Incondite

[Dr. Goodword]

• incondite •

Pronunciation: in-kahn-dit, -dait • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: 1. Badly constructed, crudely made, ill-composed or written. 2. Rough, crude, rude, unrefined, unpolished.

Notes: Here is a word reminiscent of recondite "abstruse, arcane, obscure". It comes with an adverb, inconditely, and a noun, inconditeness, appears a few times on the Web. I see no reason preventing its general use.

In Play: The first sense of today's Good Word may be used in sentences with concrete or abstract senses: "Teenagers lead lives of incondite structure until they learn how to organize themselves—and some of them never do." The second sense always refers to people: "In the process teenagers pass through a phase of incondite behavior."

Word History: Today's word is a remodeled form of Latin inconditus, made up of in- "not" + conditus "put together", the negated past participle of condere "to put together". All European Indo-European languages have a negative particle and prefix containing an N: English no and un-, German nein and un-, French non and in- and Russian ne, which serves as particle and prefix. Condere comprises con- "(together) with" + de-, a Proto-Germanic borrowing based on PIE dhe- "set, put", origin of English do and German tun "to do". In Latin, initial [dh] became [f], as in facere "to do". English borrowed many variants of this word, like fact, factor and factory. We also borrowed many words based on the combining form of this word, fic-, such as edifice, fiction, and suffice. (Let's all give Daniel Obertance a standing ovation for finding and sharing today's fascinating Good Word with us.)

[David Myer]

Hmm... I think I will continue to use jerry-built to mean the same thing. Incondite is not an easy word to say unless you de-emphasise the first or second syllable or even both.

Thinking about my preferred jerry-built, I wonder if that is no longer politically correct. Is it racist? I do hope not. If it is I shall have to adopt incondite! Interesting that Microsoft underlines incondite in red.

[LukeJavan8]

good question............any responses>

Is "jerry-built" considered racist?
It's used around here a lot, and I don't want to use it and offend.

[bnjtokyo]

See below -- I somehow posted once before I was finished and couldn't find a way to delete the earlier post. So I simply erased the content of that post.

[bnjtokyo]

I do not think "jerry built" should be considered racist. According to
etymonline, it's been around for nearly 200 years.
jerry-built (adj.)
"built hastily of shoddy materials," 1856, in a Liverpool context, from jerry "bad, defective," probably a pejorative use of the male nickname Jerry (a popular form of Jeremy; compare Jerry-sneak "sneaking fellow, a hen-pecked husband" [OED], name of a character in Foote's "The Mayor of Garret," 1764). Or from or influenced by nautical slang jury (adj.) "temporary," which came to be used of all sorts of makeshift and inferior objects.

Note the suggestion that it could be related to "jury rig," the nautical term for a temporary repair to get you home after a mishap at sea.
The Oxford English Dictionary offers this interesting speculation
Mid 19th century origin unknown; sometimes said to be from the name of a firm of builders in Liverpool, or to allude to the walls of Jericho, which fell down at the sound of Joshua's trumpets (Josh. 6:20).

Mr Javan8, you might be concerned by its similarity to "jerry can" that referred to fuel cans of German design that came into use during WWII. I remember reading that these cans were superior to the GI issue fuel cans and were highly desired salvage by the Allied forces in North Africa

[David Myer]

Well, well, well. Thanks for that bnjtokyo. A good piece of research and quite comforting to me. I always assumed jerry-built was German built. But only it seems in jerry can. And that the German fuel cans were highly prized as being good quality, means that jerry can is cause for admiration and therefore probably not racist.

But that does raise another question: if hatred of a race is racism, surely the same generalisation that a francophile, say, has is also racist? Is racism necessarily bad feelings? Racism is usually defined as discrimination about a particular group or race. Oh dear. Positive racism.

[George Kovac]

IMHO, jerry-built is a perfectly acceptable word, and it never occurred to me that (via folk etymology) it could have a racist connotation.

While there is no current racist link behind "jerry-built," if it makes the speaker uncomfortable, or if it elicits distraction among the listeners, then find another word.

That is a good rule, and one that I take from the late Christopher Hitchens, the erudite, iconoclastic and highly interesting and insightful critic.

Hitchens was also a serious wordie--an exquisite writer with an exceedingly rich vocabulary. He prided himself on being politically incorrect. He wrote a whole book trashing Mother Teresa. I saw him in a book forum in Miami where, among other classic Hitchensian behaviors, he challenged one of the other panelists (who happened to be the rabbi of the temple who lent their synagogue as a venue for the book forum) to a fist fight over a point of disagreement, and, in answer to another panelist (a woman who happened to be disabled) he said "If you think I am going to spare you my rebuttal just because you are in a wheel chair, you are soooo wrong."

Yet (as I have noted before on this forum) I read in one of his essays that Christopher Hitchens said he had dropped "niggardly" from his vocabulary because of the distracting reactions it provoked, and he switched to "parsimonious." His choice of vocabulary was not dictated by political correctness, but by his desire not to cause distraction from the points he was making. Niggardly, of course, derives from Scandinavian, not Latin, sources, and has no relation to the notorious N-word, despite folk etymologies to the contrary.

Just because Hitchens was a jerk (an amiable jerk, nonetheless) doesn't mean he wasn't right in how to choose among sensitive words. Know your audience.

[LukeJavan8]

Thank you bnjtokyo for your comments and research,
most enlightening.
And the conversation here is terrific.
I feel so much the student reading your answers.

[David Myer]

Thank you too, to George. These Hitchens anecdotes are most interesting.

We should write for our audience and with appropriate sensitivity.

I once, in a commercial communications role, prepared some posters in which I included both the words Practice (the noun) and Practise (the verb). Almost universally, my readers complained that one or other of the words was mis-spelt. Goodness knows what the rules are in America, but I was brought up in UK to put the s in the verb as in advise, and the c in the noun as in advice (or licence, license). With 'practice' of course, the rule is confused because both are pronounced the same way. But back to my dilemma: should I spell the words to pacify my audience, or should I continue to spell them correctly despite my audience?

Incidentally, if he wants to drop 'niggardly' on the basis that it might erroneously cause offence, surely 'mean' or 'tight' or better still, 'frugal' are better alternatives than 'parsimonious', whose meaning may not be widely understood? In my view, the problem with this whole approach is that we continue to impoverish the language by taking out words that most would not understand or that some might take offence at. Rather, we should work to expand people's vocabulary by gently using the right words, and putting them in a context that clearly displays their meaning.

Another point on the Hitchens tongue: His statement to the wheelchair person is actually pretty offensive. That he should presume that the person might somehow see themselves as a lesser being is actually a put-down of the worst order. The person he is talking to is a person. That is enough. He should have respectfully issued his rebuttal without reference to their disability because the disability is absolutely irrelevant to the argument.

I sometimes surprise myself by my own passion!

[David Myer]

Those interested in Christopher Hitchens may enjoy this glorious interview between Phillip Adams (an 80 year old Australian legendary broadcaster) and Martin Amis, the English writer and friend to Christopher.

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/pr ... y/12742650

[George Kovac]

Hitchens enjoyed being insensitive He just wanted to make sure he was not misunderstood