A misfire on big guns

Add comment December 2nd, 2008

Time to explore homonyms again. This week’s entries were inspired by things encountered in the current issue of a nationally distributed bimonthly magazine.

In one article there was a reference to “canons fired along the canal.”

A “canon” is something that sets standards, like a law, rule or criterion. It’s also used as a term for “the books of the Bible officially accepted by a church or religious body as divinely inspired,” or any other type of official body of work.

A canon also can be a kind of clergyman.

What it can’t be is a gun, which is what the story was referring to. That’s spelled “cannon.”

Both can be traced back to the Greek “kanna,” for “cane,” the kind associated with plants.

None of this is meant to suggest that a “canon” can’t be destructive. In fact, cynics might even say that the victims of holy wars could be considered “canon fodder.”