Musings and chronicles on life, work, film, culture, politics, etc.
08 Mar 2013 Leave a Comment
in words Tags: Adjective, pedantic
sto·chas·tic (st-kstk)
ADJECTIVE:
Of, relating to, or characterized by conjecture; conjectural.
Statistics
Involving or containing a random variable or variables: stochastic calculus.
Involving chance or probability: a stochastic stimulation.
02 Feb 2013 4 Comments
in words Tags: business term, definition, investment term
04 Jan 2013 1 Comment
in musing, opinion, words, writing
"A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs who never knew one another.
03 Jan 2013 Leave a Comment
in words Tags: Gasconade County Missouri
29 Oct 2012 2 Comments
in words Tags: Greek, Indo-European, Latin, Linguistics, OED, Oxford English Dictionary, Victor Benjamin Neuburg
Talk about a mouthful – ostrobogulous, but it has tickled my fancy. How to work it into conversation? I’ll try to find a way.
Pronunciation: Brit. /ˌɒstrəʊˈbɒɡjᵿləs/, U.S. /ˌɑstroʊˈbɑɡjələs/
Etymology: Apparently irregularly < oestrous adj. + -o- connective + either bog n.1 or bog n.4 + -ulous suffix, attributed to Victor Benjamin Neuburg, British writer (1883–1940); compare:1973 Times Lit. Suppl. 27 July 871/2 It was sick, dirty, or more precisely, ‘ostrobogulous’, which according to Victor Neuburg..meant etymologically full of (Latin, ulus) rich (Greek, ostro) dirt (schoolboy, bog). Chiefly humorous.
Used after Neuburg to designate something that is slightly risqué or indecent. Also applied arbitrarily to things which are bizarre, interesting, or unusual in some other way (see quots.).
1951 A. Calder-Marshall Magic my Youth i. 31 ‘Ostrobogulous’ was Vickybird’s favourite word. It stood for anything from the bawdy to the slightly off-colour. Any double entendre that might otherwise have escaped his audience was prefaced by, ‘if you will pardon the ostrobogulosity’.
1952 A.Graves Ostrobogulous Pigs 7 Once upon a time there were..five ostrobogulous skipperty flipperty filthy grubby muddy little pigs.
1963 Sunday Times 29 Dec. 19/2 (heading) An ostrobogulous year for the toy men.
1965 J. O. Fuller Magical Dilemma V. Neuburg i. iv. 58 Some of the entries were not printed because they were ostrobogulous. This was a wonderful word of Vicky’s. It was used in the place of indecent or pornographic, and had the advantage..that it implied no moral attitude.
1972 Times Lit. Suppl. 30 June 757/4 His career, fabulous, prestigious, sordid, sinister, and in the word of Victor Neuburg ostrobogulous.
Derivativesostroboguˈlation n. nonce-wd.
1952 A. Graves Ostrobogulous Pigs 11 ‘I can no longer endure the odorous and objectionable ostrobogulations of those creatures,’ said Angelina Boghurst-Fisher.ostroˈbogulatory adj. nonce-wd.
1952 A. Graves Ostrobogulous Pigs 10, I can no longer endure this ostrobogulatory behaviour.
30 Jul 2012 2 Comments
Canadian Olympian Medallists honoured (Photo credit: VancityAllie)
You won’t believe it’s a real word, but it’s in the Oxford English Dictionary.
This week’s word is Olympianly. It doesn’t roll off the tongue and I suppose represents a wide range of conduct.
Olympianly, adv.
Pronunciation: Brit. /əˈlɪmpɪənli/, U.S. /əˈlɪmpiənli/, /oʊˈlɪmpiənli/
Forms: also with lower-case initial.
Etymology: < Olympian adj.1 + -ly suffix2.
In an Olympian manner; loftily, condescendingly.
- 1871 Echo 21 June 1/1 The Times..a little too Olympianly,..intimates that Mr. Gladstone’s argument for the Bill ‘perishes on analysis’.
- 1949 Listener 17 Nov. 860/2 Augustus John..has always been olympianly remote, a psychological factor which I think the critic should remember.
- 1975 F. Exley Pages from Cold Island ix. 151 It was..a trumpeting command issued from Wilson’s Olympianly pedantic heights.
- 1999 D. F. Wallace Brief Interviews with Hideous Men 148 Note..that its not like it’s any kind of Olympianly high aesthetic standards that have caused you to toss out 63% of the original octet.
16 Jul 2012 Leave a Comment
in words Tags: definition, International Phonetic Alphabet, words
25 Jun 2012 Leave a Comment
in words Tags: definition, uncommon, vocabulary
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