h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

An online dictionary says good examples of sentences with the word "purview" are:

"Such a case might be within the purview of the legislation", or

"Social taboos meant that little information was likely to come within the purview of women generally".


One of my Indian colleagues uses it to mean "scope" in a in a more general sense, e.g.

"As server engineers, the network incident didn't come within our purview".


So, do you use the word, and in what context?

Thesaurus.com gives us the alternatives:

acumen
apprehension
attention
attitude
awareness
cognizance
comprehension
concept
consciousness
grasp
horizon
idea
impression
insight
judgment
knowledge
light
notion
picture
range
reach
recognition
scope
sense
sight
understanding
vision
apprehending
realizing

Most of which I would think of before "purview". In fact, from your examples, I had understood it to mean "remit" - as in "the range of things I am expected to do"

Puview is my fiend.

I can honestly say that I have never had cause to use this word. Is it rising in popularity amid the business world?

Many decades ago, I first heard the phrase "paradigm shift" being used by an academic, whereupon it suddenly became ubiquitous. I find it interesting that such words have fashionability. Once everyone uses them, they cease to be so.

I'll be spotting "purview" now.


(Unfortunately, I noticed a modern-ish phrase being used yesterday, in a period drama. I really don't think "back in the day" was vernacular in the early 1800s... Scriptwriters pshwah!)

Purview is what you get from contented cat videos.

If you repeat it a number of times, it sounds as if you're calling someone a perv.

'S jess some fancy word for bailiwick.


~jwf~

Never used it.I tend to think of it as legal vocabulary.

I don't use it at all. I like to think this means I am not the sort of pretentious person who uses terms and acronyms that I don't know the meaning of. Except to satirize others.

I just found 'purview' used in a quote from the BBC TV series 'The Thick Of It':


Judy: You should tell me about it as it's a scheduled media appearance by a member of this department and therefore it falls well within my purview!

Malcolm Tucker: Within your 'purview'? Where do you think you are, some regency costume drama? This is a government department, not some Jane Austen novel! Allow me to pop a jaunty little bonnet on your purview and ram it up your with a lubricated horse !


Ah, they don't write them like that any more.

Pur is Iranian for village.
ergo
Purview - Any view of a village in Iran,

From space they all look alike.


~jwf~

Purview is a form of payment for restricted TV viewing isn't it? You pay so much purview.

I thought it was to do with cats watching TV...

But only if the like what they see.

A purview http://www.panoramio.com/photo/107124728

I think Newcastle United used to have a manager of that name but he went to Crystal Palace I believe.

Yes, I expect that many cats would like certain nature programs.

In my experience, they also like to sit by the window and look at the birds coming to the birdfeeder.

No
They like to sit on the wall above the bird feeder...

The feeder hangs from a wall bracket with a metal cage around it to stop the squirrels.

However the robin has worked out that he is out of range when he goes in at the bottom of the feeder

Seriously bemused local cats...

"No. They like to sit on the wall above the bird feeder..." [Bald Bloke]

What they like is irrelevant if they aren't allowed outside. One is left with trying to convince one's cats that they like to watch through the window.