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#46513 11/02/01 11:40 AM
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Can anyone offer me a term describing the mutation of an entity from a transmogrified state back to its origin? It would be perhaps something akin to regression or retrogression, but without the implied evolutionary 'step down'. Politically or socially it might be used to describe the ideals held by what would be termed luddites or reactionaries, along the lines of "getting back to the good old days".




#46514 11/02/01 01:09 PM
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Transubstantiation ?

Mercy! How often to I get a chance to "name drop" that word!

#46515 11/02/01 01:20 PM
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Hmmm.... Sounds as if you're describing political speeches.

WOW, I've only heard transubstantiation used eucharistically. I live next door to a Catholic church, and every Sunday several Vietnamese guys named Tran show up.


#46516 11/02/01 02:19 PM
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i am hung up on the concept! aside from actors -- who might play a part, and then go back to being themselves.. I can image a case were somthing goes back to being what it was... (changes from one state, to an other, and then back to the first...)

who was the philosopher (Roman i think?) who pointed out you could not enter the same river twice.. because the water flowed, and while the banks of the river might seem the same, it was different water

as i typed, i realized atoms can go from one state to another and mercury, can go from quicksilver to cinnabar, and back to quicksilver.. ( a favorite of alchemist) but living things can't. as we move through cycles of time, we can't go back.. but if we were phoenixes.. this is similar to cycle.. but not a retrograde progression, a cycle..

in terms of social mores.. this is sometimes likened to a swing of pendulum.. moving from one extreme to the other, and slowly progressing to a middle point.

oh i am all a muddle...maybe you can find something... or everyone will have fun, pulliing my ideas like taffy, trying to make something of them..




#46517 11/02/01 02:32 PM
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If Cinderella failed to get home before midnight, her marvelous carriage was to be turned back into a pumpkin. So perhaps "pumpkinification" could describe reverse transmutation.


#46518 11/02/01 02:38 PM
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"The Apocolocyntosis" roughly translated as the "pumpkinification"

So if you prefer a Latin derivative, there it is. Bill

Dear Ants: I am enjoying myself enough to be experiencing pleasant formication. Crudely called "antsy".


#46519 11/02/01 02:42 PM
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i atomicized "revert" and came up with "recrudesce", which Roget's defines thusly: "To come back to a former condition: recur, reoccur, return, revert".

This would seem to fit the bill nicely, but the AHD asserts that recrudescence is "break[ing] out anew or com[ing] into renewed activity, as after a period of quiescence."

These two definitions don't seem to be quite the same; i can see that they are similar, but the AHD doesn't seem to specify that recrudescence necessarily implies returning to a *former state, does it?

also, if i'm understanding the question correctly, i think the word we are seeking would describe a progressive, or forward-moving motion with a goal of attaining a state of being similar to a past state, much like what jackie, wordwind and others are attempting to do on this board by redirecting "unsavory" threads towards those related to words and the love of language. in this case, "reverting" is impossible, because we cannot literally move backward in time, but rather focus future efforts on recreating a previous state.


#46520 11/02/01 02:50 PM
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who was the philosopher who pointed out you could not enter the same river twice?

That'd be Heraclitus (Greek). There is a very funny routine by Severn Darden of the old Second City improve group about it in which his wife points out that he can step in the same river twice if he goes downstream as fast as the river is flowing.

Lemme see can I...

http://www.comedystars.net/Darden_Severn/severn_darden.htm#stageup


#46521 11/02/01 03:05 PM
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up until now, the only use for pumpkinification has been in the sense of 'making a pumpkin of', extravagant or absurdly uncritical glorification, suggested by the travesty (ascribed to Seneca) of the apotheosis of the Roman emperor Claudius Cæsar under the title of ‘apocolocyntosis’.

recrudescence originally referred to the renewal of a quality or state of things (usually one regarded as bad), a disease, epidemic, etc. through transferral [oh no, not that again!] it has come to also mean revival or rediscovery (of something regarded as good or valuable).

retrograde - To turn back, reverse, revert; to make, or cause to become, retrograde. Now rare.

#46522 11/02/01 03:22 PM
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- - which his wife points out that he can step in the same river twice if he goes downstream as fast as the river is flowing.

But, if we follow Helen's post, above, the banks of the river were regarded as an essential part of the river - and they would be different, furhter downstream.

(I agree that one could argue that the bank is not part of the river - but no-one did when it appeared above, so I take that as a justification to take it as given.)


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