A Long Time Ago, In a Seminary Far Away

Here are a couple of old pictures from the very beginning of Theologiggle. Jana and I had been married about 13 weeks, instead of 13 years. How time flies.

Academicisms

OK, so the neologiggle post (see below) didn't go over so well, but I'm not deterred. I have another linguistic challenge for you logophiles. Background: Today a friend of mine here (my fellow PTS grad Eric Jacobsen) and I were discussing the word precis as an example of an "academicism" -- i.e. obtuse words whose clever use raises one's score on the academic credibility scale.

So this week's challenge is this: can we devise a list of 50 such words, the persistent use of whicbh are sure-fire signs that the one employing them is a registered denizen of the ivory tower. The criteria are:

1) Words must be obscure
2) They must be hard to spell and / or have a pronunciation nuance (so you
can correct people)
3) They must have a perfectly good 'common' synonym.

Have fun!

Panoramic Photo of the Beach

Hello! After fiddling with some different tools for a while I have generated a Javascript based Panoramic Beach Photo from a series of images I took back in August. When you get to that page you can click and drag left and right to see the full image. Here it is in miniature.



Ah, the heady days of summer. Digging in the sand. Splashing in the water. Lathering on our SPF 80 sunblock....

Jake-a-lope

A visit to the Natural History Museum of LA County this weekend led to the discovery, in the hands-on Discovery Room, of a new species of Rienstra: the Jake-a-lope.

Neologiggle

The English language already has among the largest vocabularies of any language in the world, but hey, we could always use a few more words. A new book by a guy called Adam Jacot de Boinod collects cool words from other languages for which there is no equivalent in English. A review of the book in the British paper The Independent lists a bevy of good ones. Our favorite so far is "the stoic German term Torschlusspanik, meaning 'the fear of diminishing opportunities as one gets older.'"

So here's a challenge for Theologigglers everywhere: Let's make up some new words for things that really need words to describe them.

Here are a few definitions we've made up that need words to go with them:

• a verb to describe obnoxious parents cheering maniacally on the sidelines at their childrens' sporting matches (hyperhuzz?)
  
• a noun for the noises early-risers make that disturb people who are still sleeping (somnturbation?)
  
• a verb for the sermonic technique of answering questions nobody in the congregation is asking (pedanticize? But that isn't really "new" enough - it's just a morphologism)
  
• A noun for the sneeze that is on its way, but hasn't arrived quite yet (this one should probably be of Germanic derivation)

OK, now it's your turn.