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#174770 - 03/15/08 07:16 PM Re: no way [Re: Faldage]
zmjezhd Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 08/13/05
Posts: 2475
Loc: R'lyeh
Offeskeiten isn't German.

What he said. I can't figure out what the putative word could be in German or any of the other usual suspects. the ending -keiten looks German, but yours is as good as anybody's what the offes represents. The -keiten to me looks like the standard German -keit, which forms abstract nouns out of adjectives, e.g., Niedrigkeit 'baseness' < niedrig 'base, lowly'. It's kind of like our -hood (cf. German -heit as in Gesundheit 'health') or -ness. Now it's possible, through strange transcription methods to posit a verb skeiten, which seems more Dutch than German, but that leaves the impossible offes (sounding to mine inner ear a lot like English office). The only place on the Web with offeskeiten is this thread (link). The single example of Offeskeit is a typical Google Books, old words in strange language confuses my OCR.

I also thought for a second it could be Äffischkeit 'apishness', but I got over that. Maybe a nonce word, Auskeit 'outness'. No. Häufigkeit 'frequency, commonness'?

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#174776 - 03/16/08 12:42 AM Re: OFFESKEITEN [Re: R. Eastcourt]
The Pook Offline
old hand

Registered: 02/20/08
Posts: 1067
Loc: Tasmania
 Originally Posted By: R. Eastcourt
My dear, dead, neighbor used this word(adjective) to describe an ultra-conservative, boorish, gluttonous, self-centered, lazy, neighbor, of certain European descent.
Is this a real word or did Jack just spit out pidgion German sounds?

Phonetically it sounded: off'-ish-kiten......(add a country here)


Perhaps it was Yiddish?

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