A Whatnot Wednesday

"Whatnot" - noun [$10]
Whatnot means 1. a small, trivial, unspecified object; (alt.) an indefinite or trivial thing; 2. a set of light, open shelves for ornaments.
Sentence: Today's blog post is analogous to a collection of verbal whatnots on an Internet whatnot. :-)

First, the market. Stock prices are holding up although considerable bad news appeared. But the "bad news" is all concurrent, coincident bad news and is "priced in" ... or "overpriced in". In other words, the bad news is not "news". Beefers continue to rotate ... aka play ping pong ... among stock groups. They love the miners & energies now. Fins are weak on low volume.

Be patient, buy on good dips only. Earnings season might bring some good buys ... and will bring lots of news.

Words

This blog now seems to be an authoritative, or at least popular, site for words. I did a search for "quodliteral" on Google and the #1 site that came up was ... this blog ! Mirabile Dictu !

I did that search in my quest for a defintion of "quodliteral", which was part of my post of Monday. Quodliteral is not in any dictionary of mine, including the Unabridged Oxford English Dictionary plus supplements, nor in the online dictionary.com site. The Google search brought up only sites where the its vowel sequence was noted. And my Latin idiom dictionary did not contain "quodliteral" either.

Similarly, "duoliteral" was not included in any dictionary of mine, but it was listed on dictionary.com site in their unabridged dioctionary.

"Duoliteral" - adjective [$100]
Duoliteral means consisting of two letters only.
Sentence: The standard postal abbreviations for the States of the US are now duoliteral and upper case, as prior longer, mixed case abbreviations are now obsolete. For example, Massachusetts is MA, not Mass.

During my searches, I found another word with all the standard vowels in reverse order, viz., quodlibetal.

"Quodlibetal" - adjective [$1000] rare [this word is in the OED]
Quodlibetal is a variant of quodlibetical, meaning of the nature, connected or concerned with, a quodlibet (s)

uh ... so you're thinking: "Ok Bunkerman, what's a quodlibet ?"

"Quodlibet" - noun [$10]
Quodlibet means 1a. a theological or philosophical issue presented for formal argument or disputation: hence a scholatic debate, thesis or exercise on a question of this kind (chiefly in University use, esp. philosophy, "to do quodlibets"; 2. (musical) a fanciful combination of several airs; a fantasia, medley.
Sentence: From Erasmus, "Praise of Folly", poking fun at pompous theologians by referencing the Apostles as being "... intellectually quite incapable of grasping a single quodlibet of Scotus."

You are thinking ... "Ok Bunkerman, who is Scotus ?"

From a Google search -
"Blessed John Duns Scotus (1265/66 – 8th November 1308), besides being known as the «Subtle Doctor», is also referred to as the «Marian Doctor». It was he who presented a systematic theology of the Marian privilege of the Immaculate Conception, which the Catholic Church officially proclaimed as a Dogma of Faith in the Apostolic Constitution Ineffabilis Deus of Pope Pius IX (8th December 1854), of which we are this year celebrating the 150th anniversary."

Now, let's see if we can educe a defintion of "quodliteral".

First, it is possible that quodliteral was simply a misspelling of quodlibetal years ago when the an early list of these reverse vowel order words was copied. The Internet and print media contain lots of errors carried on for years by people who do not check original sources.

But let's try anyway. The Latin components of "duoliteral" loosely mean two letters. The Latin component of "quodliteral" loosely mean which letter(s). An Latin-based idiom does not have to be a perfectly literal translation of the Latin.

Here are some "quod" words and phrases that might help when conjoined with the definition of duoliteral and those Latin words.

"Quod vide" is a Latin idiom meaning "which see" in formal writing, often abbreviated "q.v."

"QED" is an abbreviation for "quod erat demonstrandum" which means "which was to be shown or demonstrated".

"QEF" is an abbreviation for "quod erat faciendum" which means "which was to be done".

Therefore, using inductive reasoning, I hereby propose both a definition for "quodliteral" and a modern usage.

"Quodliteral" - adjective [$$$ ???]
Quodliteral means consisting only of letters. [This is my proposed definition ! No other source !]
Sentence: Many modern web site or computer login names are workably quodliteral, but quodliteral passwords can be cracked much more easily than ones including numbers, too.

Golly, such an erudite blog !