Can anybody tell me the exact meaning of the word 'barberic'? Google and my dictionaries have disappointed me so far. Thanks!

I have never heard of the word. It sounds as though it should be someone who acts like a barber (maybe he has a striped pole outside his house;-)

In what context did you see or hear the word?

And welcome to our board, by the way.

barberic

It's not in OneLook, so, I looked through the first few pages of 43.5 ghits (Google hits), and it seems it can be two things: (1) a misspelling for barbaric and (2) a surname of Slavic origin, sometimes spelled with a diacritic over the ć.

Thistle, welcome to Wordcraft!

Where did you see the word used?

Surely zm is right and it's a misspelling

Thistle are you still with us

I just hate it when this forum has a power outage, as occurred earlier in the week. I think it tends to scare newbies away, and the slowness tends to beget more slowness because there's nothing to respond to.

Hopefully we'll be back to normal soon. [I know, the prescriptivists won't approve of that use of "hopefully." I wonder what the alternative is.]

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
Hopefully we'll be back to normal soon. [I know, the prescriptivists won't approve of that use of "hopefully." I wonder what the alternative is.]

Not a prescriptivist, but I prefer the simple, present tense:
I hope we'll be back to normal soon. I wish we all shared your constructive powers of self-criticism.

quote:

Not a prescriptivist, but I prefer the simple, present tense:
I hope we'll be back to normal soon.

"Hopefully" shares with the passive voice construction "It is to be hoped" the characteristic of being unattributable.

"I hope we'll..." means that the hope is your own.

It can sometimes be a good thing to distance oneself from a stance - and the passive voice is a wonderful device for doing this.

quote:

It can sometimes be a good thing to distance oneself from a stance - and the passive voice is a wonderful device for doing this.

Especially if someone has something to hide, or is fearful of asserting their beliefs.

"I want to live to be 100," said Bob, Hopefully.

Well, I respectfully disagree, and I like this analysis by AHD:

"Usage Note: Writers who use hopefully as a sentence adverb, as in Hopefully the measures will be adopted, should be aware that the usage is unacceptable to many critics, including a large majority of the Usage Panel. It is not easy to explain why critics dislike this use of hopefully. The use is justified by analogy to similar uses of many other adverbs, as in Mercifully, the play was brief or Frankly, I have no use for your friend. And though this use of hopefully may have been a vogue word when it first gained currency back in the early 1960s, it has long since lost any hint of jargon or pretentiousness for the general reader. The wide acceptance of the usage reflects popular recognition of its usefulness; there is no precise substitute. Someone who says Hopefully, the treaty will be ratified makes a hopeful prediction about the fate of the treaty, whereas someone who says I hope (or We hope or It is hoped) the treaty will be ratified expresses a bald statement about what is desired. Only the latter could be continued with a clause such as but it isn't likely. ·It might have been expected, then, that the initial flurry of objections to hopefully would have subsided once the usage became well established. Instead, critics appear to have become more adamant in their opposition. In the 1969 Usage Panel survey, 44 percent of the Panel approved the usage, but this dropped to 27 percent in our 1986 survey. (By contrast, 60 percent in the latter survey accepted the comparable use of mercifully in the sentence Mercifully, the game ended before the opponents could add another touchdown to the lopsided score.) It is not the use of sentence adverbs per se that bothers the Panel; rather, the specific use of hopefully in this way has become a shibboleth."

As they say, there is no precise substitute for the use of "hopefully" to mean "to make a hopeful prediction." I think the "Usage Panel" is all wet on this one, and I will continue to use it that way.

I looks rather like the editors of the AHD disagree with the feelings of their panel, reading between the lines.

the editors of the AHD disagree with the feelings of their panel

Understandable given the origins of the AHD.

quote:

James Parton, the owner of the history magazine American Heritage, was appalled by the "permissiveness" of Webster's Third, published in 1961, and tried to buy the G. and C. Merriam Company so he could undo the changes. When that failed, he contracted with Houghton to publish a new dictionary. The AHD was edited by William Morris and relied on a usage panel of 105 writers, speakers, and eminent persons for usage notes.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Kalleh:
Well, I respectfully disagree, and I like this analysis by AHD:


And, I have learnt something too: the meaning of AHD; although like many gratuitous acronyms it causes more confusion than it's worth.
Google gives 3,790,000 entries. I found inter alia :
[LIST]Advanced Hull Dynamics.
American Hospital Directory.
Australian Height Datum.
Anti Handling Device.
American Health Decisions.
Academy of Human Development etc. etc.

quote:

Especially if someone has something to hide, or is fearful of asserting their beliefs.

Like any device, the passive voice can be used for good, less good, or bad motives.

the meaning of AHD

You could've clicked on my link right above your posting.

quote:

Originally posted by zmjezhd:
the meaning of AHD

You could've clicked on my link right above your posting.

Yes, I did. But AHD was introduced by Kalleh before your worthy contribution. I was bitching at the common use of acronyms, many of which are immediately obscure or refer to diverse phrases.

But AHD was introduced by Kalleh before your worthy contribution.

But you posted after my humble entry.