QM

[thekraut]

are there any words he can't trace down to the 10th generation? I guess I'll have to make it my personal crusade to find a word he can't explain!!! hahaaaa what about dirndl, for a start?

[darth vader]

ask him the origins of contrafribularities, anispeptic, frasmotic, compunctuous, and pericombobulation

[darth vader]

oh, and sausage

[thekraut]

sausage?

[smorodina]

He just looks it up in his so called 'Bibles' and then vehemently argues with anybody who contradicts what he says, even if they have empirical evidence of their own. Can't understand why everybody here fawns all over him. He's not infallible.

[thekraut]

smorodina, what, in your opinion, would be an empirical evidence for ketchup?

[Quizmonster]

Darth, your first five are just too, too obvious. 'Sausage', now...there's a challenge! It can actually be traced back to Latin 'salsus', meaning 'salted'.

Smorodina, Chambers Dictionary defines 'empiric' as relating to knowledge obtained from experience only. (It adds that - used as a noun - it means 'a quack'. Accordingly, I should be sparing of using it, if I were you!)

The sort of thing that empirical evidence throws up - in the form of pub quizzes and so forth - is the conviction that the word 'posh' was an acronym from the words 'port out, starboard home'. It wasn't. Similarly, going by experience of hearing others quote him, one might believe that Coleridge wrote "Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink." He didn't; he wrote "...nor any drop to drink."

In terms of words and their roots, the scholars of the Oxford English Dictionary are the indisputable arbiters of correctness and ...yes...if someone offers an etymology that disagrees with theirs (not mine), I do argue vehemently against their manifest error. Simple as that.

But what the hey! You're more than welcome to your opinion of my answers - or of me, myself. Your view will make no impact upon me, you may rest assured. Others are equally free to decide for themselves. Cheers -

[Quizmonster]

Oops! Sorry, The. I forgot to answer your question in all the excitement. 'Dirndl' is, of course, based on the German dialect diminutive word 'Dirne', meaning a girl. This gave rise to 'Dirndlkleid', meaning peasant dress. Dirndl can now refer to an Alpine peasant costume consisting of a bodice and full skirt or, more usually, just a tight-waisted, full skirt. Well...so my 'Bibles' tell me!

[darth vader]

Ha ha well i nearly caught you out, but only because you perhaps haven't seen the Blackadder series? The words came from an episode of Blackadder III (see link at bottom for episode script) where BAdder was trying to catch out Dr Samuel Johnson (writer of the first English Dictionary) by slipping nonsensical words into conversation. The word Sausage comes in near the end when BAdder realises that it is an actual word that has been missed from the dictionary (along with aadvark?). You had to have been there. Anyway as always i prostrate my humble helmet in your presence, indeed you are the guru josh of english words and not one to be messed with. ps do you actually have any physical resemblance to Gandalf? actually no don't answer that i prefer the innocence of blind imagination. Have a good weekend!
http://www.gazmac.freeserve.co.uk/blackadder_3-2_s
cript.htm

[smorodina]

Christ, I do know what empirical means. How on earth you could consider a pub quiz to be an example of the same is difficult to fathom. Many words have more than one meaning, you could try looking up 'monster' for some definitions of a word that might be better used sparingly. Scholarly tomes are useful for research, but can only tell you what the researchers have discovered. No idiot is going to rely on a definition heard in a quiz, but if I heard, for example, an expression being used at an earlier date than that given in a dictionary, then the dictionary is wrong. Anyway, I didn't mean anything personal in my posting - I just get very weary, sometimes, of the mutual backslapping that is the impenetrable clique at the heart of the answerbank.

[Quizmonster]

Dear Darth, I saw every single episode of 'Black Adder' and remember well the scene your link took me to. (Whilst reading it just then, I was asked why I was laughing out loud, actually, so thanks for that.) I must confess I didn't recognise the words as being from there, though I suspected you were intent on flummoxing me with them, as none of them rang any bells at first sight. I'm grateful, too, for your kind comments. Enjoy the holiday.

[darth vader]

I worked out the pub quiz analogy. An expression being sourced from an earlier date than a dictionary does not necessarily make the source correct, just older. Your argument is therefore illogical, to quote my mate Spock. I'd quit while you're losing if i were you Smorodina.

[darth vader]

...and Empirical is to do with building a death star to wipe out the enemies of the dark side and create a magnificent empire. I should know i've been trying for eons

[JohnPPotts]

How about flauccinoccinihilipification - was that just invented as a word for people who liked to show off how long a word they could generate? (It's too long even to fit on a scrabble board!)

[bernardo]

Do you mean floccinaucinihilipilification? The word "flauccinoccinihilipilification" was invented by Mr Potts (q.v. above).

[Quizmonster]

Yes, John, the 'flocci...' word was just invented for fun, appearing for the first time in print in a letter written in 1741 by the poet, William Shenstone. It was based on a rule printed in the Latin grammar-book in use at Eton at the time, using a variety of words from that language, all of them suggesting 'for nothing' or 'at a small price'. The whole word, then, was taken to mean 'the action of setting something at little value'.

[apricot]

Should we as AB for a hermeneutics section??

[JohnPPotts]

Hey, I invented a word! (but not the one you claimed, bernardo as I spelt it ...pification and not ...pilification at the end - don't try to out-pedant me!) Amazingly enough, flocci... was not in my dictionary, or I'd have got the correct, or at least traditional, spelling.

[Quizmonster]

John, the Latin words I referred to in my earlier answer were flocci, nauci, nihili and pili - all definitely spelt thus. The first two both mean 'at a trifle', the third means 'at nothing' and the fourth means 'at a hair'.(The 'fication' element came from Latin facere = make/cause, in the same way as we got magnification, rectification and so on.) If your dictionary reverses the 'o' and 'au' elements, it has definitely got things wrong. Cheers

[Numbers]

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