What word has this author mistaken?

[ckatt]

I don't normally chime in on this sort of thing but it rang out to me because of a recent video I watched on the Google Ngram viewer. I've been using the Ngram viewer for years but this video showed me some techniques I didn't know it could do, and it used the word endemic as an example around the 3 min mark.

I tried it myself, adding endemic of to the query, and found the endemic of had brief usage in the 80's but was never popular.

That said, my take on the sentence in question is that this type of conversation is a symptom of the fear all managers have. But yuk.

 

[JNG01]

'A typical example of' would be a better , or (to cut it short)

The conversation epitomised what Ed Bicknell calls "the constant fear" that plagues all managers.

This is the one that I would have guessed (in the US here, so would have used epitomized).

I think awkwardness of the sentence is underlined by the use of "conversation" as a subject, modified as "endemic," through a linking verb, but with most of the information of the sentence in the last clause after the subject-verb pair. It's not wrong, it's just strikes me as an awkward way to present the idea.

 

[paranoid marvin]

This is the one that I would have guessed (in the US here, so would have used epitomized).

I think awkwardness of the sentence is underlined by the use of "conversation" as a subject, modified as "endemic," through a linking verb, but with most of the information of the sentence in the last clause after the subject-verb pair. It's not wrong, it's just strikes me as an awkward way to present the idea.

One of the reasons why it's easier to achieve higher Scrabble scores across the pond than over here in Blighty!

 

[Phyrebrat]

HB, did you settle on what the word was? I came late to this thread after my initial post and had forgotten about it. Now, reading your first post, the word epitomises came to mind instantly - but that'd already been mentioned.

So? What gives?

pH

 

[HareBrain]

HB, did you settle on what the word was? I came late to this thread after my initial post and had forgotten about it. Now, reading your first post, the word epitomises came to mind instantly - but that'd already been mentioned.

So? What gives?

pH

No, I haven't, and my increasingly desperate attempts to get an answer out of the author only resulted in a restraining order.

"Epitomises" works well except that I wanted to keep the "was" and "of". I think my brain was probably searching for "emblematic" because that's the one closest to "endemic", but that doesn't make it the best word to use there. (TJ's "characteristic" feels more natural.)

 

[Phyrebrat]

I think emblematic is nice but kind of a bit academic-sounding (although my preference after epitomises).

Also I now want to use "emblematic" in my wip.

pH

 

[Dan Jones]

I'm pretty sure the word you're looking for is "embiggens".

 

[Dan Jones]

Why so angry? It's a perfectly cromulent word.

 

[Toby Frost]

Let me go away and think about that. I shall return interfrastically.

 

[Phyrebrat]

I'm still struggling with the presque-vu of it all

 

[Don]

Expository, explicatory, exhibitory, and elucidatory epitomize e-synonyms.

 

[Rufus Coppertop]

I incline towards opining that the perpetration of shoehornage of the word 'endemic' into my current WIP would have an embiggenationary effect honorificabilitudinitate.