Long, confusing words

[PureChaos]

I searched for this to see if had been done already and there were 244 responses which i skimmed through but non were the same as this.

anyway, for my university modules i have to do a lot of background reading, some of which is set each week. one of the ones ive got now is 'the nature of inquiry - setting the field' and one of the sentences in the first paragraph is 'ontological assumptions give rise to epistemological assumptions; these, in turn, give rise to methodological considerations; and these, in turn, give rise to issues of instrumentation and data collection.' apparently the entire article, which is a 50 pages of a book with each page having 2 columns of writing, is filled with long words that seem to be there for the sole purpose of confusing me. im 12 lines in and i already hate the article. if i didn't have to have it read by tomorrow it would be in a pile on the floor and i would be in the fetal position.

has anyone else been in a situation like this?

 

[curlycrouton]

Try the magical tome named The Dictionary. Having said that, it would get pretty goddam annoying looking up every other word in it. Point taken.

 

[shatnershaman]

Do you hate capitals?

 

[Iron Mal]

Hell, I'm still in college and thats what most of my lectures sound like!

I understand the need to use technical vocabulary in a given subject (hence the fact that said advanced terms were created) but they do also need to keep it understandable to people who are still learning it and so may not fully understand what they are talking about (it's hard to pick up facts and notes when you can't understand a word that's being said).

 

[curlycrouton]

Do you hate capitals?

No, Capitalists! All will cower before the iron fist of Mother Russia!

Sorry, lost my train of thought.....

Oh yeah, punctuation. I would advise you to use it a lot more, as it makes your writing more presentable, and therefore more likely to be read.

 

[Conqueror Kenny]

I have found myself reading some words I don't understand over the internets. Luckily I have a dictionary built into my desktop so I double tap shift copy and paste, and I know what's going on.
But while reading through my chemistry textbooks I'm sure they just started making up chemicals. I don't recall many times they didn't call DNA deoxyribonucleic acid, how hard is it to simplify it by just putting the chemical name once and call it DNA the rest of the time.

 

[PhantomEnigma]

Its not the words that confuse you its your limited understanding of them. I do agree however that that article could be a tad overkill. To understand the longer words try breaking them down into smaller sections and try to think why it goes together.

 

[Xaryn Mar]

Heh, Yes I know the feeling, or perhaps knew is more correct since I have studied my field of science for quite som time now and has learned all those words by rote. But I still remeber the time when I had to look up several words in a text.

 

[Labyrinth]

Sounds a bit like reading Joyce or Machiavelli to be honest. Now those were slogs if ever I took them, though in both it was more the sentence structure and long winded nature that dragged one down.

 

[Iron Mal]

Do you hate capitals?

Bringing that up not only sidesteps the issue at hand alltogether but is incredibly petty. It's still readable, give the guy a break.

 

[PureChaos]

Its not the words that confuse you its your limited understanding of them. I do agree however that that article could be a tad overkill. To understand the longer words try breaking them down into smaller sections and try to think why it goes together.

very philosophical, but unfortunately true.

Do you hate capitals?

Bringing that up not only sidesteps the issue at hand alltogether but is incredibly petty. It's still readable, give the guy a break.

thanks!

while im here, does anyone know what 'nomothetic' and/or 'idiographic' mean? would use a dictionary but the only one ive got, for some strange reason, is french which i doubt will be much use.

 

[NeedAUserName]

I get confused by words longer then 2 letters or 1 syllable (spelling?)

 

[Conqueror Kenny]

while im here, does anyone know what 'nomothetic' and/or 'idiographic' mean? would use a dictionary but the only one ive got, for some strange reason, is french which i doubt will be much use.

Nomothtic: Relating to or involving the search for abstract universal principles
Idiographic: Relating to or involving the study of individuals

 

[PureChaos]

while im here, does anyone know what 'nomothetic' and/or 'idiographic' mean? would use a dictionary but the only one ive got, for some strange reason, is french which i doubt will be much use.

Nomothtic: Relating to or involving the search for abstract universal principles
Idiographic: Relating to or involving the study of individuals

Nice one, thanks

 

[Scorched_Cascade]

Suprachiasmatic pacemaker, exogenous zeitgiebers etc welcome to university literature where a word is defined once in a roundabout way and then repeated ad nausium through the book despite being called something else by someone else.

 

[NewClassic_v1legacy]

Dictionary.com [http://dictionary.reference.com/] is your best friend for all assignments like this. I can't tell you how often I've done this for archaic literature.

Hope that helps a little, don't have time to go into much more depth. Good luck.

 

[Slycne]

Everyone loves their jargon.

 

[Saskwach]

The worst is a word you think you know the meaning of, but actually has a very specialised meaning that you need a dictionary or the internet to unravel. Case in point: positive. You and I both know what that means. However, while reading a history book I noticed that the author was not using 'positive' in any sense I'd associate with it. It turns out there's a lot more to the word positive than you'd think. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism]

 

[Amnestic]

When in doubt: Dictionary.com it. There is no better way.

 

[Jobz]

For some reason I have a vocabulary that's much too large for my own good. But even I think some words are just too damn long.

Antidisestablishmentarianism for one, and that's not even the worst of it. How about Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism? Yes it's a real word, look it up. But once again, it gets worse. Here is a link to the longest word in the English language, it's too long to type here as it contains 189,819 letters:

http://www.othyr.com/titin.html