{"id":2237,"date":"2024-07-31T12:19:30","date_gmt":"2024-07-31T16:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=2237"},"modified":"2024-07-31T12:19:30","modified_gmt":"2024-07-31T16:19:30","slug":"word-of-the-week-quine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2024\/07\/31\/word-of-the-week-quine\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Quine"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Angry<\/a>I really enjoy the New York Time<\/em>‘s five-letter-word game, Wordle. Today I guessed “quine” on my third guess of six. The correct answer, that I got on try five, was “penne,” but I won’t digress about pasta, despite the great basil from our garden, waiting to be turned into pesto.<\/p>\n

The Wordle got me to wonder where I had heard “quine,” a word I never use. Now, after doing some reading, I plan to use it a great deal. It describes perfectly an action we encounter daily. While the OED gives many<\/a> antique definitions, the free site Wikionary provides a modern definition<\/a>, to “deny the existence or significance of something obviously real or important.” The etymology interests me:<\/p>\n

Named after philosopher and logician Willard Van Orman Quine<\/span>. Senses related to self-reference are coined by Douglas Hofstadter in 1979 in his book G\u00f6del, Escher, Bach<\/i> (referencing the paradox named after him), while the verb sense of \u201cto deny the importance or significance of something\u201d was independently coined by Daniel Dennett in 1978 in The Philosophical Lexicon<\/i>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now we have a verb for what climate-change deniers, flat-earth believers, and conspiracy theorists do. With hearsay “evidence” and pretzel logic (more than a Steely Dan album) they quine when presented with facts and reason.<\/p>\n

Thank you, social media, for enabling these quiners in our midst. We might call social media a “Quine Engine.” I’d prefer a world where the quiners acted like Grandpa in the Simpsons, for all the evil it would do.<\/p>\n

\"Old<\/a><\/p>\n

Yell all you wish, even quine if that makes you happy, but this blog will continue in the summer months, so send words and metaphors of interest by e-mail (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or by leaving a comment below.<\/p>\n

See all of our Metaphors of the Month\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and Words of the Week\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Image Source: Wikipedia Commons for “angry”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I really enjoy the New York Time‘s five-letter-word game, Wordle. Today I guessed “quine” on my third guess of six. The correct answer, that I got on try five, was “penne,” but I won’t digress about pasta, despite the great basil from our garden, waiting to be turned into pesto. The Wordle got me to … Continue reading Word of the Week! Quine<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2516,87405,40197],"tags":[2522],"class_list":["post-2237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-writing","category-etymology","category-vocabulary","tag-word-of-the-week"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-A5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2237"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2240,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2237\/revisions\/2240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}