We here at TodayIFoundOut are firmly in the camp that language is constantly evolving and grammar lives to serve language and effective communication, not the other way around. Putting aside the issue of unintentional mistakes, intentional use of atypical grammar isn’t really something to get inherently upset or high and mighty about.
And certainly those who claim some word, like “irregardless“, isn’t actually a word are never correct -all words are words from the moment someone first coins them, at least according to pretty much every major dictionary editor out there. (More on this in one of my favorite articles from the past year on the site: How Do They Decide What Words Go in the Dictionary and Are Words Ever Removed?)On a similar note, if many people want to treat “UFO” as an initialism instead of an acronym and, thus, say “U-F-O” when they see that string of letters, in our opinion one is on shaky ground if claiming that we’ve all been pronouncing it “wrong”. That said, it is very interesting to note how pronunciations sometimes diverge from what the original creators or people who popularized some term intended.
For example, “Dr. Seuss” should actually be pronounced “Dr. Zoy-ce”, but Theodore Geisel got tired of correcting people, so we all now say “Sue-s” instead of how he, Dr. Seuss himself, pronounced it. Similarly, “Wikipedia” should technically be pronounced “we-key-pedia”, not “wick-ee-pedia”, if we’re going to follow the lead of the original creator of the first wiki, Howard Cunningham, when he applied the Hawaiian word (pronounced “we-key”, meaning “quick”) to his bit of web software, the WikiWikiWeb.
This brings us to the man of the hour- Edward J. Ruppelt. Dying at the tender age of 37 of a heart attack, his is a name mostly only remembered today by those well versed in the field of ufology. As to why said individuals are familiar with this man, this is largely because of his genuinely fascinating book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, which drew from his admirable work on Project Blue Book, a comprehensive set of investigations conducted by the US Air Force into the phenomenon of flying saucers.
While working on the project, Ruppelt famously suggested the phrase “Unidentified Flying Object” to describe these sightings, rather than “Flying Saucer” as was previously popular among the general public. He then acronymised this to “UFO”, and even instructed people on how this should be spoken…
Which we could tell you now, but as we’ve written a lot of interesting things below, we should probably wait for the reveal until later to make sure you read those things… Or, if you promise to keep reading if we reveal it now, I guess we could do that.
Pinky-swear?
It’s “yoo-fo”… “Yoo-fo” is how the person who popularized (and is sometimes credited as coining) “Unidentified Flying Object” instructed people to say the acronymised version.
Now, remember your promise- and that lies make baby Jesus cry- and read on!
Born in 1923, Ruppelt was a distinguished airman, including earning two theater combat ribbons, five battle stars, three Air Medals, and two Distinguished Flying Crosses during WW2. Following the war, Ruppelt attended college and earned a degree in Aeronautical Engineering, occasionally flying as a navigator with the Air Force Reserves to maintain his status as an airman.
Following his graduation in 1951, with the Korean war ongoing, Captain Ruppelt returned to active duty, though this time being assigned to the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. As Ruppelt would later casually note in his aforementioned book, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, in addition to keeping tabs on foreign aircraft and missiles, the ATIC also “had the UFO project”.
Initially it was Ruppelt’s job to review reports on Flying Saucers, as they were then called, and present his findings to the Pentagon. You see, since at least 1947, the US government had been studying reports of Flying Saucers as part of Project Sign and, later, Project Grudge. The original intended goal…
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