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

"generally effective command of the language despite some inaccuracies, inappropriacies and misunderstandings".

I assume your use of quotation marks indicates this line is from THEIR description.

Try sending THEM a quick email, with lots of smileys. pointing out that
'inappropriacies' is not to be found in any online English dictionary.

Tell them it's quite creative, but as a speaker of English you find it strange,
especially as no one else seems to recognise it as an 'appropriate'
noun construct from the adjective. Even Spellcheck objects.

I'd be pleased if someone would check the OED and report back here.
If there is a cited use, tuppence says it will probably be from THEM.
Thanks,

~jwf~

Yup, further searching shows that 'inappropriacies' is entirely an invention of the IELTS crowd.

http://ask.reference.com/web?q=inappropriacies&o=10603&l=dir

Every link uses the exact same quote. All cut and pasted from some
unknown source who's probably laughing his Rs off somewhere.


~jwf~

look up 'inappropriacy' rather than 'inappropriacies'

It's unusual but it exists

So they're just warning you that they're going to be testing you on very obscure words

The slightly more usual form seems to be "inappropriatenesses", but that looks stupid, too

Inappropriate usages would be a more appropriate usage.

RF

Eschewing discombobulation mollifies obfuscation.

Try that on them.

Y.

Nsba:
>> ...look up 'inappropriacy' rather than 'inappropriacies'
It's unusual but it exists... <<

Dicdotcom still says:
"No results found for inappropriacy:"

But, yeah, I believe you.
Not the first time I've made the mistake of searching a plural in
online dictionaries and been frustrated by their failure to recognise
a plural form.

Y'd think dictionaries, especially online dictionaries, would/could
very easily 'see' that a plural form was being searched. Usually I'm
complaining because so much recent software 'anticipates' user typos
and ignorance with automatic fill-ins or 'Did you mean...' type queries.

Admittedly there are a lot of different ways to make a plural in English
so it may be problematic for online dictionaries to offer to search all the
variables which do not appear as entries with their own page header.

Google was more informative:
http://www.google.ca/search?q=inappropriacy%3A&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

"Inappropriacy is a word used by folks in Lawrence Kansas to indicate that which is inappropriate."



~jwf~

PS:

In my post at the top of the page I linked to a list of eerily similar
quotes from several IELTS sites which seemed to demonstrate
that the same quote was being copied and pasted by these agencies
in several countries and languages. The point being they accepted
the authority of the primary source (IELTS) without question.

As a result the word seems to be spreading among foreign language
speakers learning to speak English and facing IELTS tests.

Here's a Saudi Arabian poet:

http://hayaah-thevoicethatlearnttospeak.blogspot.com/2009/07/inappropriacy.html

And I bet she's never been to Lawrence, Kansas.


~jwf~

"—inappropriateness *also* inappropriacy noun [uncountable]"

http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/inappropriate

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/appropriacy


maaaaan, ah ain't never been to Kansas

(begging appropriate forgiveness for the silly accent from the people of Kansas)

Nsba linked:
http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/appropriacy

It seems that MacMillan Dict confines the meaning to language structure. (at least for the time being)

"...the degree to which a word, expression, or grammar pattern is natural or acceptable in a particular situation"

Likely it will not be long before it spreads to all manner of social behaviours. Where-ever maintaining 'standards'
is prized, those who like to pass value judgments on the conformity of others will begin to consider the use of the
word 'innapropiacies' a mark of their superiority.


~jwf~

I seem to think I came across it in some report on behaviour

'no notion of inappropriacy' I think it was.... not a recent thing unless I'm mistaken

I'm afraid that I'm with the bureaucrats. You wanna play with their ball? You are going to have to play by their rules. And as Otto says, it isn't a stupid rule.

In fact it is arguable that it should be more rigourously applied, not less rigorously, because we should do all we can to ensure this sort of nonsense doesn't happen: http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/7-1/7-1cote-pybus.pdf Though in fairness, there is nothing to indicate that the authors are not native speakers of English, and one of them - bob help us - "teaches in Communication Studies". But their sources seem to be European post-modernists.

Architecture is presumably not prone to that sort of post-modernist wilful obscurantism, but even so.

The argument that native speakers should have to pass IELTS too is actually a good one.

Ben

I marked IELTS in various foreign places in the past. Quite a lot of the sort of native speaker "mistakes" many of you are complaining about would have been allowed. Still if you want native speakers to take the testm I might get some post-retirement wotk

Oh, if *everyone* had to take it, fine.

But I object to giving that much of my money to a private company to prove something that should be obvious from my CV.

Oh, and of course architects have "post-modernist wilful obscurantism", but they use it for something that'll physically clutter up the landscape for 20+ years. Take the Vanna Venturi house, which Venturi designed for his elderly mother.

http://images.encarta.msn.com/xrefmedia/sharemed/targets/images/pho/t041/T041606A.jpg

He purposely made it difficult to find the entrance and awkward to use the interior space. The stairs, especially, are a masterpiece of being bl**dy stupid, especially as his mother was nearly blind. They end in a point, the better for tripping over, and there's a wall standing in the middle of the stairwell halfway up.

http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~arch200/Images/VannaVenturi/Half/venturi01.jpg

But it's "art", and I suppose that since her son made it, she had to put her refrigerator in it. Or something like that.

Just checked OED online; inappropriacy is not mentioned in any entry, only inappropriate, inappropriately, and inappropriateness.

And there are not many English words the OED doesn't mention . . .

OED has no place for appropriacy either. So hnah.

Any feedback yet? On the face of it it is absurd; anyone's grasp of language can be judged sufficiently from their correspondence, unless they are suspected of having an amanuensis.