ossobuco wrote:I did learn a new one recently, but I'll have to try and remember what it was.
forgetsyism 
-- 1. Forgeting something that one knew 10 seconds ago. Short term memory is always the first to go. 2. Having a "senior's moment".
Yes, senior moments are familiar to me. I had them even as a teen.
conniption
-- a fit of rage, hysteria, or alarm <went into conniptions>
Good word, Reyn. I've also seen it spelled 'canniption' or 'caniption.'
Merry Andrew wrote:Good word, Reyn. I've also seen it spelled 'canniption' or 'caniption.'
Really? I had no idea. Somebody on the board used the word and I checked it out in the Oxford (physical) dictionary and was unable to find it. I checked the Merriam-Webster online dictionary and found it spelt the way that I reported it.
I tried putting in your version and the site suggested 'conniption'. So, unless it's one of those U.S.-English type of spellings, it appears that 'conniption' must be correct.
Could be I've seen it written that way only in correspondence and that it was a misspelling. In the major cities of the NE USA, where there are sizeable Jewish populations, it's a quite common, everyday word. I believe -- but I'm not positive -- that it's Yiddish in origin. Hear it all the time. "I'm having an absolute conniption."
cloying
-- disgusting or sickening because excessively sweet or sentimental
Today's word was learned from no less than our own 'kickycan'. :wink:
obfuscate
-- 1 a : DARKEN b : to make obscure
2 : CONFUSE
synecdoche
I've seen the word before and usually figure it out by context, but have meant to look it up.
Saw it yesterday in the recent New Yorker, in a piece by Frances Fitzgerald called "Peculiar Institutions - Brown University looks at the slave trade in its past".
The sentence it was in - "In these legends, the Browns have become a synecdoche for all that has been forgotten."
from SBC Yahoo Dictionary -
Synecdoche (noun)
A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole (as hand for sailor), the whole for a part (as the law for police officer), the specific for the general (as cutthroat for assassin), the general for the specific (as thief for pickpocket), or the material for the thing made from it (as steel for sword).
etymology:
Middle English synodoches, from Medieval Latin synodoche, alteration of Latin synecdoch, from Greek sunekdokh, from sunekdekhesthai, to take on a share of : sun-, syn- + ekdekhesthai, to understand ( ek-, out of; see eghs in Indo-European roots + dekhesthai, to take; see dek- in Indo-European roots)
Once upon a time I had a wonderful bumper sticker:
Eschew obfuscation.
But, obfusching is so much fun....
Noddy, the one I saw said
ESCHEW VERBOSITY
I gave Eschew Obfuscation. bumper sticker to my father, a newspaper editor trained in the days before spell check.
He took it into the office and pasted it on the wall above the newsroom unabridged dictionary.
He said as he left the room, he could hear a stampede of reporters, thirsty for vocabulary development.
What do politicans constantly speak?
Verbal diarrhea... how u spell it correctly???
littlek wrote:Oooh, I like weltshmertz
Whaaat?
Meaning. Meaning, please!
The meaning of weltshmertz have been posted in this very same thread before
And I think he meant "Weltschmerz" which is
ebrown_p wrote:Veltshmertz: (My new favorite word as it describes me pretty well). The melancholy feeling you get from comparing the world as it is, with the world as it should be.
Reyn wrote:littlek wrote:Oooh, I like weltshmertz
Whaaat?
Meaning. Meaning, please!
Reyn, being of Dutch extraction, you should certainly know that word.
Merry Andrew wrote:Reyn wrote:littlek wrote:Oooh, I like weltshmertz
Whaaat?
Meaning. Meaning, please!
Reyn, being of Dutch extraction, you should certainly know that word.
Being born Dutch doesn't guarantee you that you know the language very well. I came to Canada when I was 5, and my parents spoke English in our house to help us aclimatize in school.
I can only recognize Dutch words when they are spoken to me slowly.
By the way, are you sure that word is Dutch?
