Hello and welcome! This is the Pompous Ass Words site, a place dedicated to identifying words that shouldn't be used on the grounds that doing so makes you sound like a pompous ass. It was partly inspired by the American Heritage College Dictionary's list of "100 Words Every High School Graduate and Their Parents Should Know." When I first saw it I thought, there have to be at least 100 words everyone should know about and never use. So I figured hey, let's start putting that list together.
Also on this site is a fabulous variety of commentary and unique items, including what I believe may be the world's first and only self-referencing hyperlink. So without further ado let's get started.
A Pompous Ass Word (PAW) is an uncommonly understood word that is synonymous with a commonly understood one. For example, tendentious is a PAW because it could be substituted with biased with no loss of meaning. On the other hand, ersatz isn't because it isn't synonymous with imitation - it implies a lesser quality as well. And while annoying words (proactive), logically incorrect words (irregardless) and trendy words (blog) are all worthy of censure, they aren't PAWs and so aren't eligible for the list. Finally, we all know every rule has its exception.
It also helps if the word is used in some prominent place. If it shows up in the New York Times or a popular novel that's better than a reference to your cousin's term paper. I prefer PAWs that get dropped in wide circulation for the whole world to see, though it's not necessary. Starting with "inchoate" I've added an "M-W says" line to include a link to the Merriam-Webster entry and its first definition as a reference.
That's why I'm here, my friend. Send me an email to paw (at) pompousasswords dot com and let me know (mail may be quoted by name unless you say otherwise). I also have a StumbleUpon page since I've had lots of traffic from there. See the "My Blog" section for short posts during the week and feedback from email. (The reviews have been fabulous too.) My goal is to get to 100 PAWs and I'll need your help to do it. If you want to defend a word on the list please have a look at the why it's a PAW page to make sure you aren't recycling an argument I'm not persuaded by.
Word: guignol
Synonymous with: Sensational or dramatic.
M-W says: Guignol, it turns out, isn't in the free Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, where you just searched. However, it is available in our premium Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary. To see that definition in the Unabridged Dictionary, start your FREE trial now.
Dictionary.com says: an entertainment with sensational or horrifying dramatic intent; also called Grand Guignol
Example: Sady Doyle at http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/08/mad-mens-very-modern-sexism-problem/60788/:
Of course the 1960s were sexist. But something about the show's Grand Guignol presentation of discrimination and contempt for women makes it feel unfamiliar: Our own lives, after all, are nowhere near this dramatic.Sent by James Cornelius.
Word: antediluvian
Synonymous with: old fashioned, antiquated or primitive
M-W says: 1 : of or relating to the period before the flood described in the Bible. 2 a : made, evolved, or developed a long time ago...b : extremely primitive or outmoded
Example: Gene Lyons at http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/07/14/lyons_washington_post_columnist/index.html:
I've always adhered to the quaint view that journalists should avoid disseminating false information, particularly on the opinion pages. An argument that can't be won without cheating should properly be lost.
Contemporary political journalism, alas, has very little to do with such antediluvian values.
Word: avuncular
Synonymous with: Nothing precisely, but come on. Fatherly or grandfatherly would probably work in most cases. This is one of those words (like "prelapsarian" below) that doesn't have a precise synonym but can be easily written around in an
accessible way.
M-W says: 1 : of or relating to an uncle. 2 : suggestive of an uncle especially in kindliness or geniality
Example: Bob Mondello at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128007714:
Cuba's Raul Castro adopts a modest avuncular tone, pleasantly deflecting Stone's description of Cuba as the fount of leftism in Latin America and asserting that other nations are simply finding their own identity.
Word: protean
Synonymous with: changing or variable
M-W says: 1 : of or resembling Proteus in having a varied nature or ability to assume different forms. 2 : displaying great diversity or variety : versatile
Example: Jeffrey Wasserstrom at http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1994133,00.html:
The Chinese protest surge that ended in bloodshed exactly 21 years ago today near central Beijing's Tiananmen Square continues to exert a powerful hold on Western thinking about China. The very term "Tiananmen" has taken on a powerful and protean life of its own in the realm of political analogy: Last July, for example, commentators wondered whether Tehran had experienced a "Tiananmen" moment when post-election protests erupted into violence in the Iranian capital, and the specter of a "Thai Tiananmen" was raised this year when thousands of anti-government protestors clashed with the military in central Bangkok. In spite of this notoriety and the fact that major events in the original Tiananmen played out on television screens around the world, much has been forgotten — and misremembered — about the demonstrations that took place in April and May of that year and the brutal crackdown that culminated in the June 4th massacre.
Word: equipoise
Synonymous with: balance or equilibrium
M-W says: 1 : a state of equilibrium ; 2 : counterbalance
Example: David Brooks at http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/the-calm-cool-and-collected-president/?hp:
Sometimes people fault Obama for being too cool. I can see their point 5 percent of the time, but 95 percent of the time, it's good to have a president with equipoise.
Word: surfeit
Synonymous with: excess
M-W says: 1 : an overabundant supply : excess
Example: Bill Gross at http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/IO/2010/Lovin+Spoonful+-+May+2010+IO.htm:
There's a surfeit of instructionals on the secret to investing, ranging from Investing for Dummies to The Intelligent Investor.
Word: attenuate
Synonymous with: weaken
M-W says: 1 : reduced especially in thickness, density, or force. 2 : tapering gradually usually to a long slender point
Example: Marc Ambinder at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/04/four-cheers-for-the-washington-post/38811/:
I've got no stake in the matter, but four cheers to the Washington Post for winning four Pulitzer Prizes. It's a needed shot in the arm for a publication that has lost considerable respect inside the Beltway over the past several years, as top correspondents have fled to other papers and as the editorial brain-trust allowed the paper's influential status as Washington's pace-setter to attenuate.
Word: legerdemain
Synonymous with: Deception (or sleight of hand).
M-W says: 1 : sleight of hand. 2 : a display of skill or adroitness
Example: Michael Barone's headline at http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/When-legerdemain-is-used-to-pass-an-unpopular-bill-8675305-79940422.html:
When legerdemain is used to pass an unpopular billHe uses it again in the article, just in case you thought he was done in by a headline writer.
Word: obstreperous
Word: percipience
Word: contretemps
Word: quiescent
Word: feckless
Word: folderol
Word: scrofulous
Word: pertinacious
Word: nonce
Word: febrile
Word: mélange Word: desultory Zimmerman singled in his first two at-bats Tuesday as the
Nationals settled into what initially appeared to be another desultory evening. Word: vapid With due respect to Gen. Petraeus, this is just vapid. Word: assiduous Each and every individual there has to fulfill his or her part
of the loan-approval process in such a way that nobody will say to them one day,
"Why did you approve this deadbeat?" They solve this problem by becoming
assiduous. Word:
hagiolatry The companion to media demonisation of the 'bad guys' is the
hagiolatry of Western leaders and apologetics for their crimes. Evelyn Callahan sent it in and adds: "Meaning, the worship of
saints, from Greek hágios 'holy'. I can't think of an exact synonym, but surely
something along the lines of 'idolization' or 'deification' or 'glorification'
gets the point across without making you sound like a pompous ass."
One caveat, though - I think "hagiography" belongs in any well developed
vocabulary, and if you know the definition of that you can probably infer
hagiolatry. Having said that, use "deification" instead! Word: nullipara As a nullipara, I have no personal stake in questions of whether
breast really is best, how long one should breast-feed, whether it's appropriate
to do so in public, etc. The adjective childless can easily substitute for the
noun nullipara. In the example above, replace "Being childless" with "As
a nullipara" and it works just fine. Word: cupidity Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of
your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Word: elide This is odd but somehow not surprising, because movies about
revolutions do tend to give pride of place to the fighting and to elide the
duller, often grimmer business of actually governing in a revolutionary way. Word: antipodal 1: of or relating to the antipodes
; specifically : situated at the opposite side of the earth or moon <an
antipodal meridian> <an antipodal continent> Example: Publishers
Weekly at
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6619813.html?industryid=47159: Alison, a plucky, boyish, observant child, set out to win Paul's
admiration by her accomplishments, and when she finally saw her biological
father again in 1973, it became clear that Alison and her antipodal sister,
Jenny, were each harboring the "mass of fantasy, jealousy, and longing that was
crucial and would define us." Lots of uses as a synonym for Australian, which is not pompous
so much as precious. Word: nugatory As we have seen, the bravery of the assassins does not count as
a virtue, and any minor virtues that they might have had - that they were good
to their mothers, for example, or that they were considerate brothers - are
nugatory by comparison with the evil they have wrought. For some reason it also makes me think of Willy Wonka.
Sent in by Evelyn Callahan, who on another matter writes: "Per se
may not be a PAW per se, but its widespread misuse as some kind of
softening qualifier is annoying and wrong. It's a favorite of pretentious
teenagers (a recent episode of South Park poked fun at this) but even otherwise
literate and intelligent people often get it incorrect. I misused it for years
before learning, with considerable embarrassment, of its actual definition.
Blame the lack of compulsory Latin education, I guess." Word: propinquity On last Thursday's CBS Evening News, facing the mild-as-milk
questioning of Katie Couric, the thriller from Wasilla should have been relieved
when the topics stopped being about the Bush doctrine or the thorny matter of
Russian-Alaskan propinquity and could be refocused instead on Sen. Barack Obama's weakness. Sent in by asbestos (the pseudonym, not the hazardous material). Word: pluvious The word is 'pluvious'. which is to say that it was raining
(both cats and dogs), sodden, soaked, drenched, awash, dripping, and even
pouring; in other words, very wet. "Aquarela do Brasil" ("Watercolor of Brazil"), also known in
English-speaking countries simply as "Brazil", is one of the most popular
Brazilian songs of all time, written by Ary Barroso on a pluvious night in 1939. Even though I am a staunch defender of the writer's right to
creative use and abuse of language -- at the risk of being tagged as a Pompous
Ass myself -- I find this one very hard to accept. Wikipedia, one imagines,
ought to be pretty utilitarian in its use of language; its purpose is to serve
readers with information. Zalmoxsis has sent in multiple examples and been a regular
correspondent. I started the PAW site before blogging software existed in
its present form, but if I had the ability to easily add contributors Zalmoxsis
would be one. So would
clemencedane. They both get it. A side note, since I just mentioned blogging. When I
railed against "trendy words (blog)" at the top I
was referring to the then-current practice of people starting what amounted to
public diaries and dumping into them whatever indulgent crap popped into the
writers' heads ("and then for lunch I had..."). Since
then new features like multiple authors, RSS feeds, comments and a few other
content management/publishing features have made the concept of a blog something
(potentially) distinctive and useful. In that sense it is no longer
trendy. (One of the reasons I've kept my name off the site is the
ego-mortifying belief that the Internet did not need another Web page all about
- me!) Word: lacuna This lack of full integration leaves some astonishing gaps in
IPS-1 management. If you want to generate a report summarizing data out of
IPS-1, it's your responsibility to set up your own reporting tool, such as
Crystal Reports, to work against the built-in database, or send events to an
external database for full control of archiving and retention. Another critical
lacuna is the lack of shared objects between firewall and IPS policies. Sent in by Jeff Fisher (who also sent in
sesquipedalian). Word: chrysostomatic The word is also used in what may be the most pompous paragraph
I have ever read (published by a major newspaper): The Divine Comedy, says Mandelstam, "in its most densely
foliated aspect is oriented toward authority, it is most densely rustling, most
concertante just when it is caressed by dogma, by canon, by the firm
chrysostomatic word. But the whole trouble is that in authority - or, to put it
more precisely, in authoritarianism - we see only insurance against error, and
we fail to perceive anything in that grandiose music of trustfulness, of trust,
in the nuances - delicate as an alpine rainbow - of probability and conviction,
which Dante has at his command." The syntax and absurdly ridiculous vocabulary make this
paragraph barely intelligible. Also, "Alpine Rainbow" sounds like a heavy metal band. Or the
organization name for gay marmots. Word: puissant Clinging to one another like leeches, Federer and the puissant
lefty, 22-year-old Nadal, traveled the longest of Wimbledon finals over so many
bumps that the audience was limp with suspense. I am, however, granting a dispensation for the
Manual of Puissant Skill at Arms. Word: amanuensis The artists begin with blank walls and, under close guidance
from members of the LeWitt atelier, the paints or pencil marks are applied with
strict precision, according to typed instructions left by the artist. While the
directions are specific, they sometimes allow for some marginal discretion by
the amanuensis. Clemencedane
and I had an extended correspondence on this one. She writes that my
example is "the more specialized definition. Usually it just means someone who
takes dictation. But in that meaning they are more like an interpreter of
written instructions. But it is still used as a fancy word for secretary in some
contexts." I looked around a little and here is the only example I found
where the "interpreter" definition is used -
http://www.abu.nb.ca/courses/NTIntro/2Pet.htm: Jerome explains the literary differences between 1 & 2 Peter by
postulating Peter's use of a different "interpreter" (interpres) or what we
would now call amanuenses, for each letter (Ep. Hedib. 120 Quaest. 11). The other examples I found make a distinction between
interpreter and transcriber. I think of transcribing as more or less automatic
repeating of exactly what you see/hear and associate it within a language, while
interpretation is across it. Under those circumstances the example reflects at
best an extremely rare and archaic use of the word. As always your
feedback is welcome1.
Zalmoxsis had the gall to take
me up on my offer and his thoughts are here. Word: atelier Word: niggardly David Howard, a top aide to D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams,
resigned last month after being criticized for saying the word "niggardly"
during a meeting with two city employees. Howard's resignation, and Williams's
decision to accept it, raised questions about whether the mayor acted too
hastily and fueled discussions across the nation about appropriate word usage. A
look at the key dates in the Howard situation: I first saw this as a candidate for the list in relation to a
scathing review of my site (see the "Reviews" section for the link). I
didn't especially want to publicize such a negative critique but I feel somewhat
obligated now. You see, once I added it people started going to it, and it
became popular in its own right on Stumble Upon - so much so that people started
stumbling upon it independently in large numbers. Since it links to my
site he has unknowingly driven thousands of people here and I certainly
appreciate the extra traffic. Consider this my "thank you" to him.
As an added humor bonus, the review in question is over a year and a half old
and well off his front page. As far as I know he is completely unaware of
the newfound popularity of his site; someone will probably alert him now but as
of mid-July 2008 the most recent item on the site is a thoroughly misanthropic
diatribe concerning the current Playboy Playmate of the Year. From May. As for the niggardly controversy, I don't have much sympathy for
Mr. Howard. Yes he used the word properly in context but it strikes me as
disingenuous to act surprised when as a white man he uses a word around African
Americans with such a strong resemblance to "nigger". People might not
pause and go to the reference section in the middle of a city budget meeting if
they hear a new word - they might just go with what they think they heard.
Considering how easily it could be confused with such an explosive epithet I
think it's reasonable to expect your average person's racial tripwire to trigger
and say "hey, maybe I should think of another word lest what I say be confused
with the n-word!" He shouldn't have lost his job over it nor should he
have been censured but I don't think the proper response is some kind of
haughty-but-defensive "well I'm sorry I have such a big vocabulary" attitude.
Under the circumstances his usage of the word indicates a somewhat stunted set
of social skills. (This incident was also brought to my attention this
week when zalmoxsis pointed me
to
this.) Word: casuistry I have a PAW for you: casuistry. I can't find it online, but I
came across it in Jon Krakauer's Under The Banner Of Heaven. (Krakauer, BTW,
should be on your next list - Pompous Ass Authors.) I poked around a little and the only definition I found used was
the second one. The first may be used in more formal contexts but for
everyday use that doesn't seem to be the case. Word: sesquipedalian With his usual sesquipedalian flair, George Will today takes us
on a tour of history, demonstrating the dangers of falling in love with our
presidents and assigning too much importance to their position as cultural and
societal icons. Sent in by Jeff Fisher. Word: inchoate It was more a diffuse collection of observations, anecdotes and
arguments than a tightly-focused narrative. But even in inchoate form, the
morning left me with the distinct impression that this book has the potential to
catapult Brooks into Thomas Friedman or Malcolm Gladwell territory - except that
unlike, say, Blink it'll actually be good as well. Word:
dépanneur The submission by Michel from Switzerland was bang-on with the
common usage of many of the words in French that become pompous in English. One
French word that has become a PAW, in my estimation, and one that only a few
English-speakers worldwide will recognize (and it is almost exclusively those
from Montreal) is dépanneur, meaning "convenience store" or "corner store". In
French, once sense of the verb dépanner means "to support" or "help out". So, in
time of need, one goes to the "support store" or dépanneur to buy a few things
to get them through until another trip to the grocery store. The word is used
quite often by Montreal anglos because the dépanneur also usually happens to be
the place most Montrealers buy their beer. To make matters worse, the word has
now been reduced to "dep", as it seems that both anglophone and francophone
Montrealers find the word dépanneur too long to pronounce in its entirety. It's probably best that a PAW not be regional because I'm sure
there are language quirks like this everywhere. This is the first of that type
I've received though, so it makes the list due to novelty as well. From
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/westisland/story.html?id=2552e8ef-e0b7-4401-bd21-cc0ff487db46: When he stopped near a dépanneur, an older boy demanded that he
hand over his ipod. Follow the link for the exciting conclusion! Word:
noisome The PAW that annoys me most is "noisome". You can find lots of
articles that use it on Google news. Here is one from
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/04/style/fkaoriweb.php: Now in Beijing the bicycles that for so long have been a
trademark of the city are almost gone, replaced by sleek cars and noisome
trucks. The word means smelly, or malodorous. What makes this word
particularly bad is that it looks like it should mean "noisy" rather than
"smelly." The "noisy" meaning often works in context. So it's not just pompous,
it's misleading. Word: soupçon With sophistication and a soupcon
of insouciance, 23-year-old Lauren Remington Platt is taking New York (London
and Paris, too) by storm. It's in the flash section and (mercifully) doesn't attribute it
to a specific writer." I wouldn't claim it either. Word: insouciant You know, I see how it might seem counterintuitive. But
sometimes you actually save time by using all of the syllables in a word. I suspect working with language experts all day would be pretty
entertaining if you're a competent speaker and keep you on your toes if you aren't. Word: arch The Coens, who have been known for their arch style and oddball
humor in films such as "Fargo," "O Brother, Where Art Thou" and "The Big Lebowski," received some laughs for Ethan Coen's laconic acceptance speeches. I've seen "arch" more often than most of the other PAWs but for
some reason it strikes me as too precious by half. Up it goes! Aaron
Petry has this caveat though: I think that arch, used as an adjective, isn't quite the same as
"mischievous." Merriam-Webster's on-line says "a: mischievous, saucy b: marked
by a deliberate and often forced playfulness, irony, or impudence." I'll grant
that it has mischievous right there, but it also has saucy. There's an
underlying connotation of lewdness in arch that just doesn't exist with
mischievous. I could see describing Mrs. Robinson from The Graduate as "arch,"
but not as mischievous. Likewise, I could see describing
Jerry from Tom and Jerry as mischievous, but not arch. Of course, I find ersatz
to be more offensive than arch, so maybe it's just personal prejudice. He makes a fine point. I've seen several Coen brothers movies
though, and "saucy" doesn't come to mind with any of them. I think it is
generally used as a synonym for mischievous, but per Aaron when used to mean
mischievous AND saucy it may not be a PAW. Word:
recrudescence Barack Obama, who might be mercifully closing the Clinton
parenthesis in presidential history, is refreshingly cerebral amid this
recrudescence of the paranoid style in American politics. Word:
précis Much of Saletan's précis of the rest of the research surveyed in
"Thirty Years of Research Into Race Differences on Cognitive Abilities" is
highly questionable. Word: preternatural His face had the subtle preternatural gleam which only I could
detect, and love, and properly appreciate, and eventually kiss....And there we
stood divided, laden with preternatural gifts, both fit and rather full of
emotion, and unable to communicate except in the simplest and best way,
perhaps--with words. Here's a good
usage note from The Columbia Guide to Standard American English: Preternatural means "beyond or transcending nature and natural
laws and feelings" and hence often "exceptional, extraordinary," or even
"unusual." Technically, she uses the word correctly, but because her
subjects are inherently outside nature, using the word as an adjective renders
it redundant. For me, every time she uses the word, I read it as 'spooky' -- as
if she's saying, "This vampire is really spooky, eerie even. I'm trying to say
this vampire is not natural." Word: orotund Humans have a long, tangled relationship with lead, now
celebrating its pliant versatility, now fearing its orotund power, and who knows
if we can ever put our saturnine genie back in the bottle we’ve been mining for
at least 5,000 years. I'm not entirely sure which definition she's using here. Word: saturnine Doesn't "put our saturnine genie back in the bottle" just
sound ridiculous? Or vaguely obscene? I think saturnine
is one of those words (like amygdala) that makes sense in a medical/scientific
setting but is pure PAW in general usage.
Zalmoxsis notes it can
also mean
"cold and steady in mood : slow to act or change b: of a gloomy or surly
disposition c: having a sardonic aspect" and writes "'dour, gloomy' doesn't
necessarily convey the same thing. A saturnine person is dour and gloomy because
of inexorable fate. He or she was born like that, has always been saturnine, and
could never change merely by wishing it." Word: ne plus ultra The idea for the Minisode Network reportedly gathered added
steam after Sony executives saw the ne plus ultra of homemade highlight reels,
Paul Gulyas and Joe Sabia's "The Seven Minute Sopranos," which has been viewed
more than 500,000 times since it was uploaded to YouTube at the end of March. Word: hirsute That's why it's so tough to handicap whether my hirsute friend
in New Hampshire will follow Junior to Hendrick—the team that also happens to
employ one Jeff Gordon. This is a modified violation because at the end of the article
he writes: If I were a very hairy man with an "8" on my back, I'd be
excited that my guy's now poised for a run at the Cup. So he may be covered by the exception
on this one. It looks like he wanted to avoid repetition but I still don't
like it. Hmmmmm. Word: tyros Hillary's intricate experience with the Washington bureaucracy
makes Edwards (toward whom I've been leaning) and Obama (whom I may shift to)
look like shaky tyros. Word: ecdysiast The bachelor should be teased, humiliated, and possibly
oil-wrestled by a professional ecdysiast. Word: lassitude Last year an immigration bill surfaced and all hell broke loose
again. It was the dominant subject on talk radio for two months, and helped
contribute to the lassitude that overcame the GOP base in the months before the
election. On a side note, a commenter at that page posted the following
amusing line: "Good to see liberals and conservatives working together for a
change, even if it is on goofy conspiracy theories." Word:
piscine In what may be the most spirited public defense of Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales to date, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee
today will demand an end to what one called an "endless piscine expedition" in
the U.S. attorneys scandal. This constitutes vigorous action in Washington D.C. Word: métier Yet it’s worth considering the possibility that Bush’s
madman-at-the-wheel métier owes as much to psychological factors as to
structural ones. It doesn't look like métier is even used correctly here -
wouldn't style or personality be better choices? No matter, he's
warming up and can't break his momentum over quibbles like proper usage! Next he
tees up: Word: salver [H]ere the president and his party were handed an exit strategy
on a silver salver: a set of recommendations leading to a phased withdrawal of
U.S. troops that most Democrats would have swallowed hard and signed onto. "Silver platter" is a universally used phrase. When I read
"salver" I thought, "if it means platter this is clearly a guy who loves
the sound of his own voice". Yes and yes! Finally there's this, which
ordinarily I wouldn't bother with here since it's not a PAW: Pathological narcissism? Delusions of grandeur? Res ipsa
loquitur. There have been other presidents, of course, who could readily be
described as suffering from these same maladies. From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Res_ipsa_loquitur: Res ipsa loquitur is a legal term from the Latin meaning
literally, "The thing itself speaks" but is more often translated "The thing
speaks for itself". The doctrine is applied to tort claims which, as a matter of
law, do not have to be explained beyond the obvious facts. First of all, only lawyers or REALLY old school Catholics should
use Latin phrases like that (actually neither should but it's so ingrained to
both that they may as well be grandpatered [HAR!] in). Second, when
someone tells me something is obvious, goes without saying speaks for itself or
is common sense I immediately go on Code Red BS Alert. More often then not such
appeals are just passive-aggressive attempts to bully you into quietly agreeing.
It's also a popular way to breeze past a potentially thorny issue. I try to
respond along the lines of "well I'm slow so spell it out for me anyway." Sorry for the digression; back to PAWs. Word: peripatetic Barham constantly sounds like he's going somewhere, and he casts
himself as a peripatetic wanderer, a rolling stone with a guitar and, he hopes,
a story. Word: endemic However isolated and aberrant it was, Haditha represents
something endemic, and is destined to become a watchword for the headlong excess
of the conflict in Iraq and the perils of long-term occupation. Wouldn't typical or unexceptional be better ways
to describe Haditha's relation to the occupation? I don't think the point is
that such excess is native to Haditha (something in the water? or are those
Hadithans just a rowdy bunch?) Maybe it's endemic to the perils of long-term
occupation, but the "headlong excess" bit in front really muddies it. A terrible
word horribly used. Word: carapace
They are not old enough, or established enough, to have built up
the sort of carapace many women I know - black women in particular - develop to
guard themselves against casual insult. Word:
torpor It's the aspiring young middle-class writer's worst-case
scenario. You get to college armed with pages of prose that capture the
soul-sucking torpor of your suburban adolescence, only to find yourself in a
writing class with a former child soldier who spent years fighting the
Revolutionary United Front after his Sierra Leone village was torched and his
entire family killed. And the guy can actually write! Word: soporific The impresarios of Washington, D.C.’s tourist industry have
retained a battery of image consultants to furnish a new city catchphrase, like
Seattle’s brand-new "Metronatural" or Little Rock’s in-your-face "the Rock."
D.C. boosters have been making do with a soporific Ken Burns–style appositive,
"the American Experience," and the city’s oddly intransitive license-plate
slogan, "Celebrate and Discover." This paragraph inspired a new page on
the PAW site; ladies and gentlemen I present you the current holder of the "Most
Pompous Paragraph" championship belt (all divisions)! Word:
parlous Of course, all this is still heavily overshadowed by the daily
menace of vicious jihadist sabotage, of corruption in a sectarian oil ministry,
and of the generally parlous state of the infrastructure. This one is especially bad because
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/parlous also says "[Origin:
1350–1400; ME, var. of perlous, syncopated var. of perilous]". So what's
wrong with using perilous instead? Word: obloquy [Lewis] Libby is suffering well-deserved obloquy. Word: invidious I hope it isn't lost on readers
that my aim was not to reinstate myself but rather to argue against Wikipedia's
"notability" standard itself and to use it as a newfangled illustration of our
society's love affair with invidious distinction. Word: myrmidon The frightening thing is that any
regime dedicated to ruling by terror so easily finds a sufficient supply of
lethal myrmidons. Word: mendicant First, China was infuriated by
North Korea's October nuclear test, which fizzled but expressed defiance of
China. So now China seems amenable to serious pressure on its mendicant
neighbor, which is substantially dependent on China for food and energy. Word:
shambolic Now, politicians are entitled to be
concerned about their political survival....Indeed, they're entitled to ignore
the fact that voting for this resolution somewhat increases the chances of a
shambolic outcome to Bush's foreign policy, and therefore may not be in their
own interest. Is it me or does "shambolic"
sound like it belongs in an Austin Powers movie? The online
reference I use is
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/shambolic and there it's
characterized as "Chiefly British Slang". On the other hand it wasn't even
listed in the old dictionary I keep handy for everyday usage. So let me
note the following: It's a PAW when an American writing for an American audience
uses it. It may not be a PAW when used by Brits, but I'd like more
information on that. I asked for some British feedback on this and the
result is here (#4). Word: matriculate Premium Content: Ranking of top
college preparatory schools with the highest Stanford University matriculation
plus individual school profiles There's some Premium Content you
just can't put a price on. Word: pusillanimous I was watching CNN about 7 years
ago or so, and on it was George Bush (the first) talking about why he didn't go
all the way to Baghdad the first time and get rid of Saddam. Somewhere in what
he was saying, he used the word "pusillanimous" and I vividly remember thinking
"He just made that up. There's no way that's a word", but sure enough it is.
Word:
cavil
Connecticut uses a lot of electricity each day. It is, however, inhospitable
to companies that generate power and sell it to consumers. We cavil at every
proposal to build new generators and welcome suppliers. Ashley Odell sent this to me and writes: "'Cavil'? There's a reason usage
guides say you should used 'nitpick' or 'quibble over' instead. And, you
know, if you can barely find it on Google from sources other than pretentious
word-of-the-day lists, there's another clue for you. Just sayin'." Word:
pedagogy
Fourteen international secondary teachers from the Middle East and Asia will
arrive Wednesday at Southeast Missouri State University to study advanced
pedagogy, curriculum construction and instructional technology. As a side note, it seems to be used most frequently by
colleges of education (and their siblings) and non-native English speaking
countries. A recent search of Google news showed links to
Cuba, Jamaica
and Vietnam. I have no idea what to make of this. Or at least I
didn't until I received this from Mark Severs:
"Pedagogy" is a
common translation of foreign words meaning "teaching as a profession" as
distinct from the act of teaching. Take for instance the German word "Pedagogik",
being a subject one might study in a university or teacher-training college.
In US and UK English, this is an obsolete word, but that might not be true in
Jamaica. Possibly Cuban Spanish and Vietnamese might have imported the antique
English word, or perhaps a continental variant of it (Castilian Spanish?
French?) and continued using it up to the present day. In Britain, "to study
advanced pedagogy, curriculum construction and instructional technology."
would simply be rendered as "to train as a teacher". In an ad designed to
appeal to foreign nationals, it may be that Missouri State used what they
considered an "international English" form? Your Kansas City scribe might then
have just copied the ad content verbatim, as a blame-throwing measure.
We take no
shortcuts here in America, sir. The search for the real explanation
continues... Word: pulchritudinous I thought of a word you might want to add. In the liner notes
for his album "Thick in the South: Soul Gestures in Southern Blue Vol. 1"
(pompous ass title, huh?), chief pompous jazz ass Wynton Marsalis writes this
about the title track: "'Thick in the South' is a condition, a location, an attitude,
a pulchritudinous proposition, and an occurrence." Pulchritudinous? Obviously he was going for alliteration with
"proposition," and I actually kind of like the way it sounds, but it so
perfectly fits his elitist attitude that it seems worth labeling as a pompous
ass word for all the world to see. "Beautiful" or something similar would have
worked as well and would have spared us all a trip across the room to our
dictionaries. Word: trope Who now cultivates or reveres the sharp-edged art of the
epigram, the well-placed flourish, the daring trope, the Shandyan excursus,
the smart simile, Ciceronian copiousness, Senecan taciturnity, cunning
variation of pace, tone, tempo and rhetorical force -- that whole repertory of
effects subsumed under the word "prose"? She also says "this word is a creative writing school darling.
It makes me wish I had never gone to creative writing school." Word: cogitate I essentially have to ask the approval of management to see
certain documents. They go cogitate and then tell me whether I can see them. Word: quotidian As in the rest of her life, she had declared war on pathetic,
quotidian self-pity Word: qua This is the Redirection. It is the denial of man
qua man. The
Elites approach it through the Science = Certainty / Democracy = Uncertainty
Reciprocal and Islam through its destruction of the Self, Society, and the
Divine by translating all of the Whole into Umma via a murderous Islamic law
that pays no real mind to any purpose other than the Umma as represented by
the Islamic World State. Eric Gosnell sent "qua" along and writes:
I've only seen it used one place and that's in the book "Ghost
in the Machine" by Arthur Koestler. In this particular book, he uses the word
qua frequently, and does so in true pompous ass form. WOW!! Is it me or is this an especially pompous word?
Lip read either quote above and pretend you're the one saying it. Don't
you feel compelled to pause and put slow and dramatic emphasis on "qua"?
It's a pompous word that demands pompous usage! Note this can also be used with "sine qua non" (essential
element) as in
http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070110-125826-8016r: "In
recent weeks, the Bush-Hamilton Iraq Study Group's report, as well as Brent
Scowcroft, national security advisor to both presidents Ford and Bush, in a
widely published op-ed, have emphasized the imperative necessity of a
Palestinian-Israeli peace deal as a sine qua non to restoring America's
credibility in the Middle East." I didn't want to use the same word for
two entries but otherwise sine qua non would be deserving. Peter Schuyff sent this along
this: "In theNetherlands (in Dutch), the word 'qua' is used in the same manner
and the same grammar as described and quoted on your site. but it used used by
everybody, not just pompous assholes." Word: micturate Bud and Miller have been in a micturating match for a while
now. Just call a pissing match a pissing match. Word: synecdoche Steve Brozak is running for Congress in New Jersey against
George W. Bush. Sure, his opponent on the ticket is Republican incumbent Mike
Ferguson. But as Brozak sees it, Ferguson is just a synecdoche for the Bush
team, whose failings drove Brozak out of the Marines and the Republican Party
and into the first political campaign of his life.
treeunit sent in the following
clarification, which prompted the M-W link this far down the list: "Synecdoche" is a term for a
specific literary device. When creating a synecdoche, one mentions one aspect
of something as a representative for the entire thing. For example, when
someone says "Nice Wheels!" they are actually saying your entire car is nice.
Many average, down-to-earth writers use synecdoches, and as long as the word
remains on your list they will not be able to discuss their writing with
others without sounding like pompous asses. Thanks to Mr. Unit for the
additional information. So: Using synecdoches isn't pompous but
using the word synecdoche outside a literary setting - especially when
a word like proxy will work just as well - is pure PAW. (This
should not be taken to imply a jihad against all terms for literary
devices outside literary settings.) Word: animadversion The National Review's William Buckley was more attuned to the
nuances of the issue.... Word: palaver Just as Mr. Cheney, Rummy and the neocons turned W. into a
host body for their old schemes to knock off Saddam, transform the military
and set up a pre-emption doctrine to strike at allies and foes that threatened
American hyperpower supremacy, so now W. has turned Mr. Allawi into a host
body for the Panglossian palaver that he believes will get him re-elected. On the other hand, Panglossian: Blindly or naively
optimistic. Nice. I think she was pressing too hard for
alliteration. I heard from a number of Brits that it's commonly used to
mean "fuss", and one reader said "I think most people here in the UK will
easily recognise what this word means and, if any, its association is with the
lower classes." So noted. Word: amygdala I prefer the canon to the fireworks and a speech that appeals
to the brain's reasoning facilities to a demidocumentary film arousing the
amygdala. Word: prelapsarian [H]e felt that Washington had become infested with politics
and corruption since he first worked there in the prelapsarian innocence of
the Nixon administration. Word: desideratum Name recognition is the great desideratum of a nascent
restaurant chain (or political candidate). Word: tsuris You watch him as he trudges around the city, hunched over, a
chip on his shoulder the size of Cleveland, and wonder how a man could survive
under the weight of so much tsuris. Word: anodyne [The central bank's] decision - and an ambiguous and
anodyne
statement released with it - helped spark a big rise in bond yields, undoing
much of the fall in long-term interest rates that had loosened monetary
conditions earlier in the year and provided a supportive environment to
growth. Word: manqué To the vast majority of professional academic economists-not
the economists manqués who inhabit intellectual biospheres such as the Wall
Street Journal editorial page and certain time slots on CNBC-the debate over
the Laffer Curve is long since settled. Word: palter Giamatti knew exactly why "boys will be boys" is not a
satisfactory response to paltering with the rules of the game. Word: condign Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, who is a candidate to succeed him,
would become governor, the recall would deflate and the Democratic Party's
condign punishment probably would be to continue wrestling with the problems
it has created or exacerbated. And again at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11222-2003Jun18.html:
The liberals' conundrum is condign punishment for the
discordance between the way they talk and the way they live. Word: recondite Is not such
recondite reasoning,
leading to such opaque conclusions about such baroque regulations of speech,
prima facie evidence of incompatibility with the austere brevity of the First
Amendment? Could we find a more pompous ass passage this year? I
don't think so. Of course, Bill Bennett is still out there. Now, you
might say Dr. Will is being ironic here and using that language to make his
point about regulating speech. There are two problems with that.
First, it isn't too much different from his un-ironic writing so it doesn't
exactly announce itself. Second, it's too clever by half. It labors
mightily for almost no result. Groucho Marx knew how to make a lot of work
seem effortless and funny as well: "Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the
other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west and if you take
cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than
rhubarb does." That's how it's done. Word: rictus
Word: fait accompli The war with Iraq is, in essence, a
fait accompli, regardless
of the views of the other countries in the United Nations. Word: rodomontade
First-round holdout tackle Bryant McKinnie, who's already
trying to compete with Moss for most grating rodomontade in Minnesota, was the
"uncovered" player, requiring him to report to the officials as eligible.
Word: in medias res It begins in medias res, as though you had just stepped out
for a few seconds to get more popcorn. If you didn't see last year's The
Fellowship of the Ring, Peter Jackson, the trilogy's wizardly director, isn't
about to cut you any slack. Even though it's clear enough in context, it could have been
removed entirely with no loss of meaning. Having it in there broke up the flow
at the very beginning of the article because I stopped to wonder "what is
that?!" Word: casus belli http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,843065,00.html
WOW! Impressive, don't you think?
Word: seppuku Meanwhile, James K. Glassman, co-author of the science-fiction classic Dow 36,000, who should have had the good manners to commit
seppuku when the market flushed, continues to shovel his go-go wisdom in the Sunday Post, and the "Business" section continues to plug local tech companies with generous daily coverage, albeit with a post-bust blush on its face. Word: sobriquet Word: tendentious Al Gore, Barack Obama, and countless lesser lights of the
Democratic party have been hinting all week that Republicans don't want votes
counted, and that poor Democrats are the victims of this mean-spirited
attitude. This is all tendentious nonsense. A second sighting from Alessandra Stanley at
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/24/politics/campaign/24watch.html: Facts, half-truths and passionately
tendentious opinions get
tumbled together on screen like laundry in an industrial dryer. Word: jejune
Aldridge’s sarcasm is jejune, his Scottish-nationalist agenda tiresome and his
use of quotations sometimes mendaciously inaccurate Word: risible The atrocity at School No. 1 in Beslan, Russia -- the worst
act of terrorism since Sept. 11 -- was one episode in Russia's 150-year
struggle with Chechen separatists and involved a political "perfect storm,"
the convergence of nationalism, ethnicity and religion. I update the site as needed, so there may be stretches of
inactivity. New entries go at the top so you can check for updates
quickly, and of course you can be the source of updates yourself. -Dan
Synonymous with: unruly
M-W says: 1 : marked by unruly or aggressive noisiness : clamorous
Example: Chicago Tribune editorial board at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-pelosi-20100304,0,4493358.story:
The Rangel affair should have been a moment for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to show she won't tolerate unethical behavior in Washington. She should have been leading the parade to make Rangel step aside at Ways and Means. But she didn't lead; she was led.
She defended Rangel, even as he grew more obstreperous, even as he blamed his staff - and the ethics committee - for his troubles.
Synonymous with: perception
M-W says: perception
Example: Martin Rees at http://timesonline.typepad.com/science/2010/01/how-is-the-internet-changing-the-way-you-think.html:
Srinivasa Ramanujan, a clerk in Bombay, mailed long screeds of of mathematical formulae to G H Hardy, a professor at Trinity College, Cambridge. Fortunately, Hardy had the
percipience to recognise that Ramanujan was not the typical green-ink scribbler who finds numerical patterns in the bible or the pyramids, but that his writings betrayed preternatural insight.
Synonymous with: dispute or fight
M-W says: 1 : an inopportune or embarrassing occurrence or situation. 2 : dispute, argument
Example: Ruth Sunderland at http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/17/google-china-hacking-censorship:
Underlying the issues of hacking and censorship is unease over the inexorable increase in China's business clout and whether its ambition to become an economic superpower is compatible with its political system.
In the past few weeks alone there has been a string of contretemps with the west, including the execution of Briton Akmail Shaikh, the imprisonment of dissident Liu Xiaobo and ill-feeling over China's behaviour at the Copenhagen climate change summit, where it appeared to snub Barack Obama.
Synonymous with: quiet or inactive
M-W says: marked by inactivity or repose : tranquilly at rest
Example: Jerry Jordan at http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/10/28/business/econwatch/entry5439301.shtml:
Historically, commodity prices have remained quiescent during the initial period of an economic upturn.
Synonymous with: ineffective
M-W says: 1 : weak, ineffective. 2 : worthless, irresponsible
Example: Gene Lyons at http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/10/15/fox_news/:
As feckless and cowardly as the so-called “mainstream” media have grown in the face of conservative propaganda about “liberal media bias,” this strikes me as very good news.
Synonymous with: nonsense
M-W says: 1 : a useless ornament or accessory : trifle. 2 : nonsense
Example: Bill Wyman at http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2009/02/19/roman_polanski_documentary/print.html:
Polanski, who had pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl, was welcome to return to America, surrender, and then petition the court as he wished. Indeed, the judge even gave Polanski more than he deserved, saying that he might actually have a case. "There was substantial, it seems to me, misconduct during the pendency of this case," he said, according to the Los Angeles Times. "Other than that, he just needs to submit to the jurisdiction of the court." Polanski deserves to have any potential legal
folderol investigated, of course.
The first definition can be used well, though, like this from Tom Shales at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/09/AR2009090903587_pf.html:
A joint session, after all, means lots of padding for pomp, circumstance and folderol, like the 16 minutes it took for Obama -- preceded by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton almost dancing her way down the aisle -- just to get to the lectern in the House of Representatives chamber.
So maybe it's only half a PAW.
Synonymous with: immoral
M-W says: 1 : of, relating to, or affected with scrofula. 2 a : having a diseased run-down appearance b : morally contaminated
Example: Andrew Sullivan at http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/09/one-small-moment-of-actual-dissent.html:
Fox's agenda has always been to suppress actual conservative dissent, and to reiterate the GOP talking points of the day against Potemkin "liberals" who, when they don't seem positively
scrofulous, tend to look like beauty queens.
Synonymous with: obstinate
M-W says: 1 a : adhering resolutely to an opinion, purpose, or design b : perversely persistent. 2 : stubbornly tenacious
Example: Yoani Sanchez: at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/raised-at-fidels-knees-a_b_278481.html:
The person who all this happened to was, in turn, an amusing hedonist, born conversationalist, tolerant,
pertinacious and the worst guerrilla one could imagine.
Synonymous with: now
M-W says: 1 : the one, particular, or present occasion, purpose, or use
Example: Megan McArdle at http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/09/ant-abortion_protester_shot_an.php:
An anti-abortion activist has been shot and killed in Michigan. It seems to be linked to another homicide in the area, so this seems more like a lone lunatic than a political killing, at least for the
nonce.
Synonymous with: feverish
M-W says:
marked or caused by fever : feverish
Example: Kevin Drum at http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/08/afpak-dominos:
Nothing is impossible, but at its core this is just a sophisticated version of the same domino theory that dominated U.S. thinking in Southeast Asia in the 50s and 60s. That led us into a disastrous war then, and it could do the same now if the Obama administration starts getting too wrapped up in
febrile thinking like this.
Synonymous with: mixture or hodgepodge
M-W says:
a mixture often of incongruous elements
Example: Rich Ernst sent in this Publishers Weekly review of The Cloudspotter's Guide: The Science, History, and Culture of Clouds (Paperback) at http://www.amazon.com/dp/0399533451?tag=fw-book-su-20:
The result is an amusing and remarkably informative jaunt through the heavenly vapors that draws on classical poetry, physics, geekery and pop culture. Despite this improbable
mélange, Pretor-Pinney succeeds in fleshing out subtleties and making difficult concepts like convection, advection, condensation and atmospheric optics comprehensible to almost any reader.
Synonymous with: chaotic, disappointing or irregular
M-W says:
1 : marked by lack of definite plan, regularity, or purpose...2 : not connected
with the main subject 3 : disappointing in progress, performance, or quality
Example: Steve Fainaru at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/13/AR2009051303813.html:
Synonymous with: dull or tedious
M-W says:
lacking liveliness, tang, briskness, or force : flat, dull
Example: Andy McCarthy at
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NjFkMDM5NWMzODJhNGI3NjdlOGE0NjQ0Yjg0ZjZmMzg=:
Synonymous with: persistent, thorough or industrious
M-W says:
marked by careful unremitting attention or persistent application
Example: Stanley Bing at
http://money.cnn.com/2009/06/03/magazines/fortune/stress_test_bing.fortune/?postversion=2009060410:
Synonymous with: idolatry
M-W says:
hagiolatry can be found at Merriam-WebsterUnabridged.com. Click here to start
your free trial!
dictionary.com says:
the worship of saints.
Example: David Edwards and
David Cromwell in the book GUARDIANS OF POWER, excerpted at
http://www.medialens.org/bookshop/extract_of_chapter_11.php:
Synonymous with: a childless woman
M-W says:
nullipara can be found at Merriam-WebsterUnabridged.com. Click here to start
your free trial!
dictionary.com says:
a woman who has never borne a child.
Example: Kate Harding at
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2009/01/12/breastfeeding_101/index.html:
Synonymous with: greed
M-W says:
1: inordinate desire for wealth: avarice, greed 2: strong desire: lust
Example: Gene Weingarten
at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html:
Synonymous with: omit
M-W says:
1 a: to suppress or alter (as a vowel or syllable) by elision b: to strike out
(as a written word). 2 a: to leave out of consideration : omit b: curtail ,
abridge
Example: Terrence Rafferty at
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/movies/07raff.html:
Synonymous with: opposite
M-W says:
2: diametrically opposite <an antipodal point on a sphere>
3: entirely opposed <a system antipodal to democracy>
Synonymous with: trivial
M-W says:
of little or no consequence
Example: Theodore Dalrymple at
http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/13921/sec_id/13921:
Synonymous with: kinship or proximity
M-W says:
1 : nearness of blood : kinship. 2 : nearness in place or time : proximity
Example: Christopher
Hitchens at
http://www.slate.com/id/2201130/:
Synonymous with: rainy
M-W says:
pluvious can be found at Merriam-WebsterUnabridged.com. Click here to start your
free trial!
Dictionary.com says:
of or pertaining to rain; rainy.
Example:
Zalmoxsis sent in the following:
I was doing a little research to find out who wrote and sang the song 'Brazil'
(as in the movie, and the VISA commercial), and happened on Wikipedia's entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquarela_do_Brasil:
Fortunately, my half-remembered French and Latin told me that 'pluvious' had
something to do with rain, so I wasn't completely in the dark; but it seems to
me that a writer may not assume readers to understand any language other than
that in which they are supposed to be writing. Foreign words ought to be used
sparingly: either when no other word or phrase comes close to their meaning, or
when the foreign word has been adopted into English, or is at least familiar to
most intelligent general readers.
Synonymous with: gap or deficiency
M-W says:
1: a blank space or a missing part : gap <the evident lacunae in his story —
Shirley Hazzard>; also : deficiency 1 <despite all these lacunae, those reforms
were a vast improvement — New Republic>
Example: Joel Snyder at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/06/AR2008080602148.html:
Synonymous with: eloquent
M-W says:
The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. (Super bonus awesome PAW
points!)
Example: Arieh Smith sends the
following from
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/jul/16/classics.dantealighieri and adds
Synonymous with: powerful
M-W says:
powerful
Example: From
http://www.boston.com/sports/other_sports/tennis/articles/2008/07/07/nadal_ascends_in_historic_fashion?mode=PF:
Synonymous with: secretary
M-W says:
one employed to write from dictation or to copy manuscript
Example: From
http://www.nysun.com/arts/got-to-paint-the-lewitts/80896/:
Synonymous with: workshop
M-W says:
1 : an artist's or designer's studio or workroom
Example: See previous entry.
Synonymous with: miserly
M-W says:
grudgingly mean about
spending or granting
Example: The infamous
David Howard incident:
Jan. 15 [1999]: In a discussion of how little money his office would have to
serve residents, Howard, the head of the mayor's constituent services office,
tells two associates that he'll have to be "niggardly" with his agency's budget.
Niggardly, meaning miserly, has no racial connotation, but soon rumors begin
spreading among some city workers that Howard had used the "N-word."
Synonymous with: rationalization
M-W says:
1 : a resolving of specific cases of conscience, duty, or conduct through
interpretation of ethical principles or religious doctrine 2 : specious argument
: rationalization
Example: Aeirlys writes:
"When this casuistry came to light, it unleashed a nationwide howl of
indignation." (Krakauer, Jon. Under The Banner of Heaven. New York: Anchor,
2003.) The word means rationalization. There's just no excuse for that; it's
plain egregious. (You can verify, if you want, by using the "Search Inside"
feature at Amazon, which won't let me link directly to the page:
http://www.amazon.com/Under-Banner-Heaven-Story-Violent/dp/1400032806/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215480459&sr=8-1)
Synonymous with: polysyllabic
M-W says:
having many syllables
Example: From
http://themoderatevoice.com/at-tmv/newsweek-blogitics/19938/romancing-the-potus/:
Synonymous with: incomplete or partial
M-W says:
being only partly in existence or operation : incipient; especially :
imperfectly formed or formulated : formless, incoherent
Example: Ross Douthat at
http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/07/the_presidents_unconscious.php:
Synonymous with: Store or corner shop
Example: Steve writes:
Synonymous with: smelly or noxious
Example: Morty Abzug writes:
Synonymous with: dash or slight trace
Example: First, the mark under
the c in "ç" is called
a cedilla and is "a mark (¸) placed under a consonant letter, as under c in
French, in Portuguese, and formerly in Spanish, to indicate that it is
pronounced (s)". When I'm sent to the reference section to track down
individual letters in a word that is a good indication we have a PAW on our
hands. The cedilla seems to be used or replaced with a "c" interchangeably
in English. Amanda O'Brien sent it in, and she writes: "Thought you'd take
this double whammy into consideration. Vogue magazine is dripping with pompous
ass words. They use the word insouciant or insouciance at least once an issue.
And soupcon is a regular as well. But this is a two-fer:
Synonymous with: carefree
Example: See above. The
word "carefreeness" is
listed as a
synonym for insouciance. I'll grant that carefreeness seems clumsy, so
maybe it's not a PAW as a noun. It definitely is as an adjective though,
and when coupled with another PAW it absolutely goes over the top.
Amanda's web site is a fun read, by the way. I was particularly amused
by this:
Synonymous with: mischievous
Example: Rich Ernst writes: I
have an article from CNN that may be of interest. The writer, in order to sound
impressive, apparently, used a fairly obscure (adjectival)
definition of "arch":
Synonymous with:
revival
Example: George Will at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/04/AR2008010403561.html:
Synonymous with: summary
Example: Stephen Metcalf at
http://www.slate.com/id/2179073/:
Synonymous with: supernatural
Example: Troy Darling sent the
following; the rest of the entry is his: My candidate for PAW comes from the
oeuvre of Anne Rice, whose use of the word 'preternatural' is so frequent it
drives me to distraction, even as I seemed to enjoy the stories enough to read
several of her novels. It wasn't hard to find examples online. (Searching Google
for "Preternatural anne rice excerpt" yields 865 hits.) The excerpt [here]
is a good case in point as it uses the word twice within a few paragraphs:
Synonymous with: 1. Pompous or 2. Sonorous
Example: Aaron McHugh sent in a
twofer with Natalie Angier at
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/science/21angi.html?_r=1&oref=slogin:
Synonymous with: suffering from lead poisoning, as a person
Example: See above
Synonymous with: highest point/acme/ultimate
Example: Jessica Winter at
http://www.slate.com/id/2168857/:
Synonymous with: hairy
Example: John Swansburg at
http://www.slate.com/id/2168353:
Synonymous with: beginner
Example: Camille Paglia at
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2007/06/13/gore/print.html:
Synonymous with: stripper
Example: Troy Patterson at
http://www.slate.com/id/2167873/
Synonymous with: weariness or indifference
Example: John Podhoretz at
http://www.nypost.com/seven/05252007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/better_off_losing_opedcolumnists_john_podhoretz.htm:
Synonymous with: pertaining to a fish or fishes
Example: From
http://www.rollcall.com/issues/52_123/news/18421-1.html. During the
glacially slow end of Alberto Gonzales' job as Attorney General some his
defenders figured out they couldn't keep calling the investigation into his
conduct a "fishing expedition" month after month after month. Solution?
Grab the thesaurus!
Synonymous with: profession or specialty
Example: The example is from
http://nymag.com/news/politics/Bush/26997/, but first a comment. When I come
across a PAW I'll mentally snort and think "what a pompous ass." If there's a
second one close on its heels I'll think "this is ridiculous" and be annoyed. If
there's a third one right after that I'll make note of the writer's name so I
can approach future articles with an appropriately low opinion. With that in
mind, ladies and gentlemen I present you John Heilemann!
Synonymous with: A tray (for serving food or drinks).
Synonymous with: itinerant
Example: Aaron McHugh writes:
The use of peripatetic for itinerant or wanderer; especially offensive is using
the redundant phrase "peripatetic wanderer" to simultaneously be pompous and
patronizing. One example from
http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A30035:
Synonymous with: native to
Example: Aaron McHugh sends
along
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2006/05/rampage_at_haditha.html:
Synonymous with: shell
Example: Gwen Ifill at
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/opinion/10ifill.html:
Synonymous with: lethargy
Example: Meghan Daum at
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-daum2apr02,0,4699095.column:
Synonymous with: sleep inducing or sleepy
Example: Chris Lehmann at
http://observer.com/20070402/20070402_Chris_Lehmann_opinions_newsstory1.asp
Synonymous with: dangerous
Example: Christopher Hitchens
at http://www.slate.com/id/2161629/
Synonymous with: censure or disgrace
Example: Michael Kinsley at
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1597658,00.html:
Synonymous with: offensive
Example: From Timothy Noah at
http://www.slate.com/id/2160222/pagenum/all/:
Synonymous with: lackey
Example: From Clive James
http://www.slate.com/id/2159927:
Synonymous with: begging
Example: From George Will
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/21/AR2007022101585.html:
Synonymous with:
chaotic
Example: From Bill Kristol at
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/236diejk.asp:
Synonymous with:
enroll. At
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/matriculate "to enroll in a college
or university as a candidate for a degree", which made me think: As opposed to
enrolling just for the parties.
Example: A St. Louis reader
sent
http://www.prepreview.com/english/us/rank/stanford_2030608043018686zewonen123.htm,
the link for the Stanford Matriculation College Preparatory School Ranking,
which offers:
Synonymous with:
cowardly
Example: Mark Matich sent the
following (slightly edited), which is even better than a link:
Synonymous with: quibble
Example: From
http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/columnists/hc-rennie0128.artjan28,0,3235715.column:
Synonymous with: teaching
Example: From
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/16515388.htm:
Synonymous with: beautiful
Example: Sent by Jeff Merritt. I can't improve on what we
wrote, so here it is copied and pasted. Please note: I have no opinion of
Wynton (or any other) Marsalis and Jeff's comments are his own only. If
they outrage you it won't do any good to send me an email. Your best bet is to
track him down and give him a piece of your mind, and be sure to wag your finger
vigorously in his face when you do so. I'm sure he'll feel terrible.
The liner notes can be found at the link below, although the exact address for
them is elusive because of Marsalis' pompous ass Flash web site, so you have
to navigate a bit.
http://www.wmedev.com/flash/wynton4.html
Synonymous with: figure of speech
Example: Andi Werblin alerted me to
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/10/08/reviews/001008.08suthert.html:
Synonymous with: think
Example: Stephen Minton sent this from
http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2002/03/19/auerbach/index.html:
Synonymous with: daily or
common
Example: Sabrina Qedesha sent along this from
http://nymag.com/news/profiles/26988/index.html:
Synonymous with: as
Example: From The Conservative Voice at
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/21465.html:
Here's a quote from that...
"the essential difference between primitive identification, resulting in a
homogeneous flock, and mature forms of integration in a social hierarchy. In a
well-balanced hierarchy, the individual retains his character as a social
holon [self aware sub-assembly], a part-whole, who qua whole, enjoys autonomy
within the limits of the restraints imposed by the interests of the
community."
Synonymous with: urinate
Example: From Seth Stevenson
http://slate.msn.com/id/2110114/:
Synonymous with: Stand-in, maybe? Proxy? From
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=synecdoche:
substituting a more inclusive term for a less inclusive one or vice versa
M-W says:
a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole (as fifty sail for fifty
ships), the whole for a part (as society for high society), the species for the
genus (as cutthroat for assassin), the genus for the species (as a creature for
a man), or the name of the material for the thing made (as boards for stage)
Example: Michelle Goldberg at
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/30/brozak/index_np.html:
Synonymous with: Strong criticism; a critical or censorious
remark.
Example: Mark Follman quotes William Buckley at
http://www.salon.com/opinion/right_hook/2004/10/20/cheney_stewart/index.html:
"This last interpretation of it was taken by an evangelical Christian
politician, Gary Bauer, who ran for the presidency four years ago. He reasoned
as follows: that traditional-values voters would react to the public reference
as to an animadversion against the Bush ticket, and that by saying what he had
said, Kerry could reasonably hope 'to knock l or 2 percent off in some rural
areas by causing people to turn on the president.'"
Synonymous with: Idle chatter; prattle.
Example: From Maureen Dowd at
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/26/opinion/26dowd.html:
Synonymous with: (as a PAW) Emotions. Defined at
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=amygdala
as "An almond-shaped mass of gray matter in the anterior portion
of the temporal lobe. Also called amygdaloid nucleus." A reader sent
along the more helpful "a portion of the brain that is responsible for, among
other things, mediating emotional responses." Outside of an
anatomy class I don't know why it should be used (especially since the
definition doesn't say what its function is).
Example: In an otherwise
excellent essay William Safire writes in
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/21/opinion/21safi.html:
Synonymous with: I don't know exactly.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=prelapsarian
defines it as "Of or relating to the period before the fall of Adam and Eve."
I just think there is no reason outside of a theology seminar to need to
refer to the period before the fall of Adam and Eve. This word inspired
reason #3 on the why it's a PAW page.
Example: From Michael Kinsley at
http://slate.msn.com/id/2093949/:
Synonymous with: From
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=desideratum Something
considered necessary or highly desirable:
Example: From Daniel Gross at
http://slate.msn.com/id/2086889/:
Synonymous with: From
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=tsuris: (Informal) Trouble;
aggravation
Example: From David Edelstein
at http://slate.msn.com/id/2087000/:
Synonymous with: Capable of soothing or eliminating pain.
Relaxing: anodyne novels about country life.
Example: From the Financial
times at
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1057562384589
Synonymous with: No one word exactly but it sounds
horrendously pompous and there has to be a way to not use it.
Definition: Unfulfilled or frustrated in the realization of one's ambitions or
capabilities: an artist manqué; a writer manqué.
Example: From Daniel Gross at
http://slate.msn.com/id/2083926/:
Synonymous with: From
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=paltering: To talk or act
insincerely or misleadingly; equivocate. To be capricious; trifle. To quibble,
especially in bargaining.
Example: George Will
provides the following at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15175-2003Jun4.html:
Synonymous with: Deserved;
adequate
Example: George comes through
with this one at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46940-2003Aug11.html:
Synonymous with: Concealed;
hidden
Example: And he completes the
hat trick at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28082-2003May7.html
Synonymous with: A gaping grin
or grimace
Example: It was Word of the Day for Thursday February 6,
2003. See
http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2003/02/06.html
Synonymous with: (French)
"a thing that is already done so that
opposition or argument is useless." (Webster's Unabridged.). Foregone
conclusion.
Example: Jim provides the following unattributed usage:
Synonymous with: From
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=rodomontade%20:
"rodomontade - Pretentious boasting or bragging; bluster."
Example: From
http://espn.go.com/page2/s/tmq/021203.html:
Synonymous with: (Latin) In the
middle of things:
used esp. of a narrative that opens in the middle rather than at the
chronological beginning.
Example: Time magazine took care of it in its review of
installment 2 of Lord of the Rings. From
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101021202/story.html:
Synonymous with: An act or event that provokes or is used to justify war.
(From http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=casus%20belli)
Examples: The Guardian came through in a big way for me on
this one. A quick search for just one immediately turned up three references:
"There must be a second resolution before further Iraqi infractions are formally converted into a
casus belli"
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyandsociety/0,6121,841468,00.html
"And it was a hard fight, especially in Britain, his adopted country, where The Satanic Verses, the
casus belli for Iran's theological thugs, was written."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,840275,00.html
"It is quite possible and indeed probable that there will be genuine differences of opinion among the permanent five (P5) about whether Iraq, at any given moment, has committed the sort of "material breach" that is a
casus belli under 1441."
Definition (from http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=seppuku):
Ritual suicide by disembowelment formerly practiced by Japanese samurai. Also called hara-kiri.
Example: From http://slate.msn.com/?id=2074439:
Synonymous with: Nickname
Example: None available. I just thought of it this week and
knew it had to be included.
Synonymous with: Biased
Example: From Jonah Goldberg at
http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200407300202.asp:
Synonymous with: Dull; also immature.
Example: From
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/books/review/Dore.t.html (second page):
Synonymous with: Laughable
Example: I think Maureen Dowd sold her monopoly certificate
on this word to George Will; she's stopped using it and he's started. From
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6963-2004Sep8.html:
But even if he succeeds, he continues to deepen the risible incoherence of his
still-multiplying positions on Iraq.Notes
1.
Not Really. Back.