Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains
Merriam-Webster: soothing, calming. Example: "Like all good listeners, he has a way of attending that is at once intense and assuasive: the supplicant feels both nakedly revealed and sheltered, somehow, from all possible judgment." (David Foster Wallace)
I am a good listener, but far more intense than assuasive.
You have the verb 'assuage' in your vocabulary; now add the adjective 'assuasive.'
From 'prodrome,' a premonitory symptom of disease.
Etymology: French, literally, precursor, from Greek prodromos, from pro- before + dromos act of running, racecourse — more at PRO-, DROMEDARY
Example of use found at Diogenes' Middle Finger:
Now we are engaged in a prodromal civil war, and American constitutional democracy is the contest’s prize. The universities and the media, always diseased, have progressed from mischief into depravity. Various states are attempting to mandate that their schools teach critical race theory — that is racism — and elected leaders on the coasts have resigned their cities to thuggery and ruin. – David Mamet – Playwright and Screenwriter
'Constitutional democracy' is right, not 'democracy'! Tucker Carlson take note.
Never use 'democracy' sans phrase!
Not discerptible : not subject to being separated into parts // simple and indiscerptible entities— James Ward. (Merriam-Webster)
Patrick Kurp of Anecdotal Evidence is a man after my own mold:
When I encounter a new word, lengthy or not, I like to know what it means and where it comes from. I won’t necessarily use it, in writing or speech, but I’ve grown accustomed to plugging holes in my knowledge of the world. Plain speaking is essential but so, on the right occasions, are eloquence and verbal lushness. Part of linguistic effectiveness is sensitivity to context and audience. When it’s not mere showing off, deployment of obscure words adds a pleasurable texture to poetry and prose – one of many reasons we read Shakespeare and Sir Thomas Browne. A gifted writer commands styles and is not limited to one. In addition, what’s obscure or pretentious to you may be familiar and homely to me.
My sentiments exactly.
The blogosphere is vast, and she is deep. If the ordinary modes of human interaction have left you high and dry in your quest for the like-minded, a little fishing in her vasty deeps should satisfy your needs.
How does one acquire a large vocabulary? The first rule is to read, read widely, and read worthwhile materials, especially old books and essays. The second rule is to look up every word the meaning of which you do not know or are not certain of: don't be lazy. The third rule is to compile vocabulary lists. The fourth rule is to review the lists periodically and put the words to use. Use 'em or lose 'em.
But what good is a large vocabulary in a society of semi-literates? Not only is it of little use, it can harm relations with regular guys social intercourse with whom can be useful. Among the latter, one needs to pass oneself off as one of them. Use 'big words' and you will strike them as putting on airs, whether or not you are — not that the semi-literates would understand this old phrase.
While alive to and appreciative of the good in people, one should not overlook the prevalence of the mean, the paltry, the envious, and the resentful. In this joyous season, and in every season.
A gallimaufry is a hodgepodge.
The word is of course white-supremacist so be careful of the contexts in which you use it, assuming you dare use it. After all, if correct grammar is racist, as per the Rutgers English Department, then a large vocabulary must also be. Don't forget: anything blacks are poor at is ipso facto racist, and that holds in spades for ipso facto.
'Gallimaufry' is also a useless word and for two reasons. First, 'liberals' have so eroded standards that almost all have impoverished vocabularies; hence nothing will be communicated by the use of this word.
Second, in this Age of Levelling, the use of the word in question will be perceived as effete, and possibly epicene; you will be thought to be putting on airs. It is a verbal bow tie.
Thanks to, or rather, because of 'liberal' dumbing-down, people these days have terribly limited vocabularies. Here are a couple you should know. Both definitions from Merriam-Webster.
: a forcible separation or detachment: such asa : a tearing away of a body part accidentally or surgicallyb : a sudden cutting off of land by flood, currents, or change in course of a body of water especially : one separating land from one person's property and joining it to another's.
(Entry 1 of 2)
: a relative by marriage : in-law
affine
Definition of affine (Entry 2 of 2)
: of, relating to, or being a transformation (such as a translation, a rotation, or a uniform stretching) that carries straight lines into straight lines and parallel lines into parallel lines but may alter distance between points and angles between lines affine geometry.
But not only are insensibility and purity in no way identical; insensibility [Unsinnlichkeit] . . . does not even constitute an environment particularly favorable to the virtue of purity. For it is not even the temperament which is affine to that virtue and which makes it easier. That is to say, it is not the temperamental counterpart of purity.
Here, by James Lesher. Sample:
Ex vi terminorum: preposition + the ablative feminine singular of vis/vis(‘force’) + the masculine genitive plural of terminus/termini (‘end’, ‘limit’, ‘term’, ‘expression’): ‘out of the force or sense of the words’ or more loosely: ‘in virtue of the meaning of the words’. ‘We can be certain ex vi terminorum that any bachelors we encounter on our trip will be unmarried.’
Uncle Bill advises,
When it comes to Latin, and not just Latin, don't throw it if you don't know it.
1: an English Roman Catholic of the time from about 1570 to 1791 who refused to attend services of the Church of England and thereby committed a statutory offense.
2: one who refuses to accept or obey established authority.
So, like atheists in a theocracy, or recusants in Elizabethan England, we go underground. We are a secret society — brave rebels against the epidemiocracy.
Clarity will be served if we distinguish at least the following senses of 'absurd.' The word is from the Latin surdus, meaning deaf, silent, or stupid. But etymology can take one only so far and is no substitute for close analysis. And beware the Dictionary Fallacy.
1) Logico-mathematical. The absurd is the logically contradictory or self-contradictory or that which entails a logical contradiction. Absurdity in this sense attaches to propositions or sets of propositions. A reductio ad absurdum proof, for example, is a reduction to a contradiction. It is a way of indirectly proving a proposition. One assumes its negation and then derives a logical contradiction thereby proving the proposition.
2) Semantic. The absurd as the linguistically meaningless. Meaningful words can be strung together in meaningless ways, or meaningless words can be strung together. Example of the first: "Quadruplicity drinks procrastination." (Russell) Example of the second: "The slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe." (Lewis Carroll). There is nothing syntactically or logically wrong with these sentences.
3) Existential. The absurd as the existentially meaningless, the groundless, the brute-factual, the intrinsically unintelligible. The absurdity of existence in this sense of 'absurd' is what elicited Sartre's and Roquentin's nausea. The sheer, meaningless, disgusting, facticity of the chestnut tree referenced in the eponymous novel, for example, described by Sartre as de trop and as an unintelligible excrescence.
4) Ordinary. The absurd as the manifestly false. To be precise, 'absurd' as it is mostly used in standard English by non-philosophers refers to that which is both factually false and manifestly false. "Pelosi's assertion that there is no border crisis is absurd!" In other words, Pelosi's assertion is factually false, and plainly so. What is manifestly false as a matter of fact needn't be logically or semantically objectionable.
Item for further rumination: In Christianity construed along Kierkegardian lines, the apparent absurdity of human existence is redeemed by the Higher Absurdity of the God-Man on the cross.
Cultural note: the hipster depicted below is a parody of the beatniks of the late 'fifties and early 'sixties. It is what Joe Average imagined an 'existentialist' must look like: a goateed cat with a beret, dressed in black, smoking a cigarette, preferably a Gitane or an unfiltered Gaulois.
Autobiographical addendum: Things didn't work out with an early girlfriend. She complained that I was an 'existentialist' who was "down all the time." I did read a lot of Camus and Sartre in those days, but my favorite existentialists were the Dane, Kierkegaard, and the Russian, Nicholas Berdyaev. Lev Shestov came later. Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger are only loosely classifiable as existentialists.
Since [Kamala] Harris is now on her way to the political oubliette, however, Schweizer’s discussion of her depredations is of less exigent interest than his discussion of other figures, especially Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders, all, remarkably enough, leading contenders for the Democratic nomination for president.
I think I've been inside an oubliette, thought I didn't know what it was called at the time. It was quite unsettling. My brother, his son, and I were driving in southern Spain when we saw a ruined castle at the top of a hill. There was no sign or anything, but that's not unusual in Spain, so we hiked to the top of the hill and explored the ruins.The only sign of modern habitation was a fairly recent steel ladder going down into a sort of pit, about twenty feet deep and cylindrical with a diameter of about thirty feet, mostly covered, and with a round opening somewhat larger than a manhole. We couldn't figure out what the pit was, so my nephew climbed down the ladder to look around, then my brother followed.I asked one of them to come back up because it didn't seem safe for all of us to be down there (in case the ladder broke or something). My nephew came back up and I climbed down to look around. It was only moderately creepy until my nephew came back down and all three of us were down there together. No way could we have made a cell phone call from that location, and I had a sudden image of being stuck down in that hole with no way out.For just a moment, I imagine I felt what it would be like to be dropped into such a horrifying prison. It was one of those shocking moments when you really grasp viscerally how evil man can be to man.
Regards,David Gudeman
Said of a woman. Having a full, shapely figure. Voluptuous. Plump and vigorous. Rubenesque. A Yiddish word. Supposedly from the German saftig, juicy. More here. Trigger Warning! Snowflakes of the distaff persuasion will be offended.
Time was when 'female persuasion' and the like were used figuratively as a kind of joke; after all, one cannot be persuaded to be female or male. Or recruited. One does not join the female club. Nor can one be assigned one's sex at birth. Being female is something biological, not political or social like a party affiliation. But the times they have a'changed. Nowadays everything is a social construction and a matter of arbitrary identification. So, being female is like being a Democrat!
Nowadays there is no sex, only gender. How then can anything be sexist? And if, in reality, there are no races — race being a mere social construct — how can there be racism? Inquiring minds want to know.
Consuetude. Disuse versus usages and customs.
Conseuetudines Camaldulenses: Customs of the Camaldolese. Cf. Thomas Merton, Journal, vol. 5, p. 349.
A concealing, concealment, hiding, veiling. Antonym: revelation.
My example: Her selective self-revelation was as much an intended obvelation.
Example from Stewart Umphrey, Complexity and Analysis, Lexington Books, 2002, 140:
Since divine revelation is never without obvelation, those bound back to God in inquiry need a hermeneutics to distinguish what belongs to Him from what belongs to the medium of His self-presentation.