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Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 7
stranger
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OP
stranger
Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 7 |
It seems a lot of words originate from the names of those who first demonstrate the practice of them. Here is my small, slightly arrogant effort:
Seddonist, n: one who gives bad advice as a rhetorical device that demonstrates the foolishness of the suggested course of action, (e.g "The best thing to do is to worry constantly about this problem until it solves itself")
That's not a very good example, but seddonism a useful method of explaining things. Believe me.
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Posts: 1,981
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981 |
Along the same lines is that great piece of parental advice, "If you kill yourself, jumping off that wall/swimming in that lake.....I'll never speak to you again!"
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Joined: May 2000
Posts: 112
member
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member
Joined: May 2000
Posts: 112 |
...and my late Mother's favourite - "Put on a jumper, I'm cold." Or was that simply her own neurosis coming to the fore? 
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Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Would an example of seddonism be: cut off your nose to spite your face?
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Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 7
stranger
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OP
stranger
Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 7 |
Another word that I've found extremely useful is the word 'padding'. I'm sure we're all familiar with those days at school when our essay was not quite long enough...so we employed padding - substanceless language - as a means of upping the word count.
Padding also occurs every day in ordinary conversation, for instance at the end of a telephone conversation when both parties deliberate for about five minutes on how nice it was talking to each other, when they'll speak again, whether they'll speak again, aren't clouds nice etc. Let's try and cut this out - think how much time is wasted when we could be talking about more interesting stuff!
Also, we tend to pad our lives quite a lot in other areas - doing things to pass the time. We should all make an effort to cut down on the padding in our lives. Maybe. Well, we could at least use the word more!
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Joined: Apr 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
the French have a word for this, which under the circumstances seems far superior: remplissage
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
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stranger
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OP
stranger
Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 7 |
Fair enough - and thanks for the padding-free post, jmh...
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Joined: Mar 2000
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981 |
I thought it was waffle-free
... or was it free waffle?
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 1,094 |
Concerning essays, at my school we call superfluous verbiage simply 'BS'.
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