Okay, I’m having a few beers with an old friend and after we exhaust the discussion of women (which means either we a) have been there for waaay too many beers or b) are simply lazy), we start to talk (read: bitch) about work. He describes a new vendor incentive program that is pretty stupid but less crapulous than any of the other ideas on the table.
At which point I stop listening to him and ask myself, “Is this really a word?”
Now I readily admit that I am not the sharpest knife in the chandelier, but I’m no Trent Lott either. I’ve looked this up without success but crapulent appears to be associated with hangovers or other illnesses due to over indulgence. It was clear from the context of the discussion that he meant it as a synonym for shitty. This is a pretty funny and intelligent guy and I wouldn’t put it past him making it up. But did he?
I know from long experience that if I need an answer to an arcane question, I can get it from this august group. And if this august group ignores me, pretty much any other month will do.
I ask a perfectly frivolent question and I am met with complete amborience. I had expected more from such omnivoral people.
Seriously though, I understand the definition of the word but have never heard it used in this context. As I’ve said, I’m no rocket surgeon but I’d like to think there may occasionally be something new under the sun. Is there?
Oh, and sorry I put this in the wrong forum. I am, after all, a guest and I simply misunderestimated its placeure.
This is so unfair! I was going to come in here all proud of myself because I actually learned this word last week cuz it was the word of the day at dictionary.com.
Of course, multiple people beat me to the definition…
Earliest usage of crapulous, meaning grossly intemperate, is certainly not 1999. Earliest usage to mean poopy may well be by the OP’s friend.
It’s in Kipling’s short story “The Bonds of Discipline”, c 1903, in Traffics and Discoveries.
It is used in a report by a French spy on the disciplinary deficiencies of HMS Archimandrite, from which Kipling (in a bar) is doing a flying translation to a petty officer Mr. Pyecroft (ex-Archimandrite), for the purpose of seeing what kind of verification he can get.
Kipling reading; the voice is the French spy’s. [Snip]*‘Overborne by his superior’s causeless suspicion, the Navigator took off the badges of his rank and cast them at the feet of my captain and sobbed. A disgusting and maudlin reconciliation followed. The argument renewed itself, each grasping the wheel, crapulous’ * (that means drunk, I think, Mr. Pyecroft), shouting. It appeared that my captain would chenaler’ (I don’t know what that means, Mr. Pyecroft) to the Cape. At the end, he placed a sailor with the sound’ (that’s the lead, I think) ‘in his hand, garnished with suet…at two thousand metres of profundity. Decidedly the Britannic Navy is well guarded.’
gardentraveler’s reference gives derivation back to the Greek.
