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Originally Posted by radarmaker
Heh. Woulda sworn that was Glice if I didn't look at yr name  |
Spoken like a timorous harpy. Cant, I tell you.
Anyway. I think there's three ways of responding to words you don't understand - passive ("whatever"), curious ("what do you mean?") or passive-agressive/ agressive ("Why are you trying to alienate me, you cunt."). There's a context to everything, so if you're saying 'trangressive' [NB - this is not synonymous with 'transcendent'] or 'pithy' in a context of being a smug cunt (so, at a 6-year-old's birthday or something) then people are more likely to react agressively, regardless of whether or not they know what you mean. As some of you are aware, I'm a total word-whore, but I generally find that people pick up the meaning of words from context more than they do strict intention (hence catachreses like 'decimate' [which are often subsequently standardised, like 'decimate'])
Incidentally, I wouldn't say pithy was the same as cogent - I've always taken it to mean persuasive and alluring, with a degree of élan, while cogent, to me, belongs specifically to the fief (or ken, if you will) of formal (or philosophical) logic. But I've heard it more in terms of literature, "a pithy turn of phrase".