this one is taken from the Glossary compiled by Pete Saussy:



can't seem to find this anywhere online..

I ran soer* through Onelook, and got a hit at Dictionary.com. It's way too long to copy here; I'll just give you the link . The only *esmus things looked to be medical.

so?

Interesting. Soeresmus and then soer(Jackie) made me look up
sorus
Sorus is a word we use that may come from Jiddish and means a heap of trouble. I'm surprised the word also exists in English. Don't know about possible connections.

Origin:
1825–35; < NL < Gk sōrós heap (?)

Feeding onelook with "soer*" gives, among other choices "soeren kirkegaard" so I thought it might be "søresmus". I googled that (with o for ø) and got a little better results, but not much better. What I found was this (emphasis mine):



Looks like a sort of Europanto.

Hodge-Podge.. and in
that sense he answer'd him with this mingle-mangle following [add't'l emphasis mine]

this one is taken from the Glossary compiled by Pete Saussy

I take this to mean one of the versions of this book by George Stone Saussy III (aka Pete Saussy): The Oxter English Dictionary: Uncommon Words Used by Uncommonly Good Writers, The Logodaedalian's Dictionary of Interesting and Unusual Words. Or is there an online version of same? From what I gathered online via Google, Mr Saussy researched all his words in the OED or such-like. It may be a typo. From your site, he seems to have been in contact with you, why not ask the man himself?

I am a fan of macaronics, but I have not run across the word before, and mingle mangle seems more like a gallimaufry or hodgepodge than macaronics per se.

"soeren kirkegaard"

While Kirkegaard is a comic philosophe, I don't think he is known for his macaronics. The Europanto seems mainly to be English, Welsh, and Latin all mixed up.

A better view of the same passage, scanned, (link).

>why not ask the man himself?

I'll do that, but "nature abhors a vacuum, but not as much as cats do." (it's one of those words that Pete defines, and then gives examples of the trope, rather than citations for the word itself.)

from the "English Glossary" in the same work:
soresmus n macaronic composition [LL(?)]

good work, guys!

edit: yes, George Stone Saussy III link (there's one review for this book, by Pete himself); many, many moons ago he sent me a version in Word, which has many egregious typos!

it's one of those words that Pete defines, and then gives examples of the trope, rather than citations for the word itself

It's one of the things that separates the cream from the chaff, lexicographically speaking.

For what it's worth, I took a quick spin through oneof the editions of Du Cange's Glossarium mediae et infimae Latinitatis, digitized by and online at the National French Library, but found nothing under soeresmus or soresmus.

here's the totality of Pete's entry(s), with Spanish, French, and Latin examples:

SOERESMUS trope/spanish The mierda, as the saying in bastardized local lingo went, had really hit the abanico. Nichols, The Magic Journey, p. 56.

SOERESMUS trope/french the use of foreign words and phrases mixed with your own language's text. Also called "macaronics" and "mingle mangle" which is often a more apt phrase "Dieu caillou les corbeaux!" he cried aghast "Regardez sa chevelure! She 'as flipped 'er wig! What do I see, me? Un moment, ma belle brun, le next une bébé peroxide! C'est trop fort!* * fractured French for God stone the crows, Look at her hair, my beautiful brunette, It's too much. Fraser, The Pyrates, p. 238.

SOERESMUS trope/Latin see quotation The Boss knew all about the so-called fallacy of the argumentum ad hominem. "It may be a fallacy," he said, "but it is shore-God useful. If you use the right kind of argumentum you can always scare the hominem into a laundry bill he didn't expect." Warren, Robert Penn, All the King's Men, p. 248.

I'll ask if these got into the published version intact.

Spanish, French, and Latin examples

I see. So he does not give examples of the word *soeresmus being used, but examples in various languages.

The first poetry to be called macaonic was written by Teofilo Folengo in the first have of the 16th century. The language was Latin, but with nonce words from Italian but with Latin morphological affixes. The content tended to the mock-epic, and the meter was usually hexameters.

The word has since come to be used for other kinds of language mixture, e.g., code-switching as in the Saussy examples, poetry in which ever other line is in one of several languages (this was big in England where Middle English, Latin, and French were used. A fourth century grammarian, Ausonius, is famous for using many Greek words in his otherwise Latin poetry. Another famous example is Hisperic latin from the Hisperica Famina. It was written by Irish monks and used Hebrew and Greek nonce words.

I've seen macaronic used in another sense; i.e., etymologically speaking, words such as television are macaronic. would you consider this to be correct usage?

etymologically speaking, words such as television are macaronic. would you consider this to be correct usage?

I understand what is meant, though I myself wouldn't use it.

how would you, yourself, refer to such (mixed origin) words?
-joe (asking the unanswered) friday

how would you, yourself, refer to such (mixed origin) words?

Because the notion of using both a Greek-origin and a Latin-origin ISV root in the same word does not bother me, I don't need a single word to describe it. If I wanted to refer to the phenomenon jocularly, I might say that the word television was etymological hybrid. After all, the Greek didn't think it a problem when they coined words like φιλόκαισαρ (philokaisar, with kaisar < Caesar) 'loyal to the emperor' (even when they had a perfectly good all Greek version φιλοσέβαστος (philosebastos, with sebastos as a calque for Augustus).

So, macaronic is used to describe different languages used in groups of words (a sentence, a verse, etc.) but not for a single word that combines different etymologies?

So, macaronic is used to describe different languages used in groups of words (a sentence, a verse, etc.) but not for a single word that combines different etymologies?

I said I wouldn't use it. You, of course, are free to use words in any which way you would.

""homophobia" seems as badly cast as the so-called "scientific" word "homosexual" itself, except that "homophobia" does not have a macaronic etymology..."
- Lawrence R. Schehr, Figures of Alterity (2003)

"Macaronic words are formed by the addition of terminations of one language to roots of another language. Macaronic compositions, written in burlesque, contain, generally, genuine words from both languages, interspersed among the hybrid compounds."
- Hubert M. Skinner, The Schoolmaster in Comedy and Satire (1894)

edit: I'm going to send these to Jesse S.!

editorial comment

I simply said that I would not use it. I may have implied that it was incorrect, though I have seen it used, and I know what they're on about. In the same way, I try to avoid certain usages, even though grammatical, because they are disputed by the grammatically clueless.

[NB, your link does not work for me.]

sorry for the sorry state of soeresmus, the origin of the word, that is. i received tswum's inquiry and fear i cannot give a good answer. i just searched my sources on tropes & schemes and have not found it. i seem to remember getting the word/definition from a dictionary of tropes and schemes from a library which i xeroxed [back in those days] and not sure i still have it buried in the garage. i was more interested in classifying the nifty quotes i found than in the word itself so did not pursue its origin. as for the mass of typos in the version i sent to tswum lo, those many years ago, i had to terminate spell check at the start because i would have been correcting every other word. can anyone refer me to source for 1. the word for the space underneath a staircase [i have seen "spandrel" used but not convinced] and the word for someone who finishes your sentences for you.??
thanks to all y'all [plural of y'all]
pete saussy
pawleys island sc

Hi, Pete; I just love your last name! Welcome aBoard! As for the space underneath a staircase, I think all I'm familiar with is cubbyhole. As to your other query--I think we've had that discussion here before, or one very similar, and I believe the consensus was "rude".

Edit: spelling correction.

1. the space under the stairs: for Harry Potter it was the cupboard; for the Welsh it's a cwtch — but neither of these is exclusively stair bound, as they can be elsewhere.

2. sentence completion: good grief, pete; you've been seeking this now for at least 28(twenty-eight!) years!? link

edit: i had to terminate spell check at the start because i would have been correcting every other word. see wwftd dictionary disclaimer: "You try spell-checking this stuff!"