Saturday, December 10, 2005

Degrees of Sophistry

Just going back to the 'quiz' that ended up as 'me' being a 'semi-colon'. Part of it says that am 66% 'sophisticated'. Have no idea what is supposed to fill up the remaining 33%, but you have been warned.

(From Chambers's 20th Century Dictionary)

Sopherim n-pl. the scribes, the expounders of Jewish oral law. [Hebr. Soferim.]

Sophia n. wisdom: divine wisdom (often personified Sofia, Hagia Sophia, Saint Sophia.)
Adjs. Sophic, -al. - adv. Sophically. - ns . sophism, a specious fallacy; sophist, one of a class of public teachers of rhetoric, philosophy etc. in ancient Greece: a captious or intentionally fallacious reasoner; sophister (Shak) a sophist: (Cambridge, hist) a student in his second or third year, (Dublin) in his third or fourth. -- adj. sophistic, pertaining to, or of the nature of, a sophist or sophistry: fallaciously subtle, the art of sophistry. Sophistical --adv. -- v.i. sophisticate, to adulterate: to falsify: to doctor: to render sophistical or unsound: to artificialise: to give a fashionable air of worldly wisdom to . --adjs. Sophisticate, sophisticated, adulterated: impure: not genuine: falsified: worldly-wise and disillusioned. sophistication; sophisticator; sophistry, specious but fallacious reasoning.

[Gr. sophia, wisdom. sophisma, skill, device, trick, quibble. sophistes, an expert, a sophist - sophos, wise.]

Sophoclean. Adj. Pertaining to Sophocles, Athenian tragic poet. (c.496-c.406 B.C.)

Sophomore. n. (now U.S.) a second year student. Also adj. sophomoric, of a sophomore, bombastic.

[prob. From sophos, wise… moros, foolish.]

12 comments:

Linda Jones Malonson said...

Oh my goodness, don't you just love the dictionary!

I put it right up there with all the great books .. and a step above most because it has the power to define what you believe. The truth is as ugly as a like and twice as hard to take.

Davoh said...

Amias, never lose your unique way with words. Am sure that Shakespeare and Marlowe never read a 'dictionary'.

Linda Jones Malonson said...

You do me honor Davo ... and if I could blush I would, but you know how brown skin is. It's hard to change colors.

Thank you dear friend.

GreenSmile said...

always be mindful in treating a word with Hebrew roots that vowels are not written down, and nikudim, the dots and
decorative squiggles that modern hebrew uses for vowel sounds were introduced by the Mazorites about 9th C BCE [because crusades and the spread of islam had begun to threaten the long lived schools and centers where oral tradition had preserved the vowels and the meanings for a millenium.]

Sopherim is a plural but its root is just the "consonants" shin, fay, reysh. "Sefer",the root, is the same as the hebrew word for "scroll" or book.

JahTeh said...

Worldly wise and disillusioned, me to a t.

Davoh said...

umm, JT .. think that I trend toward the moros.

Davoh said...

Greensmile, am learning that you have a better understanding of words that I. Forgive me if I err.

Anonymous said...

I took the quiz and came up as an ellipsis.

PhilippinesPhil said...

Words are cool! I love 'em now more than ever. When I learned about SHIFT+F7 (in Microsoft Word) I became KING in my last unit--I was the one-eyed man in the land of the blind. My flight commander didn't know about Shift+F7 and she was always asking me for synonyms while she was writing performance reports. She thought I was a walking thesaurus. Heh, heh. I didn't tell her until just before she left. I'm so evil.

Mother Sharon Damnable said...

Apologies for OT

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/12/13/bvprison13.xml

Davoh said...

OT? mother d. Interesting link though. Have reset it here

Davoh said...
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