tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jan 17 13:39:11 2007

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Re: Klingon WOTD: Hoqra' (noun)

Steven Boozer ([email protected])



> >>Klingon word: Hoqra'
> >>Part of Speech: noun
> >>Definition: tricorder

Voragh:
> >Apparently consists of {Hoq} "expedition" (n.) + {ra'} "order,
> >command" (v.).

mIq'ey:
>"Expedition" is a synonym for "trek".  "Trek" + "order" = "tricorder".
>An Okrandian pun?

> >Okrand's usual gloss for "Trek" is {leng} "trip, voyage" as in {Hov
> >leng} "Star Trek":
> >
> >If it is a pun, I suspect it's much older - maybe even going back to Gene
> >Roddenberry himself.  I never saw the connection before, but you could be
> >right.  I always thought it was a contraction of "tri + recorder" and
> >wondered which three things it was recording.

>I rather suspect that tricorder was in fact "tri" + 
>"recorder".  Neologizing by adding new prefixes to existing words is a 
>Trek tradition going back to the beginning; just with number prefixes 
>alone in TOS, we have, in addition to "tricorder", "dilithium" and 
>"quadrotriticale" (off the top of my head).  I any

This sounds more likely and is perfectly consistent with other 
Trekisms:  DI-lithium, TRI-corder, QUADRO-triticale = 2, 3, 4.  (Are there 
any Trekisms for 1 [mono-/uni-] and 5 [penta-/quint-]?)

>event, I don't see why the coinage of "tricorder" would involve a pun on 
>"order", since there's no a priori reason to associate that word with the 
>tricorder's function (unless you're reaching for a bilingual pun on the 
>French word for computer, "ordinateur", which seems quite far-fetched to me).
>On the other hand, given the word "tricorder", a need to translate it into 
>an invented language, and a mind that can come up with such things as 
>{ghotI'} and {nughI'}, I can see Okrand noticing that embedded "order" and 
>running with it.

This would be classic Okrand.  Sometimes he only puns on part of a word to 
make it less obvious.

>Of course, this would be a somewhat more convincing speculation if the 
>word he'd come up with had been {lengra'} instead.

I don't have it with me, but I believe {Hoqra'} appeared in the original 
1985 edition of TKD as did {Hoq} "expedition", which has never been used in 
canon.  AFAIK the earliest appearance of {Hov leng} "Star Trek" was ten 
years later in the special Klingon issue of "Star Trek Communicator" #104 
(1995).  I wonder if Okrand rejected *{Hov Hoq} in favor of {Hov leng} 
because it sounded a little silly or because some might have found it hard 
to pronounce if trying to correctly enunciate the two /H/s and the /q/?



--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons






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