11 ms·

'Dord': A Ghost Word

245 points by joe5150 6y ago

dkdbejwi383 6y ago
I wanna be a dord
johnlbevan2 6y ago
I am much a dord
_emacsomancer_ 6y ago
There are 'ghost words' which have become established. E.g. _derring-do_: "The two words _durring_, _dorryng_, _daring_, verbal noun from _durran_, _dorren_ "to dare" v.1, and _don_, _do_, present infinitive of "do" v., literally "daring to do", which, by a chain of misunderstandings and errors, have come to be treated as a kind of substantive combination, taken to mean, Daring action or feats, ‘desperate courage’. The words come incidentally in their ordinary sense and construction followed by the object ‘that’ (= what, that which) in Chaucer's Troylus; whence, in an imitative passage by Lydgate, in an absolute construction more liable to misunderstanding; Lydgate's _dorryng do_ was misprinted in the 16th cent. editions (1513 and 1555) _derrynge do_, in which form it was picked up by Spenser and misconstrued as a substantive phrase, explained in the Glossary to the Sheph. Cal. as ‘manhood and chevalrie’. Modern romantic writers, led by Sir W. Scott, have taken it from Spenser, printed it _derring-do_, and accentuated the erroneous use." (from the OED)
Pxtl 6y ago
https://dord-orbit.tumblr.com/ https://dord-orbit.tumblr.com/
ttctciyf 6y ago
Reading this, I realised the fnords are everywhere, once you know how[0] to look for them. 0: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22fn+or+d%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22fn+or+d%22
- ggm 6y ago
  Fnord! Dillinger says hello
macintux 6y ago
I thought for a moment this might be like a trap street.
- colanderman 6y ago
  There are in fact such words, e.g. "esquivalence": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Oxford_American_Dictionary#Fictitious_entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Oxford_American_Dictionary...
  - cgriswald 6y ago
    I don’t know how that can work in practice. If it’s in a dictionary, it might get used and then... it should be in other dictionaries. Do they cycle them in and out?
superhuzza 6y ago
The urgency in that correction slip is amusing (Imperative! Urgent! A ghost word!), considering how inconsequential of a mistake it is. What's the absolute worst case caused by a ghost word like dord - someone accidentally uses it in a paper?
- chansiky 6y ago
  Wood floats and so do ducks. So logically if the dord of the duck equals the dord of the girl then the girl must be a witch. `checks dords of both duck and girl`. "She's a witch!" -- excerpt from "A More Scientific Guide to Witch Hunts".
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  that it might become perfectly cromulent?
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  It is like a biological mutation, usually nothing. It could result in a massive misinterpretation of prior documents due to a shift in meaning and not understanding the lack of shift in context. Not very predictable but often hillarious like say Moses being depicted as horned. It probably involves very long timelines even with cultural acceleration. Imagine "dord" caught on as a synonym for density in all its senses including stupidity. Now imagine one document of a riot caused after accidentally ordering a squad to shoot when calling out about a fire. A poorly chosen "word" causing death gets corrupted to a misplaced "dord" and it gets taken as caused by one idiot who shouldn't have been chosen to lead (also accurate but not intended). A mention of a D or d in the chemical context taken as a stealth insult or joke like 1D10T Error.
- meowface 6y ago
  Apparently they agreed with you, because it was fixed 8 years after that note described how urgent it was.
- reaperducer 6y ago
erichurkman 6y ago
I wonder why they didn't just adopt it as a fictitious entry? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry
barrkel 6y ago
The cards are more interesting to me than the word, which I originally thought was going to be some kind of copyright-protecting deliberate mistake. The cards remind me of Jira tickets, with stamps and names as a kind of audit log of work associated with the ticket. I find myself curious about the information architecture and paper processes that companies built around such tickets going to and fro. Such architectures probably have fairly close analogues in distributed systems, and there may be a thing or two to learn from how more innovative and efficient organizations structured their paper pushing.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  In my experience, the difference is - unfortunately - that Jira tickets end up being discarded once a task has been finished, instead of becoming documentation for a feature. I think that was caused by volume, we'd do 10+ tasks or features a week at our most productive, and it quickly became line- or factory work, instead of carefully crafting individual features.
- tasogare 6y ago
  This is very specific of lexicography (dictionary making) given the huge amount of work, yet the natural partitioning of it. If you like this, you can see a bit more of it in the anime Fune wo amu (舟を編む).
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Speaking of that, I need to find time one of these days to research what the hell "a memo" is. I understand it was a piece of paper of sorts, used in a way similar to how e-mails are used today, but I don't understand how they were delivered to people, what was the equivalent of MTA there. I know how to use the word in writing ("I didn't get the memo"), but not much more than that.
  - burlesona 6y ago
    My understanding is these were printed letters circulated internally via the mailroom. Most companies had workers who circulated both internal and external mail - so a couple times a day someone would come by with letters for you, both from the outside world, and from inside the office. Memoranda were generally announcements distributed to many people in the office. There were normally two trays or boxes for paper on people's desk, one was the "inbox" and one was the "outbox," and the mail person would place the new stuff in the inbox and take anything from the outbox to circulate it around the office. I never really lived that, although my first desk job did have an inbox and an outbox, the team wasn't big enough to have a mailroom, so we would just use those boxes to drop papers at other people's desks - hence the outbox didn't really get used, but the inbox did. Usually once a day a bundle of mail would get dropped off at the front desk and someone would take a turn walking the letters around the office, but there weren't that many of them as email was already a thing at that point.
phoe-krk 6y ago
The article mentions the abbreviation ULEC, but it does not define it. Does anyone know what it means?
- webkike 6y ago
  Right above its first usage: Universal Lexicographer's Ethical Code
  - phoe-krk 6y ago
    Thanks, I missed it in the text.
hirundo 6y ago
Dord is a perfectly cromulent word.
- bruce_the_bruce 6y ago
  I would say dord is a woody sort of word... dord.
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  It must be, it's in the Merriam-Webster dictionary on my bookshelf.
mci 6y ago
In 1995, Polish Scientific Publishers PWN, a long-time publisher of dictionaries, sued Kurpisz, a new publishing house, for plagiarizing their large dictionary of Polish. The case was closed in favor of PWN in 2005, hitting the Supreme Court along the way. Among the evidence against Kurpisz was their entry on the nonce word "amikus" (meaning "friend"), which they illustrated with the quotation "spijał się ze swoimi amikusami" (he was getting drunk with his friends) but could not tell the court where they had gotten the quotation from. Nowadays, with libraries digitizing every flimsy old book, they would find the source easily.
derimagia 6y ago
I remember learning this years ago from a video which turns out to also be made by Merriam Webster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3sDiH3FhnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3sDiH3FhnY
grawprog 6y ago
This really stopped and made me consider the amount of work that goes into making dictionaries, especially before computers, and the completely mind numbing and awful job it must be to be a dictionary editor. Then again, I'm sure some people out there probably love it but, I just imagined for a moment having to be the person going through those and adding them to the dictionary and honestly, it wasn't a happy thought. Anyone who did that, or still does, and anyone who enjoys doing that kind of work, I just say props to you guys. People like you work on those little details that makes the world interesting and do the things that get unappreciated but used by everybody. Just wanted to say thanks to all the dictionary editors and people doing work like that. I'm sure you guys don't get appreciated as much as you should.
- dmurray 6y ago
  > the completely mind numbing and awful job it must be to be a dictionary editor. How Samuel Johnson defined a word in his (perfectly serious) 18th century dictionary: > Lexicógrapher. n.s. [...]×A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge
- nsomaru 6y ago
  https://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/johnsons/patron.htm https://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/johnsons/pat... “ Seven years, my lord, have now passed, since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance (1), one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before.”
  - defen 6y ago
    My favorite part about The Letter to Chesterfield is that it was such a sick burn that Chesterfield put it on display on a table in his house.
  - yesenadam 6y ago
    Gee, that version (which wikipedia also links to) is very mangled. "Is not a patrons my lord" ?! The letter concludes with: Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a Patron, which Providence has enabled me to do for myself. Having carried on my work thus far, with so little obligations to any favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I shall conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation, My Lord, Your lordship’s most humble, Most obedient servant, SAMUEL JOHNSON. https://archive.org/details/beautiessamuelj00keargoog/page/n64/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/beautiessamuelj00keargoog/page/n...
murrayb 6y ago
I thought it was going to be about the musical instrument- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dord_(instrument) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dord_(instrument), somebody should let Merriam-Webster know :)
- happy-go-lucky 6y ago
  The wind instrument is also usually seen in South India :) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombu_(instrument) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombu_(instrument)
sfgweilr4f 6y ago
You could say they completely increased the dord of the whole situation for quite a few years. Ha! Take that! Now we just need a few hundred people to also use it and it slowly becomes real. The circle becomes complete.
userbinator 6y ago
A 386 assembler I used in the late 80s (when the 386 was still new) consistently referred to 32-bit quantities in its documentation and error messages as a "dord", so that's what came to mind when I read this article. I assume that was also either because of a "propagating typo" from "dword" (this was software from Eastern Europe, where English wasn't all that common), or because it seemed more convenient to have "byte", "word", and "dord" all be the same number of characters.

245 points by joe5150 6y ago

dkdbejwi383 6y ago

I wanna be a dord

johnlbevan2 6y ago

I am much a dord

_emacsomancer_ 6y ago

There are 'ghost words' which have become established. E.g. _derring-do_: "The two words _durring_, _dorryng_, _daring_, verbal noun from _durran_, _dorren_ "to dare" v.1, and _don_, _do_, present infinitive of "do" v., literally "daring to do", which, by a chain of misunderstandings and errors, have come to be treated as a kind of substantive combination, taken to mean, Daring action or feats, ‘desperate courage’. The words come incidentally in their ordinary sense and construction followed by the object ‘that’ (= what, that which) in Chaucer's Troylus; whence, in an imitative passage by Lydgate, in an absolute construction more liable to misunderstanding; Lydgate's _dorryng do_ was misprinted in the 16th cent. editions (1513 and 1555) _derrynge do_, in which form it was picked up by Spenser and misconstrued as a substantive phrase, explained in the Glossary to the Sheph. Cal. as ‘manhood and chevalrie’. Modern romantic writers, led by Sir W. Scott, have taken it from Spenser, printed it _derring-do_, and accentuated the erroneous use." (from the OED)

Pxtl 6y ago

https://dord-orbit.tumblr.com/ https://dord-orbit.tumblr.com/

ttctciyf 6y ago

Reading this, I realised the fnords are everywhere, once you know how[0] to look for them. 0: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22fn+or+d%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22fn+or+d%22

ggm 6y ago
Fnord! Dillinger says hello

macintux 6y ago

I thought for a moment this might be like a trap street.

colanderman 6y ago
There are in fact such words, e.g. "esquivalence": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Oxford_American_Dictionary#Fictitious_entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Oxford_American_Dictionary...
- cgriswald 6y ago
  I don’t know how that can work in practice. If it’s in a dictionary, it might get used and then... it should be in other dictionaries. Do they cycle them in and out?

superhuzza 6y ago

The urgency in that correction slip is amusing (Imperative! Urgent! A ghost word!), considering how inconsequential of a mistake it is. What's the absolute worst case caused by a ghost word like dord - someone accidentally uses it in a paper?

chansiky 6y ago
Wood floats and so do ducks. So logically if the dord of the duck equals the dord of the girl then the girl must be a witch. `checks dords of both duck and girl`. "She's a witch!" -- excerpt from "A More Scientific Guide to Witch Hunts".
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
082349872349872 6y ago
that it might become perfectly cromulent?
Nasrudith 6y ago
It is like a biological mutation, usually nothing. It could result in a massive misinterpretation of prior documents due to a shift in meaning and not understanding the lack of shift in context. Not very predictable but often hillarious like say Moses being depicted as horned. It probably involves very long timelines even with cultural acceleration. Imagine "dord" caught on as a synonym for density in all its senses including stupidity. Now imagine one document of a riot caused after accidentally ordering a squad to shoot when calling out about a fire. A poorly chosen "word" causing death gets corrupted to a misplaced "dord" and it gets taken as caused by one idiot who shouldn't have been chosen to lead (also accurate but not intended). A mention of a D or d in the chemical context taken as a stealth insult or joke like 1D10T Error.
meowface 6y ago
Apparently they agreed with you, because it was fixed 8 years after that note described how urgent it was.
reaperducer 6y ago

erichurkman 6y ago

I wonder why they didn't just adopt it as a fictitious entry? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry

barrkel 6y ago

The cards are more interesting to me than the word, which I originally thought was going to be some kind of copyright-protecting deliberate mistake. The cards remind me of Jira tickets, with stamps and names as a kind of audit log of work associated with the ticket. I find myself curious about the information architecture and paper processes that companies built around such tickets going to and fro. Such architectures probably have fairly close analogues in distributed systems, and there may be a thing or two to learn from how more innovative and efficient organizations structured their paper pushing.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago
In my experience, the difference is - unfortunately - that Jira tickets end up being discarded once a task has been finished, instead of becoming documentation for a feature. I think that was caused by volume, we'd do 10+ tasks or features a week at our most productive, and it quickly became line- or factory work, instead of carefully crafting individual features.
tasogare 6y ago
This is very specific of lexicography (dictionary making) given the huge amount of work, yet the natural partitioning of it. If you like this, you can see a bit more of it in the anime Fune wo amu (舟を編む).
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Speaking of that, I need to find time one of these days to research what the hell "a memo" is. I understand it was a piece of paper of sorts, used in a way similar to how e-mails are used today, but I don't understand how they were delivered to people, what was the equivalent of MTA there. I know how to use the word in writing ("I didn't get the memo"), but not much more than that.
- burlesona 6y ago
  My understanding is these were printed letters circulated internally via the mailroom. Most companies had workers who circulated both internal and external mail - so a couple times a day someone would come by with letters for you, both from the outside world, and from inside the office. Memoranda were generally announcements distributed to many people in the office. There were normally two trays or boxes for paper on people's desk, one was the "inbox" and one was the "outbox," and the mail person would place the new stuff in the inbox and take anything from the outbox to circulate it around the office. I never really lived that, although my first desk job did have an inbox and an outbox, the team wasn't big enough to have a mailroom, so we would just use those boxes to drop papers at other people's desks - hence the outbox didn't really get used, but the inbox did. Usually once a day a bundle of mail would get dropped off at the front desk and someone would take a turn walking the letters around the office, but there weren't that many of them as email was already a thing at that point.

phoe-krk 6y ago

The article mentions the abbreviation ULEC, but it does not define it. Does anyone know what it means?

webkike 6y ago
Right above its first usage: Universal Lexicographer's Ethical Code
- phoe-krk 6y ago
  Thanks, I missed it in the text.

hirundo 6y ago

Dord is a perfectly cromulent word.

bruce_the_bruce 6y ago
I would say dord is a woody sort of word... dord.
quickthrower2 6y ago
It must be, it's in the Merriam-Webster dictionary on my bookshelf.

mci 6y ago

In 1995, Polish Scientific Publishers PWN, a long-time publisher of dictionaries, sued Kurpisz, a new publishing house, for plagiarizing their large dictionary of Polish. The case was closed in favor of PWN in 2005, hitting the Supreme Court along the way. Among the evidence against Kurpisz was their entry on the nonce word "amikus" (meaning "friend"), which they illustrated with the quotation "spijał się ze swoimi amikusami" (he was getting drunk with his friends) but could not tell the court where they had gotten the quotation from. Nowadays, with libraries digitizing every flimsy old book, they would find the source easily.

derimagia 6y ago

I remember learning this years ago from a video which turns out to also be made by Merriam Webster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3sDiH3FhnY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3sDiH3FhnY

grawprog 6y ago

This really stopped and made me consider the amount of work that goes into making dictionaries, especially before computers, and the completely mind numbing and awful job it must be to be a dictionary editor. Then again, I'm sure some people out there probably love it but, I just imagined for a moment having to be the person going through those and adding them to the dictionary and honestly, it wasn't a happy thought. Anyone who did that, or still does, and anyone who enjoys doing that kind of work, I just say props to you guys. People like you work on those little details that makes the world interesting and do the things that get unappreciated but used by everybody. Just wanted to say thanks to all the dictionary editors and people doing work like that. I'm sure you guys don't get appreciated as much as you should.

dmurray 6y ago
> the completely mind numbing and awful job it must be to be a dictionary editor. How Samuel Johnson defined a word in his (perfectly serious) 18th century dictionary: > Lexicógrapher. n.s. [...]×A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge
nsomaru 6y ago
https://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/johnsons/patron.htm https://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/johnsons/pat... “ Seven years, my lord, have now passed, since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance (1), one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before.”
- defen 6y ago
  My favorite part about The Letter to Chesterfield is that it was such a sick burn that Chesterfield put it on display on a table in his house.
- yesenadam 6y ago
  Gee, that version (which wikipedia also links to) is very mangled. "Is not a patrons my lord" ?! The letter concludes with: Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a Patron, which Providence has enabled me to do for myself. Having carried on my work thus far, with so little obligations to any favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I shall conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation, My Lord, Your lordship’s most humble, Most obedient servant, SAMUEL JOHNSON. https://archive.org/details/beautiessamuelj00keargoog/page/n64/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/beautiessamuelj00keargoog/page/n...

murrayb 6y ago

I thought it was going to be about the musical instrument- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dord_(instrument) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dord_(instrument), somebody should let Merriam-Webster know :)

happy-go-lucky 6y ago
The wind instrument is also usually seen in South India :) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombu_(instrument) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombu_(instrument)

sfgweilr4f 6y ago

You could say they completely increased the dord of the whole situation for quite a few years. Ha! Take that! Now we just need a few hundred people to also use it and it slowly becomes real. The circle becomes complete.

userbinator 6y ago

A 386 assembler I used in the late 80s (when the 386 was still new) consistently referred to 32-bit quantities in its documentation and error messages as a "dord", so that's what came to mind when I read this article. I assume that was also either because of a "propagating typo" from "dword" (this was software from Eastern Europe, where English wasn't all that common), or because it seemed more convenient to have "byte", "word", and "dord" all be the same number of characters.