There's a columnist for my local paper back in England. I sometimes find him mildly amusing and often find him (especially politically) intensely aggravating. However this gave me a moment's pause.
quote:
A COUPLE of readers have consulted their dictionaries to discover that “diarise,” a word I scoffed at on Tuesday, actually exists. I will make three points. 1) If you need to use a dictionary to find it, then it's not a proper word; 2) My dictionary describes it as archaic; and 3) After 47 years in a profession which lives, breathes and exists around diaries, I've never heard it. Nonetheless, “diarise” does exist and I have takenonboardarised your comments.
Phrased as a joke, but after seeing his stuff for many, many years, I'm not sure he doesn't mean exactly what he said.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
Diarise/diarize is listed in M-W and Collins English Dictionary Collins English Dictionary, as well as in the OED Online. The first citation in the OED is 1827 and the last is 2008. It's placed in the Frequency Band 2:
quote:
Band 2
Band 2 contains words which occur fewer than 0.01 times per million words in typical modern English usage. These are almost exclusively terms which are not part of normal discourse and would be unknown to most people. Many are technical terms from specialized discourses. Examples taken from the most frequently attested part of the band include decanate, ennead, and scintillometer (nouns), geogenic, abactinal (adjectives), absterge and satinize (verbs). In the lower frequencies of the band, words are uniformly strange or exotic, e.g. smother-kiln, haver-cake, and sprunt[/i] (nouns), hidlings, [i]unwhigged, supersubtilized, and gummose (adjectives), pantle, cloit, and stoothe (verbs), lawnly, acoast, and acicularly (adverbs), whethersoever (conjunction).
About 45% of all non-obsolete OED entries are in Band 2.
I don't understand that last sentence. there is a table which explains it, but I don't understand it either. Can anybody explain it to me?
quote:
The following table shows the frequency range for each band, and the percentage of non-obsolete OED entries assigned to each band: Band Frequency per million words % of entries in OED 8 > 1,000 0.02% 7 100 – 999 0.18% 6 10 – 99 1% 5 1 – 9.9 4% 4 0.1 – 0.99 11% 3 0.01 – 0.099 20% 2 < 0.0099 45% 1 - 18%
How many of those words did you know? I don't know any of them, though haver-cake sounds familiar from somewhere. (I've already thought of the pun "Haver-cake and eat it too.") There are a few that I can deduce the meaning of. I haven't looked any of them up yet, so I don't know if my deductions are correct.
How many can you use in a sentence? A meaningful sentence, not a nonsense one.
I would think of [[i]diaris/ze]/i] as the equivalent of modern-day blog, a known noun turned into a verb, of which process one may approve or not.
As to the common nature of the words offered, they vary. I suspect some are obsolete and obscure (decanate, geogenic, gummose think of the syphilitic lesion "gumma"), some look highly local even in their prime, (smotherkin, havercake, sprunt), some look as though they are uncommon but whose meaning could be deduced, (unwhigged, supersubtilize, whethersoever). Ennead and scintillometer I would guess belong in the "second 20,000" category.
I'll attempt a pun of my own for you: "Does the number of Ministers in your Cabinet make it an Ennead, Frau Merkel?" "Nein!" (actually there are 14, I think)
Colin Baker writes a column in a local paper. A few years ago he wrote this:
quote:
It is a 191 years since Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice, which came second to Lord of the Rings in the BBC's search for the best novel. I don't believe that many people would contend that the teaching and understanding of English has benefited from the passing years. Jane Austen and her readers knew the difference between "that " and "which". It is subtle but important. Nobody cares much now.
As the Doctor said in The Ultimate Foe, "If you could compile this monstrosity, it follows that I should be able to unravel it."
"With great energy; but it is always a subject which makes a lady energetic." (Pride and Prejudice chapter 6)
The former was divided between admiration of the brilliancy which exercise had given to her complexion (Pride and Prejudice chapter 7)
there was a solidity in his reflections which often struck her (Pride and Prejudice chapter 22)
At work we use diarise quite often. I'd mention that the app Americans call the calendar we call the diary.
When making an appointment I'd say "I'll diarise that". Before the advent of computers a calendar would usually hang on the wall and have a pretty picture as a decoration; a diary would be a book that the owner would write in to a) list appointments for a particular day or b) describe the day's events.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Originally posted by arnie: At work we used diarise quite often. I'd mention that the app Americans call the calendar we call the diary.
When making an appointment I'd say "I'll diarise that". Before the advent of computers a calendar would usually hang on the wall and have a pretty picture as a decoration; a diary would be a book that the owner would write in to a) list appointments for a particular day or b) describe the day's events.
Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I would think of [[i]diaris/ze]/i] as the equivalent of modern-day blog, a known noun turned into a verb, of which process one may approve or not.
Yes, or Facebook entries.
As an aside, My grandmother use to diarize every day, including keeping track of her beloved baseball team and recording the weather. She had years and years of diaries, but then as she aged got rid of them one day. Too bad!
