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Posted By: Father Steve Discombooberated - 01/05/01 08:01 PM
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?



Posted By: Capital Kiwi Re: Discombooberated - 01/05/01 08:05 PM
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


Posted By: Faldage Re: Discombooberated - 01/05/01 08:16 PM
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.

Posted By: Capital Kiwi Re: Discombooberated - 01/05/01 08:55 PM
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.

Posted By: tsuwm Re: Discombooberated - 01/05/01 08:57 PM
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).

Posted By: AnnaStrophic Re: Discombooberated - 01/05/01 09:03 PM
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.)

Posted By: Faldage Re: Discombooberated - 01/05/01 09:26 PM
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.

Posted By: belMarduk Re: Discombooberated - 01/05/01 09:59 PM
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.

Posted By: Capital Kiwi Re: Discombooberated - 01/05/01 11:05 PM
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.

Posted By: Jackie Re: Discombooberated - 01/07/01 02:21 AM
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.







Posted By: Avy Goofaglarbian - 01/07/01 05:01 AM
> 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?

Posted By: emanuela Discombooberated -Scombussolato - 01/07/01 09:27 AM
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

Posted By: tsuwm Re: Goofaglarbian - 01/07/01 03:43 PM
it's a noun, used in the sense of a solecism.

"I am perplexed by this apparent goofaglarbian."
-jmh [John, not Jo]

Posted By: Jackie Re: Discombooberated -Scombussolato - 01/07/01 04:33 PM
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.


Posted By: Avy Re: Goofaglarbian - 01/08/01 01:18 AM
"I am perplexed by this apparent goofaglarbian."

Nice.

Posted By: Father Steve Re: Discombooberated - 01/08/01 03:29 AM
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.




Posted By: Faldage Re: Gazor'nenpflap - 01/08/01 02:59 PM
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

Posted By: TEd Remington gazor'nenpflap. - 01/08/01 05:16 PM
Or more likely gesnorenplop???

Posted By: Bingley Re: Discombooberated -Scombussolato - 01/09/01 07:31 AM
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
Posted By: Jackie Encompassed - 01/09/01 04:01 PM
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.

Posted By: Max Quordlepleen Re: Encompassed - 01/09/01 06:49 PM
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".


Posted By: of troy Re: Encompassed - 01/09/01 07:48 PM
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.

Posted By: Bobyoungbalt Re: Encompassed - 01/09/01 08:26 PM
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.)

Posted By: jmh Re: Encompassed - 01/09/01 08:32 PM
>I have to go with Max

Yes, I'd put an "s" on Math too!

Posted By: Max Quordlepleen Re: Encompassed - 01/09/01 09:01 PM
Thanks, Jo. Bob, being a "math" person, missed my oblique dig. I was told to buy a compass, sans added "es", for my maths classes.

Posted By: NicholasW Re: Encompassed - 01/11/01 09:26 AM
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;

Posted By: AnnaStrophic Re: Encompassed - 01/11/01 11:27 PM
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

Posted By: pgrew Re: Discombooberated -Scombussolato - 01/14/01 12:05 PM
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


Posted By: Chickie Re: Discombooberated - 01/15/01 12:41 PM
Have also heard this used as "discombobulated".

"Adversity is the whetstone of creativity"
Posted By: Faldage Ooh A linguist. - 01/15/01 04:34 PM
Welcome, pgrew. We need someone like you here.

P.S. Ænigma (q.v. http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=9694&page=&view=&sb=&vc=1#Post9694) converts you to Phaedra.

Posted By: musick Re: Discombooberated - 01/16/01 06:53 PM
"Repetition is the whetstone of Boredom"

JK

Posted By: Bridget Re: Discombooberated - 01/21/01 12:04 AM
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'...

Posted By: iPox Re: Discombooberated - 06/12/07 01:22 PM
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".
Posted By: AnnaStrophic Re: Discombooberated - 06/12/07 01:43 PM
Welcome, iPox! How did you dig up such an old thread??
Posted By: Buffalo Shrdlu Re: Discombooberated - 06/12/07 02:00 PM
Originally Posted By: Faldage
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!
Posted By: tsuwm Re: Discombooberated - 06/12/07 03:06 PM
Originally Posted By: AnnaStrophic
Welcome, iPox! How did you dig up such an old thread??


google possibly?
Posted By: Aramis Re: Discombooberated - 06/12/07 06:44 PM
That must have been written at least once as Gesnorin'platz.
Posted By: tsuwm Re: Discombooberated - 03/31/09 10:30 PM
Originally Posted By: iPox
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.
Posted By: tsuwm Re: Discombooberated -Scombussolato - 02/04/11 07:10 PM
Originally Posted By: pgrew
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)

Originally Posted By: H. L. Mencken
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
Posted By: tsuwm Re: Discombooberated -Scombussolato - 02/04/11 07:16 PM
BTW, if you've ever wondered why I continue to denigrate the UD, just plug combooberated (as suggested in the OP) into OneLook..
Posted By: Jackie Re: Discombooberated -Scombussolato - 02/05/11 04:23 AM
Augh--they can't spell!
Posted By: Faldage Re: Discombooberated -Scombussolato - 02/05/11 12:37 PM
Umm... Jackie?

No, I won't tell you.
It's so refreshing to see your innocence.
Posted By: Tromboniator Re: Discombooberated - 02/05/11 10:22 PM
Originally Posted By: Buffalo Shrdlu
[quote=Faldage]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



Back in the '60s, I think it was, comedian Bob Newhart had a schtick about an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters reproducing Hamlet. One of them typed, "To be or not to be: that is the gesorgenplatz." I've quoted it many times over the years. Sorry to have taken so long finding this thread.

Discombobulated is definitely part of my vocabulary, and I use it without pretense. Its connotation is that something is so hopelessly tangled or damaged beyond repair that it's almost funny, that maybe if we give it a good whack it will right itself, but not likely.

Peter
Posted By: tsuwm Re: Discombooberated - 02/05/11 11:16 PM
"To be or not to be: that is the gesorgenplatz."

ha! I'd forgotten this bit. not surprisingly, I find this via google with another spelling: "To be, or not to be, that is the gesornenplatz..."

but this is just a quiddle[sic], and it serves to remind me of another comedy bit, from the Blackadder series:

Blackadder: Oh, well, in that case, sir, I hope you
will not object if I also offer the Doctor my most
enthusiastic contrafibularities.
Dr. Samuel Johnson: What?
Blackadder: '"Contrafribularites", sir? It is a common
word down our way.
Dr. Samuel Johnson: Damn! [writes in the book]
- Edmund Blackadder, Blackadder the Third
Posted By: Jackie Re: Discombooberated -Scombussolato - 02/06/11 01:14 AM
It's so refreshing to see your innocence. Hmph. I say, even if you're posting pornography, it ought to be spelled correctly! With correct punctuation. laugh
Posted By: Buffalo Shrdlu Re: Discombooberated -Scombussolato - 02/06/11 01:25 AM
gesorgenplatz!! I use that word all the time! I have always wondered where I picked it up.
Posted By: wofahulicodoc Discombobulated again - 02/06/11 01:50 AM
While we're giving Earliest Printed Appearances: In 1940-41 Robert Heinlein wrote, and Astounding SF published, a three-part serial named Sixth Column, reprinted by Signet Books in 1951 as "The Day After Tomorrow," a novel about USA after being conquered by the (thinly-veiled) Japanese, and the remnants of the Army fighting back under the Occupation, masquerading as a religion. Using slang to confound the eavesdropping authorities (who can hear only his end of the conversation), right here on Page 124 of the paperback the Commander says to his staff,

"Look, cherubs--mamma wants baby to go to the nice man. It's all hunkydory as long as baby-bunting carries his nice new rattle. Yea, verily, rattle is the watchword--you don't and they do. Deal this cold deck the way it's stacked and the chopstick laddies are stonkered and discombobulated. The stiff upper lip does it." [emphasis mine]

Which the guy at the other end of the line translates, just in case the reader didn't get it either, "Check me if I'm wrong, Chief. You want the priests to give themselves up, and to rattle the PanAsians by their apparent unconcern. You want them to carry it off the way you did, cool as a cucumber, and bold as brass. I also take it that you want them to hang on to their staffs [clandestine super-weapons], but not to use them unless you tell them to. Is that right?"

"Elementary, my dear Watson."

(And so the rebellion proceeds.)

Posted By: tsuwm Re: Discombobulated again - 02/06/11 02:31 AM
I don't think anyone had claimed earliest (until just now) - that credit would have to go to one of these: discombobulated

or even one of these:
1834 Sun (N.Y.) 21 Mar. 2/3 May be some of you don't get discombobracated.
1838 J. C. Neal Charcoal Sketches 14 While you tear the one, you'll discombobberate the nerves of the other.
Posted By: Faldage Re: Discombooberated -Scombussolato - 02/06/11 11:49 AM
Originally Posted By: Jackie
It's so refreshing to see your innocence. Hmph. I say, even if you're posting pornography, it ought to be spelled correctly! With correct punctuation. laugh


Umm... Yeah. Innocence. That's the way it's normally spelled given the meaning.
Posted By: Avy Re: Discombooberated -Scombussolato - 02/07/11 01:52 AM
I discussed this word with a German yesterday. He said he did not know of this word as a German word. I told him of the British Nanny thing. He said it must be "gesnorgenplatz" the place where one snores.
Posted By: Jackie Re: Discombooberated -Scombussolato - 02/07/11 01:58 AM
Well--I won't copy the homophonic spelling here, but see what else it has: even if it IS all 'messied up'.
Posted By: LukeJavan8 Re: Discombooberated -Scombussolato - 02/07/11 03:20 AM
"gesnorgenplatz" - I like this: the place where one snores.
I am looking forward to it this eve: long day.
Posted By: Aramis Re: Discombooberated - 02/08/11 08:40 PM
Now see how the back-formation thing can get dangerous? One can only imagine how one (who is capable) might "booberate". Jackie? whistle
Posted By: tsuwm Re: Discombooberated - 02/08/11 09:15 PM
this is by no means (I'm sure) the last word on the subject, but here's what The Word Detective had to say back in 2005:

In any case, if your dictionary doesn't list "discombobulate," you definitely need a new dictionary†. However, your search for "combobulate" will come up dry in even the best dictionary, because "combobulate" by itself isn't a word. "Discombobulate," meaning "to throw into a state of confusion, to disturb or disorient," is an invented word apparently formed as a joking alteration of "discompose" or "discomfit," both slightly musty terms for confusing or upsetting a person. "Discombobulate" first appeared around 1834.

† - heh. I often used the word 'smegma' as the criterion for this.
Posted By: Faldage Re: Discombooberated - 02/09/11 02:49 AM
Originally Posted By: tsuwm


† - heh. I often used the word 'smegma' as the criterion for this.


Mine has always been 'zarf'.
Posted By: tsuwm Re: Discombooberated - 02/09/11 03:19 AM
Originally Posted By: Faldage
Originally Posted By: tsuwm


† - heh. I often used the word 'smegma' as the criterion for this.


Mine has always been 'zarf'.


oh dear.. that disqualifies MW-CD and W3!!
Posted By: Buffalo Shrdlu Re: Discombooberated - 02/09/11 12:57 PM
smegma!

O.o
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