Leibniz, himself no stranger to strange ideas about language, is said to have recognized the transcendent quality of this work by coining the French verb goropizer ("goropize") to mean "invent absurd etymologies". So it's fitting that in honor of Dr. Goropius Becanus, an anonymous benefactor has endowed the prestigious Goropius Becanus Prize, awarded to people or organizations who have made outstanding contributions to linguistic misinformation.
Not really related, but this makes me think of a word (colloquialism) I just learned: backronym. This means an acronym that is figured out after the fact. Like you've been calling your project 'cat' because you are a big cat fan and think cats rule, but then once it's popular people are always asking what 'cat' stands for - so you create a backronym and just make something up. "Uh, it stands for Cataloguing Auto Truncator."
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- bill 1-03-2007 11:55 pm
Not really related, but this makes me think of a word (colloquialism) I just learned: backronym. This means an acronym that is figured out after the fact. Like you've been calling your project 'cat' because you are a big cat fan and think cats rule, but then once it's popular people are always asking what 'cat' stands for - so you create a backronym and just make something up. "Uh, it stands for Cataloguing Auto Truncator."
- jim 1-04-2007 12:00 am [add a comment]