Ultreacrepdarian
How can this write be added?
This is actually a great general question. What was the process for entering the etymology of a word in the past 20 years? I would imagine haphazard, based on the immediate fancies of the creator of the site? But I’d only be guessing.
I’ve spent the last 60 immersed in literature and history and writing about them. I haven’t paid attention to movies, TV, pop culture generally since the 90s. I don’t understand digital technology and avoid it like the Amish. I detest the digitalized nonbrains that rattle loose in all the lemming-heads now.
The question is, what is the most useful application of my candle-butt of remaining time?
Option 1: Track down ephemeral words made by digitalized nonbrains and touted online to play the virality game. Make myself a collector of mayfly words that will be stiff in six hours and forgotten in six months. Devote myself to promoting whimsical TikTokkers’ brainfarts. When there already is an Urban Dictionary which looks to be in thriving fettle and is doing its chaotic job well enough, better than I could.
Option 2: Continuing to expand and polish etymonline, which has no interest in the future but offers a gateway into a past that digital lemmings in 2024 increasingly can’t read, much less understand. That past has a few things in it you might want to keep in touch with. “Federalist Papers,” say, but that’s the future’s business and by election none of mine.
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would be a way of putting it
Hi Doug,
at school I learnt to write with stylus and nib – back then the fountain pen was regarded as an unnecessary luxury - thus I must predate you by a decade or so.
Nonetheless I do understand digital technology because I was among the ones who contributed to its growth when it was still a baby, rather than strangling it in the crib - and may the Gods forgive me for that.
Be it as it may, it would take me about half an hour to jot down a small program (I’ll be damned if I’ll ever call it an app) to churn out an arbitrary number of plausible English-sounding words no one’s ever heard before, a precious asset for all those, er… gentlebrats whose highest goal in life seems to be to pull nil-IQ pranks on innocent etymoholics and dictionary editors.
May they some day discover a better use for life – such as for instance peeling bananas with their feet.
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Well said! [Which is sufficient reply, but the Tech, on my own forum, won’t let me post anything shorter than 20 characters, no matter if style, reason, and clarity demand no more. Bring me back my pen knife.]