October 13, 2009 | No Comments »
verb. TO SMASHTICATE
Nay, if you be no better in the Reare then in the Van I shall make no doubt to vanquish, and vanquash you, too, before we part.
Dick of Devon (c1626)
The OED is boring. The definition there is “To Smash,” but that doesn’t really conjure the meaning I think of when I hear vanquash. It conjured the word vanquish (to deafeat, conquer) along with squash. If something has been vanquashed, it wasn’t just smashed, it was annihilated, (Check out Charles Hodgson’s excellent post/podcast on annihilate), hence my definition of SMASHTICATE.
It’s a very useful word, especially when describing incredible feats and defeats in history. Remember when the Rebels blew up the second Death Star? Empire got totally vanquashed.
August 19, 2009 | No Comments »
adj. Of or belonging to surpassing depth or profundity.
Sink down into the Hyperbyssal, Supersensual, Unsearchable, Eternal One.
Behmen’s theosophick philosophy unfolded, Edward Taylor (1691)
How the heck am I supposed to talk about a word that means “beyond profound”? I’m not profound. I’m not even just plain ol’ found. Confound, maybe. What’s beyond profound? Postfound? Superfound?
Anything else I can say has be lost to the hyperbyss of space. Maybe we can use hyperbyssal to refer to space. Space is pretty profound; hard to wrap your brain around anyway. If space is infinite, that means there’s a parallel universe somewhere with a parallel me writing this blog… but he is profound. He makes me hyperbysmal in comparison.
Even thought I can’t be profound about it, hyperbyssal is a pretty rockin’ word. Not to be confused with hypabyssal; that’s a kind of rock.