27 April 2008

Unguided Fissiles

The gentry of Lynx, Badger, Iconoclastes LLC don’t often expose their trade secrets for inspection by the vulgar, but today is exceptional:

(The Aswat al Iraq English language version of this refers to "fissile bombs", which is a little hard to understand, possibly leading to people overlooking this. The type of bomb in Arabic is "inshitariyya" from a root meaning dividing or splitting, and it can only refer to cluster bombs. If it was an actual fissile bomb, they would have needed only one, and there would be no one there to report on it).


At New Soli they say "fissile bomb," evidently. Or possibly that was Ms. Malaprop.

Anyhow, the received Arabic for "cluster bomb" is qunbula ‘unqúdiyya. It is so well received that there is even an article thus titled in the East-of-Suez edition of the Wikipaedia.

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