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TorgoX (1933)

TorgoX
  sburkeNO@SPAMcpan.org
http://search.cpan.org/~sburke/
"Il est beau comme la retractilité des serres des oiseaux rapaces [...] et surtout, comme la rencontre fortuite sur une table de dissection d'une machine à coudre et d'un parapluie !" -- Lautréamont

Journal of TorgoX (1933)

Monday June 17, 2002
04:36 PM

Websterrifying

[ #5723 ]
Dear Log,

I invented a new word: "Websterrifying". It's when someone spends five pages uselessly defining something that the reader basically already knows the meaning of, just because he wants to ramble about "what IS a [tape player, or function, or whatever], REALLY?" It's all too common in technical writing. Instead of "defining" (a word and concept that I would banish from the language, if I could), show by example.


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  • ...you just need to submit your new word to Webster.
  • A related word would be "websterrorism".

    Although, frankly, that sounds like something having to do with the internet.

    Btw -- you want to banish "define", yet "define" is what you did for your new word.

    Besides, we need a word that means "to give a meaning to (a variable, subroutine, etc.)"

    :-)
    • I said I wanted to banish "define", not define. The word, not the reference.
      • Either I'm severely failing to comprehend your point, or you persist in using a word which you want to banish. If the word "define" were banished, how would you be making your point? What do you mean by "reference", anyway? You've done a fair amount of defining, yourself; but you feel that activity should not have a single-word label? Where people now say "define", they should instead say something like "establish the meaning of"? Why is that an improvement?

        Puzzled,
        /me
  • Halfjack coined this by accident one day (offline, actual sounds involved).

    We were all enchanted.
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