Obscure Canwest Canspell Words

[SirJosephPorter]

S.J. One of my first rules of life is "there is an exception to every rule", and this is one of them. To the vast majority of the population "berm" is not an obscure word, as the vast majority of the posters here have tried to tell you. In fact it has many different uses in many walks of life - flood control, city planning, mining, earth retention, noise attenuation, stream rehabillitation. Why can't you just let go of the fact that "you know everything" and accept what people are trying to tell you once in awhile?

You may be right JLM, but anecdotal evidence holds no water with me. To me, the opinion of Reader’s Digest and Microsoft Word carries much more weight than anecdotal experience of some posters here (however true that may be).

Anyway, did you try to see if your word processor recognizes the word ‘berm’? My guess is that it doesn’t.

 

[JLM]

You may be right JLM, but anecdotal evidence holds no water with me. To me, the opinion of Reader’s Digest and Microsoft Word carries much more weight than anecdotal experience of some posters here (however true that may be).

Anyway, did you try to see if your word processor recognizes the word ‘berm’? My guess is that it doesn’t.

None of what you say here flies. You go on and on about anecdotal evidence not being acceptable and yet on the other hand you accept the results of people marking a ballot in a polling booth and nothing can be more anecdotal than that. Another news flash for you, even the scrabble dictionary recognizes "berm"

 

[karrie]

None of what you say here flies. You go on and on about anecdotal evidence not being acceptable and yet on the other hand you accept the results of people marking a ballot in a polling booth and nothing can be more anecdotal than that. Another news flash for you, even the scrabble dictionary recognizes "berm"

perhaps the word 'berm' is obscure if you've never set foot on soil? If you spend all your time a library writing dictionaries and studying the origin of words? Or editing magazines? I don't have a lot of faith in the real world knowledge of those who think 'berm' is obscure, ESPECIALLY given the mass of 'anecdotal' evidence in here. :smile:

 

[TenPenny]

You mean the typo? Oh, get a grip. I was saying that I am a voracious reader, that 'a' was just a typo.

I don't think you're literate enough to even figure out how many mistakes are in that post of yours.

No wonder you read RD.

 

[JLM]

You may be right JLM, but anecdotal evidence holds no water with me. To me, the opinion of Reader’s Digest and Microsoft Word carries much more weight than anecdotal experience of some posters here (however true that may be).

Anyway, did you try to see if your word processor recognizes the word ‘berm’? My guess is that it doesn’t.

REaders Digest is about 99% anecdotal, ordinary folks like you and I contributing our life's experiences.

 

[AnnaG]

Funny that RD and Microsoft consider berm to be an obsolete word and Oxford, Merriam-Webster, Princeton U., Cambridge, etc. don't.
I think Pompass needs to expand his horizons past Cosmo, Vogue, and Reader's Digest more.

 

[SirJosephPorter]

None of what you say here flies. You go on and on about anecdotal evidence not being acceptable and yet on the other hand you accept the results of people marking a ballot in a polling booth and nothing can be more anecdotal than that. Another news flash for you, even the scrabble dictionary recognizes "berm"

You are comparing apple with oranges here, JLM. Anecdotal evidence is the evidence of a few people, what they experienced. Voting in an election is done by the whole country, by millions of people.

If in a referendum say, 20 million Canadian say that they know the word ‘berm’, then I will concede that it is not obscure. But that is totally different from experience of a few people.

And scrabble dictionary recognizes it, so what? I would expect any dictionary worth its salt to recognize it. If Reader’s Digest or Microsoft Word say that it is an obscure word, then it is an obscure word. However, if a dictionary does not recognize it, then it is not obscure, but non existent. Scrabble dictionary recognizes it? I should hope so. A dictionary is supposed to list all the words, obscure and non obscure.

 

[SirJosephPorter]

REaders Digest is about 99% anecdotal, ordinary folks like you and I contributing our life's experiences.

Quite so, but I hardly think that they decide if a word is obscure or not by talking to a few people. I don’t think a word being obscure is decided by anecdotal evidence (well, hardly anything is decided by anecdotal evidence).

 

[SirJosephPorter]

I don't think you're literate enough to even figure out how many mistakes are in that post of yours.

No wonder you read RD.

Sorry, but I cannot get worked up over typos. I could point out typos in your posts (I am sure there are plenty of them), but it is not worth my time.

But if pointing out my typos gives you pleasure, delight, go for it. You just add to my importance when you do so. So I am OK with that.

 

[SirJosephPorter]

perhaps the word 'berm' is obscure if you've never set foot on soil? If you spend all your time a library writing dictionaries and studying the origin of words? Or editing magazines? I don't have a lot of faith in the real world knowledge of those who think 'berm' is obscure, ESPECIALLY given the mass of 'anecdotal' evidence in here. :smile:

I don’t know about that karrie, you may well be right. However, I prefer to go by what Reader’s Digest and Microsoft Word say, rather than by what a few posters say here.

 

[JLM]

Quite so, but I hardly think that they decide if a word is obscure or not by talking to a few people. I don’t think a word being obscure is decided by anecdotal evidence (well, hardly anything is decided by anecdotal evidence).

I don't know what words are in common use in the area where you live, but I can assure you that in British Columbia, "berm" is used and understood by about 90% of the population, regardless of what R.D. says about it. Any other provinces care to report?

 

[dumpthemonarchy]

Hung up on berm still, it only gets 384,000 hits on google, so it is obscure. Many good words are.

I read the word "sunkers" in Farley Mowat's book, A Whale For The Killing. Awesome word, but won't ever be commonly used in most of Canada. Gets only 11,000 hits on google. Some words are regional and jargon and don't expand from their base unless something dramatic happens.

 

[JLM]

I don't think you're literate enough to even figure out how many mistakes are in that post of yours.

No wonder you read RD.

To be completely fair, Readers Digest is an excellent publication in that it covers a whole spectrum of subjects dealing with people in all walks of life and is very easy to read. It is almost entirely Canadian in content (the Cdn. version)

 

[SirJosephPorter]

I don't know what words are in common use in the area where you live, but I can assure you that in British Columbia, "berm" is used and understood by about 90% of the population, regardless of what R.D. says about it. Any other provinces care to report?

You may be right about BC, I have no idea. But again, that is your opinion only and in my opinion, does not trump the assertion by Reader’s Digest and the tacit agreement by Microsoft Word.

 

[SirJosephPorter]

Hung up on berm still, it only gets 384,000 hits on google, so it is obscure. Many good words are.

I read the word "sunkers" in Farley Mowat's book, A Whale For The Killing. Awesome word, but won't ever be commonly used in most of Canada. Gets only 11,000 hits on google. Some words are regional and jargon and don't expand from their base unless something dramatic happens.

Of course it is an obscure word, a few posters here are trying to convince us otherwise, by anecdotal evidence. The fact that a few posters in this forum know the word means nothing.

 

[JLM]

I don’t know about that karrie, you may well be right. However, I prefer to go by what Reader’s Digest and Microsoft Word say, rather than by what a few posters say here.

S.J. Not ALL the posters on here are stupid, there are intelligent ones (even besides You and me)

 

[TenPenny]

You may be right about BC, I have no idea. But again, that is your opinion only and in my opinion, does not trump the assertion by Reader’s Digest and the tacit agreement by Microsoft Word.

That is your opinion, and your opinion only, and does not trump the assertion by many people that 'berm' is not an obscure word.

 

[SirJosephPorter]

S.J. Not ALL the posters on here are stupid, there are intelligent ones (even besides You and me)

Sure they are not stupid, JLM, I never claimed otherwise. In fact, I don’t’ see how knowing the word ‘berm’ can be considered a sign of stupidity, if anything, knowing an obscure word will indicate intelligence. I know plenty of obscure words myself, I gave a couple of examples a while ago in this thread (rodomontade and lagniappe)

But that doesn’t mean I agree with their claim, that ‘berm’ is a common word, widely known. In fact, Microsoft Word recognizes the words ‘rodomontade’ and ‘lagniappe’, but it doesn’t recognize ‘berm’. So berm is even more obscure that rodomontade and lagniappe.

 

[AnnaG]

You are comparing apple with oranges here, JLM. Anecdotal evidence is the evidence of a few people, what they experienced. Voting in an election is done by the whole country, by millions of people.

If in a referendum say, 20 million Canadian say that they know the word ‘berm’, then I will concede that it is not obscure. But that is totally different from experience of a few people.

And scrabble dictionary recognizes it, so what? I would expect any dictionary worth its salt to recognize it. If Reader’s Digest or Microsoft Word say that it is an obscure word, then it is an obscure word. However, if a dictionary does not recognize it, then it is not obscure, but non existent. Scrabble dictionary recognizes it? I should hope so. A dictionary is supposed to list all the words, obscure and non obscure.

After reading your statement that there's nothing wrong with your use of the English language, I'm not surprised your reference for the use of the language is Reader's Digest. I bet your source for anything scientific is al Hilly's interpretation of the Quran, too.

I didn't see "berm" listed here:

Luciferous Logolepsy - B

or here:

Lost Words: A-E

or here:

http://www.islandnet.com/~egbird/dict/b.htm

or here;

World Wide Words: World Wide Words: Weird Words Index

RD is wrong;. Get over it.

 

[dumpthemonarchy]

Of course it is an obscure word, a few posters here are trying to convince us otherwise, by anecdotal evidence. The fact that a few posters in this forum know the word means nothing.

Quite right. People just like to support the underdog on a point of principle.