@ sixes & sevens

rewording

[It's been an age since I posted anything on this blog. Facebook, for all its faults, stands in remarkably well for a blog site. But it has such short-term memory--it's all NOW NOW NOW--that nobody would think of going backward through the mis-named News Feed for the sort of gems that blogs nurture.]

vo·lup·tu·ous·ness

Do we really need a five-syllable, fourteen-letter word for this concept? My online dictionary offer voluptuosity as an alternative: fewer letter, more syllables. I'll concede that voluptic doesn't share the same aural quality of the original, for all its faults. How about voluptious (vo-lup-shuhs)?

Your suggestions welcome.

i·con·nois·seur

Recently coined on the fly during a visit by one of our Russian book vendors, John Emmerich. Defined as "a person who is especially competent to pass critical judgments on representations of some sacred personage, as Christ or a saint or angel, painted usually on a wood surface and venerated itself as sacred." Possible antonym of iconoclast. An iconnoisseur with antiquated art historical views on icons might jocularly be called an iconosaur.

"Is There Anybody Out There?"

Long before I became a Facebook 'enthusiast' (something this side of an addict?) I had stopped posting to this blog. Instead I would make a note in my cellphone of something that caught my attention -- a concept, turn of phrase, language abuse, anagram or neologism -- with an idea of 'doing something about it' at a later date.

Well, it's definitely a later date now, and still no new blog posts. And these things continue to pile up in my cellphone. I expect one day it will inform me there's no more room. I've thought of spooling these out, maybe a week at a time, just to get them off my mind and into print.

A colleague from MPOW asked me recently why I hadn't posted anything here for so long, and I related this very story ... and got no sympathy at all. So I've transcribed them below. If anybody wants me to take up one of these first, let me know and I'll spin it out.

Field <=> filed <=> flied … and Fidel
Bra-chitecture
Lost in place
Pheromenon
Mañanismo
Faux-pulence
Crew d’état
Rasputation
Antiskeptic / Antisceptic
Pathways of desire
Thermal toupées
Please <=> asleep
Tenants ≠ tenets
Wheelchair-accessible ≠ wheelchair assessable (new 1/25)
Constructive selfishness: "I took out the garbage because I just couldn't stand it anymore."
erotic ≠ erratic
Phlegmatically mercurial = sullenly moody? (a certain someone) (1/30)
coupons: koopons vs. Q-pons (2/2)
clandestiny (2/6)

There but for the grace of God ...

Schadenfriede

n. The feeling of relief at the misfortune of other museums. See "A Collection of Tribal Art Is Embroiled in a Modern Family Feud".

block that neologism ... but not this one.

comfortability

We heard this from one of the Mets sportscasters the other day. Kiki had her head turned, but when I squeaked "Comfortability?" she said, "Oh, I'm glad you noticed that." This is a classic case of adding on to a word when there's a perfectly useful and shorter word in use -- in this case, comfort.

Mind you, I'm not against word elaboration when there's a semantic need for it. Kiki brought this to mind when she quoted someone in an article in the Times, who referred to an heirloom's divineness. Clearly this 'divine' object had not so much divinity as divineness.

But what then of this word that Kiki came up with: definity? What could be more cumbersome that definiteness -- no better than comfortability, really. And the pre-existing noun definition has by now taken on so many other meanings that a new word is certainly called for.

yet more further words

ventriloquence

1. the practice of projecting one's voice with fluency and aptness so that it seems to come from another source.
2. (fig.) the art of making other people say what you want them to say.

This is (as far as I can tell) a neologism.

personalty

This is a real world, or at least a word used in the legal profession. American Heritage Dictionary online defines it as "Personal property; chattels." This came up while talking with the estate lawyer yesterday afternoon. Of course, there in the forms I was signing was the very word "chattels" used in the definition above. In a sense, it's personality with the 'I' taken out. (yuk, yuk)

It put me in mind of other -ty words. The first one that sprang to my mind was admiralty, and it seems that the root word needs to end in al for it to work. [My literate and lawyerly neighbor reminded me of both realty, the apposite of personalty, and fealty.]  Is there a use for "the liberalty"?

a silk purse out of a sow's ear

in·'sou·ci·ance + 'in·so·lent = in·'sou·so·lent

This new portmanteau word popped into my head as I watched a casually obnoxious teenager on the bus thumbing his cellphone and blocking the aisle.