You Keep Using That Word...

[ostone]

So here at NASA we appear to have co-opted the word "nominal." This, in and of itself, is not unusual... NASA repurposes the English language at nearly the same rate as lawyers (and then there are acronyms... which I'm fairly certain is NASA's primary output). What's amusing here is that the meanings are so often contradictory. In regular usage "nominal" means something like "in name only," but NASA uses it to mean roughly the same thing as "normal." I'm quite keen on figuring out where the NASA usage came from, but there doesn't seem to be any information on that which is easily googlable. If anyone finds any answers which are more than speculation, lemme know!

Also of note... this is hilarious as a result of what it implies: "Ironic" redirects here. For the Alanis Morissette song, see Ironic (song). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony