The forensic arena

In Tuesday's The Life Scientific Dr Sheila Willis, a forensic scientist...

<oops>
Jim Al Khalili used the term "forensics" before Dr Willis said she disapproved of it as 'meaningless' She had the good grace not to correct him, and he (as far as I noticed – though it's not a nit I'm particularly keen to pick)...

<american-trait status="query">
These two dictionary excerpts suggest that 'forensics' as shorthand for 'forensic science' is more common in American English,

Anerican Heritage Dictionary

Collins Engllish Dictionary

And the Google Ngram Viewer confirms this:

American English

In American English, 'forensics' is nearly always the commoner form, while in British English the form 'forensic science' was preferred until the early years of the twenty-first cemtury.

British English

Then it is quickly overtaken by 'forensics', which has a sudden steep rise in fortune. (Incidentally, the TV series CSI – Crime Scene Investigators first appeared in the early years of the millennium. Just saying.)

</american-trait>

...  didn't repeat the error (?slip?bone of contention'/???).

</oops>

...was reflecting on the derivation of the word 'forensic' – from the Latin forensis (='pertaining to the market place or forum, public, out of doors'). The  point of forensic experts is that they have to present  their analysis for all to see.

<tangent>
Link with 'autopsy' (= 'see for yourself').
</tangent>

Jim Al-Khalili ...

<parenthesis fivolity-quotient="5">

(who I can never listen to without imagining his evil twin, Midge Acidid {'Midge' doesn't look like the polar opposite of 'Jim', but looked at in terms of phonemes {natch} it's a palindrome: /mɪʤ/ versus /ʤɪm/ . See? Stark raving sane.

</parenthesis>

...asked her to contrast this sort of presentation with the sort of acacdemic situations that experts are usually called on to speak in. And she said 

The court is certainly a very different arena from the scientific conference mainly because the adversarial system is designed in such a way as to... undermine your opponent; that's the nature of the game....

<etymological aside>
I doubt if she knew how appropriate the word 'arena' was in the context of an adversarial system. You can't get much more adversarial than gladiators  (not the Spandex and greasepaint sort with a capital G, but the Roman sort who actually spilled blood). And so that the blood of the previous fight wouldn't interfere with the spectacle of the next, the fighting area was covered with sand (Latin arena).

<tangent>
In the same way that a covering (in this case, sand) became – by the magic of metonymy –  a word refering to the whole fighting area, a fallen boxer 'hits the canvas'. Maybe not, though. The arena is the ring, not the canvas. Still, there's a link there somewhere...
</tangent>

<//etymological aside> 

Westminster Diary 

We understand that there's no truth in the rumour that Rishi Sunak plans to replace the KCMG with the KChNG (pronounced Ker-ching)..

That's all. There's a break in the clouds, and it's time I got out.

b