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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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Pooh-Bah
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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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