The Professor is proud to announce the word "cunster" as an integral part of Ms. Snark's lexicon; she shall incorporate this word into her future posts.
-
For now, http://www.cunster.com/ will remain on a construction page, although it may eventually be parked on a for-profit advertising page, should traffic warrant it. This blog does involve much labor and some expense.
-
Assigned meaning of "cunster" (n.): a student who employs dishonest measures--copying from another student, cheating of any kind, plagiarizing, bribery, lying, blackmail--to acquire undeserved and unearned high grades. The prefix "cun" refers to "cunning" and "conning," pejorative modifiers, describing a scheming and conniving person who resorts to tricks to deceive for personal gain, either higher monetary and/or social status. The suffix "ster" creates a noun with shady connotations. "Cunster" joins other wordplay words, such as trickster, jokester, punster, and scamster.
-
Interestingly, the German word for "artist" is "kunst," although The Professor was not mulling over this possibility when she grabbed "cunster" (She could not obtain conster dot com, and she refuses to chase after dot com resellers). Upon reflecting, she has come to realize that the "cun" prefix is, for her purposes, a better fit anyway, for "cunst" could actually refer to the "art of the con."
-
One caveat: please do not mistake "cunster" for that other word, sexual in nature, that demeans women; someone else owns that domain name.
-Alas, Ms. Snark was quite mistaken when she claimed that The Professor coined the word; "cunster" is actually an 18th century word, meaning "to construe." "Cunster" can be found in Tobias Smollett's 1771 novel The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker:
-
--------------- "...when we can cunster
--------------- the crabbidst buck off hand
--------------- and spell the ethnitch vords ..."
-
The Professor does not subscribe to the French Academy practice of keeping language static. She adores the idea that words in the English language are constantly shifting in their meanings.
-
Ms. Snark shall return tomorrow with some witticisms.
-
The Professor
-
No comments:
Post a Comment