Spehro Pefhany wrote:

On Tue, 24 Apr 2012 01:59:50 -0700, the renowned "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:

Convention does seem to be detent, I always thought it involved
dents so dedent. So where does this word detent come from,
via detend? As in detending to rotate or tent as in tenterhooks
for suspending hides for scraping to parchement etc

It is absolutely trivial to look this up on line. "Detent" comes from an Old
French word meaning "to release", which is derived from a Latin word meaning
"to stretch".

See "détente" (a sudden release of pressure), which was directly
borrowed into English (minus the accent) to describe Soviet-American
cold war negotiations . The meanings are very similar.

I suppose English could use an antonym for that word to apply to
current behavior patterns. Retente? It means something different in
French, but..


Given that the original detente propped up the Soviet Union for another
few years, until the Reagan buildup pushed them over the edge, let's
hope the current approach works as well as R's. Not likely, given the
hands at the tiller just now.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
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