Seldom-Used Words

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Pedagogics - the science of teaching.

Although the word, as English, is frequently used to describe teaching training in many European countries, it is almost unknown in the UK because of the association with the derogatory term pedagogue.

And where I teach, some "educators" have re-introduced the term androgogy to refer to teaching adults. Unfortunately these educators aren't familiar with Greek, and are proposing a word, originating in Germany in the late 19th century, that actually means "teaching adult males."
 
And where I teach, some "educators" have re-introduced the term androgogy to refer to teaching adults. Unfortunately these educators aren't familiar with Greek, and are proposing a word, originating in Germany in the late 19th century, that actually means "teaching adult males."

My brother practised androgogy during his National Service in the Royal Navy. He was a Coder (Educational), who coded and decoded messages sent by radio, and when he wasn't required for messages he taught some of his fellow National Servicemen to read and write.

He preferred the code work.

Og
 
Pedagogics - the science of teaching.

Although the word, as English, is frequently used to describe teaching training in many European countries, it is almost unknown in the UK because of the association with the derogatory term pedagogue.

Derogatory? Pedagogue? Eh?

Do you mean in the mildly derogatory sense of, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach" or is there another definition of pedagogue of which I'm unaware?


I hadn't experienced the Socratic method of pedagogy until graduate school; up 'til that time, most of my masters had been rather boring pedants.


 
"Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. And those who can neither do nor teach, administer."


And I suspect Og meant demagogoue.
 


Derogatory? Pedagogue? Eh?

Do you mean in the mildly derogatory sense of, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach" or is there another definition of pedagogue of which I'm unaware?


I hadn't experienced the Socratic method of pedagogy until graduate school; up 'til that time, most of my masters had been rather boring pedants.



I can't lay my hands on my Oxford Concise Dictionary at present (I blame the chaos caused by the resident builders) but my 2 volume Websters [1956] gives pedagog (US Spelling) also pedagogue as noun 1. A schoolmaster, especially a pedantic, narrow-minded teacher. 2. In ancient Greece and Rome, a slave who attended children to school.

In UK English usage, a teacher called a pedagogue would consider himself/herself greviously insulted.

Og

PS. From time to time we housed teachers who accompanied foreign high school students in England for a short course of English. The Germans were willing to admit that they had studied pedagogics and were surprised that we thought that unusual. Their German/English dictionaries didn't explain that pedagogics was an unfamiliar term in British English. The British equivalent is Teacher Training which concentrated far too much on the Theory of Teaching (which is what the Germans meant by Pedagogics) and far too little on the practice - unfortunately still true today.

In British English, to study pedagogics would mean to study to be an incompetent teacher. (What was I saying about Teacher Training?)
 
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I can't lay my hands on my Oxford Concise Dictionary at present (I blame the chaos caused by the resident builders) but my 2 volume Websters [1956] gives pedagog (US Spelling) also pedagogue as noun 1. A schoolmaster, especially a pedantic, narrow-minded teacher. 2. In ancient Greece and Rome, a slave who attended children to school.

In UK English usage, a teacher called a pedagogue would considered himself/herself greviously insulted.

Og

I sit corrected, Og. I'm not at all familiar with the pedantic connotations ofpedagogue. Kindly excuse me for putting words in your text.
 
ruth –noun
1.
pity or compassion.
2.
sorrow or grief.
3.
self-reproach; contrition; remorse.

Much more common is the antonym ruthless
 
I sit corrected, Og. I'm not at all familiar with the pedantic connotations of pedagogue. Kindly excuse me for putting words in your text.

It is another example of a "false friend" word. The English word seems to be the same as the equivalent term in German but has a very different meaning.

I suspect that is also true for the British and US usages. There are others - "fanny pack" means something completely different in the UK.

Og
 
Talk of 'derogatory' reminds me of old friends from the same root, 'prorogue', to ask for an extension, both in turn coming from 'rogation', the asking. Rogation Days asked for a good harvest.
 
Talk of 'derogatory' reminds me of old friends from the same root, 'prorogue', to ask for an extension, both in turn coming from 'rogation', the asking. Rogation Days asked for a good harvest.

Prorogue means to suspend or to postpone. We had that issue here in Canada over a year ago when the PM, leading a minority government, asked the Governor General to prorogue Parliament so he could avoid a vote of non-confidence. She granted him the prorogation, but his government did fall last month.
 
What an interesting conversation that was to catch up on. Well done, gents, once again. Please, carry on at will.

I am over here wondering about the word;

augury - noun 1. divination from omens or portents or from chance events (as the fall of lots) 2. OMEN, PORTENT
 
You don't see this one very often at all...

scapulimancy noun. Foretelling by interpreting the cracks and scorch marks on a heated mammalian shoulder blade. Ox scapulae were used in Shang China, and may have contributed to the development of ideographic writing. The Naskapi used beaver shoulder blades in an effort to find food sources when the caribou didn't show up on the usual migratory paths. Many cultures have made use of the practice.
 
That is a great word, Tio. I had to look this next one up;

zeitgeist - noun the general intellectual, moral and cultural state of an era
 
And the surname of a wildly sexy star character in a German cartoon of the 60s, a parallel for Barbarella...

Her name was Phoebe Zeitgeist...
 
I love the movie Barbarella so much I own it, so I will happily look up Pheobe, thanks for the tip, Tio.

This one I could not define, even though I knew its general meaning through context.

succor - noun 1. RELIEF, also AID, HELP 2. something that furnishes relief
 
I can't lay my hands on my Oxford Concise Dictionary at present (I blame the chaos caused by the resident builders) but my 2 volume Websters [1956] gives pedagog (US Spelling) also pedagogue as noun 1. A schoolmaster, especially a pedantic, narrow-minded teacher. 2. In ancient Greece and Rome, a slave who attended children to school.

In UK English usage, a teacher called a pedagogue would consider himself/herself greviously insulted.

Og

PS. From time to time we housed teachers who accompanied foreign high school students in England for a short course of English. The Germans were willing to admit that they had studied pedagogics and were surprised that we thought that unusual. Their German/English dictionaries didn't explain that pedagogics was an unfamiliar term in British English. The British equivalent is Teacher Training which concentrated far too much on the Theory of Teaching (which is what the Germans meant by Pedagogics) and far too little on the practice - unfortunately still true today.

In British English, to study pedagogics would mean to study to be an incompetent teacher. (What was I saying about Teacher Training?)

The Shorter Oxford gives both the insulting and the 'training' definition though I would agree that the insult is the more usual in UK.

More interestingly S.O. quotes Samuel Peyps as describing someone as "A Welsh schoolmaster, a good Scholar, but a very pedagogue", which seems to cover both meanings.

Now, am I right in recollecting Og, that you have some Welsh ancestry?;)
 
Dee Why

Dysprositos was originally a Greek word meaning hard to get at. So how did it get into English and what has it to do with the Northern Beach and suburb in Sydney, named Dee Why.

When the surveyors in Australia (and in the US I believe) made their earliest surveys it was often difficult or too expensive to examine the more inaccessible areas in detail, so they wrote on their maps in many placesDy. The early Australian settlers, (convicts mainly) were generally not known for their Greek scholarship, and simply adopted the surveyors abbreviation as the name of one of their settlements but re-spelt it, Dee Why.

In 1868 a new metal was discovered which was so hard to extract that it was called Dysprosium. The Frenchman who found it went by the name of Paul Emile Le Coq de Boldbaudran of Cognac. ( I swear, I'm not making this up!)

Generally regarded as a useless discovery, it has suddenly become immensely valuable in the manufacture of high strength magnets, nuclear reactor components and hybrid fueled cars.
 
...

Now, am I right in recollecting Og, that you have some Welsh ancestry?;)

Born in Wales, but of mainly English descent except for a Welsh grandmother (Everyone should have a Welsh grandmother!), and some Scots sometime before the 16th Century.

The "born in Wales" was caused by the impact of WWII on my father's employment. My brother was born in Surrey, my sister in Newcastle upon Tyne.

We would all have been born in the City of London, as most of our ancestors were, except that both my father and mother's families had to leave because their homes were made untenable by a bomb dropped by a Zeppelin in 1915.

Og
 
Personal history is as interesting as global history to me. Thank you for sharing some of yours, Og. And thank you, Ishtat, for asking and enlightening all of us about Dee Why. The Frenchman's name almost sounds lewd. I may have to use that Le Cog de Boldbaudran name in Book Two, just for fun.

doppelganger - noun a ghostly counterpart of a living person
 
Personal history is as interesting as global history to me. Thank you for sharing some of yours, Og. And thank you, Ishtat, for asking and enlightening all of us about Dee Why. The Frenchman's name almost sounds lewd. I may have to use that Le Cog de Boldbaudran name in Book Two, just for fun.

doppelganger - noun a ghostly counterpart of a living person

The Doppelganger figures often in literature, and Poe's tale of a double - William Wilson - was reinterpreted quite erotically in a short film by Louis Malle. It appears as the second in a trilogy entitled Histoires extrordinaire, following an erotic offering by Roger Vadim with Jane Fonda. I know you like that pairing from Barbarella, Allard.


[errata from earlier post. I wrongly identified Phoebe Zeitgeist as a German comic; it was actually American. The collected cartoons from Evergreen Review were published as a book by Grove Press in 1968]
 
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Thank you, Tio, for your wonderful attention to detail.

I knew this word, but wondered about its origin and was surprised to find this entry above the more commonly known one;

halcyon - noun 1. a bird identified with the Kingfisher and held in ancient legend to nest at sea about the time of winter solstice and to calm the waves during incubation 2. KINGFISHER
 

preantipenultimate • n & adj., fourth from last.






Another from the 6,000-entries-long word list that is Mrs. Byrnes's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure and Preposterous Words by Josefa Heifitz Byrne ( Seacaucus, N.J. 1974 ). As a concert pianist, composer, daughter of Jascha Heifetz and word maven, Mrs. Byrnes qualifies as a polymath . Over the years, I've bought many books; few brought as much pleasure as this one.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jascha_Heifetz

 
Here is a very interesting fact I learned from Mark Twain's Other Woman about Bromidia, a popular all-purpose medicine used in those days.

Bromidia - an extremely potent tonic containing extract of Cannabis indica (marijuana), 10 percent alcohol, chloral hydrate (a sedative and hypnotic), extract of hyoscyamus (a powerful narcotic and hypnotic), and potassium bromide (a salt used as an anticonvulsant and sedative). The recommended dosage was a stout eight of a fluid ounce every hour until sleep occurred.
 
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