Used in the Barack Obama acceptance speech 28 August...
or extricable, extricate as you see fit
While discussing this, it might be good to touch on a similar work 'inextirpable'
inextricably
Main Entry: in·ex·tri·ca·ble
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French or Latin; Middle French, from Latin inextricabilis, from in- + extricabilis extricable
Date: 15th century
1: forming a maze or tangle from which it is impossible to get free
2 a: incapable of being disentangled or untied <an inextricable knot> b: not capable of being solved
inextirpable
SYLLABICATION: in·ex·tir·pa·ble
PRONUNCIATION: nk-stûrp-bl
ADJECTIVE: Difficult or impossible to eradicate or destroy.
Sounds like what I used to feel about trying to rid my house of the water roaches back in AZ. They kept coming back like in a horror movie. I remember the county services coming to spray the sewer system and my house was the last in the sewer route, I had to be prepared for battle. That's what I get for buying a house in a cul-de-sac on the lower side of the hill.
Sorry I took this farther away from the DNC speeches that prompted this suggestion.
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French or Latin; Middle French, from Latin inextricabilis, from in- + extricabilis extricable
Date: 15th century
1: forming a maze or tangle from which it is impossible to get free
2 a: incapable of being disentangled or untied <an inextricable knot> b: not capable of being solved
inextirpable
SYLLABICATION: in·ex·tir·pa·ble
PRONUNCIATION: nk-stûrp-bl
ADJECTIVE: Difficult or impossible to eradicate or destroy.
Sounds like what I used to feel about trying to rid my house of the water roaches back in AZ. They kept coming back like in a horror movie. I remember the county services coming to spray the sewer system and my house was the last in the sewer route, I had to be prepared for battle. That's what I get for buying a house in a cul-de-sac on the lower side of the hill.
Sorry I took this farther away from the DNC speeches that prompted this suggestion.
Even in chaos there is a pattern.
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- Grand Panjandrum
- Posts: 1476
- Joined: Wed Apr 12, 2006 1:58 pm
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Quite a useful word, and on reflection well suited to politics.
I first noticed it in the narration of Rick Wakeman's adaptation of Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1974)
"A mile further on they reached the edge of a huge forest made of the vegetation of the tertiary period. Tall palms were linked by a network of inextricable creepers." (chap. 4)
Well, you don't drop a phrase like inextricable creepers and just walk away without getting noticed.
Whether the term is lifted directly from Verne's original I don't know, but in the process of researching this line I came across this examination of the word stupefication from the same work. Another GWS?
I first noticed it in the narration of Rick Wakeman's adaptation of Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1974)
"A mile further on they reached the edge of a huge forest made of the vegetation of the tertiary period. Tall palms were linked by a network of inextricable creepers." (chap. 4)
Well, you don't drop a phrase like inextricable creepers and just walk away without getting noticed.
Whether the term is lifted directly from Verne's original I don't know, but in the process of researching this line I came across this examination of the word stupefication from the same work. Another GWS?
Stop! Murder us not, tonsured rumpots! Knife no one, fink!
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