PM a daffynition for cladistics, if it please you.

So far just one - and a very good one at that! How about a dozen more!

Mine's in, and thanks for doing this!

Come one, come all! Geoff needs some more daffynitions!

If you are new, please come up with a daffynition for this word; that is, a silly definition that you think will trick us into picking it. Send it to Geoff as a PM, and then Geoff will post all the daffynitions, along with the real definition, and we'll all choose which we think is the correct definition. Beware, though, arnie is good in this game!

Mine's in!

WM

I've got five so far. Still waiting for some long-time players to chime in, and invite newcomers to PM me with a daffy, though plausible, idea of what this word might mean. No fair looking it up, though!

I assume one of them is mine

I've sent one but I don't know whether it got through.

I don't see it, RE. Please try again.

Bob, indeed one is yours!

Sent again.

Now we're cooking! I've heard from zmježd, arnie, Kalleh, Bob Hale, Wordmatic, Richard English, Proofreader, and Stella. I'll give it until Sunday morning PST (GMT-8) before posting, just in case Caterwauller or someone else donates a daffynition.

Just a little PR, that's all we needed.

Who's little and from Puerto Rico?

The daffynitions, and the real cladistics:

1. It's what your body measurements change to with corrective underwear i.e. vital cladistics.

2. Having a propensity to make fun of those fully-clothed.

3. A minted coin replica which has a plating of gold worth nothing.

4. Nude by choice.

5. An unpleasant odor from hay-filled mattresses.

6. The study of clumsiness.

7. In ballistics, the study of the penetrative capability of projectiles.

8. The science of fashion as practiced by those who reveal no bare flesh.

9. A form of intense meditation among austere orders of monks, consisting of simultaneously counting the individual threads of their garments while repeating the Cladis Deus prayer until the count is complete.

10. The scientific study of lava flows in active volcanoes.

11. A classification system based on the phylogenetic relationships and evolutionary history of groups of organisms.

12. Pertaining to the habit of wearing clothes in the bathtub.

13. The study of certain lichens

14. The study of armoured marine warfare.

Whew! That's quite a bunch! Make your best guess except for the two of you who'll surely know it! Arnie and Z, please wait until everyone else has guessed so as not to make it too easy!

After much consultation with persons of higher learning, I have established to my own satisfaction that the correct answer is number thirteen. This decision was reached while in the local KFC eating finger-lichen chicken.

My computer problem seems to have been fixed so I will name the next town as soon as this game ends, to avoid both competition and limerick overload.

Do you live in Lichtenstein?

I once thought of moving there but decided it was not to my lichen.

I once skidded while out mountain bikin'
When I ran my bike over a lichen.
I wound up in the grass
With six spokes up my ass
And a lump from the handlebar strikin'.

Discounting all the ones that are obvious puns on "clad", I'll go for the one that appears to be genuine gibberish - number 11, please.

Eleven for me too, please.

I'll go for #10, then.

WM

I've held off for as long as I dare ... eleven, please.

May I have eleven, please?

Well, it was between 10 and 11 for me, and since I see that arnie and z chose 11, I'll chose 10.

That was too obvious! #11 it is. I'll post who submitted what this evening. Cladistics also applies to linguistics. Z, how about filling us in on this application, either here or in the linguistics 101 thread?

Was I the only dumb one?

Cladistics also applies to linguistics

It's not just linguistics, stemmatics (a branch of literary criticism), also uses the tree metaphor for branching as classification. Greek κλαδος (klados) means 'branch'. In fact, trees for describing the genetic relationship between languages was used before Hennig coined the word cladistics (aka phylogenetic systematics) in 1966. I have a book Biological Metaphor and Cladistic Classification: an Interdisciplinary Perspective by Henry M Hoenigswald and Linda F Wiener.

It is!
I genuinely just guessed because it sounded like actual authentic gibberish. I must use that technique again.

\'ve opened the new limerick game so don't forget to look for it.

#1 was from Stella; ##s 2 - 5 were Proofreader's; 6 and 7 were mine; #8 was RE's, #9 was from Wordmatic; # 10 was Bob Hale's; #11 was, as most of you knew or guessed, the real thing; #12 was Kalleh's; then arnie's and z's.

Now, have we a word that might actually fool someone besides Proofreader and Kalleh?

I'm prepared to offer the word "corvus" which I think and hope an unknown quality.

The only words that could fool them would be actual made-up gibberish. I like Bob's gibberish detection method, though it probably won't always work. Still, it sounds like an actual strategy!

WM

quote:

Was I the only dumb one?

Nope, I am included in that group, too.

Hey, proof, start a new thread with your new word. Let's keep it going!

OK, Proofreader, go ahead and corv us!