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here's another of those mystery words..
epicaricacy can be found in Mrs. Byrne's dictionary, defined as 'taking pleasure in others' misfortune'--an actual English synonym for schadenfreude?! but I haven't found it anywhere else (except for those online lists that parrot Mrs. B.), or been able to discover anything about its etymology.
a connection to epicarican (An isopod crustacean, parasitic on shrimps -Webster's 1913) seems tenuous.
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Pooh-Bah
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Here's an immediate use for it:
"The traffic on the M6 moved past the accident scene at an epicaricatic crawl, despite the vehicles involved having been moved to the hard shoulder by several sweating and cursing policemen ... "
From this morning's trip to work! Like it, it will become part of my normal vocabulary forthwith!
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epicaricatic crawl
We must wonder--with astonishment--at the soul of one for whom this crawl brought pleasure.
Epicaricactic seems another possible spelling for the adjective form.
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>this crawl brought pleasure
the mystery is always that the *accident brings so much pleasure as to reduce flow to a crawl.
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The crawl can be explained without invoking pleasure at all.
Once it gets started it is self perpetuating. You can't go through faster than the cars ahead of you. The accident scene is generally accompanied by the flashing lights of a police or sheriff's car, enough in itself to cause the majority of drivers to slow down. Then all it takes is people exercising extra caution in an area liable to have restricted traffic flow anyway. And even if there is epicaricacy in evidence, it need only be by an extremely small minority to affect everybody's speed.
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epicar = from old Persian: neck icacy = from middle Greek via French: having the quality of rubber 
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>The crawl can be explained without invoking pleasure at all.
on the other side of the divided highway?!
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the other side of the divided highway
Even then we needn't equate curiosity with pleasure.
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>Even then we needn't equate curiosity with pleasure.
nor are we necessarily constrained from doing so.
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"Once it gets started it is self perpetuating. You can't go through faster than the cars ahead of you. The
accident scene is generally accompanied by the flashing lights of a police or sheriff's car, enough in itself
to cause the majority of drivers to slow down. Then all it takes is people exercising extra caution in an
area liable to have restricted traffic flow anyway. And even if there is epicaricacy in evidence, it need
only be by an extremely small minority to affect everybody's speed."
Quite. The Traffic Check Wallahs on my local radio station frequently make judgmental remarks about "onlooker delays" causing significant slowing of traffic. Apparently we are supposed to forge ahead, with callous disregard for the car in front of us that has just come to a halt, possibly because the driver didn't want to hit police officers or emergency medical personnel.
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nor are we necessarily constrained
No, we aren't, but my point is that, while it may be sufficient to explain the traffic tie-ups, it is not necessary. Therefore, we need not wonder--with astonishment--at the soul of one for whom this crawl brought pleasure.
This is not to say that we may not take the pleasure of so wondering.
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>The Traffic Check Wallahs on my local radio station frequently make judgmental remarks about "onlooker delays" causing significant slowing of traffic.
perhaps; or often they'll say that the accident has been cleared but to expect continued delays, in both directions!
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And if the accident has been cleared, how can it be blamed for the delays? I remember many times I would encounter traffic jams that cleared up with no rational explanation after passing some point in the road that had no evidence of anything untoward having happened. Could it be a case of self-perpetuation?
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years ago, in Scientific American, the mathmatical recreations column, there was a mathmatical explaintion of the residual effect of a traffic jam.. the effect can last up to 4 hours, and it travels, not unlike the waves caused by a stone thrown into a pond.. except the pattern is linear (just a slice of the 'pond' is seen.)
and the ripple effect of slowed traffic travels in both directions, moving away from the sourse (at a speed relitive to the highway speed, and traffic volumne.
so the next time you are driving along, and suddenly traffic slows for a few hundred feet, and then resumes, with no obvious reason, you 'll recognize you have just past through a ripple left over from an accident, several miles up the road, and several hours in the past!
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a mathmatical explaintion of the residual effect of a traffic jam
Reminds me of another item, also from Scientific American, if I remember correctly, that a wave of brake lights travels backwards at some ungodly speed in traffic that exceeds a critical density.
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like cells in the veins of society...
formerly known as etaoin...
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WaddidIsay?
I dunno, what *did you say?
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Back to the opening post; when I saw this word in another thread before seeing this thread, my reaction was, "I wish they'd use English!" I still don't trust that Mrs. Byrne.
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I wonder if it is a misprint for epic uricacy? Somebody's attempt to coin a word from epicurean and cacos meaning bad? So somebody treats bad events as a source of epicurean pleasure? Edit. I take that back. From a clue in one of the pieces on Julian Burnside's site linked to by Dr. Bill, I have found in LSJ (http://makeashorterlink.com/?P229134A4 the Greek word epikairos meaning seasonable, opportune, advantageous. Kakos is the Greek for bad (cacophany). So epicaricacy could be a coinage for finding bad things opportune.Bingley
Bingley
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I considered a possible epicurean connection as well, but a search turned up no word for that either. I think you've come up with something with epikairos though--good work, Bingley. prolly one of them inkhorn terms...
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just for grins, I wrote the help desk at the MPL and asked about the word. here is the (suspicions confirmed) response: In reply to:
I looked in a number of dictionaries including the Oxford English Dictionary
and I didn't find this word either. We do have a reference copy of "Mrs.
Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words" from 1974.
Epicaricacy is defined on page 67 as a noun which means "taking pleasure in
others' misfortune." The Random House Unabridged Dictionary defines
schadenfreude as "satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else's
misfortune."
In the editor's introduction to Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary, this claim is made:
"Incredible as it may seem, every entry in this book, even the most
ludicrous has been accepted as a formal or legitimate English word by at
least one major dictionary."
At the end of the book there is a bibliography of about 85 sources. The
problem is that a source isn't given for each entry.
I checked our catalog and we do have a few of the sources, but since this is
a dictionary of "unusual, obscure, and preposterous words" "epicaricacy"
might turn out to be very difficult to find. You might have to trust Mrs.
Byrne here.
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You might have to trust Mrs. Byrne here. Oh, no, I don't! Hrmph. Atomica found a few listings for me, some of which were no longer available (the most promising, of course), and none of which gave any citation; indeed, some had the exact wording of Mrs. B. However, I'm going to give a Univ. of Georgia link, because it has a list of "books for logophiles" at the top. Epicaricacy is given about 11/12ths. of the way down the page, in ext. 62. http://www.coe.uga.edu/~smago/Vocabulary_Games/Appendixes.pdf
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Jackie, could you copy the relevant part here? My acrobat reader isn't wanting to read. 
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>a list of "books for logophiles"
one of the sources for this document is Mrs. B--we come full circle.
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Maybe she's just having a bit of a laff ...
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Before I'd harrumph Mrs. Byrne, I'd make sure I was her equal in what she had researched. Or even approximately her equal. Now tsuwm--tsuwm's probably got the right to harrumph Mrs. Byrne in that he at least has files on words and has researched so many. But how many of us here have endeavored to put together files and have studied our files for dictionary references? And how many of us here have published lexicons? Mrs. Byrne may be eccentric--but I don't think she tried to put forth her lexicon as anything but eccentric. Before you go around harrumphing Mrs. Byrne in a superior-than-thou way, go and publish your own lexicon for the public to criticize. Harrumph, indeed.
Just my little bitty, n'er-fare-you-well, inconsequential opinion. I'm just sick to death of all this superiority by people who haven't jumped a single hoop.
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>Maybe she's just having a bit of a laff ...
...and enjoying our frustration?! :0)
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I don't want to make too big a deal out of this (read: at least he didn't start a new thread), but I think it is worth making a couple of points. 1. it's hard to find any source without some errors--at least some typos--always remembering they may not be the fault of the lexicographer. (consider Mrs. B's own "hit with a fish" [ycliu]) 2. it's not always easy to avoid perpetrating errors from your source material. I know this well myself, and it's why I try to always have two(2) reliable sources--but these people steal indiscriminately from each other! 3. [see #2] there are snares and traps out there just waiting for the most sedulous and incredulous lexicographer. take, for example the word zzxjoanw which Mrs. B. defines as "a maori drum". I've come to learn (correct me if *this is wrong, max) that zzxjoanw is a "ghost word"; i.e., there ain't no such word. ghost words get in to the most prestigious dictionaries. [see the story of "dord" in W2*] http://wordways.com/ghost.htm4. there seems to be a streak of recreancy in word boffins. Charles Elster tells me there are two mistakes in his There's a Word for It!, but he won't tell me what they are!? anyway, for all of these reasons, plus my natural skepticism, I tend to think "maybe it's epicuricacy.." when I can't find epicaricacy in another source. *here is the W3 entry for "ghost word": an accidental word form never in established usage; especially : one arising from an editorial or typographical error or a mistaken pronunciation (as phantomnation or dord) at least they caught the errors in W2 and removed them!
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>zzxjoanw which Mrs. B. defines as "a maori drum". I've come to learn (correct me if *this is wrong, max) that zzxjoanw is a "ghost word"; i.e., there ain't no such word.
No, you are not wrong - Maaori has no "z", no "j", and no "x", and every Maaori word, without exception, ends in a vowel.
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Maaori has no "z", no "j", and no "x", and every Maaori word, without exception, ends in a vowel.
But, you can bet the Government's last dollar, and they do, there will be a claim in before the Waitangi Tribunal by next week, claiming that the Europeans who transcribed Maori sounds into the Roman alphabet thereby short-changed the tangata whenua. Although, of course, it's not a problem that a few more million taxpayer dollars pissed up against the Tiriti o Waitangi wall won't cure ...
[/rant]
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But, if I remember correctly, and it's a couple of years since I read Earth, it doesn't state that it's a Maori drum.
Brin has Allan Dean Foster's problem. You flip in, have a quick look around and then flap out again, confident that you have picked up an entire culture to the point where you can write about it convincingly. And, bar 4 million-odd people to the contrary, you probably can.
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>it doesn't state that it's a Maori drum.
maybe so; I'm just thinking that he prolly got the idea from a source such as that which we discuss.
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In reply to:
(consider Mrs. B's own "hit with a fish" [ycliu])
Well, it wasn't Mrs. B's own; it was the website editor's error. She was clear as a sock between the eyes that it was a fist. And you, tsuwmie-batumbi, know for a fact that it wasn't Mrs. B's.
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and you, Windbabe, have used the cloaking device on point #1, and I quote with emPHAsis: 1. it's hard to find any source without some errors--at least some typos--always remembering they may not be the fault of the lexicographer. (consider Mrs. B's own "hit with a fish" [ycliu])
now... you wanna 'splain away the Maori drum?
edit
zzxjoanw pronounced /ziks-jo'-&n/, with &=schwa
zzx = ziks
jo = jo
anw = &n
which leads us, I guess, to a silent w (or maybe an extraneous w)--in any event, not even a vowel sound at the end.
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Well, Mr. tsuwmie, I was only making sure that people here not familiar with all that fish v. fist-in-the-face nonsense wouldn't blame the innocent Mrs. B. with the mistake.
As far as that drum goes, let me say that with Mrs. B's rarefied musical background, it wouldn't surprise me to learn at Saint Peter's gate that she had been correct. She traveled in privileged circles and may have come across some firsthand knowledge less privileged beings such as I have no access to. I'm just saying she may have. Is that schwa on the final syllable? That would certainly allow for the 'w' functioning as a vowel. But I am out of my depth here. Wish Mrs. B. were still around to explain herself, and I certainly wish she had left a plethora of footnotes.
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let me say that with Mrs. B's rarefied musical background, it wouldn't surprise me to learn at Saint Peter's gate that she had been correct. She traveled in privileged circles and may have come across some firsthand knowledge less privileged beings such as I have no access to. I'm just saying she may have.
And I have to say, with the deepest possible respect, that you must have been smokin' something if you think there is a whelk's chance in a supernova that your beloved Mrs B. is anywhere near right in calling that "zz" monstrosity Maaori. There's right, nearly right, totally wrong, waaay wrong, and then there's this.
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This site: http://plex.us/archives/word.htmlhas an interesting comment on zzxjoanw as well as making the claim that the Maori not only don't have "z", "j" nor "x" but didn't have drums, either. Scroll down to Not So Famous Last Words near the bottom.
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zzxjoanw - see point #4, above
epicaricacy - Novobatzky, in Depraved English, breaks it down this way: epi (upon) + chara (joy) + kakon (evil) {"..[this] book lacks authentic quotations or etymology, incredulous readers must rely on the bibliography of dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other resources from which the words were selected." - Library Journal}
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Here's from Google searching: "*NOTE: The Music-Lovers Encyclopedia by Rupert Hughes (all editions from 1914 to 1956) has this entry: zzxjoanw (shaw) Maori. 1. Drum. 2. Fife. 3. Conclusion. According to Philip Cohen in Word Ways (Nov. 1976), there are several problems with this entry, notably the fact that it's an impossible Maori word, both in spelling and pronunciation. Cohen suspects that Hughes made up the word as a joke. In his book, Earth, David Brin has a Maori character playing a zzxjoanw. Asked about this, Brin said that he'd gotten the word from Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary [Dan Tilque]. Anne Woodley, who is from New Zealand, agrees that ZZXJOANW is not a Maori word. She writes, "There are no Z, X or J in the Maori language - also the the phonetics aren't right for the Maori, or indeed any Pacific Island language, all of which come from the same family." ...That's pretty much what you all have been saying all along. And I don't think you understand what I've been saying...and this is it: Could there be the possibility that Mrs. B, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, could have been correct? Could she have been privy to information we don't have? I'm just looking at possibilities in the face of apparent impossibility. I'm definitely not saying she was categorically correct, come hell or high water. I'm a lot more interested in why someone who was looking for and cataloguing 'preposterous' words would have included this one, no matter how preposterous it appears to be on the surface. Rather than throw the baby out with the bath water, I'd like to know how this baby got into her lexicon. What was her source? And I'm not smoking anything, for the record. 
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>I'm a lot more interested in why someone who was looking for and cataloguing 'preposterous' words would have included this one...
you should also consider the possibility, ridiculous as it might seem to you knowing Josefa as you do, that it was just a joke, it being the last word and being, according to some testimony here, just about as preposterous as you can get. also, in *conclusion, the third definition seems odd somehow--why do you suppose that she chose to disinclude that?
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You know, tsuwm, I could just kiss you for no other reason than you use words like disinclude.
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>Could there be the possibility that Mrs. B, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, could have been correct? Could she have been privy to information we don't have?
If you want it monosyllabic - No.
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>I could just kiss you...  now don't you go using your gypsy wiles on me! <scrambling and cross-threading like mad>
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Ha!!!!!! tsuwm, your 'blush' has made me laugh outright tonight!
Back to Mrs. B. We need to examine her probable purpose in proposing her lexicon. She read a lot of dictionaries--and she compiled a preposterous bunch from her bigger bunch. I don't believe she was offering a lexicon of bona fide words, but one of often preposterous words.
And, tsuwm and dxb, the faux-Maori word was such a terrific choice, as tsuwm has very perceptibly noted, as the final word. And it is, as tsuwm has also suggested, an ironic final entry in that she chose not to include the third definition 'conclusion.' Mrs. B. was a wit in her own way.
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You will note, presumably, that sjm and I, fellow New Zealanders, both agree without any conditions whatever that Mrs Byrne was full of it.
Period.
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>You will note, presumably, that sjm and I, fellow New Zealanders, both agree without any conditions whatever that Mrs Byrne was full of it.
Welcome to Ragnarok.
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I think you and fellow New Zealanders are without a sense of humor in Mrs. B's case--unless, that is, being 'full of it' is not pejorative.
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Well, WiseacreWord, you're not wrong ...
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If one were predisposed to find words listed in only one word reference--without using Mrs. B at all as one of the references--it would be a hard task, to say the least. This, of course, wasn't Mrs. B's purpose. I'm just saying.
Anyhow, the only word I know off the top of my head that I've seen in only one reference was ferrophiliac, although I know I've looked up some words here on AWAD that weren't in any reference I could put my hands on. Ferrophiliac will not be found in any dictionary that I know of to date; however, it will be found in The Random House Word Finder--or a title similar to that. I don't have the book here at the moment. You can google ferrophiliac, but you won't come up with any definition that approximates the one given in Random House [not dictionary, but word finder or whatever its actual name]. The connection to Mrs. B? Well, hardly any other than in this Random House book there are no footnotes to where the editor, now deceased, found his entries either. Many entries are common words--he wasn't going after the unusual and preposterous--but he doesn't note any individual references for where he found words. Too bad. I'd really like to know where he found ferrophiliac, but he's gone, same as Mrs. B. I will add his name here later today.
Edit: The correct title is Random House Word Menu, Stephen Glaier, editor
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"Ferrophiliac"? Isn't that the guy who went around the world in eighty days, last name first?
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Is it possible that Mrs. B. (or her husband) slipped in a totally fallacious entry to catch out plagiarists, as I'm told some other reference works do?
Bingley
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Fascinating theory, Bingley. Do you have any firsthand citations we could take a look at? The longer I live the curioser and curioser the world becomes...
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Re: Fascinating theory, Bingley. Do you have any firsthand citations we could take a look at? The longer I live the curioser and curioser the world becomes
i know map makers (cartographer's!) do that... my old address, one Beechknoll Avenue in Queens, was one that was shorter, longer, bent, through, and other wise usually wrong on most maps! (it was only 1 block long, and in reality, was a dead end, not a through street. because of hills, the streets on either side had bends (so some properites had very deep lots, they were actually steep hillsides) so sometimes it bend to match the street on the right, and sometime it was shown straight, and sometimes shown to match the street to the left (where North was top of page, and left and right relative) it was sort of fun, checking out maps to see how it was drawn!
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I first heard it said about "Wbo's Who" quite some time ago, and the article said that other reference books do the same but I forget which ones.
Bingley
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Dag-gone it, dag-GONE it! I skip a thread for a couple days, and an ol' Windbag, I mean, Windwords 'r somebody, moves right into my territory! Well, it would serve you right if you caught his cold; I'll wait 'till he's back to health, to claim my turn! 
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enthusiast
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The crawl can be explained without invoking pleasure at all. Once it gets started it is self perpetuating.
True, but "pleasure" doesn't necessarily explain why the lead car in the crawl slows down to look. Morbid curiosity or gawkination could explain the attraction.
As a matter of fact, cars slow down passing anything parked on the shoulder, even if there is no sign of an accident or injury.
You could make a better case for epicaricacy in the popularity of blood sports such as bear-baiting. But in that case it would not be epicaricacy, but epibearicacy.
Did the common man lose his taste for public hangings (a popular public spectacle before the turn of the last century) or did we outlaw such amusements because an increasingly educated population became embarrassed at the depravity of ordinary citizens?
We may have scotched the snake of epicaricacy, but we have not killed it. Does it still lurk in the fascination of professional boxing and extreme fighting, high-speed car racing with inevitable accidents and inevitable fatalities, predictable violence in sports like hockey?
Are we really less epicaricatic today than we were a hundred years ago when mom and dad took the family out to picnic at a public hanging? [A scary thought.]
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"we really less epicaricatic today than we were a hundred years ago when mom and dad took the family out to picnic at a public hanging? [A scary thought.]"
Dear Wordminstrel: "epicaricraticic" won't fly. One of the early dictionaries gives spelling "epicarikaky" so your
adjective is cacky. You know where I got this.
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cars slow down passing anything parked on the shoulder
Which only makes sense from a safe driving perspective. Ya never know when some dang fool idjit's gonna pop that driver side door open on ya.
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It's a safety issue, isn't it? I mean slowing down on a motorway/freeway when there are people on the side of the road simply ensures their continued health. I was slowed down by a breakdown the other day - a boat trailer with a flat tyre. The cop and the car driver were sitting on the armco barrier chatting while waiting, presumably, for the RAC or the AA. The cop's vehicle was parked on the hard shoulder with cones out and his blue lights flashing. I have no problem with that. Killing people, even at a two-lane remove, is no part of my agenda!
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Morbid curiosity or gawkination could explain the attraction.I believe it does... and in these parts we call 'em "gapers blocks". The traffic could be moving 55mph or 25mph and people will still slow down to 10mph... It's clearly a combination of all four... safety, gawkers, the initial "wanna slow down to help" urge, and being stuck behind all of the above. ...predictable violence in sports like hockey?In this case, "predictable" only because it is allowed, unlike US "football" where it is "counted on" and other than US *football where us US's count on the fans to take up the slack . ... maybe competitive sports start as a catharcism(sp?)... and if there ain't no violence to "relieve the need" coming from the sport itself, it serves to boil to the surface and erupt the tension into action from the gawkers. 'Morbid curiosity' are just other words for 'genetic predisposition'???
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enthusiast
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"epicaricraticic" won't fly. One of the early dictionaries gives spelling "epicarikaky" so your
adjective is cacky.
I didn't get "epicaricatic" out of any dictionary, wwh. I got it from our own Capfka - 2nd post in this thread:
"The traffic on the M6 moved past the accident scene at an epicaricatic crawl ..."
An "epicaricatic crawl" sounds pretty good to me even if it is not recognized in any dictionary.
If we can have a 'peripatetic crawl' (aka as a "pub crawl"), why not an "epicaricatic crawl"?
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the worthless word for the day is: epicaricacy
/ep"-i-kar-ik'-i-see/?
taking pleasure in others' misfortune: schadenfreude
this word, as defined in Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of
Unusual... Words, has caused a lot of discussion
recently on a couple of forums that discuss these
sorts of things. where in the world did she find
this English word for a concept that isn't supposed
to have a word in English? this question has yet to be
answered in full, but I can quote you this from Nathan
Bailey's An Universal Etymological English Dictionary,
which is a very olde dictionary indeed (1721):
Epicharikaky - from the Greek words or roots for
"upon", "joy", and "evil": "A Joy at the Misfortunes
of others".
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the worthless word for the day is:you mean we're not all wwftd subscribers?
formerly known as etaoin...
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Well, I subscribe to wwftd. And it shows up in my inbox more times a week than AWAD does. So, kudos to tsuwm and his email server (or whatever esoteric computer stuff sends the email out every day without fail). And I'm really not complaining about AWAD being unreliable - after all, I come to read here almost every weekday and can easily look for the day's word if I've missed it. Usually necessary in order to get the gist of some threads!
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy? -Ursula K. Le Guin, author (1929- )
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Now that's odd, vanguard. I get them both, heel-to-toe as it were, every morning, by the time I log on. Anyone else having trouble with AWAD delivery?
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Pooh-Bah
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Nope, but I was subscribing to Oxford word for the day for a while and I'd swear there were more than seven in a week. They used to come in threes sometimes!
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info.com produced this remarkable little article: http://www.foodandwine.net/reviews/243.htmWarning: It's a review of a bar but if you scroll all the way down to the bottom you'll note that Mr Tullio drops the word epicaricacy in as though it were a commonly understood word that everybody knows. Could it be that the word is suddenly, before our very eyes, being resurrected from the dustbin of linguistic lassitude?
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Ha! Mr Tullio may be translating. Anybody looked up epicaricacía or similar? I would, but I got a baseball game to go to.
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thanks Faldage; another prize for the "spotting obscure words" section!
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Hey. I didn't feel like scouting out epicaricacy in the article, so I decided to google the article so I could highlight epicaricacy. Problem is, google didn't find it.
Here's how I googled it:
"Food and Wine Net" [plus] epicaricacy
Google told me, "No go."
Why? What did I do wrong? Why didn't the article come up?
I'm going to try googling it other ways, but why didn't the above take me to the article? Are the google search engines tiring out?
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try: foodandwine +epicaricacy
the only place "food and wine net" appears on the page is in a graphic, which won't show up in a search.
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just as a curiosity and fwiw, googling 'epicaricacy' turns up this thread but not that *other site.
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Thanks, tsuwm, for explaining that. I should have figured it out about the graphics, but it's good to have that little bit of info filed away.
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here's someone else who evidently fell for the zzxjoanw "hoax" (see last link, below): http://www.mindbodyspirit.com.au/auth/b/bowlerpeter.htm"There are many words to learn and be amused. The first word is "abecedarian." The last word is "zzxjoanw." He recomends this word for Scrabble." (from an amazon review) [should you get this combination of letters (with a blank), a one in a googol chance, it could be successfully challenged anywhere in Known Space.] the author, Peter Bowler, should have known better, as he is evidently an aussie. this is still the best, last word on zzxjoanw: http://wordways.com/ghost.htm
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>he author, Peter Bowler, should have known better, as he is evidently an aussie.
Perché? It simply means he knows as much about Zild as most Aussies.
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Merriam-Webster cites the ghost word DORD (along with PHANTOMNATION) in their Web 3 definition of the term "ghost word.
Wow--what a great concept: a phantom nation! <grin>
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