Comments by retorick

  • A word designating the eighth power of a number has a place here, I ween. All together, now: zenzizenzizenzic.

    April 19, 2013

  • "long-winded" - The Endangered English Dictionary - Bodacious Words Your Dictionary Forgot (David Grambs, 1994, W. W. Norton & Company)

    February 13, 2013

  • "to get dark or late" - The Endangered English Dictionary - Bodacious Words Your Dictionary Forgot (David Grambs, 1994, W. W. Norton & Company)

    February 13, 2013

  • "possessing or holding all things" - The Endangered English Dictionary - Bodacious Words Your Dictionary Forgot (David Grambs, 1994, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.)

    February 13, 2013

  • "to turn into a bat" - The Endgangered English Dictionary - Bodacious Words Your Dictionary Forgot (David Grambs, 1994, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York)

    February 13, 2013

  • One place where thelyphthoric is listed is in The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1971, Oxford University Press), which marks it as both obsolete and a nonce word. Two citations appear, from 1780 and 1794, I think.

    From arcamax.com, where the word was featured as "Today's Word" on 3/6/05: Today's word was the creation of Martin Madan, who wrote in 1780 "Thelyphthora or, A treatise on female ruin: in its causes, effects, consequences, prevention, and remedy." Madan put this word together from Greek thelus "woman" + phthora "destruction, ruin." Both Greek words have resisted efforts of etymologists to dissipate their mystery.

    http://www.arcamax.com/knowledge/vocabulary/s-22625-956164#BC4b82xmRdGrj7Jz.99 "

    January 25, 2013

  • The word tendentious is used to describe something (an account, document, depiction, Wikipedia article, etc.) that's biased. What adjective refers to a topic that's highly subject to such bias, even though it could be presented in a balanced way?

    February 29, 2012

  • I'm still wondering about a word to denote the adoption of an ostensibly defensible position, but more to annoy than because one really believes in it. Surely there is such a word?

    February 29, 2012

  • I'd accept iconoclastic as a good candidate for "rejecting the old."

    February 29, 2012

  • A word for "rejecting the old"? Good question. We have misoneism and the evidently synonymous misocainia for rejecting the new. It seems there should be something for a similar attitude with regard to the customary, or traditional. Starting with the same "mis(o)-" prefix, one might look for something related to the Greek "ethos." ('misethism"?) However, Google appears to be ignorant of such a word.

    A "real word" that comes to mind is "progressivism." However, that seems to have a political connotation, doesn't it? Perhaps an exploration of its synonyms?

    February 26, 2012

  • There must be a word for this: the supporting of a thing that is, in fact, putatively meritorious, but largely because it will offend someone one finds annoying.

    February 26, 2012