Cato's Grammar Grumble

[Cato]

"Consumer Discreationary Update"

Well, some updates should be discreated!   0:)

In this instrutable I am going to show you a few methods of cleaning a laptop screen with household products you probably already have. It is cheep and safe way to make your monitor shine like its brand new!!

I find "instrutable" inscrutable: does the writer mean "instruction" ?

And "prepone" ?   I am skeptical of needing that word! 

[North Star]

You cannot strut it, it is instrutable.

[Jo498]

And "prepone" ?   I am skeptical of needing that word!

As a Latin teacher you should have nothing against the word, shouldn't you? But I certainly prefer postponing...

[North Star]

As a Latin teacher you should have nothing against the word, shouldn't you? But I certainly prefer postponing...

I don't know about prepone, I suppose it's a handy way to say that something has been rescheduled to an earlier time, so there's a theoretical reason for its existence.

[Ken B]

I saw "prepone" somewhere;  barbarous.

Yeah. Really it has a lot going for it. It is useful. It derives from the same process oas postpone. It really should be OK. But it just feels awful, just awful. Business speak at its worst.

Megalothymia is a needed and useful one though. Too bad it's not shorter and catchier.

[Jo498]

Isn't megalothymia the same as magnanimity, only Greek?

My favorites when studying Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics were pleonexia (to want to have more than one's share) and megaloprepeia (spending big for parties for friends or sth. like that). The latter is a virtue!

[jochanaan]

I saw "prepone" somewhere;  barbarous.

"...and though it is a barbarous country, there are no barbers there." --L. Frank Baum, The Patchwork Girl of Oz

(Not an example of "grammar grumble," BTW; whatever one may think of the Oz books and the pun-ishment therein, Mr. Baum's grammar was excellent. )

[Cato]

"...and though it is a barbarous country, there are no barbers there." --L. Frank Baum, The Patchwork Girl of Oz

(Not an example of "grammar grumble," BTW; whatever one may think of the Oz books and the pun-ishment therein, Mr. Baum's grammar was excellent. )

Quite true!

Isn't megalothymia the same as magnanimity, only Greek?

No, I suppose it means "desiring great respect."  The latter means "extremely generous."

My favorites when studying Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics were pleonexia (to want to have more than one's share) and megaloprepeia (spending big for parties for friends or sth. like that). The latter is a virtue!

Also used in Herodotus for a politician buying votes by spending big on public works. 

Nothing has changed, except today it is called "pork-barrel spending."   

One of my favorite words from Ancient Greek is "Cathadypathy" (from kathadupatheo) which means to "squander your life in riches and luxurious living."

Ancient Greek had all kinds of very specific words!   0:)

[North Star]

Quite true!
No, I suppose it means "desiring great respect."  The latter means "extremely generous."

Well, extreme generousness.  0:)

[Ken B]

Megalothymia is defined as "a need to feel superior. "  It's usefulness in the modern world of PC mau-mauing, shame storms, and politics as identity is clear enough.

[Karl Henning]

Megalothymia is defined as "a need to feel superior."

You're welcome.

It then struck us we had not so much as a single Beatles song in our library and that in order to download MP3s of our favorites recorded by the Beatles themselves we'd have to buy them and, to our dismay, would have to buy them through iTunes even though we'd long ago sworn to never again install a piece of Apple software on our Windows machine.

[kishnevi]

Mr. Douglas certainly qualifies for the Fury portion of his blog's title.  Hurwitz has nothing on him.

[Wanderer]

Megalothymia is defined as "a need to feel superior. "

That's a definition that Fukuyama coins to the word in one of his books. The actual meaning of the word in Greek, still in use, is magnanimity.

[Wanderer]

Isn't megalothymia the same as magnanimity, only Greek?

Yes.

My favorites when studying Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics were pleonexia (to want to have more than one's share) and megaloprepeia (spending big for parties for friends or sth. like that). The latter is a virtue!

Both are widely used to this day; πλεονεξία meaning greed or rapacity and μεγαλοπρέπεια meaning splendour, magnificence.

[Jo498]

Very interesting! As my ancient Greek is very rusty and my modern Greek virtually non-existent, except for a few simple words, it's nice to see that such words are still used with pretty much the same meaning.

I looked it up again in my (modest) German/Ancient Greek dictionary (I cannot get the online Liddell&Scott to work properly, to stupid to enter the Greek text). This did not have the negatively connoted megalothymos. It gives only the old-fashioned to obsolete "grossherzig" which means literally having a big heart which implies generosity but more in a charitable, forgiving way, not mainly spending generously.
There is also megalopsychia (even more literally magnanimity) with roughly the same meaning.

The fun thing with German and Greek is that they are similar in the way words can be compounded to sometimes long concatenations. (batrachomyomachia is "Froschmäusekrieg", please don't ask why it is not "Froschmauskrieg" or "Fröschemäusekrieg")
Another similarity, ruthlessly (ab)used by philosophers since Aristotle is coining nouns by simply sticking a definite article in front of something which isn't a noun (and German is not quite as powerful here but it still works).

[Karl Henning]

Mr. Douglas certainly qualifies for the Fury portion of his blog's title.

I hadn't spared a thought for him in a decade or more.  But Ken's provision of that definition brought him right to mind, somehow . . . .

[Karl Henning]

Of course, having been gulled at times myself, I am not saying I am certain that this was not the fault of voice-to-text software, but I did enjoy just reading:

. . . 7 year old full bread German shepherd.

[North Star]

I don't think bread is the usual material used in stuffing animals. . .

[Karl Henning]

For table rather than the diorama, yes.

[North Star]

For table rather than the diorama, yes.

Well, that is certainly true. I don't know how common it is to eat a dog of so advanced years. A puppy would be delicious, I'm sure. . .