The British word "boffin" is polarizing the boffins

[Swamp Thing]

https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/29/scientists_boffins/

 

[Vanadium 50]

polarizing the boffins

Vertically? Horizontally? Circularly? Elliptically?

 

[Baluncore]

Vertically? Horizontally? Circularly? Elliptically?

Conical - egg shaped.

Chamberlain himself claimed that 'A Puffin, a bird with a mournful cry, got crossed with a Baffin, a mercifully obsolete Fleet Air Arm aircraft. Their offspring was a Boffin, a bird of astonishingly queer appearance, bursting with weird and sometimes inopportune ideas, but possessed of staggering inventiveness, analytical powers and persistence. Its ideas, like its eggs, were conical and unbreakable. You push the unwanted ones away, and they just roll back.'"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boffin#Military

 

[strangerep]

Perhaps the definition of "Boffin" needs refinement, e.g.,

Boffin: a highly intelligent scientist or other expert who works to make discoveries that ultimately benefit trolls and other knuckle-draggers.

 

[pinball1970]

Perhaps the definition of "Boffin" needs refinement, e.g.,

Boffin: a highly intelligent scientist or other expert who works to make discoveries that ultimately benefit trolls and other knuckle-draggers.

An EX introduced me to the word when she got me a birthday card with a guy with wild hair, a magnifying glass or something and in a white coat.

I had never heard of it and it sounded (and looked) silly to me.

She was a music student at the time and I worked in a lab, so anyone who had studied A level sciences or above was probably a scientist in her eyes.

 

[JT Smith]

I sympathize but don't see how they are going to get the tabloids to stop using a word. Or anybody for that matter but especially the tabloids. That's not how language works.

I think Dr. Chapman has the right idea. Don't fight it, own it. Boffin has a nice to ring to it. Maybe this website should be renamed to BoffinForums.

 

[berkeman]

Maybe this website should be renamed to BoffinForums.

Maybe for a certain April 1st event...