ept

[Victor Steinbok]

A quick hit for "socially-ept" from Yahoo Answers:
http://bit.ly/cv5WSt
Advice to making a homeschooler socially ept and able to say things to
people without being stupid?

I don't think this was ironic.

Wordnik has four quotations--none ironic and one suffering from the
long-s problem, it seems:

http://www.wordnik.com/words/ept

     VS-)


On 3/21/2010 8:06 AM, Damien Hall wrote:
> Just heard the author Val McDermid, on the BBC ethical-debate show
> 'The Big
> Questions' (21 March 2010), say something like the following:
>
> '[my children are] well-adjusted and socially ept'
>
> OED only lists _ept_ as 'a deliberate antonym of "inept": adroit,
> appropriate, effective; hence _eptitude_, _eptly_ adv.', and the
> quotations
> back that up, all seeming to use it ironically. The word isn't in the
> online version of MW. From her tone, McDermid wasn't being ironic - there
> was no change of pitch or pause to call attention to the word - and no-one
> picked it up, though, granted, on that show you wouldn't expect them to
> (they were debating IVF at the time).
>
> MDermid was brought up in the late '50s and early '60s in Kirkcaldy, Fife,
> Scotland; I don't know whether that's relevant to the use of the form, but
> others here might. Has anyone else heard it non-ironically?
>
> Damien
>
> --
> Damien Hall
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org