#808 Zax and Pinnae

The other day I was reading a scientific article and the writer was pontificating about pinnae.
Pinnae, it turns out, is the scientific plural word for what the rest of us call ears. Those fleshy pieces of cartilage that stick out from the sides of our heads and which are also a favorite target for piercing and adornment.
“Pinnae” is one of those words that’s never caught on with the general public. Despite its obvious alliterative value, we don’t say we’re piercing our pinnae. The singular of the term, pinna, is so rare it’s not even in spellcheck.
Science feels the need to distinguish because they use the term “ear” for the whole system—outer, middle and inner. The outer ear is primarily the pinna. The middle ear has the tiny bones know as ossicles—the hammer the anvil and the stirrup, or in Latin, the malleus, incus and stapes.
The bones have these names because they vaguely resemble the shapes of anvils and hammers and such. But not really. The hammer looks more like a tadpole, or possibly a young guppie. The incus looks less like an anvil and more like a zax, a weird tool used by slate roofers, and the highest word score in scrabble.
These fanciful acts of description seem to conflict with the part of the scientific community that insists on saying pinnae when the mean ears.
The inner ear contains the cochlea, with jillions of tiny hairs which respond to vibrations.
In any event, the public has never bought, and will never buy into the whole pinnae thing. Having a mean nun in a story “box someone’s pinnae” just doesn’t resonate like having her “box someone’s ears.”
And would you lend someone a sympathetic pinna?
There’s something almost poetic about saying you’re going to the barbershop to get your ears lowered. Lowering your pinnae makes it sound like a petticoat deal.
And it’s occasionally fun, if cruel, to hear about folks having ears that stick out like cardoors.
Pinnae like cardoors just ain’t the same simile.
America, ya gotta love it.