Dear All, 3/15/01
Martin's highly interesting discussion leads me to ponder
whether maybe mineralogists are more honest, direct, and
(consistent?) than petrologists. Consider the word, pseudomorph.
True, it's a term also used extensively by petrologists, but I
believe it comes originally from mineralogy. It means exactly what it
says: "false form". I'm not sure if it involves two Greek roots, but
I think it does.
Now, consider a pseudosection that involves binary phase
relations, i.e. a pseudobinary. When we talk about the phase
relations shown thereon, we say that they behave approximately, "sort
of", or almost as if it were a true binary system. In hindsight one
can dream up equally compact terms that might have better conveyed
this approximate behavior than the term with which we are stuck -
pseudobinary! Two that come to mind are "circabinary" and
"quasibinary", and both parts of each (according to my dictionary)
having Latin roots. Actually, it seems that I've seen the terms
quasibinary or quasisection already in use.
So Frank, if in the next edition of your book, you want to
use some terms that are both more exact, and also consistent in terms
of root derivations, you might consider quasisection instead of
pseudosection. BUT, I'd guess that it would just add a lot of
confusion to that which already exists.
Cheers, Charlie
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