omphaloskeptic?

[Baker, John]

        It would appear that our listserv software, which fails to
translate some message codings, has struck again.  Because I wouldn't
want Jim's prose to be lost, I've reproduced it below; if you've already
seen it in readable form, just delete.

John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of Wilson Gray
Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 8:27 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: omphaloskeptic?

A person who gazes at his navel? Your post has arriived encoded into
garble, Jim.

-Wilson

On 1/3/07, James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at netscape.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
-----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "James A. Landau" <JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM>
> Subject:      omphaloskeptic?
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

        [What appeared to some to be gibberish, but was really:]



On Wednesday 1/3/07 at that fateful hour of 12:06AM, Jonathan Lighter
wrote:
"my three degrees are in English, though I took them just before
that discipline began to collapse in a welter of omphaloskeptic cultural

theory."

let's see now.  "omphalo" Greek for "navel" and "skeptic" originally a
Greek
philosophy, now a naturalized English word.  Apparent meaning of the
compound
is "dubious about the existence of one's umbilicus" which does not seem
to
clarify the quote.
Perhaps "they" (per the stylebook quoted yesterday) meant
"omphaloscopic",
"navel-gazing".
Doubts about the existence of one's navel can perhaps be referred to a
well-
known Washington DC (actually Arlington VA) think tank, the Center for
Naval
Analyses of the University of Rochester.  (A more highly specialized
outfit
than the Center for Human Understanding of the University of Chicago.)
Since the long-naturalized English word "skeptic" is also a Greek word,
you
are immune from attacks by that long-established prescriptivist school
which
objects to any compound formed from words in different languages (most
often
to compounds with both Latin and Greek elements.)  Those people should
be
forbidden to drink Pepsi-Cola (Greek "pepsein" + Malinke "kola")
Then there are the omphalomphaskeptics (I'm sure I misspelled that one)
who doubt the existence of the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory, or at
least
of its employees.
OT: on "cowpoke" and "cowpuncher": I have heard the story that in the
Wild
West days the railroads employed menial workers who rode cattle cars and
poked or punched cattle to keep them awake and healthy (or something)
while
en route to the Chicago slaughterhouses.  So many cowboys signed up for
this
job to get a free trip to Chicago that the two terms, instead of
referring
to a very low-caste worker, became synonymous with "cowboy". Anyone know
whether this be true or etymythology?
    - Jim Landau
"White people have no souls" - Baron Munchausen

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