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Cromulent

By jquiggin | January 30, 2008

Working in a Faculty of Business and Economics, I get exposed to lots of business magazines I wouldn’t read otherwise. I saw one today with a cover which urged me to “empassion my sales!”.

Being a prosaic economist, I would have thought that, as long as a business can embiggen its sales and profit margins, empassionment is beside the point.

Topics: Life in General |

9 Responses to “Cromulent”

  1. cg Says:
    January 30th, 2008 at 5:20 pm

    I was going to add something about ‘crapulence’ (to wallow in one’s own), but a number of online dictionaries tell me this is actually a word?

  2. Ken Lovell Says:
    January 30th, 2008 at 5:34 pm

    John as anyone from Sex Ed could tell you, empassionment often leads to embiggenment.

  3. P.M.Lawrence Says:
    January 30th, 2008 at 5:58 pm

    Ostrobogulous.

  4. Donald Oats Says:
    January 30th, 2008 at 6:12 pm

    All too sesquipedalian for me.

  5. carbonsink Says:
    January 30th, 2008 at 7:16 pm

    Talking of businesses embiggening their sales…

    I meant no harm. I most truly did not.
    But I had to grow bigger. So bigger I got.
    I biggered my factory. I biggered my roads.
    I biggered my wagons. I biggered the loads
    of the Thneeds I shipped out. I was shipping them forth
    to the South! To the East! To the West! To the North!
    I went right on biggering…selling more Thneeds.
    And I biggered my money, which everyone needs

  6. Ikonoclast Says:
    January 30th, 2008 at 8:29 pm

    Yep, and now that unfettered capitalism has biggered everything we find it has buggered everything too.

  7. Jill Rush Says:
    January 30th, 2008 at 8:33 pm

    How fortunate that English is such a malleable language and new words can be found to replace all of those which are of no use any more. Vale Snollygoster.

  8. Helen, the friendly pedant Says:
    January 31st, 2008 at 9:15 am

    You statisticians certainly come out with some doozies. Here’s a comment from the “Books that make you dumb” thread at Crooked Timber:
    Bad, bad, bad, poorly designed, unscientific study with so much multicollinearity, heteroskedesticity, and ommited vars to make a grown man weep.


    Criminy.

  9. Hal9000 Says:
    January 31st, 2008 at 10:36 am

    While we may legitimately laugh at neologisms, we should weep for the useful words misused into mere synonyms: disinterested/uninterested; militate/mitigate; regretful/regrettable to name but a few. Neologisms are largely cosmetic and may be inspired: ignorant misuse is sad and chronic.

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