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opsophagist I could not find this anywhere, but remembered "opsonin" a medical
word, and looked up its etymology in AHD.
opsonin
SYLLABICATION:
op·so·nin
PRONUNCIATION:
ps-nn
NOUN:
An antibody or product of complement activation in blood serum that causes
bacteria or other foreign cells to become more susceptible to the action of
phagocytes.
ETYMOLOGY:
Latin opsnre, to buy provisions (from Greek opsnein, from opson,
condiment, delicacy; see epi- in Appendix I) + –in.
So I wonder if the guy who coined the word used this root, which would mean that
the person referred to used large amounts of condiments.
Anybody got a better idea?
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opsophagy - nonce-wd. [from the Greek word meaning 'the eating of dainties']
The eating of dainties, esp. of fish. So opsophagist, an eater of dainties;
opsophagize v. intr., to eat dainties.
1854 BADHAM Halieut. 519 Opsophagy again was necessarily confined to the rich. Ibid., At Corinth..the law enacted that none should ‘opsophagize’ but such as could prove their income sufficient to support the extravagance.
opsomania - A morbid longing for dainties, or for some particular food. Hence opsomaniac,
one affected with opsomania.
[OED2]
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Dear tsuwm: just to practice my vocabulary, is "opsophagy"
then a "hapax legomenon"?
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it would seem so, although someone online has used it in "experimental fiction" (don't bother, it's completely unreadable).
the 'net makes this phenomenon somewhat untenable -- as soon as we mention that we've found a 'hapax' someone is likely to use it!
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I found myself still a bit confused on the difference between a hapax and a nonce-word, so I asked for an explication from Jesse Sheidlower, U.S. editor of the OED; his timely reply:
A hapax legomenon--the term is normally used only in reference
to dead languages--it a word or form that is found only once in
a given corpus (an entire language, the works of a particular
author, etc.). That's it--there's no other implication here about
its use. Often the assumption is that the word could have been
more common but the one example is all we have. Note that the
reoccurrence of the word in criticism doesn't change its status;
that is, if you say "so-and-so is a hapax in Shakespeare", your
use of "so-and-so" does not mean that you now have another
example in English and it's no longer a hapax.
A nonce-word is generally used to mean a word coined for a
specific occasion, with the implication that it's not likely to
be used again or outside a very limited range. While nonce-words
_can_ become widespread, the assumption is that they won't.
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Dear tsuwm: Thanks for sharing the words of Mr. Sheidlower.
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In reply to:
A hapax legomenon--the term is normally used only in reference to dead languages
So, why was Shakespeare used as an example? His isn't a dead language.
Also, is nonce-word generally hyphenated?
Interesting discussion here, by the way.
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"the term is normally used..."
I think he chose his example in the context of my question, which wasn't couched in terms of dead languages, and the fact that the term isn't heard widely in those terms but is probably transferred to other uses when used today, especially when bandied about on the Web of a Millions Lies (WoaML).
it does seem to transfer nicely to "works of a given (dead) author", and not so nicely to a living language (or writer) such as English. maybe we should think of the key word as "dead"?!
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Thanks, tsuwm. Dead language/Dead writer. I guess you can use hapax for short.
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