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#205843 05/22/12 10:09 AM
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Surely - surely - there is a word that means "in reverse alphabetical order"?

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¿Por qué?

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Urban Dictionary suggests 'omegabetical' (heh) and 'zalphabetical' (ecch) - but then who gives any credence to the UD?!

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Omegapsical might be better than omegabetical, but that ain't sayin' much. Zalphabetical is just plain ecch.

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Hoom... yes. The reason I need this word is when specifying how a list of items can presented by a system - for example a list of members of an organisation on a website. I'm trying to avoid saying "You can also view the list in reverse alphabetical order". The same problem comes up when trying to list date-based items like a list of events - that can be list in chronological or reverse chronological order.

Omegapsical is pretty decent.

The only advantage to zalphabetical is that is suggests what it is quite well - dumb people might more easily understand what it means than omegabetical...

Anyhow - thanks for the suggestions.

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But., would not everybody understand you just as well if you put it simlpy: "reversed order"?

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I'm with BranShea, here. You do want your reader to understand what you mean and 'reverse alphabetical order' is perfect for the job. If you tried to drag 'omegapsical order' into it you'll have people looking it up, scratching their heads, and tossing your article into the bit bucket.

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for sure; at least omegabetical can be found via OneLook, thanks to UD!

(Faldo, maybe you should submit your word to UD - they'll accept anything.)

NB: zalphabetical can't be found directly at UD; you have to look up 'zalphabetical order'.

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Wordnik discusses omegapsical.

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wordnik is indexed at OneLook, but doesn't seem to have been re-scanned for almost two(2) years - maybe that's why omegapsic(al) (order) doesn't appear there.

this is actually a problem at OneLook, since the founder is supposedly no longer actively involved; they no longer do automatic/periodic updates of all their content, and (at least us lesser) lexic drudges have to *poke* the OneLook drudge(s) to do an update.

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