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Chris -- 2018-04-11
I can report this one on myself, it is a blend if nothing else.
[re a tune that does not fit the serious words sung to it] It just feels a little … flib, I guess.
I immediately caught it to write it down. My initial reaction was that both glib and flippant had been my mind:—both fit the context, and that is probably enough of an explanation. The more modern slangish word “flip” meaning “insincere, joshing, etc.” may have been doing its thing too, though I don’t think it was in my mind at the moment; it is hardly in my active vocabulary at all. “Fib” = a slight insincerity (lie) ?
But why are there so many words starting with “f” that mean something involving insincerity or instability or something like that? What about “gl” makes it feel somehow to gloss or glide over such instability smoothly? Why do so many “fl” words have a notion of flitting, fluttering, flashing, flirting, flicking, flubbing, flapping, flopping, etc., a momentary or repeated small, awkward disturbance in expected smoothness? And the final “b” feels meaningful in ways I can’t articulate without thinking a lot more (and likely not even then).
Who knows?
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2024-05-15 10:08:10)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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David, flibbertigibbet came to mind before I’d finished the first sentence. Perhaps you were casting about for it unconsciously? Certainly I spend much time thrashing about in the shallows with net and gaff while behind me the fish I seek beaches itself and slowly rolls away over the horizon.
Your last paragraph expresses my feelings exactly. I don’t know either, but wish I did.
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Yes, flibbertigibbet fits in too, and I don’t doubt that, as you suggest, I was gaffing about for it unconsciously. So you beach yourself with it in hand and roll it towards me—thanks!
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2024-05-08 15:57:39)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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Oddly enough, I’ve just encountered two unfamiliar fl- words in a passage by William Clowes, an Elizabethan surgeon/chirurgeon. In castigating charlatans and quacks he says, “Then rises out of his chair, fleering and jeering, this miraculous surgeon, floriously glittering like the man in the moon … ”
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