#14792
01/05/2001 8:01 PM
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Just received an e-mail message from my choir director informing me that the organist's father died and choir practice was cancelled and music plans are changing after the Sunday bulletin has been printed. She concludes: "So, as you can see, our musical plans for Sunday have become quite discombooberated!"
This term does not appear in any of my dictionaries, yet I understand quite well what she means. This must present an additional challenge to ESL folks, having to learn not only the formal English language, but these sorts of made-up words, as well.
Following this week's theme about taking the negative out of words, is a "combooberated" person one who has it all together? Or just both of them together? Or what?
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#14793
01/05/2001 8:05 PM
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Funny - we use "discombobulated". But I figure it means the same thing. Dictionary.com has this to say:
dis·com·bob·u·late (dskm-bby-lt)
v. tr. dis·com·bob·u·lat·ed, dis·com·bob·u·lat·ing, dis·com·bob·u·lates.
To throw into a state of confusion. See Synonyms at confuse.
FWIW
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#14794
01/05/2001 8:16 PM
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CapK uses discombobulated
That is certainly the form I learned at my mother(of whichever sex*)'s knee. I suspect a student of ESL would have similar problems with that one. I doubt if it's high on the list of Important Vocabulary Words.
*I think it was my father who used it.
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#14795
01/05/2001 8:55 PM
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I suspect a student of ESL would have similar problems with that one. I doubt if it's high on the list of Important Vocabulary Words.
Granted. Don't think I've used it in conversation ... ever! It would get me branded as uppity, I would imagine.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#14796
01/05/2001 8:57 PM
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I have a friend who speaks and writes using nonce words like this; words like 'contravivulated' and 'goofaglarbian' and 'slipshodderiness' -- you'll not find these in any dictionary, but you know pretty much what he means, in context. (as an aside, he styles himself as jmh; not to be confused with our own).
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#14797
01/05/2001 9:03 PM
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The Padre postulates: Following this week's theme about taking the negative out of words, is a "combooberated" person one who has it all together? Or just both of them together?
nota bene: Kaintuck's sleaze police spies are watching.....
(down here in the South of the good ol' US we say 'discombobulated' ... never heard the 'boob' variety.)
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#14798
01/05/2001 9:26 PM
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In reference to discombobulated CapK remarks that using it: "...would get me branded as uppity"
US'ns have always used it in a mock rustic way.
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#14799
01/05/2001 9:59 PM
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I've often heard discombobulated also, but usually from strick non-swearers who do not want to say f****d-up and never from a guy.
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#14800
01/05/2001 11:05 PM
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A "Mock Rustic" approach in Zild would be what Bel has said discombobulated is substituted for in her world. And both sexes would participate these days, I might add.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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#14801
01/07/2001 2:21 AM
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is a "combooberated" person one who has it all together? Or just both of them together? Or what?
C'mere a minute, F.S.--I wish to discombooberate you.
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#14802
01/07/2001 5:01 AM
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old hand
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old hand
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> I have a friend who speaks and writes using nonce words like this; words like
'contravivulated' and 'goofaglarbian' and 'slipshodderiness'
How would he use Goofaglarbian?
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#14803
01/07/2001 9:27 AM
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Posts: 315
enthusiast
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enthusiast
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I like this word, and I cannot help myself from offering the Italian word
Scombussolato
which sounds so similar, and has also the same meaning...
Scombussolato means - for example - someone which lost ( the way shown from ) the compass, since
compass = bussola.
Incidentally, I am always wondering if it is not confusing to use the same word compass in English in 2 ways
compass (=Italian bussola) giving North
compass (=italian compasso) drawing circles.
Ciao
Emanuela
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#14804
01/07/2001 3:43 PM
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it's a noun, used in the sense of a solecism.  "I am perplexed by this apparent goofaglarbian." -jmh [John, not Jo]
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#14805
01/07/2001 4:33 PM
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if it is not confusing to use the same word compass in English in 2 ways
It sure can be, E.--For ex., the sentence, "I used a compass" requires some context in order for us to know which instrument was meant.
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#14806
01/08/2001 1:18 AM
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old hand
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old hand
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"I am perplexed by this apparent goofaglarbian." Nice.
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#14807
01/08/2001 3:29 AM
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When I was a small boy, my English nanny used nonsense words which sounded German, e.g. when one was so tired as to fall asleep in the chair, one was gazor'nenpflap.
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#14808
01/08/2001 2:59 PM
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Gazornen something or other, what was it? Gazornenplatz seems most likely but where did I hear it and what did it mean? Well, to be orthographically correct it should be Gesornenplatz
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#14809
01/08/2001 5:16 PM
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Or more likely gesnorenplop???
TEd
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#14810
01/09/2001 7:31 AM
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Isn't the hinged instrument for drawing circles a pair of compasses? Of course you could just draw round the rim of direction-finder.
Bingley
Bingley
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#14811
01/09/2001 4:01 PM
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Isn't the hinged instrument for drawing circles a pair of compasses?
Not here. Both I and my children were told to buy
a compass and protractor for math class.
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#14812
01/09/2001 6:49 PM
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Jackie said . Both I and my children were told to buy
a compass and protractor for math class.I also, but with the addition of an "s".
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#14813
01/09/2001 7:48 PM
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Thank you, e, for In reply to:
Scombussolato which sounds so similar, and has also the same meaning...
Scombussolato means - for example - someone which lost ( the way shown from ) the compass, since compass = bussola.
Discombobulated entered english about the time of WWI-(according to M-W 10th) and it might well have been taken almost right from the italian..
And as for compass-- it is singular in NY, too, so i agree with Jackie-- a compass.
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#14814
01/09/2001 8:26 PM
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
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veteran
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Compass(es)
I have to go with Max. I was taught (as were most people I know) that the drawing instrument is a compasses; a compass is a navigational tool. (and the construction of that sentence is a chiasmus.)
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#14815
01/09/2001 8:32 PM
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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>I have to go with Max
Yes, I'd put an "s" on Math too!
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#14816
01/09/2001 9:01 PM
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Thanks, Jo. Bob, being a "math" person, missed my oblique dig. I was told to buy a compass, sans added "es", for my math s classes. 
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#14817
01/11/2001 9:26 AM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 393
enthusiast
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enthusiast
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a compasses ??
A compass, or a pair of compasses -- my own maths days when we actually used those are so far away they were probably in Latin. To me a circle is just {(x,y): (x + a)^2 + (y+b)^2 = r^2}, none of this mucking around with dull sublunary approximations.
And of course the locus classicus is:
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
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#14818
01/11/2001 11:27 PM
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Nicholas truncates:
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
I'm holding my breath
And may start to turn blue
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#14819
01/14/2001 12:05 PM
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Joined: May 2000
Posts: 8
stranger
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stranger
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In reply to:
>> Scombussolato which sounds so similar, and has also the same meaning...
>> Scombussolato means - for example - someone which lost ( the way shown from ) the compass, since
>> compass = bussola.
>> ...Incidentally, I am always wondering if it is not confusing to use the same word compass in English
>> in 2 ways
> Discombobulated entered english about the time of WWI-(according to M-W 10th) and it might well
> have been taken almost right from the italian..
The similarity of these two words is, in my analysis, a felicitous coincidence. As Emanuela rightly points out, the seventeenth-century Italian scombussolare is (at least mostly) rooted in bussola, which means a direction-finding compass and is cognate with English "box" (as compasses were once made of wood).
In the early Renaissance Mediterranean, celestial navigation relied on the juxtaposition of the two sorts of compasses (the magnetic needle floating in a box of liquid and the pivoted instrument also known as a pair of dividers) and metonomy allowed for the trasfer of the name for the former object to the latter, in English. Maritime terminology was a great source of loan words from even before the Crusades until the industrial revolution in this region. A sailor who had lost his compass (in either sense) would certainly have been at sea.
My theory is that the metaphorical image underlying "discombobulation" is entirely different. I suspect this word may ultimately hark back to the idea of thread (or wire) coming off a bobbin (cf. haywire). There does not seem to me to be any evidence of borrowing from Italian. BTW, Merriam-Webster missed their mark in dating discombobulate and its variants such as discombobberate (cited OED 1838). These words are fanciful, early-nineteenth-century, American coinages on a par with other Latinate slang the likes of absquatulate and...
...someone give me another example, please.
chow,
- ph
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#14820
01/15/2001 12:41 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
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newbie
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newbie
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Have also heard this used as "discombobulated".
"Adversity is the whetstone of creativity"
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#14821
01/15/2001 4:34 PM
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#14822
01/16/2001 6:53 PM
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"Repetition is the whetstone of Boredom" JK 
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#14823
01/21/2001 12:04 AM
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Joined: Jun 2000
Posts: 444
addict
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addict
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I've often heard discombobulated also, but usually from strick non-swearers who do not want to say f****d-up and never from a guy.
My father uses this word frequently. He also swears like a trooper and to the best of my knowledge is a guy! Then again, I have never claimed that any member of my family is 'normal'...
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stranger
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stranger
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There is an episode of the Twilight Zone where the main character is named James WB Beavis. He gets a guardian angle that straitens out his life... Anyway, Rod Serling in the beginning refers to James WB Beavis as being "discombooberated".
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Welcome, iPox! How did you dig up such an old thread??
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Gazornen something or other, what was it? Gazornenplatz seems most likely but where did I hear it and what did it mean? Well, to be orthographically correct it should be Gesornenplatz<br><br> wow. I have said gesorgenplatz for some time now, and I have no idea when and where I first heard it. right up there with murgatroyd.. howdy, iPox, and thanks for digging this up. fun!
formerly known as etaoin...
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Welcome, iPox! How did you dig up such an old thread?? possibly?
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addict
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addict
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That must have been written at least once as Gesnorin'platz.
ÅΓª╥┐↕§
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There is an episode of the Twilight Zone where the main character is named James WB Beavis. He gets a guardian angle that straitens out his life... Anyway, Rod Serling in the beginning refers to James WB Beavis as being "discombooberated". from the department of everything eventually gets documented dept... "In the parlance of the twentieth century, this is an oddball. His name is James B.W. Bevis, and his tastes lean toward stuffed animals, zither music, professional football, Charles Dickens, moose heads, carnivals, dogs, children, and young ladies. Mr. Bevis is accident prone, a little vague, a little discombooberated, with a life that possesses all the security of a floating crap game. But this can be said of our Mr. Bevis: without him, without his warmth, without his kindness, the world would be a considerably poorer place, albeit perhaps a little saner... Should it not be obvious by now, James B.W. Bevis, on whom Dame Fortune will shortly turn her back, but not before she gives him a paste in the mouth. Mr. James B.W. Bevis, just a block away from the Twilight Zone." -Rod Serling 6/30/60 DARE records discombooberated as a variant of discombobolated, discomboberated from 1943.
Last edited by tsuwm; 03/31/2009 10:50 PM. Reason: DARE I mention
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These words are fanciful, early-nineteenth-century, American coinages on a par with other Latinate slang the likes of absquatulate and...
...someone give me another example, please.
chow,
- ph
(this thread needs to be postrevivified every 2 or 6 years) Yet again, there are the purely artificial words, eg, sockdolager, hunkydory, scalawag, guyascutis, sponduluc, slumgullion, rambunctious, scrumptious, to skedaddle, to absquatulate and to exfluncticate. so.. "The frontiersman, ring-tailed roarer, half horse and half alligator, described himself as kankarriferous and rambunctious, his lady love as angeliferous and splendiferous. With consummate ease he could teetotaciously exfluncticate his opponent in a conbobberation, that is to say a conflict or disturbance, or ramsquaddle him bodaciously, after which the luckless fellow would absquatulate." - A. Marckwardt, American English (1980) coming next week to a wwftd near you.. exfluncticate - to overcome, beat thoroughly; to crush
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Carpal Tunnel
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BTW, if you've ever wondered why I continue to denigrate the UD, just plug combooberated (as suggested in the OP) into OneLook..
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