The Insular Islands

November 19, 2014 @ 7:33 am · Filed by under The language of science

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The most recent xkcd has the mouseover title

I just learned about the Slide Mountain Ocean, which I like because it's three nouns that sound like they can't possibly all refer to the same thing.

But it gets better — the extended Slide Mountain Ocean story line, known as the Omineca Episode,  includes the Bridge River Ocean, the Intermontane Superterrane, and my personal favorite, the Insular Islands (which star in the next chapter, the Coast Range Episode).

November 19, 2014 @ 7:33 am · Filed by under The language of science


5 Comments

  1. Johan said,

    November 19, 2014 @ 1:13 pm

    The Insular Islands one got me thinking about this list that I stumbled across some time ago: List of tautological place names (English Wikipedia).

  2. lhc said,

    November 19, 2014 @ 1:29 pm

    I thought of Language Log when I saw the noun pileup in the mouseover text.

  3. SRM said,

    November 19, 2014 @ 2:36 pm

    I believe that's Intermontane Superterrane.

    As John McPhee says in Annals of the Former World,

    Geologists write "terrain" when they mean topography and "terrane" when they are referring to a piece of country many miles deep.

    [(myl) Oops — fixed now.]

  4. mark said,

    November 20, 2014 @ 1:49 am

    I believe these are not far from the Benmont Tench.

  5. thefringthing said,

    November 26, 2014 @ 4:12 pm

    The opposite phenomenon: Glendale Valley.

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