When did "Medireview" = Medieval???

[Hand of Vecna]

I've been seeing "medireview" being used in quite alot of places in place of "medieval," and I'm wondering just how/why this started.

Some examples:

From the Trivia Mailbits list:

The last day of carnival - Shrove Tuesday - came to be called "Fat Tuesday" because of the medireview Parisian custom of leading an ox, crowned with a fillet stuck on its horns, through the streets.

From the Dragonstar yahoogroup:

Is high-tech light armor more lightweight than medireview light armor?

First off I sett he DR amount based on 2x the Defense bonus of the armor for hi-tech armors. My thoughts are x1.5 for modern armor (round down) and x1 for medireview.

I'm not the only one who's noticed this phenomenon -- behold!


(there, fixed the link)

 

[Morrus]

This is probably way off... but maybe it's just a cut & paste error? 'Eval' being substituited with 'review'. 'Eval' could be short for 'evaluation' whch means much the same as 'review'.

I'm probably wrong though.

 

[Wolfspider]

This is probably way off... but maybe it's just a cut & paste error? 'Eval' being substituited with 'review'. 'Eval' could be short for 'evaluation' whch means much the same as 'review'.

This sounds plausible.

 

[Wolfspider]

Actually, it appears to be a real term and not a mistake. I'm finding "medireview" in a lot of places on the web in place of the more traditional "medieval," even in university and college catalogs.

Interesting.

 

[Psion]

Um, your "behold" link leads to http://behold. Not useful.

I did a search of the DS mailing list archive AND in the DS ML messages in my mailbox and the ONLY place this word appears on the mailing list was in a thread where someone asks the same question as you. Are you "Jon Howell" by any chance?

Anyways, I did find this:

http://www.ku.edu/~medieval/melcher/20001101/msg00220.html

Which leads me to the question: have you EVER seen this prop up anywhere but a mailing list? The two instances you cite are both mailing lists.

Might I suggest that somewhere along the line, you have a mail server that carelessly does an MS-Word style "I know better than you" type of replacement of the term "eval" with "review"? That sounds like vexingly over judicious programming to me, but it does appear to be the case.

 

[Henry]

All right - female gender neutral pronouns I' m perfectly willing to accept, and BCE and CE in place of B.C. and A.D. I can live with - it makes sense, in a way -

but what the heck is this?????

If anyone has a correct explanation for this totally left-field terminology, I have GOT to hear it.

The term, "medieval", is translated as "middle age" is it not? As in, "the age between the dark ages/ end of the Empire and the Renaissance." Not derogatory in any context that I was aware of, so is there another reason for some people switching to this totally non-intuitive term?

"Medireview." Huh?

 

[Wolfspider]

Which leads me to the question: have you EVER seen this prop up anywhere but a mailing list? The two instances you cite are both mailing lists.

Might I suggest that somewhere along the line, you have a mail server that carelessly does an MS-Word style "I know better than you" type of replacement of the term "eval" with "review"? That sounds like vexingly over judicious programming to me, but it does appear to be the case.

As I said, I found the term used quite frequently on the internet in place of "medieval." In fact, a simple search of the word using Altavista came up with 189 instances of its use, the vast majority dealing with medieval subjects.

Here are some examples:

http://www.dominican.edu/academics/artsandsciences/humanities.html
http://www.theromancereadersconnection.com/reviews/welfondersueellen1.html
http://www.ikashmir.org/Vitasta/2001/1.7.html
http://www.vsfcamps.com/fsc_program2.shtml

And the list goes on and on.

So this isn't just something that popped up due to a editing mistake, unless the mistake is quite widespread and outside the world of email (which would be darn funny).

 

[KDLadage]

Other places my google-fu finds this term include:

Dominican University, California

This RPG site

The Romance Reader's Collection

as well as over 700 other places I will not list here... but you could go HERE to see all that GOOGLE pulled up.

However, Mirriam-Webster Online pulls nothing on the word; Dictionary.com does not know what it is; nor does the American Heritage Dictionary online know about this word, so in the end, I am a bit skeptical as to the words validity.

However, as a sideline of humor, would it not be the damndest thing if it became a legit word, because of an over use of global replace in software?

 

[Wolfspider]

However, as a sideline of humor, would it not be the damndest thing if it became a legit word, because of an over use of global replace in software?

Yes, it would be. I think that I'll ask my linguist friend what she thinks and get back to you all.

 

[Aaron L]

It would be hilarious if this became a real word after it's widespread appearance as a mistake.