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Talking about "as soon as words get used they tend to split and shift"; Internet influences the actual stretching of language too. Lots of people play with words. On Flickr homepage I read: We call it interestingness and somewhat lower they use gordeousity.
Both words nouned. Online dictionaries do not give entries
(yet?). The word monstrosity is listed.
Why does monstrosity look like a better word to me than gordeousity? Monstrous has an etymology. Could find no origins for gordeous. ( a word without family tree)
Last edited by BranShea; 12/04/2009 12:24 PM.
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interestingness [...] gordeousityIsn't the second one supposed to be gorgeosity? English gorgeous from the French, is ultimately from the word gorge 'throat' (cf. gorget 'a piece of armor, originally to protect the throat'). The latter word might be (ultimately) from Latin gurges 'whirlpool, abyss'. Interestingness does sound a little strange, but it's probably a matter of its being so new; cf. unwillingness and a host of others ( link).
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Interestingness is an obvious coining from interesting plus -ness. Gordeousity is not so transparent. There is, Gordea, a taxonomic order of worms within the class Gordioida, for what it's worth.
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Gordeousity is not so transparent
It could be from the fictional character, Geordi La Forge, or perhaps the ethnonym, Geordie, for a person from Tneside. The river Jordan? The Gorgons of Medusa fame? Just kidding. I think it's just a misspelling of gorgiosity, which gets some ghits at least; gordeousity gets two: one from Urban Dictionary, th'other from the eponymous website.
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please! cease this idle speculation, for the FLICKR page says this: Flickr labs have been hard at work creating a way to show you some of the most awesome content on Flickr.
We like to call it interestingness.
Explore the gorgeousity by choosing a point in time...
[EA] link edit: gorgeousity itself gets 68,900 ghits
Last edited by tsuwm; 12/04/2009 2:40 PM.
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please! cease this idle speculationIdeal specification is the sweetmeat of most wordine boards. Mayhaps, interestingness is merely an anagram of engineers stints, intense stingers, sentient signers, &c., ( link). Nuncle ( "Knucklehead") Jasiu
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formerly known as etaoin...
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How variable are those hits? And those are page hits,not dictionary hits. A fashion word is not a 'coined' word is it?
I get 69,300- English pages, 73.300- Dutch pages for gorgiousity.
What's interesting is the gap between gorge and gorgeous if they really are connected. The abyss so to speak.
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How variable are those hits? And those are page hits,not dictionary hits. A fashion word is not a 'coined' word is it?
I get 69,300- English pages, 73.300- Dutch pages for gorgiousity.
I don't think you do -- I get 79. however, gorg eousity gets ~69,000. I make this incessant and somewhat sarcastic point because it was a misspelling that got this whole unfortunate thing started. now, as to the 'legitimacy' of the word gorgeousity, I'll grant you that no legit dictionary seems to grant that this word does in fact exist; but if you do a book search, you'll find that it's been used in fiction since (at least) 1905. but this is my favorite citation: Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. As I slooshied, I knew such lovely pictures! - Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orangenow I'm going to go see if I can find it in some other reference books on my shelf(s)..
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well, I just had this gnawing suspicion that wasn't an entirely new topic; to wit,
the worthless word for [Monday, July 23, 2007] is: gorgeosity
[a blend of gorgeous & generosity(?)]
an abundance (generosity) of gorgeousness
"Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh."
- Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (1962)
"I didn't want you to be hurt. So messy. But you got
going. I couldn't stop you. It was gorgeosity."
- Jesse Kellerman, Trouble (2007)
the absolute best thing about this is that I managed to capture two senses; the second usage seems to be more about gorge than gorgeousness!
edit: now *this spelling; i.e., gorgeosity, seems to be a 'real' variant, as it gets 27,900 ghits! as far as I can determine, Burgess actually spelled it gorgeosity, and others quote him inaccurately; perhaps they are really two *different words!?
edit(2): or maybe the different spellings are transpondial! : )
Last edited by tsuwm; 12/04/2009 9:29 PM.
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old hand
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the different spellings are transpondial!A
Now that sounds like something Geordie la Forge would say.
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*Sniff* And I so liked [gordeousity, derived from the order of parasitic worms of the sort so beloved by Intelligent Designers for their ability to alter the behavior of their hosts so as to get themselves eaten by the proper host for the next stage of their life-cycles.
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now I'm going to go see if I can find it in some other reference books on my shelf(s)..
I was already convinced reading this that the word is not just a fashionable thing. I remember the movie and that's old enough to be an example of long term usage. Never even knew it was a book. So..
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