Some philosophers, your humble narrator occasionally included, get irritated when people, especially intro ethics students, focus on what we take to be irrelevant details of what are meant to be serious, if somewhat improbably grisly, examples. But really we’re not upset about the lack of philosophical sophistication our students shown, just about how stylishlessly they complain. If all our intro ethics students were like “Fafnir and Giblets”:http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2004_07_11_fafblog_archive.html#108973435683602830 I can’t imagine we’d ever be so irritated.
{ 7 comments }
dan 07.13.04 at 10:15 pm
Congratulations! According to my sources, you are just the second person ever to use the word “stylishlessly” on the internet. Who’s the first? You guessed it: pogue mahone.
themoabird 07.13.04 at 10:27 pm
And there I was thinking that philosophers spent their whole working lives worrying about irrelevant details…
novalis 07.13.04 at 10:28 pm
Reminds me of this classic
rob 07.13.04 at 10:48 pm
See, I thought philosophers argued whether there is such a thing as an irrelevant detail.
Brian Weatherson 07.13.04 at 11:16 pm
Dan, so as soon as this post is googled there will be some really easy “googlewhacks”:http://googlewhack.com/ to be found between the two posts. I think ‘stylishlessly irritated’ could describe me before breakfast most mornings.
Jeff R. 07.14.04 at 12:34 am
I thought googlewhacks had to use actual words. Or plausible ones, at least. (Shouldn’t it be either the simpler stylelessly or the baroque stylishnesslessly?)
dan 07.14.04 at 2:28 am
Unfortunately, the Dictionary doesn’t seem to care much for your word. The Dictionary really is a very closed-minded dictionary. It doesn’t even like stylelessly or unstylishly, which yield a combined 416 google hits. If you want an adverb meaning “in a manner lacking in style” don’t go looking for the Dictionary to help you out. And don’t expect Googlewhack to let you fill in the gaps left by unimaginative dictionaries.
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