AW.: the meaning & use of "microtonal"

In einer Nachricht vom 12/27/99 6:09:31 PM (MEZ) Mitteleurop�ische Zeit
schreibt skyfyre2@yahoo.com:

<< There are a lot of words out there built on the Greek
"xenos". In fact, you could say the establishment's resistance of
xenharmonics is to a degree, xenophobia.
>>

It's unfortunate that _xenos_ is translated as "strange", as that leads to
other associations in English (some of which may have well, however, been
usefully applied to Ivor Darreg's music). Other, more accurate,
possibilities would be "alien" or "foreign", but again, this leads to some
negative associations. I prefer the term "unfamiliar", because it has the
additional advantage of allowing one to consider the _xenharmonic_ to be a
temporary classification. I trust that all of us are trying to make these
tunings more familiar rather than less, and eventually one may usefully focus
on a more (small c) catholic art of _harmonics_, or just plain _tuning_,
absent the _xen_.

(If you happen not to come from a Zen-Catholic Californian family with fond
memories of the Jerry Brown governorship, the please excuse the last pun).