Vocabulary

[CelestialBody]

 

[fmp]

vocabulary

I really enjoyed this thread. Joined-up thinking, words of more than one syllabub....It seems to me, however, that terms such as conservative and liberal are used in US English as synonyms for any other ill-defined insult. No?

Pope:" True art is nature to advantage dressed
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed"

 

[Grrrn38]

Re: If there's one thing I hate........

And there ain't too many...... It's the fucking New York Times. A bigger journalistic stick up the collective ass of so many primadona (how do you spell that?) hacks - I've never seen.

Sorry - but USA Today communicates to the masses better and quicker.

I mean, what the fuck is a newspaper for? Pure, simple, easy to read news. Not some "thing" egos begin to mistake for an art form. Journalism is not art!!!! It's a fucking vocation.

And that's exactly what's wrong with Journalism today - everyone's forgotten that fact. Apparently except for the young'uns - they know it's a vocation - all they have to do is look at the entry level salaries - when the do, they know it's a vocation.

So what do they decide to learn instead? The fucking law!!! Another vocation that currently is mistaken by its practitioners as an art form. Ah - but it pays so much better than responsibly reporting the news. So why not? Why not be a lawyer. Fact is most of'em (the students) are majoring in law and minoring in Journalism.

Oh - God help us!!!

And all this from a guy who lives in Manhattan and actually works in the newspaper business.

You had me until you championed USA Today. I agree that NYT isn't for everyone, but USAT is it's polar opposite. There's a reason it's called "the McPaper". It's part of the dumbing down of our citizenry, like TV news; the sinister part of it is that both lull people into thinking they're well informed. (And then some of them go out and vote based on that info!) Almost any city's daily paper is a good alternative to USAT -- and that includes the other Gannetts (which are also pretty bad).

 

[Oliver Clozoff]

This is a great thread and as I often do with the great threads, I've come to it so late that most of my opinions have already been expressed, but I have just a couple of things to add.

I don't believe the the evolution of language creates superfluous words. Every word that's ever been created, I imagine, is born because its creator had no other word to express his thought (or at least express it as simply as one can with a single word).

With a new word, its creator can convey a new meaning to any and all who learn the word, opening the listener up to a new aspect of reality perhaps never even imagined before. While one may go to a thesaurus to look up synonyms, no word is ever a perfect synonym for another. They each possess unique and often subtle shades of meaning. In that way, words perform the role of enlarging the world we live in simply by our learning them.

The analogy that comes to mind is of color. If you were given the task of painting a landscape would you prefer the Crayola box of 128 colors or just the basic 8? Or better still, would you want a pallette of paints where you could mix the colors together in order to approximate the colors of nature?

I know what I would choose.

 

[Gaucho]

Horrors!

That's cool, riff. I have a vocabulary that reflects my channeling Dr. Johnson (the lexicographer, not the dildo manufacturer).

You mean they're not one and the same? Damn, I could've sworn...

You see, one time I was in this porn shop in San Diego and they were just unwrapping the latest and greatest device from the good Doc, called an "Accu-Jack". Ever hear of one of those? This "device" had a long, plastic tube that slipped over your cock with a pump attached and provided, so the box described, "hours of perfect sucking action".

As they were just setting it up, the guy asked me if I'd like to try it out and, being young and stupid, I said yes. Well, to make a long story short, we went into the back room and I got it on all right, only it got stuck and I couldn't get the thing off. And the owner came in and tried to get it unstuck and he was getting all blue in the face and cursing and using, well, words that I'd never heard before and that's why I figured that this Doc Johnson had to be the same...

Why is everyone staring at me?

 

[Cheyenne]

Re: Horrors!

Well, to make a long story short, we went into the back room and I got it on all right, only it got stuck and I couldn't get the thing off. And the owner came in and tried to get it unstuck and he was getting all blue in the face and cursing and using, well, words that I'd never heard before and that's why I figured that this Doc Johnson had to be the same...

You think you're going to get away with not telling us the end of the story? I want to know if you were too big for the contraption and that's why it wouldn't come off. And how you finally DID get it off. The contraption, that is. Not you.