BS: Which Word scores most in Thesaurus?

Subject: BS: Which Words scores most in Thesaurus?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 01:40 AM

I have lost my thesaurus, along with my stegosaurus, and no longer know where it is (Yo! Redundancy rears its ugly head.), but I think the word "stupid" has the largest body of synonyms and related words for any single concept in the English language. It's astounding how many there are, and it makes for amusing reading, as some of them are quite archaic. Try putting them all in one letter, and send it to some deserving person.

It says something about people if the word "stupid" encapsules the most successful and prolific archetype in our language, but I'm not sure what.

So if you have a thesaurus handy, check it out and see if I am right about this.

There are very few synonyms for solipsism, unfortunately. Odd, isn't
it?

*Pardon my mistake in the title. It should read "Word". Pedants take note.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Which Words scores most in Thesaurus?
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 01:58 AM

Lots of thesauri on line to look through, LH: click and scroll down.

Do you want me to fix the title? (As a joeclone, I mean.:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Which Words scores most in Thesaurus?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 02:06 AM

Sure, okay, Kat. Fix it then. I know there are thesauri online, but nothing matches a good old tactile real book. However, I shall do as you suggest.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Which Word scores most in Thesaurus?
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 02:13 AM

Oh, I agree, LH, nothing like the real, sunstantial thing in your hands! Book, I mean book!**BG**

kat

Subject: RE: BS: Which Words scores most in Thesaurus?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 02:18 AM

As I figured...the digital approach is cumbersome, time-wasting, and ineffective. I once had a physical thesaurus that could have answered this question in a fraction of the time by simply riffling through the pages and taking a ten-second glance.

It's pathetic.

For comparisons, try talking to a real live person on the phone in order to secure the answer to a question, and then try dealing with one of those computerized menus that gives you numbers to push which lead to other menus....none of which provide you with what you actually want. This has given big organizations the impression that everyone's happy, cos nobody even bothers trying to reach them anymore.

"If there's anybody out there with an original idea, I could use it right now" - Bob Dylan

If there's anybody out there at all in corporate-land, I'd like to make some human contact.

The porch light is on folks, but...there's no one home.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Which Word scores most in Thesaurus?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 02:34 AM

Hell, I can do better on my own with this...

Chuckle-headed, moronic, dimwitted, obtuse, dense, dull, half-witted, witless, idiotic, feckless, slow, lacking intelligence, inept, foolish, lacking judgement, less than shrewd, vapid, vacuous, empty-headed, know-nothing, brainless, incompetent, unthinking, thoughtless, thick-headed, mentally challenged, dull, dunderheaded, neanderthal, apish, oxlike, dumb (as in "dumbass"), doltish, cretinous...

Well, that's a start anyway...I know I've missed some of the archaic ones.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Which Word scores most in Thesaurus?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 09:26 AM

As I mentioned in How Do You Say Drunk I recall reading somewhere that English has more expressions for intoxication than for anything else.

Nigel

Subject: RE: BS: Which Word scores most in Thesaurus?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 10:26 AM

The answer to your thesaurus question depends on which one you check. Roget's does, I believe, list a lot of entries for 'stupid'.but the one I use, 'Buddy's Pretty Good Word Finder' has 6 pages for 'ignernt'.

Subject: RE: BS: Which Word scores most in Thesaurus?
From: Amos
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 10:49 AM

You could take this to mean that there is an awful lot of stupidity built in to the human species (which seems true anyway). Just as the Inuit have a LOT of snow to deal with.

But it might help brighten things up to keep in mind that every time someone uses one of those many terms for stupdiity, they have to be smart enough to recognize the stupidity in question, which implies there are more instances of people able to recognize it than of people committing it, since it takes a lot of agreement to make a word last.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Which Word scores most in Thesaurus?
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 08:49 PM

Yep, everybody's above average. ":)

Subject: RE: BS: Which Word scores most in Thesaurus?
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 08:57 PM

Stupid people always get picked on (PC not withstanding). Jes nacheral hooman nachure.
Yep, the book is a lot better than the digital. I have Webster's Dictionary on disc, but the book is much quicker.

Subject: RE: BS: Which Word scores most in Thesaurus?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 09:26 PM

Anything real is better than digital, I find, but digital is well suited to the lazy, I suppose, who can't be bothered dealing with anything as rigorous and demanding as actual reality! Ha! I see myself deeply implicated in this. It was great being in a well-functioning spiritual community where reality was in my face every waking minute, thus not really allowing me to be lazy. I have been reading a superb book on the nature of good and evil, entitled "People of the Lie" and written by Scott Peck in the late 70's. He asserts that two impulses that are usually at the very root of human evil (or a destructive state of mind, if you prefer) are laziness and narcissism (self-absorption, exaggerated self-love to the exclusion of a healthy sense of self and others). That's for sure. I have found narcissism easier to combat than laziness, when it comes right down to it.

So, Nigel, maybe it is the word "drunk" that has the most synonyms in English, and not "stupid". This should make Blind DRunk in Blind River very happy if he finds out about it!

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Which Word scores most in Thesaurus?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 09:54 PM

I think masturbation probably has about as many synonyms, euphemisms and dysphemisms as any other word. You won't find too many of 'em in Roget's, but there's a whole bunch of lists on the Net, like this one. (If one list isn't enough just plug "names for wanking" into Google.)

Bruce

Subject: RE: BS: Which Word scores most in Thesaurus?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 19 Jan 03 - 08:37 PM

Amos: you're assuming that someone identifying 'stupidity' is right. The person using the term may not realise that the person to whom they are referring has made a valid point!

Nigel

Subject: RE: BS: Which Word scores most in Thesaurus?
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 19 Jan 03 - 09:36 PM

G'day katlaughing (et al),

" ... nothing like the real, sunstantial thing in your hands! Book, I mean book!**BG** ..."

Yes ... and a real Roget's Thesaurus is nothing like those "dictionary of synomyms" bastardisations that you Yanks keeping publishing with the misleading claim to be Roget's Thesauruses (more correct plural, as thesaurus is from the Greek, not a Latin word!).

My Roget's - a volume of related words and phrases which are accessed via a preliminary table of associations, can lead me to hundreds of associated words, phrases and thoughts. It compares to an American Roget as a 3-dimensional sculture compares to a flat sketch ... and it doesn't comply with the massive censorship evident in the American dictionary version that skulks near the Blue Niger leather-bound Folio Society Roget's that is final arbiter and inspiration.

Regard(les),

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: BS: Which Word scores most in Thesaurus?
From: open mike
Date: 19 Jan 03 - 10:03 PM

if yuo are looking for a way to say low I.Q.
there are quite a few:
a quart low,
playing with half a deck,
elevator does not go all the way up,
lights are on, but nobody's home,
a six pack with one missing,
missing a cylinder,
others???

Subject: RE: BS: Which Word scores most in Thesaurus?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Jan 03 - 11:17 PM

Also: "thick"

That's a particularly good one, I think. "Loutish" is not bad either.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Which Word scores most in Thesaurus?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 20 Jan 03 - 12:12 AM

Since thesaurus is a Greek word, and not Latin, shouldn't the proper plural be thesauroi?

Subject: RE: BS: Which Word scores most in Thesaurus?
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 20 Jan 03 - 09:28 AM

G'day misophist,

... Probably - but the habit of insisting on "foreign" plurals is a bit tedious - and usually restricted to Latin, so we'll just keep quiet - and use a comprehensible 'English' plural. (That's one of the hallmarks of the liberation of English that came when it abandoned inflections and overdone grammar.)

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: BS: Which Word scores most in Thesaurus?
From: DMcG
Date: 20 Jan 03 - 09:57 AM

Looking at the full Oxford English Dictionary, "set" does pretty well. I seem to remember it takes 64 pages to cover the possible meanings.