"excrudescent"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

while blogging about something totally different on Language Log, i
quoted a rant by Ben Tripp with the word "excrudescent" in it:

Him and his people weren't really fascists. Just execrable
excrudescent assholes.
www.counterpunch.org/tripp05082003.html

there are a few other hits:

Country music, or what passes for it, was really the excrudescent
crystallization of that part of America that was most easily
exploited over the last few ...
momentoftriumph.blogspot.com/2006_04_16_momentoftriumph_archive.html

The Me Generation of Reagan has finally borne its promised fruit and
it's falling, excrudescent, bursting at our feet. ...
www.evangelicaloutpost.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=3158

Mark has once again failed, through shoddy reasoning and a
excrudescent urge to postulate glib, supposedly ‘funny’ one-liners; ...
larvatusprodeo.net/2006/05/13/naked-iranian-islamic-feminist-nuclear-
advocates/

a few more for "excrudescence", for example:

it feels like my retinas have been raped, and sometimes have to go
browse through a bland Country Road catalogue to clean the
excrudescence away.
facepalm.blogspot.com/2004/12/you-like-you-buy-vol-16.html

"You pullulating excrudescence of obstreperous obfuscation!" is, to
me, a far more satisfying description of a frustrating bureaucrat
than "F*cker!
anitraweb.org/kalliope/begin2.html

Language Log readers have written to ask about the origin and meaning
of the word.  it looks like a made-up word, a deliberate portmanteau
of "excrescent" and "extrude", maybe with "crude" thrown in there.

on the other hand, a few of the cites seem serious enough that the
word might have been a malapropism for "excrescent", or an
inadvertent blend on the part of the writers.

in any case, definitely a word with a negative tinge.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)

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