At 01:31 PM 1/25/98, you (sylvester pollet <[log in to unmask]>) wrote: > Pigritude I might be able to use sometime--that's a good one. > Yes, it was on my mind because I won a contest on a wordplay list and was punished by having to put forward an really obscure word for which other people are challenged to make up fanciful but alluring definitions, as a kind of competition. "Fictionary." Anyway, I used "pigritude" because I got it from Latin (piger = idle, lazy, slothful, etc.; the noun is pigritudo), thought it might make a cute alternative to the probably germanic "laziness," calculated that remembering and employing it now and then might save me a dented nose once in a while. Since I've never seen it in a book, I figured it was obscure enough. It *is* in the OED, but all three usage cites are from that mid-17C high-water mark of anglophone latinity -- and two of the three usage cites are from glossaries, which at that period are notorious for putting Latin- or Greek-based English words in their pages that no one or virtually no one ever used, on the off chance someone might start using them. Pigritude's day has come, though. Hey, language -- as they say -- is part of a cultural envoironment, and my motto is "Pigritude: Now More Than Ever." All best to the nonpigritudinous poundians, Greg Downing/NYU, at [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]