A friend used the word “disigerent” over the weekend. He claims it means “to argue just for the sake of arguing, even if you know you’re completely wrong.” I’ve never heard of such a word, and can’t find it in any dictionary that I have, but he insists that it’s a real word. He said that he read it on a message board (not this one of course), but somehow that doesn’t convince me. Anybody ever hear of this word, or am I safe to say that he’s full of it?
Google finds 11 results, all from the same source.
it’s not in the OED, so either it’s misspelled, or there’s no such word.
I thought that this was called “being a Doper.” 
I’d bet the ranch, myself. I don’t think a made-up word that is used on a single website would count as a “real word” in most people’s book.
It seems likely that it’s a corruption of “belligerent.”
The part of the word that comes from the root “bellum” has been lost and replaced with a negative prefix.
Pure barbarism.
At first I wondered whether he had it mixed up with ‘belligerent’ but I have a free afternoon to play so…
I looked it up on msn and got 3 results, all the same web page. It is another notice board and someone has used it, but have used just the word, I can’t see the context.
Then I tried it on Office Word and got nothing.
I have tried 6 on-line dictionaries and none of them can find the word…
The dictionary that shipped with my Linux distro doesn’t have it, either. Not that that makes a huge amount of difference, but it’s another nail in the coffin.
It is apparently a nonce word only used on one website and by a very few people offline.
looks at Google links
Well, no mystery there. It’s the message board that buddy was reading, and it’s a pretty plain joke:
Excellent, I shall inform him of his wrongness at once.
$5 says he continues to argue “just for the sake of arguing.”
Igerent is as igerent does/says!
Tell him the correct form of the word is “maligerent.”
Perhaps a blend, like patheti-sad, but of “disingenuous” and “belligerent”?
Also known as a portmanteau.
No, a portmanteau does not involve truncating the root words, merely agglomerating them.
:dubious:
I believe that Lewis Carroll would tell you that that’s not the case at all. A portmanteau is, by definition, “truncated.”
You mean as in chortle and slithy? And as in portmanteau itself?
LOL! Sounds pretty self-referential to me!
(By the way, when you were checking those dictionaries, did you look up “self-referential”?
self-referential: adj. Resembling this definition. 
)
Sounds a tad like “tergiversate”: 1) to use evasions or ambiguities; equivocate; 2) to change sides; apostatize.
How many beers had your friend had? 