Paul Myers and I were colleagues back in Boston back in the early 1990s. Thanks to the wonders of Twitter, LinkedIn, and RSS we reconnected and I came across his excellent blog and found this little gem this afternoon. I suspect that your politics might influence exactly how funny you find this, but I think everyone ought to be able to appreciate it at some level.
A teaser on the front page of this week’s Simmons Voice, the college newspaper, declares "Student questions Palin’s qualifictions [sic]." That last word was a typo – obviously the intended word was "qualification" – but when you think about it, "qualifiction" is a dandy word for false or misleading credentials. On resumes, people commonly stretch the truth of their experience by taking more credit for some accomplishment than they probably deserve. But lies presented as truths are, in a sense, fictions. Thus a new word for the week – "qualifiction: the outright misrepresentations of job titles, degrees, or achievements that are presented to bolster one’s suitability for a job." Pass it on!
Neologism of the Day: Qualifiction
professormyers@professormyers.com
Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:58:41 GMT