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I'm moved by dale's steadfast search for neologisms to start this thread, in hopes that it will be picked up and followed by others. (to define my term, let's arbitrarily say "a word coined in my lifetime".)
bafflegab
[f. BAFFLE v. + GAB n.]
Official or professional jargon which confuses more than it clarifies; gobbledegook.
1952 Daily Tel. 23 Jan. 4/6 A new word for lovers of officialese is bafflegab, invented by Mr. Milton A. Smith, assistant general counsel for the American Chamber of Commerce. He has won a prize for the word--and its definition: ‘Multiloquence characterised by a consummate interfusion of circumlocution..and other familiar manifestations of abstruse expatiation commonly utilised for promulgations implementing procrustean determinations by governmental bodies.’
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apostronym:
a word that becomes another word with apostrophe deletion - can't, he'll, I'll, she'll, we'd, we'll, we're
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zyxical:
opposite of alphabetical ordering of letters.
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boustrophedonym:
word divisible into two letter strings ~ one alphabetical, one zyxical.
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tetrabard - a unit of vocabulary : 60,000 words; hence, a tetrabardian vocabulary is one of that size
"Steven Pinker in The Language Instinct compared
the probable 60,000-word vocabulary of a typical
US high-school graduate with the 15,000 words
used in the complete works of Shakespeare, thus
defining the "tetrabard" as a unit of vocabulary. We
suspect that David Ridpath, who reminded us of this,
may be a jaded teacher: "I can think of a few
centibards I have known," he grumbles."
- New Scientist, Feedback, 13 November 2004
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newbie
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Quote:
"Steven Pinker in The Language Instinct compared
the probable 60,000-word vocabulary of a typical
US high-school graduate with the 15,000 words
used in the complete works of Shakespeare, thus
defining the "tetrabard" as a unit of vocabulary. We
suspect that David Ridpath, who reminded us of this,
may be a jaded teacher: "I can think of a few
centibards I have known," he grumbles."
- New Scientist, Feedback, 13 November 2004
These figures don't sound right. Is the vocabularly of the average high-school graduate in the US really 4 times greater than all the words used in Shakespeares complete works? I don't, like, buy that.
Last edited by Stag_Beetle; 03/04/06 11:56 AM.
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newbie
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Quote:
Richard Lederer, a lion among linguistics, tells us that the average English speaker possesses a vocabulary of 10,000 to 20,000 words, Lederer observes, but actually uses only a fraction of that, the rest being recognition or recall vocabulary.
Huh?
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Hey Stag_beetle, let's me and you coin a word. Maybe tsuwm will use it as the WWFTD. Here's how it works, I say ( "polybarb"?) meaning "many Shakespeares". Then you extend "polybard" to a "characteristic" and use it in a sentence, like; The Elvis impersonators sashayed acrosss the stage in a manner that the great wordwhiz, Milo, has dubbed a polybarbian strut. Then we become famous.  Or maybe you have to be famous first to get your stuff on WWFTD. I forget which. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Pinker said "(tetrabarb?)". Then in a translation... "....that the average American high school graduate has a vocabulary of 60,000 words. Steven Pinker has dubbed it a tetrabardian vocabulary." - Verónica Albin, Tanslation Journal, April 2005
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Quote:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Pinker said "(tetrabarb?)".
no, Pinker said tetrabard. Shakespeare is known as the Bard, see? I'm sure you'll agree that you neeed to work on that reading level before you start coining words, okay?!
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60,000 vs. 20,000
it's those darn kids (and other non-HS-grads), dragging things down again.
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