I have often seen the word turgid used where I though the author meant turbid. Turbid means cloudy as with disturbed sediment, etc. Turgid means something under pressure, as an infected boil, a balloon full of water or a hot sausage about to be pierced with a fork. In a Colin Dexter mystery, the author describes a river as turbid and turgid. Clearly he intended to use the word turgid, but can a river be turgid? Even in a narrow canyon, it is open at the top, and though it is under great pressure, it is not in an enclosed pressure, as for a boil. What do you think?

I think you are absolutely right

I also think you will probably get hundreds if not tens of thousands of Ghits with "turgid" used to mean turbid

Finally, if we live long enough I positively predict that this "new" meaning will eventually appear in Webster's Collegiate

The bottom line is that by 2098 any word whatever can be used to mean anything whatever

quote:

Originally posted by dalehileman:
The bottom line is that by 2098 any word whatever can be used to mean anything whatever

That's a very precise prediction. Personally I think it will take much less time: by 2012 no one will be able to understand anyone else.

I find it to be much that way even today

quote:

Originally posted by dalehileman:
I find it to be much that way even today

And I'm quite certain that everyone you speak to agrees.

And I'm quite certain that everyone you speak to agrees.

How can they understand him? Or how does he understand himself?

...to be sure, but there's precedent. The question is, which is to be master. Don't you recall your Alice Through the Looking Glass"? Humpty Dumpty says, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - - neither more nor less.”

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all."

As my Dad, rather inexplicably, says "Don't teach your granny to suck eggs."

There's only one Alice expert around here and that's me. I'd say that dale's use of language is more akin to Humpty's creative explanation of Jabberwocky. The words are all (in reality) invented and Humpty comes up with his definitions that, when examined, still make no real sense. For example the first verse, as translated by Humpty, comes out as

It was four O'clock in the afternoon, and the lithe, slimy, corkscrew-like lizards went round and round like a gyroscope whilst making holes like a gimlet in the grass plot surrounding the sun dial [which dale would insist doesn't need to be circular ]. The tall shabby birds, which had mop like feathers, were flimsy and miserable while the green pigs, who were far from home, made a bellowing, whistling, sneezing sound.

Incidentally, for the historically minded, Dodgson wrote the first verse many years earlier as a "Stanza of Anglo Saxon Poetry".
Some of his interpretation of it was similar to Humpty's but "tove" was described as "a species of Badger [with] smooth white hair, long hind legs and short horns like a stag, [living] chiefly on cheese" while "gyre" was given as "scratch like a dog"; "wabe" as "the side of a hill"; "mimsy" was "unhappy";"borogove" was "an extinct species of parrot [who] had no wings, beaks turned up and made their nests under sundials and lived on veal";"rath" was "a species of land turtle, head erect, mouth like a shark, forelegs curved out so that it walked on its knees, smooth green body, lived on swallows and oysters"; "outgrabe" was "the past tense of outgribe, squeak.

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You may sit back and applaud my erudition.

I have never heard or read turgid where turbid was meant. Perhaps you're thinking of torpid?

Turgid has been used figuratively since the 18th century to mean overblown, pompous, or inflated.

What Jesse Sheidlower has to say.

I took a look at the the first 30 or 40 ghits for turgid, and most are dictioanry entries or people complaining about the "problem". "Turbid prose" gets 72 ghits, and "turgid prose" gets 32.9K ghits. So, it seems like a very few people do comfuse the two words.

zm: If you mean to say that sometimes you don't understand me I would hope you will submit instances that I may clarify, in order to improve my ability to express myself

I have been so criticized from many quarters but seldom are examples proffered

Bob: No, I had reference not to sundials but to keyboards

I have been so criticized from many quarters but seldom are examples proffered

You could do no worse than rereading all of the threads on your use of the word algorithm.

Yes, Dale, the "algorithm" threads have confused me, as well. I think I pointed that out to you quite clearly in some other thread.

I haven't ever seen turbid and turgid confused, either. Remember, you can find nearly anything on Google. When you point out Google hits, you must click them (like zmj did) to find out where they are coming from. If you begin to do that, I think it would help a great deal.

I can only assume you were being ironic (the word of the day recently!) with this post? "The bottom line is that by 2098 any word whatever can be used to mean anything whatever"

quote:

Originally posted by BobHale:
There's only one Alice expert around here and that's me.

I couldn't deny that, even if I tried with both hands.

k: I may have have exaggerated just a little

zm: If you will go to another board I'm not sure if I'm allowed to mention you will find just this morning an exposition on "algorithm" by Ken Greenwald (who is much smarter than either Laverne or I) comfirming my contention that not only can the word be used to mean the procedure from which the code is derived but the code itself

Thus as I might have said, anyone who can defend the use of "drive" to mean a semiconductor chip on a keychain could surely not object to a spellcheck routine being clalled an algorithm