Really? What’s the definition?
Actually, I suspect friend Snowboarder of hiding his light under a bushel – he’s actually a frustrated coiner of new words.
I really like “garbagerie” as a deprecating term for a consignment store. “Televisionary” has probably actually been used just slightly fewer times than necessary to take hold and begin a journey into the pages of the dictionerie. And I absolutely love this one:
*Symptomonomatopoeia: noun. Definition: (a) a hiccup, cough, or burp indicative of a particular illness (b) When your doctor says "I’m not sure, but it * sounds like you’ve got …"
And thanks, Gadarene, for the kind words.
You know, the word ‘gullible’ isn’t in the dictionary, either. Really.
I got my then-16-year-old niece to look it up. I asked her if her picture was in there.
Damn! :smack: Beaten to the punch.
Yeah, except that you have failed to demonstrate your case.
You caught a doctor falling into the trap of using jargon outside the sphere where it is perfectly cromulent and jumped to the error that he invented the word (he did not) and assigned him a motive of trying to make himself look “smart” when the evidence provided does not support your accusation.
Saying, after the fact, that he could have expressed himself in a way that was more to your liking is simply backpedaling on your initial acusation.
Standing ovationage to King of Suop!
Ow! My tongue!!
Dittoage!!!
Stop putting apostrophe’s where they dont belong, imbecile’s!
Er, what’s Guadere’s 6th Law? For that matter, what are 1-5?
Er, no. Try again:
I could present with fifty unrelated symptoms, from a pessimistic outlook on life to visual hallucinations, but what’s really important is the clusters of symptoms that point to specific diagnoses–in other words, the symptomatology.
You know what really doesn’t help the whole trying-to-look-smart-thing? Ex-cessive hyphen-ation.
Er, no. A symptom complex is one thing which includes all of the relevant and connected symptoms for one diagnosis of one patient. “Symptoms”, on the other hand, can refer to a long list of things affecting any number of patients that may or may not have any bearing on each other or on any one diagnosis. Strike!
Actually, you’re taking an established, legitimate use for a word and bending it around to make it sound dumber so you can prove your point. You’re the imbecile. Get over it.
No, but taking -age off the end of a word to turn it into another word that doesn’t necessarily have the same meaning sure makes you (and the language) dumber.
Hey, Bo. . .here’s a new word for you: pwn3d.
As in: ur ass in this thread.
Furthermorily, “signage” means something subtly different than “signs” to some people. “Signage” is more the overall placement, design, and layout of the “signs” themselves. In my conception, a place could have nice signs, but poor signage.
Also, I like new words. Especially silly ones like pwn3d and garbargerie.
“Symptomatology” sounds perfectly normal to an MD in the context you describe.
People in any field get in the habit of using jargon. It’s certainly possible to make a conscious effort to avoid it when talking to “laymen”, but in the case of doctors they only really deserve slamming is when the jargon obfuscates meaning. In this case it’s obvious what he means.
That said, I am tired of one of my local plant nurseries running ads in the paper announcing “New Shipments of Plant Material Arriving Daily”. This is a case of industry jargon superseding common sense. “Plant Material” is what I bag up when I rake the lawn. What you are selling is what normal people call “Plants”.
Bunch of feculent, dystrophic-brained wretches. 
The habitification of adding extra syllabilicals and unnecessarified wordage to speechifying is one of the mannerisms in which our Britisher satiricalite comediators mock your present and current Presidential personage now these days.
Is adding extra syllables to words as bad as when someone takes a perfectly good word and cruelly slices it in half with a misplaced hyphen?
Murderererer.
We keep this up he’s going to tell us to fucko-off!
Shouldn’t that have been “(and the langu)”?
Look, I’m not going to defend SnoboarderBo’s points, and I tip my hat to the King of Soup’s tour de forceage.
But the original was NOT perfectly clear, and that was precisely my point. I’m not asking for it to be dumbed down, just stating that it could have been even more clear, and usefully so.
“The highway exit sign that seemingly indicates you to move into the left lane when actually you need to stay in the second-from-left lane is an example of the consistently poor signage throughout the Seattle metropolitan area.”
The signage could be poorly placed, poorly spelled, incorrectly worded, angled away from the correct direction, and you’d call it poor signage. Those are small differences, admittedly.
It could also be poorly conceived, like some of the nonverbal symbols I see from time to time. It could be poorly maintained, like having the reflective coating darkened. It could simply be placed too close to decision points – a common problem in my area.
Saying “poor signage” is informative. More specific detail is MORE informative. More informative is more useful – if I am driving in the area, is it my night vision, my reflex speed, my reading comprehension, or my ability to interpret arbitrary symbols that will most likely be tested?
Clarity is a virtue and a goal toward which writers can aspire even if they do not reach it.
Some of the people I work with are bureaucrats to the core. They’ll ask my help and I’ll have all kinds of problems getting clarity out of them because they’re trained to avoid it.
They’ll say “it was made like that” when pointing to a document.
I’ll ask “did the requestor want it that way?”
“Well, it was made that way.”
“Who made it that way? Did you do it?”
“Well, that’s the way it’s been done.”
“So you did it?”
“Uh…that’s how it always is.”
“But you made it look like that?”
“Uh…yeah.”
“Was that way specifically requested?”
“Uh…”
It’s like pulling teeth.
The original example wasn’t obscure, but it could have been usefully improved upon.
Which was my point.
Sailboat
Of course, some are laymer than others.
Okay, two things. First, I will freely concede that maybe I didn’t use the best example. I was trying to think of a sentence in which “signage” worked and “signs” didn’t, and that’s the first thing that came to mind. I agree, it could be more clear. Second, your objection that I just quoted seems to be more with the word “poor” than with the word “signage”!
I am, however, completely with you on the rage-making frustration in bureaucratic inertia.
I have no intelligent answer to a remark like THAT, genius!
IF you are serious, I must apologize. I had no idea you had no real life and would go to ALL THAT much work to see my point.
I have already said that NEITHER version of the “word” existed in ANY dictionary!!! Were you not paying attention?!
You must have gone through a linguistics journal, instead. If not, you can find “hoxe” plainly listed after searching the following database for linguistic journals online:
http://straitjacketeddope.com/
“Stupid” True Blue Jack
Notice the large blank space where your quote should go? :rolleyes: The reason why there’s nothing there is that you used the QUOTE block feature which is to be used when you’re quoting another poster. :wally
I agree. As if back in the day, you would get scolded for the OPs use of the word ‘Accompanied’.
“Why u use big word Ogre? Think u smarter then us?”