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A word a day keeps the Haus away

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12:31 / 29.07.05

I collect fun-sounding (and fun-to-say) words. These are from the World Book dictionary on my iBook:

absquatulate, intransitive verb, -lated, -lating.
(U.S. Slang.) to run away; flee; abscond.
Ex. Anybody who has read a thriller by Ian Fleming is bloody well aware why the Russians have absquatulated with so many of Britain's state secrets. It's that blinking British Agent 007 (Time).
noun absquatulation.

bafflegab, noun.
(Informal.) very involved or confusing language; gobbledygook.
Ex. financial bafflegab.

boondoggle, verb, -gled, -gling, noun.
(U.S. Informal.)
v.i. to do useless work.
noun a worthless work or product.
noun boondoggler.

callithumpian, adjective, noun.
(U.S. Dialect.)
adj. denoting or having to do with a noisy concert, characterized by beating of tin pans, blowing of horns, shouts, groans, and catcalls, usually given as a mock serenade.
noun 1. a callithumpian concert; charivari.
2. a person who takes part in a callithumpian concert.

12:33 / 29.07.05

I think you probably mean nepotistic, anyway, if you're referring to the way industries promote and hire based on family links. Incestuous implies a rather closer relationship.

12:33 / 29.07.05

Incestual is an Ugsome.
(Shouldn't that be adj. Kitkat? Seems like an adjective to me)
'Incestual is an ugsome word'

12:50 / 29.07.05

No, not nepotism at all – incestuous, as in: “the accountants moved about between the 4 main finance firms – KPMG, Anderson, the other one and PwC; it was a fairly incestuous industry”

13:01 / 29.07.05

Deary me, yes, of course it should. Sorry chaps.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:15 / 29.07.05

No, not nepotism at all – incestuous, as in: “the accountants moved about between the 4 main finance firms – KPMG, Anderson, the other one and PwC; it was a fairly incestuous industry”

Dude, you totally need to write something about ninjas instead. They can be as incestuous as you like.

14:23 / 29.07.05

oh Haus, you've let me down... I thought of all the people to know you would. I will talk about incestuous Ninjas if you really want me too though.

Once upon a time there was a daddy ninja...

Seriously though - incestual? Is there such a thing? In any contet (besides an ugsome one?)

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:09 / 29.07.05

As has already been mentioned, incestual seems to be a neologism. Or, to put it another way, just plain wrong. At a guess, it has been used by lots of people who have assumed "sex-sexual, therefore incest/incestual". In the sense both of relating to congress between those too closely related to marry and of small, closed systems resistant to outside influence, use "incestuous".

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

15:16 / 29.07.05

Diegetic

Nice. Sound in a film, particularly music, which originates from the scene itself, rather than as part of the score or soundtrack.

Sounds like an L Ron Hubbard course.

17:44 / 29.07.05

As opposed to the non-diegetic laugh tracks on sitcoms, is that right? I just found Mimesis, it's dramatic counterpart, showing rather than telling.

I love wikipedia.

17:57 / 29.07.05

Defenestrate: To throw out of a window.
"The rebels stormed the palace and defenestrated the President"

Best verb ever.

18:46 / 29.07.05

I knew an RPG character who was an expert self-defenestrator. He had it as a skill, seriously.

18:57 / 29.07.05

1. Definitions of heteroclite on the Web:
* Something or someone that deviates from the ordinary rule; an anomaly.

2. The process of adding strings together. An example of concatenation would be adding two words together to produce a single word: "kilo" + "byte" = "kilobyte".
aa.uncw.edu/ward/chm255/glossary.htm

3. Definitions of squamous on the Web:
* Scaly or platelike.
www.cdc.gov/od/ohs/manual/chemical/chmsaf5.htm

4. Definitions of heterotopia on the Web:
* the displacement of part of an organ from its normal position
www.proteus-uk.org/glossary.html

(which doesn't fit in so well with Foucault's use: "heterotopias ... dessicate speech ... and sterilize the lyricism of our sentences"

5. # string together (morphemes in an agglutinating language)
# clump together; as of bacteria, red blood cells, etc.
# united as if by glue
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

6. Definitions of adumbrate on the Web:
* (1) To give a sketchy outline of, (2) To prefigure indistinctly; foreshadow, (3) To disclose partially or guardedly, (4) To overshadow; shadow or obscure.
www.salamander.com/~wmcclain/ev-glossary.html

* A vague indication or warning of something to come; to overshadow or obscure something.
www.thepeacefulplanet.com/glossary.html

7. # the body of ideas that determine intellectually certain knowledge at any particular time
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

# As distinguished from techne, the Greek word episteme (literally: science) is often translated as knowledge.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episteme

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:56 / 29.07.05

When not now, episteme conversation to be had. Wonderful word.

00:00 / 30.07.05

Stop bafflegabbing!

00:23 / 30.07.05

sned

really, its a word

means to cut, or lop off; to divest of branches

sweet...

Sean the frumious Bandersnatch

06:17 / 30.07.05

hylozoism- the belief that rocks are alive and have souls.

10:51 / 30.07.05

caesura \sih-ZHUR-uh; -ZUR-\, noun;
plural caesuras or caesurae \sih-ZHUR-ee; -ZUR-ee\:

1. A break or pause in a line of verse, usually occurring in the middle of a line, and indicated in scanning by a double vertical line; for example, "The proper study || of mankind is man" [Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man].
2. Any break, pause, or interruption.

12:38 / 30.07.05

galactophilia: sexual attraction to human milk or lactating women

plushophilia: sexual attraction to stuffed toys

22:01 / 31.07.05

I don't like words like that. You can stick 'philia' on the end of anything.

I noticed a word today in The Book Of Ahania by Blake that was so cool it made me shiver. The word is the verb 'reptilize', from this passage

Wailing and terror and woe
Ran thro' all his dismal world:
Forty years all his sons & daughters
Felt their skulls harden; then Asia
Arose in the pendulous deep.

They reptilize upon the Earth.

I have no idea what it means, of course. Possibly 'be reptilish'.

*

04:27 / 01.08.05

reptile
1390, from O.Fr. reptile (1314), from L.L. reptile, neut. of reptilis (adj.) "creeping, crawling," from rept-(um), pp. stem of repere "to crawl, creep," from PIE base *rep- "to creep, crawl" (cf. Lith. replioju "to creep"). Used of persons of low character from 1749.

So, probably, creep and crawl.

15:32 / 31.08.05

here's a word for today:

egregious - outstandingly bad, flagrent

15:44 / 31.08.05

*smacks modern maenad upside the chin with a clipboard*

Pecksniffery
It's something akin to hypocrisy, I think. I'm not sure - I've never read any Dickens. Gorgeous word though.

16:23 / 31.08.05

As has already been mentioned, incestual seems to be a neologism.

Incestual may be an uncommonly lexico-verified word, but it's not so neo-; Robert Montgomery used it in 1828, and Thomas Nuce used it in 1581 (with two l's). Both were, I confess, poetic nonce words, but there they are.

Nothing wrong with neologisms, anyway (provided one realizes they're coining a neologism, which is perhaps not typically the case).

To this I add esquivalience, which is what I'm engaging in now: the willful avoidance of one's official duties.

This particular word sees neologism and raises it one : not only is it new, but it's completely fake. The New Oxford American Dictionary invented it and used it as a test-word to find out what other dictionaries are biting their copyrighted material instead of doing their own research.

I will, of course, be using it from now on. Descriptive lexicography for me, all the way.

16:29 / 31.08.05

smoothly weaving

ouch!!

Mon Oncle Ignatius

16:40 / 31.08.05

... poetic nonce words...

To which I cannot but help adding not only:

"nonce. noun 1. Now only used in the phrase "for the nonce, For the time being"; for the present.

Etymology: 14c: originally for then ones for the once, then once coming to be understood as the nonce."

which gives us:

"nonce word. noun 1. - a word with a special meaning used for a special occasion"

but there also, as the British English speakers will know:

"nonce. noun 1. prison slang. A sexual offender, especially one who assaults children.

Etymology: 1970s"

17:11 / 31.08.05

"nonce. noun 1. prison slang. A sexual offender, specially one who assaults children.

So incestuall is doubly a nonce word. Handy.

Whisky Priestess

17:59 / 31.08.05

Nonce fact - it's actually an acronym, standing for:

Not
On
Normal
Courtyard
Exercise

cos the other lags will beat them up, see?

18:21 / 31.08.05

Perhaps, but early citations give the spelling as nonse. It could just be that early transcribers were unaware of the acronym, but the OED is skeptical enough to list it as "origin unknown," and suggests a possible link to nance or nancy-boy, or the regional slang nonse, meaning "good-for-nothing fellow."

18:50 / 31.08.05

Follow me and become a -

Goliard

A wandering student in medieval Europe disposed to conviviality, license, and the making of ribald and satirical Latin songs.

Golias, Lord of Vagabonds

18:55 / 31.08.05

Golias: you build the Time Machine, and I'll bring the wine.

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