The Good The Bad & The Indifferent

[Canoerebel]

A few days back, John asked me to give him at some point two days in which he could attend to many housekeeping chores that have accumulated while he was trying to play three games at a time. We had arranged for today and tomorrow to be those days. So I may not get the turn back until Saturday, or it may be that John is pretty caught up in the excitement and does wish to play. I dunno. But I do think his interest is again increasing as his natural competitive "juices" are flowing as he plans his response to Big Tent etc.

[Canoerebel]

I suppose most of us add to our vocabulary occasionally throughout our lives. But I do have a very sharp memory of the last time I read a book that introduced me to a word I hadn't previously seen but that became an important part of my vocabulary: paradigm. I read the word in my fourth year of college in a collection of essays about the environment. I had no idea what it meant. I pronounced it very oddly: pair-at-uh-jim. I had to look it up. But since then I've seen it in print fairly often, heard it used in speech on occasion, and I use it from time to time in speech )but never in writing, I think).

I still have the book. It also introduced me to "The Tragedy of the Commons," which was a famous environmental/population essay of the 1970s.

[Anachro]

Heard a professor use the term "palimpsest" when giving a lecture on Greek tragedy. Had to look it up and have loved the meaning of the word ever since. Try to use it when I can, which is rare. Another favorite of mine is "panopticon," which I first read in an academic essay and for which wikipedia has a long-winded explanation. And none of us could ever forget the greatest word of all time: defenestrate, or to throw someone out of a window. This I picked up in history class way back in school when learning about the Defenestration of Prague.

There are a lot of beautifully specific words out there.

[Canoerebel]

The French seem to have more than their share. "Ennui," for instances. There are some English synonyms, but do any really do it justice?

[Anachro]

A Gorn might know! [:D]

[paradigmblue]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

I suppose most of us add to our vocabulary occasionally throughout our lives. But I do have a very sharp memory of the last time I read a book that introduced me to a word I hadn't previously seen but that became an important part of my vocabulary: paradigm. I read the word in my fourth year of college in a collection of essays about the environment. I had no idea what it meant. I pronounced it very oddly: pair-at-uh-jim. I had to look it up. But since then I've seen it in print fairly often, heard it used in speech on occasion, and I use it from time to time in speech )but never in writing, I think).

It's a good word.

[DW]

I noticed many years ago that once I learned a new word, I suddenly started hearing it being used with a fair degree of regularity.

I recall that "neophyte" was one such word.

I first heard it while watching a movie where it was really emphasized. I didn't know what it meant so I looked it up. After that I started hearing it... I wouldn't say commonly, but often enough that it shouldn't have been unfamiliar to me.

After that had happened a half-dozen times or so, it got me to wondering what was going on.

New words do sometimes burst onto our collective consciousness and quickly become ubiquitous, like all of the new words associated with the computer revolution, for example. But, the words I was discovering back then weren't of that sort, and that they were being used so often, after I became aware of them, I couldn't believe that I was actually hearing them for the first time.

That led me to believe that the words in question were being used all along, but because I didn't know what they meant my brain was somehow skipping over them, with no awareness on my part that I had missed something. Then, when something out of the ordinary finally brought such a word to my attention, like the movie that emphasized "Neophyte", and I learned the word's meaning, my brain then stopped skipping over it.

I've often wondered how much nuance I missed over the years due to that, if that's indeed what's going on.

It's a bit of a catch 22. If I don't notice unfamiliar words until something out of the ordinary brings them to my attention, how do I know I'm missing something?

It doesn't seem to happen much these days, but I don't know if that's due to my broader vocabulary or if I'm still skipping over unfamiliar words, but due to my slowly increasing decrepitude, it's more difficult for me to finally become aware of them.

The brain is a weird thing sometimes.

[fcharton]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel
The French seem to have more than their share. "Ennui," for instances. There are some English synonyms, but do any really do it justice?

It goes both ways. "Awe" is a (very short) English word that has no good equivalent in French (the best I could think of would be "sidération"). "Cool" is another one, and "warm" doesn't render well : we have "chaud" which means hot, and then "tiède", which means 'tepid', but nothing like "warm".

Francois

[pws1225]

Another good one is the German word 'schadenfreude' for which there is no English equivalent as far as I know.

[Canoerebel]

I'm considering using a rather obscure word in a story I'm writing about the Cherokee Nation: acculturate. It's a "tough" word but fits perfectly, and readers should understand from the context:

"The Cherokee, for their part, encouraged the establishment of the Moravian mission at Springplace and Christian missions elsewhere in the Cherokee Nation so that they could learn English and begin to acculturate to American ways. They believed that doing so was their best chance of surviving as a people as the white population multiplied and relentlessly encroached on their homeland."

This particular story is in the very early stages and may change considerably before I'm done. But I spent an hour last night trying to figure out if the correct use was "acculturate to" or "acculturate into." It should be "to. "Into" would be used with "assimilate." The words are related but quite different. The Cherokee acculturated to American ways but did not assimilate into American society.

[BBfanboy]

Going back to the word "paradigm", I first heard that in one of the first business conferences I attended. Then it began being used so much in business talk that it became commonplace and "gasp" ... a "buzzword" (an overused word or phrase whose main purpose is to make the speaker look like he is knowledgeable of current business practices).
There were other terms that were popping up and then becoming buzzwords - so much so that in some conferences the attendees played "buzzword bingo". A sheet with common buzzwords or phrases (" bottom line", "fact of the matter") was distributed and the participants X'd the buzzword when they heard it! It helped keep them awake! [:D]

[Canoerebel]

Oh yeah, the annoying business/education buzzwords!

One of them is "brain storm." I first heard that in education classes in college, then soon in the business world. Soon, anytime I heard it, it was like fingernails clawing a chalkboard. I hate the word.

The former editor of the magazine used "yesteryear" all the time. All the time. It's a great word, but he used it so often that I haven't let it appear in the magazine once since I assumed his position in 2005.

[JohnDillworth]

"Matrix" used in business in countless ways and is pretty much meaningless. If you are in a meeting and any of the following words or phrases are used you probably just wasted an hour of your life that you will never get back : "Synergy, Outside The Box, Thought Leader, Leverage, Millennial, Best Of Breed". And don't even get me started on turning nouns into verbs. What I call "fix something" somebody actually calls "solution it". Using the English Language as a blunt instrument. Sheesh

[HansBolter]

Paradigm has been in use scientifically for a very long time.

Was a rather absorbed student of cosmology in the 80s and 90s and paradigm was a term you couldn't live without in that field of study.

Stopped studying cosmology after it was hijacked by mathmeticians and the currently accepted big science funded "paradigm" went down the rabbit hole of string bean theory.

[Canoerebel]

breakout session: Gag!

icebreaker: kill the utter of that buzzword.

[Canoerebel]

Since I'm an editor of a magazine that covers lifestyles and travel, we get zillions of press releases, media alerts, and publicity agency releases. A high percentage of them begin this way: "Hi, Dan, hope you're having a good day. I wanted to reach out to you to...."

"reach out to you" - *ack!*

[Cap Mandrake]

I can't stand the word "ululation" anymore. It is the sound Palestinian grandmothers made when the WTC towers fell. Guess I won't be reading any more Forrester. Msrs. Strunk & White advocated simplicity so instead of "acculturate" they would probably recommend,"The Cherokee, they learnt them some English"

Something funny about ze Heinkle's und Zenck's teching ze Cherokee to speak ze English.

[AcePylut]

Words to hate that you’ll never “unhear”, used in common everyday communication?

“Exactly”

Just listen for it… and you’ll hear it, and when you do, you’ll never “not” hear it. In fact, sometimes you’ll get a ‘double – exactly’… as in “exactly EXACTLY!”

[Cap Mandrake]

ORIGINAL: AcePylut

Words to hate that you’ll never “unhear”, used in common everyday communication?

“Exactly”

Just listen for it… and you’ll hear it, and when you do, you’ll never “not” hear it. In fact, sometimes you’ll get a ‘double – exactly’… as in “exactly EXACTLY!”

That's exactly what I was thinking.

[Canoerebel]

When I was admitted to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, the admissions packet included a copy of Strunk & White. I think the good judges were appalled by the quality of lawyer writing. "Wherefore, the perpetrator ambulated in a westerly direction and confronted your complainant with malice aforethought."