Speculation

Joanne M. Despres jdespres at MERRIAM-WEBSTER.COM
Wed Aug 14 13:49:50 UTC 2002


To tell you the truth, Jim, I'd forgotten that you wrote about this,
and I wasn't thinking of your letter at all.  I hope you didn't feel
offended.  The "chol b'seder" hypothesis for the origin of
"copasetic" is one that we hear about on a regular basis from all
sorts of people, and the situation I imagined (about the guy reading
the Roth novel, etc.) was just for purposes of illustration, to show
how an "average person" might come upon what appears to be the
solution to a vexing problem that turns out to be harder to solve
than he might have imagined.  It was certainly not intended to
disparage your etymological contributions, which have been very
great and much appreciated.

Joanne Despres



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