So changing someone’s schedule isn’t rescheduling, but *is *gerrymandering? Why bother having definitions at all?
So now you’re the first person to *use *the word “gerrymander?” Surely not. If you are the first person to use it to mean “manipulation of numbers,” and fifty years from now it comes to mean that, you were still wrong when you said it.
Anyone else get the feeling that Contrapuntal is actually ChiefScott’s boss now trying to get revenge?
The simple fact of the matter is that that is not what it means, as even the OP has acknowledged, before his latest recantation. The only reason I keep responding is that I keep being challenged on it.
Look, I think it’s a really funny story, and the boss is a doofus, but the OP’s explication of the meaning of gerrymander was off base, as several posters have noted and cited.
Dude, he’s owned up to it and said he was wrong, what the hell do you want? Don’t be one of those guys who takes all the funny out by saying that Jews don’t eat bacon and so therefore the joke would never happen.
ChiefScott, your story was excellent and funny, and I support the motion that you get a list of the words you can’t use from your boss.
Right. He said it was wrong. Then he took it back in post #57.
It matters not what I want. As long as I am challenged, I will respond. What’s the crime in that? Do I need to say “Double No Take Backs?”
Tell the others to stop arguing with me if you are tired of the exchanges. Don’t pretend that I am inventing opportunities to make my point. I have only done so in response to a counter argument. What would you have me do? Concede because the noise is deafening?
Okay, try this request, which is not an argument, Contrapuntal: You’ve made your point. How about you please drop it and let the rest of us laugh at Chief Scott’s pointy-haired XO, without getting all etymologically ensnared in the process?
This I disagree with. He said:
This is not a claim that he used the term correctly. In fact, there is an explicit admission that gerrymander is not the correct but a “close” term, followed by a prediction that some day his usage might become accepted.
For someone who is insisting on precision, you are inferring a claim that is not explicitly made, IMO.
Of course!
We’d just had a change in overlords at work, who seemed to be of the opinion that any new idea/plan/policy they dreamed up was 1) brilliant 2) to be cheerfully acknowledged as such by us minions and 3) if 2 did not occur, it was not because it was not 1, but because of ‘bad messaging’. In retrospect, I called this 'the era of being sprayed with bullshit".
Anyhow, Brunhilde the not so bright (this photo being about 90% representative) came to our weekly minion meeting with some new pile of steaming effluent from management. Don’t even remember what it was anymore. So she says whatever it was, and why it was suppose to be so great.
I say, "that’s a fallacious argument!’
She gasps and gawks at me. I gawk back.
I think,‘shit, she doesn’t know what fallacious means?!’ Not wanting to embarrass her if this is the case, I rephrase slightly; ‘that idea is based on a fallacy…’ and she’s still gasping and gawking.
Oh shit-she thinks ‘fallacy’ refers to fellatio.
I have no idea how to get out of this. Fortunately, one of my co-minions with more seniority than Moses says “What Annie means to say here is that idea is full, full of shit!”
As my brother used to say to me, ‘stop using college words!’ 
Pardon me if I’m a bit dense here - did she confuse it with “fellatio”?
Yup.
That seemed to be the case, although I wasn’t going to pipe up mid-meeting and say 'you didn’t think I was talking about a blowjob, did you?" I have some fucking sense of decorum! 
Well, what do you say? I can’t imagine how you would get out of that if you didn’t have a higher-up step in for you. The worst part is that it’s not even your fault.
Sure it is, using them high falutin’ colleege words…
What, “fallacious”? I learned that as a junior in high school.
Fair enough. Sorry if it came off like I was gerrymandering you about it. 
Are you not familiar with the the concepts of “metaphors” or “figurative uses”? They can be remarkably useful.
Chief, consider yourself a poet of the language.
Alright, we should know by now that Contrapuntal wasn’t taking issue with the metaphor, but the way that Chief defined it when asked.
Although I don’t blame Chief since Chief was really explaining how he used the word Gerrymander to his boss, instead of giving a literal definition when prompted. Which is excusable to me, since Chief’s goal was to explain to his boss what he meant in the context of the report, not in giving him a vocabulary lesson, which is why I took that (lighthearted) jab at Contrapuntal.
Are we all on the same page now?
Only if DeForrestation refers to the act of expelling the ship’s old country doctor out of a photon torpedo hatch.
Although ChiefScott’s use of the word may not have been 100% accurate, had I been in that meeting (assuming I wasn’t the boss), I would have known exactly what he was trying to convey, so IMO it was a good use of the word.
Funny story. My husband’s job is somewhat similar, so I’m going to retail it to him tonight.
In the back seat of a car? 