Dueling Designations
Copyright © 2007 by Joel Marks Look, up in the sky! It's a planet! No, it's a pluton! No, it's a ... kenning! On August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union voted to demote Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet. This has not sat well with many in and out of the astronomical community. For one thing, the term “dwarf planet” is bizarre since it is intended to remove Pluto from the ranks of the planets. But if something is a dwarf x, isn’t it still an x? For example, a dwarf star is a kind of star; indeed, our own sun is one. This means that the term “dwarf planet” is a kenning, a term to which I was led by rhetorician extraordinaire Prof. Kip Wheeler and defined in Wikipedia as “a figure of speech, substituted for the usual name of a person or thing. … compris[ing] two terms, one of which (the 'base word') is made to relate to the other to convey a meaning neither has alone.” Allison Griswold, a former student of mine, suggested the apt example of “starfish,