Sep 11, 2018 13:00
5 yrs ago
4 viewers *
English term

WORD-CHOPPER (also \"word chopper\"?)

English Other Slang Facetious linguistic contrivance?
I tentatively infer that it means "one who's thorough [a stickler, if you will] in their choice of words", further input on the notion purported, as I lack conviction here. Contexts: (And thanks in advance!)

1- Now that nirvana has become an English word, it should have its own English verb to convey the sense of "being unbound" as well. At present, we say that a person "reaches" nirvana or "enters" nirvana (...). But nirvana is most emphatically not a place. It's realized only when the mind stops defining itself in terms of place: of here, or there, or between the two. This may seem like a word-chopper's problem — what can a verb or two do to your practice? — but the idea of nirvana as a place has created severe misunderstandings in the past, and it could easily create misunderstandings now.

2- Is this the best voice for the story? Have you considered recasting it in the first person? I realise I’m stepping slightly beyond my remit as a word-chopper here, but it strikes me that this is already a deeply internalised point of view, so much so that the grammatical demands of third-person limited might be unnecessarily cramping your steez.

3- Zophar was an accuser, a man of rough tongue; he could not be civil until after he had been rude. He told Job that he, the wasted one, was 'a man of lips,' in the Hebrew tongue, a word-chopper, a gabbler in the face of heaven's patience, and that Job knew nothing about his own case.

Discussion

FNO (asker) Sep 11, 2018:
This one may be more to the point! "Last time I gave you money", said the lady, "you promised you would not walk straight into the pub and spend it."
"That's right", said the tramp.
"Well, you did!"
"Lady, don't you know the difference between a walk and a sprint?"
"Don't be a word-chopper. Whether you run into the pub or you walk in, it is all the same."

Responses

+7
24 mins
Selected

linguistic pedant

I'm really not sure as it's a difficult one to research. I have found it spelled "wordchopper" though.

This is certainly what the context sentences seem to be saying, as you yourself suggested.

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Note added at 33 mins (2018-09-11 13:34:07 GMT)
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The latest context supplied certainly points to a pedant, or a hairsplitter (also hair-splitter).
Peer comment(s):

agree Victoria Britten
5 mins
Thanks
agree philgoddard : I've never seen this phrase, and the author shouldn't draw attention to it by using it three times. But from the context, I think this has to be the meaning.
12 mins
Thanks. No, I don't know it either although I did find it (as one word) in one book. I don't personally like it at all.
agree JohnMcDove : Yes, this made think of "hair-splitter" as you mention. Like a "Korzybski fanatic". (With all my respects to Korzybski, by the by... ;-)
1 hr
Thanks
agree Alison MacG : Yes, I think you are correct. Perhaps linked to logic-chopper.
1 hr
Thanks
agree Yvonne Gallagher : Yes, has to be a pedant . Perhaps it's a literal translation of some Hebrew word like "man of lips". Apparently Heblish can be pretty bad.
2 hrs
Thanks
agree Shekhar Banerjee : That looks to be the closest possible meaning.
2 hrs
Thanks
agree acetran
12 days
Thanks
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4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Selected automatically based on peer agreement."

Reference comments

2 hrs
Reference:

Compare logic-chopper, logic-chopping, choplogic

From The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (2 ed.)

chop2

chop logic
argue in a tiresomely pedantic way; quibble (from a dialect use of chop ‘cut’ meaning ‘bandy words’). Compare logic chopping.

logic chopping
the practice of engaging in excessively pedantic argument. The expression chop logic is recorded from the early 16th century, and originally meant ‘exchange or bandy logical arguments’; in later use, chop was wrongly understood as meaning ‘cut, split’.
http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198609...

From the OED

word-chopping n.
1858 Harvard Mag. Dec. 401 That Homeric epithet of our race, ‘word-dividing men’, is by no means inappropriate, since word-chopping is the employment of half our lives.
1943 Amer. Polit. Sci. Rev. 37 1092 Waiving the question of the expediency of trying to define the limits of military authority within another nation, it is word-chopping to try to decide when departure from the chivalric code of battle is justifiable.
2004 New York Sun (Nexis) 15 Jan. 17 Lattimore's main weapon was always word-chopping. Rather than declare whether he is a supporter of the United States or forthrightly condemn Stalinism, he argues over the meaning of the words ‘leftist’ and ‘Communist’.
Peer comments on this reference comment:

agree Yvonne Gallagher : well found
12 mins
Thanks, Yvonne
agree Sheila Wilson : Useful references
13 mins
Thanks, Sheila
agree Björn Vrooman : "...produced by electronic firms in this space age are becoming smaller much so that they need a word-chopper (not wood-chopper) to label them." Lowell Sun Newspaper Archives, Jan 27, 1961, p. 16 (see Google) Like your sources, this one's American too.
54 mins
Thanks, Björn
agree katsy : Romeo and Juliet Juliet's father says this to her... "chop logic.... thank me no thankings, proud me no prouds..." the pedantic and hairsplitting use of words (here to say thank you for finding me a husband but actually I don't want him"....
12 days
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