An interesting discussion on the way to office. I boldly announce that I have a new blog amidst all the clamor inside. Curiosity envelopes the air inside. What's the name of the blog, some ask? The enthusiastic few appeared to have actually followed the post on my Facebook wall.
I proudly say - Openionate.
They boldly say - what does it mean.
And. I stand puzzled. Hey don't they get it? Pun intended. Opinionate. Openionate. Get the picture!
No. They don't get it. A search on a colleague's dictionary on an antiquated Nokia E series mobile (hey, sarcasm is in the water I drink, they say for Puneites) verifies the ignorance of the masses. Which in turn got me thinking. Whatever happened to 'opinionated'? Did it lose out to 'opined'? And yes, by the way I do not get a squiggly red line below the word 'opinionated' as I type this post, but I get it for 'opinionate' :-)
So there, an easy way to verify I'm right. And, I'm well read. And I know more words than you do. So there!
Enough wit. It appears the word 'opinionate' which was around 1600 AD was subjugated to irrelevance quite a long time ago. After some amount of researching I discovered that someone in 2006 had already researched this topic in - a matter of opinionating. To quote from the article -
"And 400 years ago, opinionate was standard English, though writers in need of a verb meaning ``believe, express an opinion about" could also choose opine or opinion. ``Pythagoras opinionated [the soul] a Number moving of it selfe," says a 1643 tract cited in the Oxford English Dictionary. Opine has since pulled far ahead in the popularity contest, but that doesn't mean opinionate is dead."
The conclusion of this article is in fact quite interesting -
"it's not, usually, a mere synonym for opine, but a word for habitual or professional opinion-mongering."
So I'll let my blog name stand. And be taken in this context. Habitual or professional 'openion'- mongering.
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