Perhaps this is a little too silly to even discuss… but it’s still raining in California, and I just spent hours with spreadsheets, and who doesn’t love a good romp with a dictionary?
Walt is entitled to state his dislike for the term “biblioblogosphere,” to propose replacements, and to point to “a number” of people who agree with him on whether this term should be replaced. Frankly, I’m rather fond of synonyms–do I really have to choose between auto and car?–but there’s no harm in all of us thinking about the terms we use and playing with the language.
But Walt says the biblioblogosphere is “too Germanic” (adding “in construction, not derivation”) and also complains that a sphere is something with a center.
I am not an etymologist; I’m not even an entomologist. But I do know a few word roots, courtesy of book-larnin’. So Walt’s objection made me curious. In fact, biblioblogosphere is a bit of a mutt, much as I am… but anything but Germanic, unless by that Walt is referring to the concept of piled-upon compound nouns, though usually those resolve themselves through contraction (automobile –> auto; of the clock –> o’clock).
(Just to be very clear, I have nothing against Germany… in fact, the Schneiders in my family could easily be mistaken for Germans. My blue-eyed aunt recently shared a story of being made to wear a Star of David necklace as a child so the children in her Lower East Side neighborhood wouldn’t tease her and call her a “shiksa.”)
I’m soon bidding farewell to the beloved databases Gleeson Library has provided me now for nearly two years. The OED is one of my favorite. I used it to dissect “biblioblogosphere”–which is, in the end, simply a word I coined, which you are welcome to use if you like it, or not if you don’t.
All I did was take a Greek root (biblio) and tack it on to a noun already in use: blogosphere. The humor, such as it is, comes from yoking a mildly fusty word with a neologism (though I was also thinking of the French word for library, bibliotheque, which like the word sphere, is aurally quite pleasing).
Here’s a bit on biblio:
biblio: “repr. Gr. – stem and comb. form of book. In compounds formed in Greek itself, as bibliography, ; and in many of mod. formation, as bibliogony, biblioklept, bibliophagist, etc., some of which are merely pedantic or ponderously humorous.” (I’m happy to be both pedantic and ponderously humorous.)
Blog is web + log, so I dissect it twice:
web: “[OE. web(b neut., corresp. to OFris. web, wob (WFris. web, webbe, NFris. wêb, wäb), OS. webbi (MLG. and LG. webbe), MDu. and Du. webbe, web, OHG. wappi, weppi, webbi (MHG. weppe, webbe) neut., ON. vef-r masc. (genit. vefjar; Da. væv, Sw. väf):OTeut. *wabjo-m, -z, f. *wa- ablaut-var. of *we-: see WEAVE v.1]”
log: “[Late ME. logge; of obscure origin; cf. the nearly synonymous CLOG n., which appears about the same time. Not from ON. lág felled tree (f. OTeut. *lg-, ablaut-variant of *leg- LIE v.1), which could only have given *low in mod.Eng. The conjecture that the word is an adoption from a later stage of Scandinavian (mod.Norw. laag, Sw. dial. lÃ¥ga), due to the Norwegian timber-trade, is not without plausibility, but is open to strong objection on phonological grounds. It is most likely that clog and logge arose as attempts to express the notion of something massive by a word of appropriate sound. Cf. Du. log clumsy, heavy, dull; see also LUG n. and v. In sense 6 the word has passed from Eng. into many other langs.: F. loch, Ger., Da. log, Sw. logg.]”
Though we could simply point to the OED’s etymological entry for blog: ” 1999 TBTF for 1999-08-30: Aibo Rampant in cistron.lists (Usenet newsgroup) 30 Aug., Blog., a Web log… First spotted on the Eatonweb blog, er, Web log on 1999-08-25, though Eatonweb’s proprietor Brigitte says the coinage is due to our very own TBTF Irregular Peter Merholz.] ”
Finally, we get to sphere:
sphere: “[ad. OF. espere (13th c.), later sphere (mod.F. sphère) or late L. sphra, earlier sphæra, ad. Gr. ball. So It. sfera, Sp. and Pg. esfera; MDu. spere, speer (Du. sfeer), MHG. spære, spere (G. sphäre).] I. 1. a. The apparent outward limit of space, conceived as a hollow globe enclosing (and at all points equidistant from) the earth; the visible vault of heaven, in which the celestial bodies appear to have their place.”
I am charmed down to my socks by the idea of a wonderful snowglobe encasing all biblish bloggers great and small. These days I feel like a small star, just glimmering bloggishly while I struggle with larger challenges in my life that limit how much time I have for sharing here on FRL. But I’m still in the sky. Whatever terms we use, there’s room for all of us… and always room for a few more celestial bodies.
Posted on this day, other years:
- FRL to Magee: Get Off My Lawn - 2008
- State Associations and all that - 2007
- I did not say... - 2007
- Podcasting on the Rise - 2005
- Librarian Writers, Writer Librarians - 2005
I *so* totally have another synonym for you “livrastan” short for “livreblogostan” … It all comes from a recent IEEE article on the “blogostan” (which I had never heard of) and then, of course, the French livre. You have my permission to make this, and me famous 🙂
I suspect that when Walt said, “in construction”, he was thinking of Mark Twain’s description of German:
“unless by that Walt is referring to the concept of piled-upon compound nouns” – that’s exactly what I meant, which is why I said “in construction, not derivation.”
It’s a kartoffelpankuchen kind of word (my mother’s parents both came from Germany, and we always had those–potato pancakes, that is, earth apple pancakes, and my spelling may be off–on one day shortly before Easter).
I entirely agree that there’s room for synonyms, and I certainly understand what it means if anyone uses it. I’d just like to find something a bit shorter and simpler. Biblogworld isn’t it: The more I look at it, the more I prefer “biblioblogosphere.” LISblogs? Maybe. It may turn out that your coinage is the best available. But hey, what better day than April 1 and an anniversary to suggest and invite alternatives?
Well, I’m still jealous that Google and Amazon got taken… and that lawyers could do “blawgs”…nice juicy little words–but maybe we can come up with something based on -brary or info- or librar-…
Speaking of Easter/Passover/Rites of Spring, my grandmother made a dessert version of matzoh brei where the eggs were separated and sweetened, and the egg whites beaten stiff then folded in.
I have always liked the biblioblogosphere–both the word and the place, which I have always imagined as existing in just the sort of cosmic snow globe you describe. It’s a particularly nice image now that I live out where one can see the stars, and, on clear nights, the Milky Way.
Has someone said it already? “Liblogs.”
Ohh – could you share your matzoh brei recipe? Sounds yummy.
As for what to call ourselves, my only problem with edubiblioblogsphere (thanks Alice Y for that one) is that it takes too long to type! Maybe I’ll ask our etymology teacher for ideas…
liblogs?
You know, that’s the recipe right there, like my grandmother’s recipe for gefilte chicken: use chicken instead of fish. I can even see her writing it down: “separate eggs, add sugar, beat egg whites, fold in,” and handing the recipe to me unironically.
Walt’s comment re the Germanic nature of a long compound word points up what happens when biblioblogosphere is modified with a prefix, though as long as it’s a dactyl ending in a vowel, it should move fairly swiftly off the tongue…
Christina, “liblogs” is interesting, but “biblioblogosphere” is a concept of place; in other words, you could imagine yourself visiting the biblioblogosphere, in order to read a few biblioblogs, or liblogs (which is a fun word).
Since you’re being Germanic … if biblioblogosphere is the neologism (or neuelogism as it were) and you replace it with livrastan or some other term, would that make biblioblogosphere the “altneuelogism” ?
Livrastan is funny, btw! Yes, I can see an argument for altneuelogism. Which could lead to a journal article about the Weltanschauung of the Altneuelogism…
Plus -stan becomes a funny suffix; bibliostan, bookestan, infostan…
Spell-checkers would probably spazz out with some of those nouveau nomenclatures!
I love the term “biblioblogosphere,” but I also like “biblioblogistan.” Both of them are so George Herriman-like in poetic construction and sound. “There Is A Heppy Lend Furfur A-Waay…”
Plus, if you wrote your blog entry in verse, you would have biblioblogistanzas…
biblioblogistanzas
kgs wins at the Internet.
“You know, that’s the recipe right there”
Here’s how I have my grandmother’s recipe for blintzes: My mother stood there with paper and pencil and my aunt stood there with measuring cups and spoons and captured my grandmothers’ handfuls of flour and pinches of soda before she threw them in the bowl. Actually, the recipe still says “pinch of baking soda.” Took me some experimenting to figure out it was a four finger pinch, not a two finger pinch.
But sugar in matza brei? Pfeh.
Think of it as a sweet souffle. Same principle.
Reminds me of my college days when I had a popcorn popper that was basically a frying pan with a really large cover which I used for Passover cooking. A friend and I argued every night whether matza brei should be like french toast and served with syrup or jelly (i.e. the wrong way) or savory (i.e. the correct way) with sauteed onions and pepper. But to bring this back to the library world MPOW (I don’t know how to make that a link, http://www.huc.edu/libraries/losangeles) claims (with good reason) to have one of the largest Jewish cookbooks collections in the world.
Here we have potato pancakes, Easter/Passover/Rite of Spring, libraries, and web logs, all swimming around in matzo brei. In this vein, I suggest libkuchen. Libkuchen is not brought to you every Easter by the Passover Bunny dancing the Rite of Spring. Instead, it is That Which Is Cooked Up By Librarians. It also sounds kind of like Lebkuchen, which is a cookie, and therefore has relevance to the web, which also has cookies.
Libkuchen! I love it! Someone needs that for a blog title!