FW: "needlepoint" v.

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>Is "solipsism" a count noun?  Isn't likely that Buckley really meant
>"solecisms" instead of "solipsisms"?

I have no problem with "solipsisms" used to mean "examples or
manifestations of solipsism". There are a few dozen Web examples in 'good'
writing, at a glance.

However, there is also this poem by James J. Kilpatrick, who apparently
misused "solipsism" in this way on some occasion:

Bring me a sackcloth, bring me ashes,
Prop me up for forty lashes.
Grade me bottom on the curve,
Impose the penance I desurve.
There's no forgiving such a gaffe,
This word that spoiled a paragraffe.
My hand reached out for solecism,
And fell, alas, on solipsism!
Gadzooks, oh my, and sacre bleu!
A lots of mea culpa teu.
And yet, perhaps, I may explain
The goof that caused me so much pain.
My fault alone? May God forbid it!
'Twas Mrs. Malaprop who did it.
This ditsy, ghostly harridan
Creature of Dick Sharridan,
Seized my pen — it sounds absurd
And made it write the hateful wurd.
The moral to my tale of woe
Was writ in stone quite long ago:
Remember, scribes who know it all,
That after pride, there comes the fall.
Burma Shave.

-- Doug Wilson