Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2001 10:24:38 -0400 From: Larissa Parson Reply-To: johnny at charm.net To: johnny at charm.net Subject: pedantry/doofus Ok, I couldn't resist any more... (and it's Friday night and I get to read Pindar this weekend, so I'd much rather play with words right now than untangle the snares of his Greek). OED has no knowledge of the word doofus or dufus or doufus, etc. But how 'bout an etymology in the fashion of Socrates' in the Cratylus: S.: Let us look now into the names which men use about other men, since perhaps through these we can grasp the names that the gods give to men. For this is indeed the most worthy pursuit. A doufus is a person who is, by all accounts a fool. Now a "doupos" is, as Homer says, a heavy sound, for he says: "hearing the uproar and the heavy noise (doupos) of his comrades stirring he woke up suddenly" [this is as Odysseus and co. leave behind Circe's island and Elpinor falls off the ladder to his death]. And again, a doufus is characterized by a heaviness of wit. So I think that surely, Hermogenes, perhaps the Americans have changed the "p" to an "f", thinking to also contain the sound of "Fool" in the word. Is it not so, best of men? H.: Yes, Socrates, in every way. ;) Larissa Parson A '98 -- "[S]top!--go not one foot farther into this thorny and bewildered track, --intricate are the steps! intricate are the mazes of this labyrinth! intricate are the troubles which the pursuit of this bewitching phantom Knowledge will bring upon thee.... Alas! 'twill exasperate thy symptoms, -- check thy perspirations---evaporate thy spirits---waste thy animal strength,--dry up thy radical moisture, bring thee into a costive habit of body,--impair thy health,--and hasten all the infirmiites of thy old age." Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, II.3