BS: Word of the Day

Subject: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,SueB
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 12:43 PM

"bloviate

To bloviate (pronounced BLOW-vee-ayt) is to speak or write overexpansively or with undue grandiosity. It suggests a derivation from to blow, meaning to boast. The term has gained some currency through distribution over Web chat forums and on Web sites. American writer H. L. Mencken, always bordering on bloviation himself, described a less interesting bloviator, President Warren G. Harding, thusly:
He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."




Isn't that marvelous? I ran across it in an article by Maureen Dowd, re Supremem Court Justice Scalia (you know, Cheney's duck hunting buddy.)

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Nerd
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 12:55 PM

Yeah, "bloviate" is a pet word of both mine and Amos's. If you search on it in Lyrics and Knowledge you'll find us using it, mostly to suggest our verbal opponents are blustering!

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,SueB
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 01:01 PM

I only typed "Word of the Day" into the search box, to see if there was an old thread that could be revived - didn't think of searching bloviate here, sorry.

Got any other cool pet words to share?

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 01:20 PM

Read an article in a musical magazine a while ago..regarding words the readers felt should be used for musical situations..ie not real words....but one took my eye which was:-
"Capoknackered" and means either broken capo or the situation one is in having left ones capo at home. Best wishes.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Don Firth
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 01:25 PM

But . . . but . . . but . . . that's what I do!!!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 01:37 PM

my favorite phrase..(made my own button of it) is

"Eschew Obfuscation"

can't remember where I first heard it...

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 01:45 PM

gesundhiet!

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: s6k
Date: 03 Sep 04 - 01:58 PM

crumb

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 01:22 AM

LOL! Then William McGonagall was one of the most spectacular bloviators in history.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: leeneia
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 11:28 AM

Sounds like the letters that people write to Miss Manners, trying and failing to imitate her style.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: mack/misophist
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 02:39 PM

Wonderful word but a better quotation. Mencken was an ass, but a very smart ass.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Ebbie
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 03:37 PM

Tired of the bombardment by facts, relevant and irrelevant, that pile into an incomprensible heap? I decided that's not 'umpteen' but 'numbteen' facts.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 07:21 PM

Bloviation at the expense of erudition is something, I suppose, we might be able to lay at the door of the current administration---though I do believe that the definition of the word eludes our leader and he surely obfuscates without bloviating.

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Amos
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 07:42 PM

It's hard to bloviate using no more than two phonemes conjoined at a time.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 07:52 PM

You gotta love the 5 dollar words


Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Amos
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 08:08 PM

I have always been fond of intrepid, ululation, minicephalic, adroit, agility and one other, which I forget...

A

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 08:11 PM

Might it be---antidisestablisharantarianism?   If not---what about xenophobia?

Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,GROK
Date: 04 Sep 04 - 09:03 PM

FACETIOUSLY

A word in which the vowels of English appear in alphabetical order.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 04:21 AM

OOh... Ululation - just read 'War of the Worlds' for the first time this century - it's still scary! This word features in WOFTW and I've always liked it.

My word of the moment is moritarium. Sounds much more miserable than it is. It should be a small room where Romans went to be moribund (a bit like the vomitarium where they went to be sick).

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 06:26 PM

Dollop. Such a comforting word.

And such a useful insult.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,SueB
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 07:30 PM

Ooooh, minicephalic, I like that one.

And speaking of Bush, how about troglodyte?

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill Hahn//\\
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 08:29 PM

Dollop. So soothing when one thinks of a dollop of sour cream on a bowl of Bluberries---with a bit of sugar, perhaps.

Damn---the season for Blueberries ends too soon in this area. One last dollop on the berries before autumn.


Bill Hahn

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,GROK
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 10:24 PM

Calamistrate

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill D
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 10:31 PM

Googling for a word I hadn't heard in 40 years, I found this:



    Befuddling
      
    To the editor:
      I just couldn't resist using the knowledge I gained from your Nov. 8 paper. James J. Kilpatrick's Writer's Art column has been a constant favorite of mine. This edition of his column, which dealt with interesting words now out of fashion, should have been published before the elections just to add fodder for the election writers. Shall we try one on Bill Clinton? While Mr. Clinton is faunching about the puckersnatch he has created, he must surely be paddybassing around his own private pokelogan. The rest of us are just waiting for him to scallyhoot out of office.
      My spell check system almost had a seizure writing this.
    LINDA K. WOOD
    Las Vegas

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,GROK
Date: 05 Sep 04 - 10:58 PM

But, Bill, did you find the word you WERE looking for?

(I shall add puckersnatch to my vocab. I doubt I will introduce it to my students. I think you know why.)

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 02:48 AM

Bill D used the word "Googling"...a fine word. The word I think might have had the largest impact in the last decade is "Internet" or perhaps "Web"....maybe even "Surfing"...All good words.
Best wishes.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 08:47 AM

The Word of the Day is

Money!

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill D
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 06:06 PM

the word I looked for was 'faunching', and though there are a lot of hits, it is really hard to sort out the basic meaning...It is one of the most 'unpleasant' words I know...it simply sounds like it refers to baser impulses and mindsets.

I am still sorting thru the things it might mean.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Amos
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 11:20 PM

"Faunch" is a handy term in science fiction fandom, meaning roughly 'to yearn for in a none-too-healthy way'.
Posted by Alison Scott at June 8, 2003 10:07 AM

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST
Date: 06 Sep 04 - 11:28 PM

polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/dare/newsletterjan99.htm

or google Dare newsletter

Good article there on faunch.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: fat B****rd
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 03:30 AM

Squorrox

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Splott Man
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 05:05 AM

Xenophobia?

We don't like that word round our way.

I like galumph, traipse, schlep, mosey... gosh, the variety of ways of getting about, you could do a workshop!

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,GROK
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 09:43 AM

How would people get there until you decide on the word?

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 10:47 AM

zaftig (ZAF-tik, -tig) adjective

    Full-figured, pleasingly plump, buxom.

[From Yiddish zaftik (juicy), from Middle High German (saftec), from saft (juice), from Old High German saf (sap).]

Sounds like something for use in The Temple of The Golden Globes...

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: muppett
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 11:39 AM

QUINQUENNIUM

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,SueB
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 12:37 PM

No fair - you have to give definitions, or we'll be forced to make them up. (Squorrox - what you'd use to bleach a squirrel.)

My word of the day - hispidulous, which means sparsely covered with fine bristles, like a pig, or like someone's hairy ass.

Troglodyte from above means cavedweller.

And Splott Man, sometimes I like to amble, and sometimes I like to promenade.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 03:56 PM

There are still some "Troglodytes" living in the UK near Matlock in Derbyshire. The caves they live in have been lived in from time "immemorial" but have all mod cons these days.
Isn't immemorial(Hope I've spelt it right)a good word..sort of earthy.
Best wishes.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Kim C
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 04:03 PM

Fantods.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 05:19 PM

I am opposed to the insipid and the fatuous, offended by the lascivious and the salacious, surprised and delighted by the serendipitous, impressed by the perspicacious, troubled by the concupiscient, maleficent, and conundrumatical, empowered by the meritricious, and utterly apalled by the aesthetic bereftitude of the parallelogramaticallismically unsound (as seen in some modern architecture these days)!

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 06:10 PM

it is good to know words, but here is a famous warning..(one of multitudenous variations)

" In promulgating your esoteric cogitations or articulating your superficial sentimentalities and amicable, philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your conversational communications demonstrate a clarified conciseness, a compact comprehensibleness, no coalescent conglomerations of precious garrulity, jejune bafflement and asinine affectations. Let your extemporaneous verbal declarations have lucidity, intelligibility and veracious vivacity without rodomontade or thrasonical bombast. Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous propensity, psittaceous vacuity, ventriloquial verbosity and vaniloquent vapidity. Shun double-entendres, obnoxious jocosity and pestiferous profanity, observable or apparent."

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 06:14 PM

Waugh!!!

Or...

"Talk straight or don't talk at all." - Yurko Slobodovich

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 06:26 PM

Well said BillD...for the lay-man..Don't talk crap!
Best wishes.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Bill D
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 06:33 PM

well, after all, I AM an antihypersyllabicsesquipedalian

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 06:54 PM

O.K you show off. Do you insinuate that we should tolerate such diabolic insolence, from a microscopic piece of animosity such as you? Your presumptions are precisely incorrect. O.K so I didn't mean it really but it sounds O.K Best wishes.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,GROK
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 07:13 PM

Well said all ye above. I particularly appreciate that it was done floccinoccinihilipilificationally.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 07:19 PM

isn't it floccinaucinihilipilificationally?

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,GROK
Date: 07 Sep 04 - 07:23 PM

Either, either.

Has two spellings.

Hey, that thing BillD said: Does that mean he doesn't want to go into space with a bicycle?

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,SueB
Date: 08 Sep 04 - 12:08 AM

It means he doesn't want to go into space with SIX bicycles.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: GUEST,ozmacca
Date: 08 Sep 04 - 01:34 AM

Personally, I've always liked "stalzheimered", which is what happens when you try to drive away from the traffic lights, having forgotten that you put the parking brake on.

Subject: RE: BS: Word of the Day
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 08 Sep 04 - 04:39 AM

I am disinclined to acquiesce.....

The best word is not always the longest (unless you are playing Scrabble and you've got a triple word score)....

My best word at the moment is 'hug'.

LTS