What with millions of words to choose form, you wouldn't think the English language needs any more. You'd be wrong. Here are a few new ones that dictionaries should start making room for.
Adicake: To give up the last piece of cake to someone else. Accidue: Small pieces of broken glass, metal and other debris that remain at the scene of an accident. Calorosity: The desire while dieting and eating out to look over the desert menu and still possess the willpower to not order any dessert. Flabbygast: To be overcome with astonishment that despite excessive dieting, you haven't lost a pound. Manorexic: Characterizing a male who eats an extremely large amount of food yet gains no weight. Nostralgia: A reminder of one's past brought on by a familiar or more recently unfamiliar smell. Plaquack: The one mysterious dentist out of five who doesn't provide advice such as recommending sugarless gum for his patients who chew gum.
My son has several books of such words. They are called "Sniglets." One of my favorietes is a word for the momentary pause of rain on your windshield when you go under a bridge. That is a "downpause." Another favorite is the name of the reading material that you keep in the smallest room of your house. That is "S___ erature."
I was looking for a thread where I could post about a new word I learned and came upon this old one with people we haven't seen in awhile, including missann. I wonder where Myth is these days. Sean posts in my Blog once in awhile, but I've not seen him here in a long time.
I came across a word that is new to me. It was in a book written by someone from the U.K. so maybe it's used there more frequently than here (or maybe I've just not heard it before). It is: Festschrift and means "a collection of writings published in honor of a scholar." Its origin is German from words meaning "celebration" and "writing." Interestingly, the author uses the word in a cynical way, saying that in order to explain this person's work it would require a "festschrift."
How have you seen the word used? Is it often used cynically?
It's pretty common in academia, at least here in the States and in linguistics. I own a fair number of them. The meaning is rather straight-forward, as you have glossed it, but any word can be used cynically or sarcastically.
I was going to suggest Fettschrift (literally fat + writing), but that is a German word meaning boldface. The alternative, Dickschrift is still available.
It's pretty common in academia, at least here in the States and in linguistics
Well, as an academic and being from the U.S., I haven't heard it. Perhaps it's not used as much in medical/nursing academia, or maybe I've just not seen it. Surely we have plenty of scholars who have published a lot (Patricia Benner from UCSF comes to mind) who could be described this way.
I did hear the word "festschrift" used once, at a retirement party for one of our professors, a chemist, who was also a poet, and he'd had a festschrift published in his honor. But I'd forgotten it until I read this. So to me, it's pretty obscure, but then, I wasn't an academic!
Wordmatic
Posts: 1390 | Location: Near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
That's an interesting combination...chemistry and poet. I bet I'd like him!
Z, I wasn't doubting you (nor do I ever!). I was just saying that I hadn't heard of it. I suppose that makes me look rather ignorant, but what are you going to do?
I suppose that makes me look rather ignorant, but what are you going to do?
I don't think so, I was just saying I'd heard of it, and I thought it was a common word in academia. There are plenty of words I'm ignorant of, but that's why Johnson and Webster wrote their dictionaries.
How about a simpler word--tribute? Or homage? Shades of meaning with these I'm not apprehending?
Yes, because as the definition goes (e.g., in the OED) "A collection of writings forming a volume presented to a scholar or savant on the occasion of his attaining a certain age or period in his career." That's a pretty specific thing that tribute does not quite cover. The people with the writing of Festschriften all knows what it means and folks who do not know the word can do what I and other English speakers do when we run across a word we don't know: look it up in a dictionary.
