Some verbiage

This is a random thought that occurred to me but interesting nevertheless.

I recently saw V for Vendetta. I was (and still am) preparing slides for my talks and on one of the slides, I had lots of words. Looking at the slide afterwards, suddenly the noun ‘verbiage’ came to my mind (some might say, this blog can inspire similar feelings ). From verbiage, I remembered this self-introduction of ‘V’ from the movie.  Then, I recalled another verbiage that used to be my screen-saver:

“Those who are perforce constrained to be domiciled in vitreous structures with patent frangibility should on no account employ petrous formations as projectiles unto others.”

I think I read the above first at one of the vocab competitions at IIM-Ahmedabad and here is its analysis:

• perforce constrained to be domiciled = forced to live in
• vitreous structures = glass buildings
• patent frangibility = easily broken
• petrous formations = stones!
• employ…as projectile = throw!

Simply put: People who live in glass houses should not throw stones!

If you would like to read more, this is the place.

Alright, I am going back to slides.

‘Prepone’ doesn’t exist in dictionary!!?

It has been more than a year since I wrote something on this blog.  Recently, I finished writing first draft of my PhD proposal. After that exercise, it is abundantly clear how ‘clarifying’ can it be to write your thoughts down. So I hope to have a discipline of writing things at more regular intervals.

Now, this post is about a mild shock I received when Firefox didn’t recognize the word ‘preponed’ in my email to friends. I looked up Merriam-Webster online, and prepone wasn’t found there. In India, we used it as a perfectly legitimate antonym to postpone.  Well, it is not a nonsense word.  Etymological roots of postpone are post + ponere (i.e., place after), so prepone makes perfect sense (i.e. place before).

It was very amusing to realize that the word that I have been using since something like 5 years doesn’t even exist in dictionary.  It is definitely a useful word and may be we will see it in the dictionary soon.

Edit: I could find it on dictionary.com. The entry comes from preview edition of Webster’s New Millenium dictionary.