"Do you think of a thought?" Dme Judi Dench questions on the British comedy As Time Goes By. That is the question indeed! What is the brain really for if insight is the real deal?
I think the brain is for mundane tasks. The brain stores building units for the shazaam, but doesn't produce the shazaam. You have a thought; you don't create them. Thoughts occur to you, but do not follow a logical link backwards through inductive or deductive reasoning. Hard to draw a flow chart that describes how you came to a bit of insight. Rather more like wandering a foreign city, lost, then coming down a dark alley to enlightenment on unretraceable steps.
"Kafuffle" is not a word I made up. I heard it on that same episode of As Time Goes By; however, you also won't find it in Wikipedia or the OED. (Not yet.) Furthermore, I believe it cannot be found in a Hebrew word search as well. Thus I feel we are witnessing the dawn of a new word, a new word to describe a new thought, and I wanted to add my contribution to the kafuffle.
Or maybe it’s British.
AA In Boston
14 years ago
2 comments:
hmm, were they saying kerfuffle? b/c that is word and such a delightful one.
Ahhhh, the OED, Marc comments about it longingly, as in "if we had a full OED then ..." (the planets would align, etc. LOL)
And I respond "I found the word just fine here in Merriam Webster," much to his displeasure. You know Scottie loves the M-W.
I have the 11th Ed. M-W, as recommended by many numerous editors as THE irrefutable source of the American English language. I keep a list of words hand-written in the front of this book which do not appear in its content, including: verticies, criteria, Louvre, bon appetit, and overload. I'm hoping the 12th edittion proves superior.
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