the worthless word for the day is: deblaterate
[f. L. deblaterare, to prate of, blab out]
rare to babble, prate; hence, deblateration
"Those who deblaterate against missions have only
one thing to do, to come and see them on the spot."
- R. L. Stevenson, Brit. Weekly Apr. 6, 1893
"Those shallow and fidimplicitary coxcombs, who fill our
too credulous ears with their quisquiliary deblaterations."
- Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine, 1817http://home.mn.rr.com/wwftd/(I thought I'd mirror wwftd here for a while; as a public service, and in hopes of generating some word discussions.)
I dug into the Latin a little bit and discovered that the blaterare part means pretty much the same thing as the whole, so I'm guessing the de- prefix isn't our normal 'reversing of the action' meaning. Any comments on this?
Right on, Faldage.
There is a word "blatter" [derived from the same "blaterare" Latin root] which means pretty much the same thing as "deblaterate" [spelled with one "t"].
Dictionary.com blatter
\Blat"ter\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Blattered.] [L. blaterare to babble: cf. F. blat['e]rer to bleat.] To prate; to babble; to rail; to make a senseless noise; to patter. [Archaic] ``The rain blattered.'' --Jeffrey.
They procured . . . preachers to blatter against me, . . . so that they had place and time to belie me shamefully. --Latimer.
it's this sense of the prefix de-
3. Down to the bottom, completely; hence thoroughly on and on, away; also methodically, formally: as declamare to shout away, DECLAIM; declarare to make quite clear, DECLARE; denudare to strip quite bare, DENUDE; deplorare to weep as lost, DEPLORE; derelinquare to abandon completely, DERELICT; dspoliare to spoil utterly, DESPOIL. b. To exhaustion, to the dregs: as decoquere to boil down or away, DECOCT; deliquescere to melt away, DELIQUESCE. (please excuse lack of markings.. just too dang many of them!)
so, de- can be another example of an intensifier(?).
> so, de- can be another example of an intensifier(?).
kind of like De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da by The Police?
> kind of like De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da by The Police?
So suggests my dependable friend. That's dependable, as in swimming pool :)
Lovely word, tsuwm - was it researching this that spurred you to think up your invaluable iggri coinage?
It's like the word heard in families of Irish descent - Blather - a lot of loquacious nonsense. Also defined in the OED.
>Also defined in the OED.
which claims that, over there, it's rendered as blether.
edit: oh, and FWIW, OED seems to find no connection between blather/blether and blatter/blaterate - ultimately from different roots!? I wonder if AHD4 would agree?
I wonder if AHD4 would agree?AHD takes
blather back to PIE
bhle-http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE64.htmlThe Latin descendants all start with
fl.