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Mind your language

Is orthogonal nonsensical?

18 November 2023

9:00 AM

18 November 2023

9:00 AM

Even with ruler and compasses I couldn’t make sense of a remark I found on Twitter or X, as we all pleonastically call it. Someone had posted this observation: ‘One’s bank balance and number of children are orthogonal to social media usage.’ I knew the prefix ortho– meant ‘straight, perpendicular, right’.

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