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"presenteeism"
I heard this used on the news tonight in a report about research into the cost to society of people turning up at work when they are ill and should be at home in bed. It's the opposite (obviously) of absenteeism.
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formerly known as etaoin...
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not all that neo; Quinion, for example, presenteed this in 1996. - joe (but into the queue it goes) friday
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"presenteeism"
It's the opposite (obviously) of absenteeism. Absentmindeeism? Heh
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not all that neo; Quinion, for example, presenteed this in 1996.  chuckle. droll, very droll.
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I saw, "inspirator" for "inspiring person" today.
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This, IMO, is the problem with hardcore descriptivism. If anything goes, anything goes.
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This, IMO, is the problem with hardcore descriptivism. If anything goes, anything goes.
but, as any good sport will tell you, it is what it is.
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the problem with hardcore descriptivism. If anything goes, anything goes.Oh, sigh. John McIntyre (director of the copy desk at The Sun, a past president of the American Copy Editors Society, and an adjunct instructor in journalism at Loyola College in Maryland) has this to say about that: "It is wholesome for him to point out that the caricature of the descriptivist viewpoint — that anything a native speaker of English says or writes is by definition legitimate — is a straw man. No serious linguist thinks that." ( link). And lest you think that McIntyre is some closet descriptivist, he does point out the flip-side: "Unfortunately, in describing the “militant grammarians” such as David Foster Wallace, the author of a well-reasoned critique of the philosophical underpinnings of descriptivism, Mr. Greene presents the other straw man, the prescriptivist as the blind follower of nonsensical rules about not splitting infinitives and not ending sentences with prepositions. " Descriptivist posit that the only way to determine what is grammatical and what is not is by describing how people actually use the language. This is as far from anything goes as all get out.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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This, IMO, is the problem with hardcore descriptivism. If anything goes, anything goes. So, what is to hate? About presenteeism, that is. We have us a phenomenon. What's wrong with the word presenteeism being used to describe it?
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This, IMO, is the problem with hardcore descriptivism. If anything goes, anything goes. So, what is to hate? About presenteeism, that is. We have us a phenomenon. What's wrong with the word presenteeism being used to describe it? I've got nothing against a new word being made up for the phenomenon but I think presenteeism is clunky and awakward to say. Maybe because there are different ways to place stress on the syllables in present. I tried it out on someone who had not nheard it before and once I got the stress right he understood what it meant without any explanation so that was good but I still think the description someone used earlier of "clunky" is on the mark.
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Is it clunkier than absenteeism?
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Is it clunkier than absenteeism? for me yes because I only know one stress pattern for absent and that makes absenteeism easier to say.
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right. I would read the word as PREE-zent-EE-ism, and that's just weird. and anyway that it's pronounced doesn't seem to give much meaning to the concept. the idea is that people are sick and shouldn't be at work. just seems like there might be a better coinage.
though I don't got one at the moment.
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No serious linguist thinks that. But many an armchair linguist would seem to, which was my point. Therefore, I would like you to sit in the ignoratio elenchi chair for five minutes, and think about what you have done. As a lowly plebeian whose only encounter with P's and D's has been at Wordsmith Talk, "anything goes" seems to me to be the latter's watchword. The retort from my own armchair is that this amounts to a cheerful disregard for taste. Seriously Jim, there is no need to be snooty. This is a web forum, not the Oxford Symposium of Linguistics. Or, if you must be snooty, at least repress your sighs of professorial exasperation until they are actually warranted.
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On that list of links that is mentioned up in the information and announcements there are a couple of good links on this subject one called descriptive or prescriptive and the other called language is the people's.
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Seriously Jim, there is no need to be snooty.
Seriously, Hydra, I am not being snooty. My sigh was plebian and to the point. I simply find your characterization of the descriptivist camp exasperatingly false. You choose to label me and other linguists as everything goes anarchists, and, in your mudslinging attitude from on high in your armchair, that's perfectly okay with you. So, be it. Leave me be, and I'll try to leave you alone, too.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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I'm chuckling from my armchair because this thread squabbling is very amusing. Some of you need to read "The Sneetches" by the venerable Dr. Seuss. Just substitute a big P for the the star and a big D for the lack of a star...
The funniest bit is where Hydra flings out "ignoratio elenchi" whilst remonstrating zmjezhd a bare 3 sentences later for being snooty! Thanks for a good laugh right before bed! I am not taking sides, either, just being amused...
My perception of the group on this forum is that there are no pole-sitters, really. Almost everyone seems to fall along the P------D continuum somewhere, and some even move around depending on the particular issue. I think that's the way it should be, and we all need to embrace the scope and fluidity which are, by the way, the lifeblood of the forum. (now stepping off the soap box and going to bed) :0)
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The funniest bit is where Hydra flings out "ignoratio elenchi" whilst remonstrating zmjezhd a bare 3 sentences later for being snooty! Thanks for a good laugh right before bed! I am not taking sides, either, just being amused...
Ignoratio elenchi is a gloriously snooty phrase, I agree, and should be reserved for when one snootily refutes a point you did not assert.
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Seriously, Hydra, I am not being snooty. My sigh was plebian and to the point.
If that's your plebian, I fear your patrician!
I simply find your characterization of the descriptivist camp exasperatingly false. You choose to label me and other linguists as everything goes anarchists, and, in your mudslinging attitude from on high in your armchair, that's perfectly okay with you.
There's a difference between mudslinging and frankness. I didn't, for example, call descriptivists vulgar swine or repulsive scum. I merely said it seems to me they lack all taste. But my view on these matters is far from settled, though so far, I'm leaning towards rejecting both pigeonholes as unhelpful. If it's not too vulgarly common sensical, I think the best benchmark is the completely unqualifiable one of personal taste.
So, be it. Leave me be, and I'll try to leave you alone, too.
Has it really come to that, Jim? It seems to me you have come to identify with descriptivism to such an extent that you take criticism of it as personal criticism. Well, none was intended, sir.
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right. I would read the word as PREE-zent-EE-ism,
Where'd that PREE come from? Onliest time I've heard it pronounced like that would be in the command "PREE-zent ARMS!" I'd think maybe pre-ZENT-ee ism, but I would also expect that most people, on first encountering the term, would have more context than that of some P complaining about it. Something like "While absenteeism is a problem in the workplace, we're finding that presenteeism * is just as much a problem." The * is meant to indicate that if the writer thought the reader had never heard the term before there would be an appositive ", coming in to work when one shouldn't," that explains the new term.
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yah, the caps on PREE indicate an emphasis that I prolly don't mean. just pree more than preh is what I mean.
I guess I think the term needs the absenteeism nearby to help explain it, and there is perhaps a coinage that could do it without it.
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snootyThe delightful thing about this word, twosleepy, is how it relates to one prescriptivist's proud self-designation. David Foster Wallace in his musingly rambling review of A Dictionary of Modern American Usage by Bryan A. Garner (1998), reveals in a footnote that his family used the term snoot which he defines in a footnote: SNOOT (n) (highly colloq) is this reviewer's nuclear family's nickname a clef for a really extreme usage fanatic, the sort of person whose idea of Sunday fun is to look for mistakes in Satire's column's prose itself. This reviewer's family is roughly 70 percent SNOOT, which term itself derives from an acronym, with the big historical family joke being that whether S.N.O.O.T. stood for "Sprachgefuhl Necessitates Our Ongoing Tendance" or "Syntax Nudniks of Our Time" depended on whether or not you were one. [David Foster Wallace, "Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage" in Harper's Magazine, April 2001 ( link).] There is much that Wallace gets wrong in this piece. I refer you to Language Hat's point-by-point demolition of it ( link, scroll down a couple of screenfuls to David Foster Wallace Demolish). But it is obvious that he does have fun playing with language. Snootitude is a fine coinage, but I have always wondered what the criteria are by which certain neologisms are silently accepted while others are not.
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Thanks for expanding. I read some of that, and it was interesting. But then I started digging around for the origin of "snooty", which has always been a marvelous word to me, seeming to perfectly describe such a one. Turns out it's quite young (1815), and derives from a Scottish variation on snout (say "snout" out loud with your best Scottish accent - perfect!) The elegance of this "common" word is that it describes both someone who looks down his or her nose at "inferiors", and also someone who raises his or her nose in the air in disdain. Lovely word! :0)
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I knew there was good reason for retiring this persona, jim.
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snootySNOOT (n) (highly colloq) is this reviewer's nuclear family's nickname a clef for a really extreme usage fanatic, the sort of person whose idea of Sunday fun is to look for mistakes in Satire's column's prose itself. This reviewer's family is roughly 70 percent SNOOT, which term itself derives from an acronym, with the big historical family joke being that whether S.N.O.O.T. stood for "Sprachgefuhl Necessitates Our Ongoing Tendance" or "Syntax Nudniks of Our Time" depended on whether or not you were one. [David Foster Wallace, "Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage" in Harper's Magazine, April 2001 ( link).] There is much that Wallace gets wrong in this piece.... Including his two references to William Safire.
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Has it really come to this, Jim?
You icily evade the question. I guess when it comes to opinions contrary to the principles of descriptivism, you're a prescriptivist after all. :P
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Including his two references to William Safire. It may have been an OCR problem. This book either silently corrects Wallace or correctly cites him: link). And for three other views of DFW and on snootism: ( link, link, and link).
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Snootitude is a fine coinagebut I have always wondered what the criteria are by which certain neologisms are silently accepted while others are not.
that's really the question, ain't it? seems to boil down to some sort of aesthetic, and we know we don't know nothin about thems.
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I'd toss social conformity into the pot.
Last edited by morphememedley; 07/28/08 05:51 PM.
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The boiling pot?  That was pretty good! [bow]
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Neologisms come and neologisms go. Some of them catch on and some of them fade away and all the weeping and wailing have no effect one way or the other. My advice to the peevologists is to wait them out or get used to them.
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I think my pre-edit post went something like, “I'd toss conformity into the roiling viralization pot.” Then I got to thinking about the fact that viralization, as the spell checker hinted, is not found in some dictionaries. Moreover, not all neologisms go viral. Thinking about all that might tangentialize a reader, and I should never divert a train of thought from its thread track, which of course a lengthy explanation of the editing of a short post would never do. Fortunately I can blame as needed my weaknesses for imagery and for ad hoc and even fun neologisms, confessing my humility as a bonus.
Last edited by morphememedley; 07/29/08 04:05 AM. Reason: [Edit I (?)] Even the worst efforts can be improved.
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...and I should never divert a train of thought from its thread track... Never a tongue-in-cheeker word was spoken! (or should that be tonguer-in-cheek?
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further research furthering the worthless word: recent inclusion in OED online [DRAFT REVISION Mar. 2007] gives the earliest citation as 1931 H. WITHERS Everybody's Business ix. 161 Certainly he is an absentee..—if he adopted the habit of dropping in at the works and making well-meant suggestions.., is it likely that his presenteeism would be helpful?a news google generates 38 hits between 1940 and 1950, and 24 in the last month. edit: fwiw, here's a link to Everybody's Business - joe (I'm here) friday
Last edited by tsuwm; 09/17/08 11:30 PM. Reason: fwiw
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further research furthering the worthless word: recent inclusion in OED online [DRAFT REVISION Mar. 2007] gives the earliest citation as 1931 H. WITHERS Everybody's Business ix. 161 Certainly he is an absentee..—if he adopted the habit of dropping in at the works and making well-meant suggestions.., is it likely that his presenteeism would be helpful?a news google generates 38 hits between 1940 and 1950, and 24 in the last month. edit: fwiw, here's a link to Everybody's Business - joe (I'm here) friday There could be a little more context but that doesn't look like it's the same definition.
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>There could be a little more context..
well, that's why I provided the link!!
-joe (sheesh) friday
edit: and here is the OED def'n entire:
The fact or condition of being present, esp. at work; (Brit.) (a) the practice of working more hours than is required by one's terms of employment, or of continuing to work without regard to one's health, esp. because of perceived job insecurity; (b) the practice of attending a job but not working at full capacity, esp. because of illness or stress.
Usually opposed to absenteeism.
Last edited by tsuwm; 09/18/08 02:27 AM.
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Including his two references to William Safire. It may have been an OCR problem. This book either silently corrects Wallace or correctly cites him: link). And for three other views of DFW and on snootism: ( link, link, and link). yes, FWIW I've just read the offending(?) piece as reprinted in Foster's collection of essays, Consider the Lobster. It's easy to see there how the OCR got confused into reading the 'f' as a 't'. There are no 'Satire's, other than (possibly) Wallace's own posturing as an expert. - joe (the imposture) friday
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