Saturday, September 1, 2012

9/1/2012

Welcome to the Guess My Word blog. This is a place to discuss the words of the day chosen by Joon and Mike. This paragraph is here mostly as spoiler space. Here are today's words:

mike's word: ornithology
joon's word: vicissitudes

Discuss.

9 comments:

  1. I could kick myself for not getting Joon's word, since it's a favorite word of mine--it just wouldn't come to me this morning. I guess "vicis-" just doesn't look like the start of a real word on its own, at least to me...

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  2. I thought taking a 14 instead of an 8 on Joon's word due to pluralization was rough, until I saw "Ab" get a 14 instead of a 3. Ouch.

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  3. I don't think it's right to use a plural. I had vicissitude early on and finally gave up.

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  4. I was lobbing grenades all around the target and took FOR EVER. Really, both words were a struggle today. Then again, I got up at 3:30 a.m. and never got back to sleep.

    I wish the contest accepted the Very Nearby Formations, because last week I was dying frm all of the -ings!!!!

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  5. you are all entitled to your opinions, but have you ever seen anybody use the word "vicissitude" in the singular? i have not. my dictionary says "usu. vicissitudes". what, pray tell, would a vicissitude be? the whole point of the word is that it connotes the way circumstances (plural) change in life. if you are only talking about a single change in something, you would never use any form the word at all.

    i don't use plurals lightly. but i would cry foul if (say) mike had chosen this word in the singular. "vicissitudes" is an awesome word; "vicissitude" is an incredibly awkward inflection.

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    1. I would clarify that I was not crying foul--I totally get the argument for using the plural in the wordlist.

      On the third hand, 24 of the 36 folks who put their names on the leaderboard guessed the singular first, so I think we just have a gap between awareness of the word and knowledge of its usage. (Or the dictionary does ...)

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  6. Thank you for the explanation - similar to "qualms" a few weeks ago. I enjoy the learning experience of GMW as much (almost) as the competition and addiction! Thanks for the time and effort that goes into this.




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  7. http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=vicissitude%2Cvicissitudes&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

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  8. (Evidence that the plural is not overstated by encompassing the singular: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=needles%2Cneedless&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3)

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