> The flat, broad, flight-enabling feathers we see across most of the wings and much of the body surface of living birds are called pennaceous feathers. (Fun fact: these are the feathers people used to make into quills for writing, hence the word “pen.”)
I get the author's point, I think, but the etymology of "pen" according to wiktionary.com:
> From Middle English penne, from Anglo-Norman penne, from Old French penne, from Latin penna (“feather”), from Proto-Indo-European péth₂r̥ ~ pth₂én- (“feather, wing”), from peth₂- (“to rush, fly”) (from which petition). Proto-Indo-European base also root of *petra-, from which Ancient Greek πτερόν (pterón, “wing”) (whence pterodactyl), Sanskrit पत्रम् (patram, “wing, feather”), Old Church Slavonic перо (pero, “pen”), Old Norse fjǫðr, Old English feðer (Modern English feather);[1] note the /p/ → /f/ Germanic sound change.
So pens aren't called pens because we used pennaceous feathers, but because they were made of feathers, period. At least that's how I get it.
"Pennaceous feather" is a funny term too, then, meaning something like "featherlike feather"?
>covering 8,425 miles without taking a single break. For comparison, there is only one commercial aircraft that can fly that far nonstop, a Boeing 777 [...]
The Boeing 787 and the Airbus A350 have ranges exceeding that, with ranges of up to 8,790 mi and 11,163 mi respectively, depending on the variant.
> "Pennaceous feather" is a funny term too, then, meaning something like "featherlike feather"?
I'd probably render it as more like "typical feathers" or "standard feathers". Note that "typical feathers" and "feathery feathers" mean the same thing, but one is perfectly normal phrasing and the other isn't.
In Mandarin Chinese a pen is 笔, obviously derived from the word for a paintbrush, 笔. Feathers don't come into it - Chinese is traditionally written with a paintbrush - but the pattern is the same.
I get the author's point, I think, but the etymology of "pen" according to wiktionary.com:
> From Middle English penne, from Anglo-Norman penne, from Old French penne, from Latin penna (“feather”), from Proto-Indo-European péth₂r̥ ~ pth₂én- (“feather, wing”), from peth₂- (“to rush, fly”) (from which petition). Proto-Indo-European base also root of *petra-, from which Ancient Greek πτερόν (pterón, “wing”) (whence pterodactyl), Sanskrit पत्रम् (patram, “wing, feather”), Old Church Slavonic перо (pero, “pen”), Old Norse fjǫðr, Old English feðer (Modern English feather);[1] note the /p/ → /f/ Germanic sound change.
So pens aren't called pens because we used pennaceous feathers, but because they were made of feathers, period. At least that's how I get it.
"Pennaceous feather" is a funny term too, then, meaning something like "featherlike feather"?