I’ve encountered the “not a true Muslim” retort many times. The arguer first makes a general statement about all Muslims, and then reframes it in order to somehow render it immune from any refutation. This is an informal fallacy known as the No True Scotsman fallacy, first described by the philosopher Antony Flew, who asked us to imagine a Scotsman shocked after reading a story in his morning paper about the action of an English sexual predator on the loose. “No Scotsman would do such a thing,” he tells himself. The next morning he sees another story about an even more heinous sex crime, this time committed by a Scotsman. Not ready to admit he was wrong, he says, this time, “No TRUE Scotsman would do such a thing.”
Ali Rizvi, “The Atheist Muslim” (St. Martin’s Press, New York), p49.
The Century Dictionary’s entry appears incomplete, yet seems the most etymologically apt. And the two etymology entries – is the one a counter-statement to the other?
Interesting. You get the same distinction with “go to” – you “go to school”, but “go to the hospital.” To me it seems the distinction has something to do with the purpose for being in the institution. You’re in school for an education and in prison for punishment or reform, both longer-term processes, whereas you’re in the hospital for a (hopefully) short-term procedure. Similarly, you go to a/the restaurant or bar for a short duration experience , you don’t “go to restaurant.” Or: “so-and-so celebrity completed their court-ordered 90-day stint in rehab” vs. “…stint in the rehab.” Of course that theory pretty well gets knocked down when you say English speakers in other lands don’t make that distinction. And I can further shoot down my theory with the phrases “he’s in prison” vs. “he’s in the pen.” So it’s probably all just arbitrary.
a cheap, unregistered firearm rumoured to be carried (sometimes unlawfully) by police officers. The firearm is thrown down next to a body in the case of a wrongful shooting of a citizen, so as to give the impression that the victim had been armed at the time.
Starting Werth's at-bat in the fifth inning Wednesday night with a fastball clocked at 90 mph, Villanueva had him set up for something slower. Much, much slower.Villanueva came back with a 57-mph eephus pitch that caught the outside corner for strike two.
– David Brown, Big League Stew sports blog 08/23/13
An Eephus pitch (also spelled Ephus) in baseball is a very low speed junk pitch. The delivery from the pitcher has very low velocity and usually catches the hitter off-guard. Its invention is attributed to Rip Sewell of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1940s. According to manager Frankie Frisch, the pitch was named by outfielder Maurice Van Robays. When asked what it meant, Van Robays replied, "'Eephus ain't nothing, and that's a nothing pitch." Although the origin is not known for certain, Eephus may come from the Hebrew word "efes" (pronounced "EFF-ess"), meaning "nothing".
The Obama administration has been evaluating military and other aid to Egypt in recent weeks. But Earnest told reporters that no decision has been made about U.S. aid.
“This is not a faucet in which you just turn the spigot, and assistance continues to flow,” Earnest said, using a metaphor he repeated throughout the briefing. “Assistance is provided episodically, assistance is provided in tranches.”
I think there is a potential “Fans” list here. I noticed Swifties (fans of Taylor Swift) was added a while back. And then there are Deadheads and Parrotheads (and Parakeets – younger fans of Buffet). I’d create the list myself, but I’m over 50 and don’t want to be responsible for adding "Belieber" to the wordnik database.
The Texas native stood 6-foot-6 and weighed 250 pounds, and claimed to have killed a Mexican officer during the Texas Revolution with a bowie knife to the heart. The claim is dubious - Terry was 13 years old when Texas fought its war for independence - but his later career was filled with more than enough bloodshed to make up for that stretcher.
State within a state (also Latin: imperium in imperio or status in statu) is a political situation in a country when an internal organ, generally from the armed forces, intelligence agencies, or police, does not respond to the civilian leadership.
– wikipedia
a government, power, or sovereignty within a government, power, or sovereignty
“Though he was not entirely opposed to military interference in politics, Mustafa Kemal wanted the armed forces to become an 'imperium in imperio', with a position similar to that of the German military between 1871 and 1914.”
– Atatürk: An Intellectual Biography, M. Sükrü Hanioglu
“I’ve been shouting it from the highest mountains,” Suhr said. “What we need is a national registry by the cell phone providers so that when your phone is stolen you can immediately ‘brick it’ and make it useless.”
“Embedded within Chinese leaders' convoluted, yet vague statements to Washington about North Korea is a simple message: Talk with Pyongyang.” – AP
Does “convoluted, yet vague” strike anyone else as being somewhat redundant, in that they probably made the statements deliberately convoluted so that they would be vague?
Anparsy (noun) - (1) Boys, in repeating their alphabet, would say ". . . X, Y, Z, anparsy." They did not know what it meant, but pointed in their spelling books to the character &, also termed parsy-and.
--M.C.F. Morris's Yorkshire Folk-Talk, 1892
(2) Anpasty, another name for ampersand. It means and past y.
--Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830
– from a daily calendar version of “Forgotten English”, Jeffrey Kacirk
A Yiddish word meaning "to mumble", most often used to mean “to be evasive”; can also mean “to putter aimlessly” or “to waste time.”
Some common spellings: 'phumpher' and 'fumpher', to a lesser extent 'pfumpher' and 'pfumpfer', and very rarely, 'pfumfer'. Never 'phumfer'. The most common is 'phumpher', followed closely by 'fumfer'.
– Allwords.com
Paddy Cheyefsky, interviewed (1977) on Dinah Shore’s old talk show: “I was interviewed in London and somebody asked me a question and it threw me completely, and so I just chattered and talked and, uh, what we call in the industry, ‘phumphered.’ I phumphered and phumphered and phumphered – I must have phumphered for twenty minutes. Fortunately they cut it down to 10 seconds and I sounded sensational.”
Sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and MSG are all Poor Food ingredients that these companies are choosing, no, demanding be added into their products with the express intent of increasing what is known as their product’s “stomach share”- the amount of digestive space any one company’s brand can grab from the competition.
“Excelsior” is the most parodied of Longfellow’s poems. Indeed it is almost a parody of itself. For Longfellow, “Excelsior” meant “higher and higher,” as the youth struggles upward only to die without gaining his objective. Longfellow wrote the poem in 1841, inspired by the New York State seal, which bore a shield with a rising sun and the motto Excelsior.
Oliver Wendell Holmes thought that “the repetition of the aspiring exclamation…lifts every stanza a step higher,” but Irvin Cobb thought the exclamation should be “Bonehead!” Harvard students used to sing a song, and maybe still do, with each stanza ending in “Upidee!” and lines laced with “la la’s.” Bret Harte wrote a parody in which each stanza ended with “Sapolio!” – the name of a soap.
"causing the formation of monsters," 1879, from teratogeny (1857), from comb. form of Greek teras (genitive teratos) "marvel, monster" + -genic, producing, forming
Sworn to the reviewer’s oath of not revealing too much about a mystery film, yet wanting to drop a few hints to the kinoscenti, I’ll just add that "Side Effects" summons references to other Hitchcocks — "Spellbound," "The Wrong Man," "Vertigo," "Marnie" — and such Hitchcock-tribute films as "Obsession," "Dressed to Kill," "Raising Cain" and "Passion" made by the director’s No. 1 fan, Brian De Palma.
Comments by danama
danama commented on the list house-words--1
Looks like yours is missing a bathroom, so outhouse?
July 20, 2017
danama commented on the word no true scotsman
I’ve encountered the “not a true Muslim” retort many times. The arguer first makes a general statement about all Muslims, and then reframes it in order to somehow render it immune from any refutation. This is an informal fallacy known as the No True Scotsman fallacy, first described by the philosopher Antony Flew, who asked us to imagine a Scotsman shocked after reading a story in his morning paper about the action of an English sexual predator on the loose. “No Scotsman would do such a thing,” he tells himself. The next morning he sees another story about an even more heinous sex crime, this time committed by a Scotsman. Not ready to admit he was wrong, he says, this time, “No TRUE Scotsman would do such a thing.”
Ali Rizvi, “The Atheist Muslim” (St. Martin’s Press, New York), p49.
July 19, 2017
danama commented on the list ii-ending-words
Nice. I had been thinking about starting a vvcvv list.
August 20, 2015
danama commented on the list the-way-of-tea
builder's tea
February 22, 2014
danama commented on the list calgon-take-me-away
[Honalee}
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honah_Lee
February 11, 2014
danama commented on the list calgon-take-me-away
wonderland
February 11, 2014
danama commented on the word VO2 max
a measure of a person’s aerobic capacity, the highest rate of oxygen consumption physiologically attainable during sustained maximal physical effort
December 22, 2013
danama commented on the list plurale-tantum
mores
in children's play there's cops and robbers, and cowboys and indians (although the latter game, if played at all, may go by another name now).
December 22, 2013
danama commented on the list autantonyms
Close, but not sure they qualify:
oversight, in that proper oversight should prevent an oversight
cop, (mixing nouns and verbs) one that enforces the law, an act of law-breaking
November 22, 2013
danama commented on the word virga
The Century Dictionary’s entry appears incomplete, yet seems the most etymologically apt.
And the two etymology entries – is the one a counter-statement to the other?
October 19, 2013
danama commented on the word hospital
Interesting. You get the same distinction with “go to” – you “go to school”, but “go to the hospital.” To me it seems the distinction has something to do with the purpose for being in the institution. You’re in school for an education and in prison for punishment or reform, both longer-term processes, whereas you’re in the hospital for a (hopefully) short-term procedure. Similarly, you go to a/the restaurant or bar for a short duration experience , you don’t “go to restaurant.” Or: “so-and-so celebrity completed their court-ordered 90-day stint in rehab” vs. “…stint in the rehab.” Of course that theory pretty well gets knocked down when you say English speakers in other lands don’t make that distinction. And I can further shoot down my theory with the phrases “he’s in prison” vs. “he’s in the pen.” So it’s probably all just arbitrary.
October 16, 2013
danama commented on the list the-sound-of-birds
Quoth the mechanic (re: my ’92 4Runner ) “Nevermore”
October 4, 2013
danama commented on the list the-sound-of-birds
Mind if I steal all these for my “Sounds described to auto mechanics” list?
October 4, 2013
danama commented on the word throwdown
Also:
a cheap, unregistered firearm rumoured to be carried (sometimes unlawfully) by police officers. The firearm is thrown down next to a body in the case of a wrongful shooting of a citizen, so as to give the impression that the victim had been armed at the time.
– online slang dictionary
September 19, 2013
danama commented on the word throwdown
: a wild party
“Dude, people have broken into your home and they’re having a throwdown.”
September 19, 2013
danama commented on the list shindigs
throwdown
September 19, 2013
danama commented on the list firearms
throwdown
September 19, 2013
danama commented on the list lost-for-word
Well I definitely like Kartoffelgeist. Papageist might pertain to strange goings-on at the Vatican.
August 27, 2013
danama commented on the list lost-for-word
If it’s just beverage possession you’re talking about, I’d go with potageist. Can’t speak to other objects.
August 27, 2013
danama commented on the list play-ball
eephus pitch
August 24, 2013
danama commented on the word eephus pitch
Starting Werth's at-bat in the fifth inning Wednesday night with a fastball clocked at 90 mph, Villanueva had him set up for something slower. Much, much slower.Villanueva came back with a 57-mph eephus pitch that caught the outside corner for strike two.
– David Brown, Big League Stew sports blog 08/23/13
An Eephus pitch (also spelled Ephus) in baseball is a very low speed junk pitch. The delivery from the pitcher has very low velocity and usually catches the hitter off-guard. Its invention is attributed to Rip Sewell of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1940s. According to manager Frankie Frisch, the pitch was named by outfielder Maurice Van Robays. When asked what it meant, Van Robays replied, "'Eephus ain't nothing, and that's a nothing pitch." Although the origin is not known for certain, Eephus may come from the Hebrew word "efes" (pronounced "EFF-ess"), meaning "nothing".
– Wikipedia
August 24, 2013
danama commented on the list fans-and-superfans
Pokémaniac added .
There is also an exhaustive list here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FanCommunityNicknames
August 23, 2013
danama commented on the list imprecise-units-of-measurement
tranche?
August 23, 2013
danama commented on the word tranche
The Obama administration has been evaluating military and other aid to Egypt in recent weeks. But Earnest told reporters that no decision has been made about U.S. aid.
“This is not a faucet in which you just turn the spigot, and assistance continues to flow,” Earnest said, using a metaphor he repeated throughout the briefing. “Assistance is provided episodically, assistance is provided in tranches.”
– The Washington Post 8/20/13
August 23, 2013
danama commented on the list feeling-testy
This is the greatest list...an absolute standout!
August 2, 2013
danama commented on the word Dittohead
a fan of the Rush Limbaugh show
August 1, 2013
danama commented on the word The Colbert Nation
fans of The Colbert Report
August 1, 2013
danama commented on the word Team Coco
fans of Conan O'Brien
August 1, 2013
danama commented on the list fans-and-superfans
Thanks, Erin!
August 1, 2013
danama commented on the word Directioner
Ah, I should have known!
August 1, 2013
danama commented on the word Directioner
I think there is a potential “Fans” list here. I noticed Swifties (fans of Taylor Swift) was added a while back. And then there are Deadheads and Parrotheads (and Parakeets – younger fans of Buffet). I’d create the list myself, but I’m over 50 and don’t want to be responsible for adding "Belieber" to the wordnik database.
July 31, 2013
danama commented on the word UNIVAC
Song reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsDFYUD5KUA
Also Wikipedia, of course.
June 27, 2013
danama commented on the word Antikythera mechanism
The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient analog computer designed to calculate astronomical positions.
– Wikipedia
June 27, 2013
danama commented on the word stretcher
The Texas native stood 6-foot-6 and weighed 250 pounds, and claimed to have killed a Mexican officer during the Texas Revolution with a bowie knife to the heart. The claim is dubious - Terry was 13 years old when Texas fought its war for independence - but his later career was filled with more than enough bloodshed to make up for that stretcher.
– San Francisco Chronicle 6/15/13
June 15, 2013
danama commented on the word imperium in imperio
State within a state (also Latin: imperium in imperio or status in statu) is a political situation in a country when an internal organ, generally from the armed forces, intelligence agencies, or police, does not respond to the civilian leadership.
– wikipedia
a government, power, or sovereignty within a government, power, or sovereignty
– Merriam-Webster
See imperium
“Though he was not entirely opposed to military interference in politics, Mustafa Kemal wanted the armed forces to become an 'imperium in imperio', with a position similar to that of the German military between 1871 and 1914.”
– Atatürk: An Intellectual Biography, M. Sükrü Hanioglu
June 13, 2013
danama commented on the list on-and-off
If you're okay with homophones, there's
Right on!, write-off.
June 6, 2013
danama commented on the word go off on
per The Online Slang Dictionary:
: to verbally chastise, angrily
: to rant explosively about something
June 5, 2013
danama commented on the word brick
“I’ve been shouting it from the highest mountains,” Suhr said. “What we need is a national registry by the cell phone providers so that when your phone is stolen you can immediately ‘brick it’ and make it useless.”
– San Francisco Chronicle 05-28-13
June 3, 2013
danama commented on the list autantonyms
liege
1. n. A lord or sovereign to whom allegiance and service are due according to feudal law.
2. n. A vassal or subject owing allegiance and services to a lord or sovereign under feudal law.
Does anybody know how liege came to refer to both the sovereign and the subject?
June 3, 2013
danama commented on the word taradiddle
For shame, oroboros! You’ll have us all turning scarlett.
May 18, 2013
danama commented on the word şerefe
Turkish: Cheers! (lit.: “honor”)
May 18, 2013
danama commented on the list unenthusiastic-interjections
Thanks, arby.
May 7, 2013
danama commented on the list unenthusiastic-interjections
meh?
Actually, I think if you were to give emphasis to meh, you would end up with the world’s shortest oxymoron: meh!
May 2, 2013
danama commented on the word convoluted
“Embedded within Chinese leaders' convoluted, yet vague statements to Washington about North Korea is a simple message: Talk with Pyongyang.” – AP
Does “convoluted, yet vague” strike anyone else as being somewhat redundant, in that they probably made the statements deliberately convoluted so that they would be vague?
April 14, 2013
danama commented on the list sluts-and-bitches
a woman of easy virtue?
April 14, 2013
danama commented on the list shifty-words
manual? stick?
March 29, 2013
danama commented on the word ampersand
Anparsy (noun) - (1) Boys, in repeating their alphabet, would say ". . . X, Y, Z, anparsy." They did not know what it meant, but pointed in their spelling books to the character &, also termed parsy-and.
--M.C.F. Morris's Yorkshire Folk-Talk, 1892
(2) Anpasty, another name for ampersand. It means and past y.
--Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830
– from a daily calendar version of “Forgotten English”, Jeffrey Kacirk
March 29, 2013
danama commented on the word daily
“All of the sudden, I had a sluggish digestive system and on the daily was plagued with chronic abdominal discomfort.”
“I figured if it didn’t have gluten, it was healthy, so I ate my weight in grains, especially corn (psuedo grain), on the daily.”
– blog post
Is this a regionalism? I’ve not before heard the expression “on the daily” subbing for “daily.”
March 29, 2013
danama commented on the word phumpher
A Yiddish word meaning "to mumble", most often used to mean “to be evasive”; can also mean “to putter aimlessly” or “to waste time.”
Some common spellings: 'phumpher' and 'fumpher', to a lesser extent 'pfumpher' and 'pfumpfer', and very rarely, 'pfumfer'. Never 'phumfer'. The most common is 'phumpher', followed closely by 'fumfer'.
– Allwords.com
Paddy Cheyefsky, interviewed (1977) on Dinah Shore’s old talk show: “I was interviewed in London and somebody asked me a question and it threw me completely, and so I just chattered and talked and, uh, what we call in the industry, ‘phumphered.’ I phumphered and phumphered and phumphered – I must have phumphered for twenty minutes. Fortunately they cut it down to 10 seconds and I sounded sensational.”
March 14, 2013
danama commented on the word stomach share
Sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and MSG are all Poor Food ingredients that these companies are choosing, no, demanding be added into their products with the express intent of increasing what is known as their product’s “stomach share”- the amount of digestive space any one company’s brand can grab from the competition.
– http://caltonnutrition.com/article.aspx?pid=105
March 14, 2013
danama commented on the word excelsior
“Excelsior” is the most parodied of Longfellow’s poems. Indeed it is almost a parody of itself. For Longfellow, “Excelsior” meant “higher and higher,” as the youth struggles upward only to die without gaining his objective. Longfellow wrote the poem in 1841, inspired by the New York State seal, which bore a shield with a rising sun and the motto Excelsior.
Oliver Wendell Holmes thought that “the repetition of the aspiring exclamation…lifts every stanza a step higher,” but Irvin Cobb thought the exclamation should be “Bonehead!” Harvard students used to sing a song, and maybe still do, with each stanza ending in “Upidee!” and lines laced with “la la’s.” Bret Harte wrote a parody in which each stanza ended with “Sapolio!” – the name of a soap.
—Best Remembered Poems, Martin Gardner
March 14, 2013
danama commented on the word teratogenic
"causing the formation of monsters," 1879, from teratogeny (1857), from comb. form of Greek teras (genitive teratos) "marvel, monster" + -genic, producing, forming
– online etymology dictionary
February 20, 2013
danama commented on the word kinoscenti
Sworn to the reviewer’s oath of not revealing too much about a mystery film, yet wanting to drop a few hints to the kinoscenti, I’ll just add that "Side Effects" summons references to other Hitchcocks — "Spellbound," "The Wrong Man," "Vertigo," "Marnie" — and such Hitchcock-tribute films as "Obsession," "Dressed to Kill," "Raising Cain" and "Passion" made by the director’s No. 1 fan, Brian De Palma.
– Richard Coliss, Time, 2/8/13
February 18, 2013