noviciate

[Jonathan Lighter]

Look up "novitiate" on Visual Thesaurus and discover the hip spelling "noviciate."

JL

Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: Fwd: A.Word.A.Day--antiphrasis
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Our topic from last week, supporting Ben Zimmer's nominee...

L
--- begin forwarded text
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 01:03:59 -0500
From: Wordsmith
To: linguaphile at wordsmith.org
Subject: A.Word.A.Day--antiphrasis

antiphrasis (an-TIF-ruh-sis) noun

The humorous or ironic use of a word or a phrase in a sense opposite
of its usual meaning. For example:
"Brutus is an honorable man." -Antony in Julius Caesar (Shakespeare)

[From Late Latin, from Greek antiphrazein (to express by the opposite),
from anti- + phrazein (to speak).]

Today's word in Visual Thesaurus: http://visualthesaurus.com/?w1=antiphrasis

"He was murmuring something between lips decorated by a little mustache,
which gave a sarcastic touch to his clerk-like expression, a mustache
folded over his mouth like an antiphrasis, which tinged whatever he said
with maliciousness, no matter how solemn it was."
Edoardo Albinati & John Satriano; Story Written on a Motorcycle;
Antioch Review (Yellow Springs, Ohio); Summer 1992.

--- end forwarded text


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