Comments | thebiggest: Neologism SOS

thebiggest

Neologism SOS

Jan 11, 2006 14:56

This is a call out to all of my verbo-centric friends to help me graduate. I know that I have enough Scrabble-Boggle-crossword playing geeks, oops, I mean, friends to achieve some form of vocabulary critical mass, so I put this conundrum out to you. I've already caused the foreheads of the folks at Autumn Leaves to wrinkle with this one, so y'all ( Read more... )

Comments 7

*ponders* narose January 11 2006, 20:26:09 UTC

I think I'll just throw terms at you and see if any of them stick :-)

Mind you, I know little-to-nothing about your actual dissertation, which may either help or hinder this process... and I assure you that most if not all of these terms will be utterly inappropriate.

There, disclaimer time's over!

formal...common...popular...shared...general...aggregate...generic...social...

Hrmph, this is tricky. Am I pointing in a somewhat correct direction?

Common dennis_obell January 11 2006, 22:26:31 UTC

That's what I would suggest - "common" works in the blanks above, and it suggests "public" in a modernizing-Communist-nation kind of way.

Oh, and, um...hi Felix!

-Chris M., BK '93

Um hi to you too! thebiggest January 12 2006, 21:47:43 UTC

Thanks for the response Chris. 'Common' is definitely one that I have considered. Will keep doing so.

niwandajones January 11 2006, 23:12:47 UTC

When in doubt, I go to the thesaurus:

accessible, city, civic, civil, common, communal, conjoint, conjunct, country, federal, free, general, government, governmental, intermutual, metropolitan, municipal, mutual, national, not private, open, open-door, popular, social, state, universal, unrestricted, urban, widespread, without charge

Clearly, "not private" is the only way to go, here. ;-)

sunpony January 12 2006, 02:00:11 UTC

Hmm. . . conjunctive space?

Lots of these words will just not do. It is mostly a cultural thing: the Chinese "public" is very different than the Amero-Western one. I trolled the OED a bit looking for inspiration; nothing yet!

tidewatcher January 12 2006, 14:49:13 UTC

Hmmm...

communal?
collective?
universal?

Multiplicitous protestations of gratitude to the aggregate entirety of the writer's coterie! thebiggest January 19 2006, 00:15:02 UTC

Or, many thanks to all my friends! I really do appreciate the help, not the least because many of you seemed to find the issue as brow wrinkling as I do. So I don't feel quite as silly for being verbally confused. I think that Josh put the conundrum particularly well at the beginning of his second post ( ... )