This I like. I may have to invent this word. Either this or juditions.
Parsimony, mostly.
This is the word I’ve been trying to find synonyms of. It’s exactly right, except that (a) no one knows this word and (b) the things I’m thinking of aren’t necessarily moral in nature. For example, I don’t think that eating broccoli has all that much to do with morality. Well, maybe consequentialism.
This, as it turns out, is the thing that I’m trying to avoid, in that I want the content of the “should” to speak for itself and not rely on the authority of anyone. That is, eating broccoli is a good idea regardless of whether anyone thinks it is. I’m looking for a word that has that idea (at the least) of impartiality.
I really thought there was such a word and I just couldn’t think of it.
Best answer would seem to be along the lines of “proper practices.”
The Latin gerundive was a verbal form (substantive or adjective) devoted to stating what should properly be made or done, e.g., a memorandum was originally a note of what should properly be remembered. Dozens of such words were borrowed by English.
However, pejorativization has besmirched the appropriate word for the general “thing that should properly be done”, which would be *agendum, the singular not common in English but its plural, a list of things to be done, very common as “agenda” – and unfortunately in the past few years this has picked up a highly negative connotation.
My colleagues from India occasionally suggest that I “do the needful” for a given situation. A nice, vague phrase that imparts urgency while leaving the details of what is urgent up to the recipient.
The problem is, my inner 15-year-old has to consciously avoid thinking of it as a euphemism for masturbation (what I would “need” to resort to in the absence of “doing the nasty”).
