It seems a lot of words originate from the names of those who first demonstrate the practice of them. Here is my small, slightly arrogant effort:
Seddonist, n: one who gives bad advice as a rhetorical device that demonstrates the foolishness of the suggested course of action, (e.g "The best thing to do is to worry constantly about this problem until it solves itself")
That's not a very good example, but seddonism a useful method of explaining things. Believe me.
Along the same lines is that great piece of parental advice, "If you kill yourself, jumping off that wall/swimming in that lake.....I'll never speak to you again!"
...and my late Mother's favourite -
"Put on a jumper, I'm cold."
Or was that simply her own neurosis coming to the fore?
Would an example of seddonism be: cut off your nose to spite your face?
Another word that I've found extremely useful is the word 'padding'. I'm sure we're all familiar with those days at school when our essay was not quite long enough...so we employed padding - substanceless language - as a means of upping the word count.
Padding also occurs every day in ordinary conversation, for instance at the end of a telephone conversation when both parties deliberate for about five minutes on how nice it was talking to each other, when they'll speak again, whether they'll speak again, aren't clouds nice etc. Let's try and cut this out - think how much time is wasted when we could be talking about more interesting stuff!
Also, we tend to pad our lives quite a lot in other areas - doing things to pass the time. We should all make an effort to cut down on the padding in our lives. Maybe. Well, we could at least use the word more!
the French have a word for this, which under the circumstances seems far superior: remplissage
Fair enough - and thanks for the padding-free post, jmh...
I thought it was waffle-free
... or was it free waffle?
Concerning essays, at my school we call superfluous verbiage simply 'BS'.
Welcome, Jazzy! Er--no, I don't believe I will ask!
Speaking of BS--that term is common here, too, Neighbor!
Though padding sounds much more refined.
Gosh, wonder what the world would be like if all padding
was gotten rid of. By my reckoning, good manners would
probably be included here. Could get problematical!
There is a theory that apart from its function in making essays longer, padding does have a social function to play in maintaining relationships even if it doesn't actually contain information. Apes groom each other, we pad.
Bingley
>Speaking of BS--that term is common here, too, Neighbor!. Though padding sounds much more refined.
This thread is getting me completely mixed-up. I thought that “padding” was the stuff that made my mattress comfortable and that “BS” was a powerful fertilizer!.
Juan Maria.
< Apes groom each other, we pad.>
Well, Bingley, that's a new word for it!
When I was just a young fella, my English teacher (for homework) asked us to rewrite the fable of the north wind and the sun in AS MANY words as possible. Accustomed as I am (and was) to succinctness, I failed miserably!
In reply to:
Padding also occurs every day in ordinary conversation, for instance at the end of a telephone conversation when both
parties deliberate for about five minutes on how nice it was talking to each other, when they'll speak again, whether
they'll speak again, aren't clouds nice etc. Let's try and cut this out - think how much time is wasted when we could be
talking about more interesting stuff!
Our lives are frittered away by detail....simplify, simplify - Henry Thoreau
>superfluous verbiage
Is self-descriptive of a repetitive redundancy
>>superfluous verbiage
>Is self-descriptive of a repetitive redundancy
what a tautologous supererogation...
ron obvious
Dept. of Pleonasm Dept.
New York, NY
Tsuwm, is your vocabulary naturally so astronomically large, or do you use the OED
every time you make a post?
t'would be more convenient to have online access to the OED, but that costs $550 dollar bucks per annum!
You can trust me on this, Jazzy--he IS that smart!
>he IS that smart!
And how do you know this, Jackie?
Jackie has been imbued with the wisdom of the ages.
tsuwm is a veritable lexical tsunami
(try saying that aloud)
I think it a bit naughty to revive posts like this without making an addition to justify re-opening it.
With regards to tsuwm's being a lexical tsunami, I agree he is our most proficient practitioner of lexical prowess. But since many tsunamis result from underwater earthquakes, was the designator wishing tsuwm
a deep,deep six?
>wishing tsuwm a deep,deep six?
while there may be many here who do not suffer fools gladly, I seem to be suffered reluctantly because I know 37 words for fool.
-joe footler
*remplissage*
And there's the devil in that lake.
While at university my household 'borrowed' a word from Blackadder and made certain logical extrapolations:
wibble: to talk nonsense/BS/pad something out (can be applied to everyday life or essays)
wibbling: to be in a state of talking nonsense/etc
to get wibbled: to induce a state of talking nonsense/etc (alternative translation: to put oneself under the influence of alcohol)
to be wibbled: one is drunk
sorry, think I've jumped threads here - wasn't I meant to be in inebriety/sobriety???
> words originate from the names of those who first demonstrate the practice of them.
Wibble I don't remember - which Series? It brought me to 'to womble' though, the verb that accompanies 'The Wombles' in their making good use of things that they find.
Here's a site dedicated to the love-erly, errrr, chaps:
http://www.tidybag.co.uk/
Oh Lordy - I can't remember - I was a student at the time and I think I killed off those brain cells! It's more than conceivable that I've remembered it wrong and it wasn't even Blackadder, although back in the depths of my mind I'm sure it is.
I quite agree though, 'wombling' is an excellent ethos/past-time and one which more of the world should be encouraged to take up.
Oh thank goodness for that! I was sure I was too young to be already affected by severe memory loss, but I was starting to wonder! Relief all round!
wibble
wibble [UK, perh. originally from the first "Roger Irrelevant" strip in "VIZ" comics, spread via "Your Sinclair magazine in the 1980s and early 1990s"]
1. n.,v. Commonly used to describe chatter, content-free remarks or other essentially meaningless contributions to threads in newsgroups. "Oh, rspence is wibbling again".
2. [UK IRC] An explicit on-line no-op equivalent to humma.
3. One of the preferred metasyntactic variables in the UK, forming a series with wobble, wubble, and flob (attributed to the hilarious historical comedy "Blackadder").
4. A pronounciation of the letters "www", as seen in URLs; i.e., www. foo.com may be pronounced "wibble dot foo dot com" (compare dub dub dub). http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/w/wibble.html