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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 7 of 7. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by IsoM on May 30, 2002, at 18:01:50
Beire-dei, seeing you're an English teacher & have a real thing about vocabulary (don't worry, so do I), I'm wondering if you've heard of this word.
On the news, I just caught the tail-end of a word that won this kid the chamionship in a spelling bee. He's in his teens so no simple spelling bee words. It sounded & looked like the word was "profiscience". Yep, that's the spelling I saw (or think I saw). I looked it up out of curiosity but couldn't find it listed in my dictionary whcih is a pretty thick English-version. Tried a search on Google, but it kept giving me 'proficient'.
Did you see that news piece and/or have you any idea what the word was? That's going to drive me crazy until I find out.
Posted by beardedlady on May 30, 2002, at 18:09:03
In reply to Beire-dei, have your heard of this word?, posted by IsoM on May 30, 2002, at 18:01:50
It means forsight.
(I remembered the word from the news this evening because I had the prospicience that you would ask!)
beardy
Posted by beardedlady on May 30, 2002, at 18:10:02
In reply to Beire-dei, have your heard of this word?, posted by IsoM on May 30, 2002, at 18:01:50
I was also joking by spelling it wrong.
beardy : )>
Posted by wendy b. on May 30, 2002, at 23:20:15
In reply to that would be F-O-R-E-S-I-G-H-T, of course. » IsoM, posted by beardedlady on May 30, 2002, at 18:10:02
Posted by IsoM on May 31, 2002, at 2:23:18
In reply to that would be F-O-R-E-S-I-G-H-T, of course. » IsoM, posted by beardedlady on May 30, 2002, at 18:10:02
Thanks for letting me know. The origins of words fascinates me, so any new word has to be examined & read up on. I remember at a gathering once, someone used as an illustration the unlikelihood of anyone reading a dictionary - that its purpose was only to check out words, if needed. No one would ever read one. When I mentioned I enjoyed reading dictionaries, they laughed & said "See what I mean? Only someone as weird as Judy would read one." Made me proud.
Posted by beardedlady on May 31, 2002, at 4:50:19
In reply to ...you mean phoarscite? » beardedlady, posted by IsoM on May 31, 2002, at 2:23:18
IsoM:
I, too, read the dictionary. My NY resolution this year was to read six pages a day, but it got old quickly. It's very hard to read that much when there's no juicy story. But I am always turning to a page at random and picking a word I've never heard. And I scour them for new words to play my in-class Balderdash.
My favorites, currently, are Zarf (a holder for a handle-less coffee cup--those mini pads, I would imagine!), Xyster (a bone-cutting instrument, which many actually guess), and Omphaloskepsis (an old one meaning contemplation of the navel). I like the sounds of these words.
Yours in lexophilia,
beardy
P.S. I had queried several literary magazines about an article comparing the top four dictionaries (M-W, Oxford, Random House, and American Heritage), but no takers so far (I haven't given up). It was called "Lexophilia: Get Thee to a Dictionary."
Posted by beardedlady on May 31, 2002, at 4:58:23
In reply to Re: Beardy - she caught you! what a world! (nm) » beardedlady, posted by wendy b. on May 30, 2002, at 23:20:15
I am pressing confirm too quickly these days to avoid spending so much time here. But I am a terrible speller, so I have a dictionary in every room of my house (people think I'm kidding, but I have them in the kitchen, dining room (where my office is), living room, bedroom, and hallway (which is right outside the bathroom). I can spell the hard words and the homonyms, but the easy things just slip by me.
So as soon as I press confirm, I say, "Oh, there was a word wrong!" So I guess I wind up spending even more time here, having to double post to undo my typos.
I am sooooo anal. Once I sent a birthday party invitation to about 10 folks--it was custom designed with my daughters face superimposed on a clown. I gave it a caption and circus type; it was very cute. But I left an apostrophe s out, so it said, "It's [Mary] birthday!"
When my mom called to say, "Should I tell you about the apostrophe s?" I said, "Oh, s**t." I quickly sent a card to all 10 people. It had an apostrophe s on it.
beardy
This is the end of the thread.
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