contemporary American English the word is more frequently used in academic journals than any other type of publication. And although it appears fairly frequently in magazines, many of these are special interest ones - e.g. medical, business, popular science, boating, hiking. In this forum there was one previous occurrence of the word, in a word request (so far unanswered) from ridethetalk: "LAYERABLE – layerable clothing consists of tank tops, skivvies, jumpers, t-shirts as well as polypropylene underwear".

I'll change the word to rare and remove it as a puzzle seed word. In practice this means we won't be seeing it again.

[Maudland]

Hurrah! Thanks, Alan.

(My mind is now boggling at the thought of plastic underwear 🩲😵)