[Ads-l] "ultracrepidate" and "anti-ultracrepidationism" & the OED

Dan Goncharoff thegonch at GMAIL.COM
Sat Feb 28 20:18:52 UTC 2015


I wonder ... Did Mary Norris reinvent "ultracrepidate" and the associated
noun form? There was no Latin word "crepidare". The more common adjectival
form is "ultracrepidarian". It comes from the saying ne supra crepidam
sutor judicare ‘let the cobbler not judge above the sandal’, or in
Brooklynese, mind your own business.

This is the second question I have about this fabulous piece of writing.
On Feb 28, 2015 2:40 PM, "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at att.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      "ultracrepidate" and "anti-ultracrepidationism" & the OED
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> There is a fancy word for "going beyond your province":
> "ultracrepidate." So much of copy editing is about not going beyond
> your province. Anti-ultracrepidationism. Writers might think we're
> applying rules and sticking it to their prose in order to make it fit
> some standard, but just as often we're backing off, making
> exceptions, or at least trying to find a balance between doing too
> much and doing too little.
>
> 2015 Mary Norris in The New Yorker Feb 23; see
> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/holy-writ
>
> "ultracrepidate" postdates OED2  --1882.
> "anti-ultracrepidationism" not in OED3
>
> Joel
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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