Maybe the word 'drone' itself is scaring us
By: Jim Beckerman
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey
..... Drone.
..... It's not word that strikes terror, exactly. Unease, maybe? Neverousness?
.....
DronnnnNNNNNNNNNNNe.
..... Of all the worrisome things about the recent spate of mysterious drone sightings in New Jersey - and now New York and Pennsylvania, the actual name of gizmo might not seem to figure largely.
.... Yet "drone" is a loaded word. It has unsettling caissons with the military, with the insect kingdom, with some bad human traits. If it hasn't added to the present tension, it certainly hasn't helped to ease it.
..... "I can see that the word can evoke certain connotations that might add to people's anxiety right now" said Ben Zimmer, linguist and lexicographer,who unpacked the history of the word in his wall Street Journal column 12 years ago, when the Obama administration's drone strikes were news.
..... Not for nothing, the drone industry itself has been pushing for other terms: UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) and RPA (Remotely Piloted Aircraft). A 2014 trade conference in Washington, D.C., had the Wi-Fi password DONTSAYDRONES.
..... "The manufacturers didn't like the word drone,," Zimmer said. "It has negative connotations."
..... Would the sightings of "unidentified UAVs," in a headline, strike the same chill as "unidentified drones"? Possibly not.
..... "The different echoes of the sue of it, in the past, may explain how people are reacting now," Zimmer said.
..... The word "drone" actually derives from German, by ways of Old English: "dran" means male bee.
..... It is, of course, an onomatopoetic word. One that sounds lie what it is. The drone of a hornet, as it's chasing you down to sting unmercifully, sounds - precisely - like Dronnne."
.....
Such ominous low sounds set off alarm bells. In "North by Northwest," the 1959 Hitchcock thriller, you can see form the chance in Cary Grant;s expression, as the distant hum of the crop duster amps up, that he knows he's in trouble. Something Wicked This Way Drones.
.....
But "drone" of course, also has a specific entomological meaning. Drones are the males of the bee colony whose sole job is to mate with the queen - and then die. Not a pleasant association. Nor did it become more so when applied, as it eventually was, to a certain kind of human being: a person who does no useful work.
..... "It's a brainless creature that doesn't do anything except to exist,"said Grant Barrett, linguist and co-host of the public raid show "A Way whit words."
..... "The drone, as in the flying vehicle, does come directly form this word for bee," Barrett said. "It's kind of a coincidence that they also make this droning noise."
..... Other, non-insectold associations of "drone" are not much better. The drone of bagpipes - everyone's least favorite musical instrument. The drone of a boring person.
..... But "drone" in the modern sense, is a coinage that goes back to 1935. the queen Bee was a radio-controlled biplane, developed in Britain, and used in target practice.
..... "The story was, there was American admiral who saw this, came back to the U.S. and used the name 'drone' as a kind of homage to The Queen Bee," Zimmer said. "It mad sense to call it a 'drone,' because it could only be operated on the ground, or form the mother plane."
.....
Drones became a big factor in pilot training dung World War II. British actor and aviator Reginald Denny ("Rebecca, "Cat Ballou") developed a drone that was sold by the thousands to the U.S. military. One of the workers at his company's Van Nuys, California plant was an 18-year-old by the name of Norma Jeane Mortenson, later known to the world as Marilyn Monroe.
..... "Ronald Reagen, when he was an army publicist, assigned photographers to the assembly line outside of L.A. where they were making these," Zimmer said. "And one of the women on the assembly line was a young Norma Jeane."
Fearful legacy
..... Today, military drones have evolved to a terrifying degree: witness the 500-plus drone strikes in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan, during the Obama years, that killed an estimated 3,797 people, including 324 civilians. Drone was for people in the Middle East, have no good caissons. "In part of the world, they've only negative," Barnett said. "They bring death from afar."
..... and our drones? The ones that are causing such agita out in New Jersey counties? who knows what they are, or what - if anything - we have to fear from them? (Governor Phil Murphy, in a Monday [12/09/2024] press conference, said they pose no known thrat to pulbic safety).
..... Possibly, they are no mroe threatening than the toys from Hammacher Schlemmmer catalog that we buy our kids for Christmas.
..... But if they're not scary, why are they called drones?
..... "the toy you play with, there;s nothing bad about it," Barrett said. :What do you do? chase the dog? See how high you can go with it? I don't know that their;s anything negative."