Pedantic Sophistry

A Pedant is someone who likes to show off their knowledge. The dictionary says it is from Middle French, and lists 3 definitions: a male school teacher, one who parades his learning, or one who emphasizes trivial points in the presentation or use of knowledge. I think the description we might use for the last one is anal retentive, a psychological term that is found in popular usage today.

A Sophist is an ancient Greek teacher of pholosophy, or a thinker, or a fallacious reasoner. Although, S-O-P-H indicates wise or expert, it also carries the meaning of deceptively clever.

Sophisticated means cultured, knowledgeable or disillusioned, or something which has become more complex or developed.

Sophomore which comes from the words for Wise and Moron in Greek, means a second year student, and sophomoric means foolish, or overconfident, but immature.

I suspect these words all come from Sophicles, not Sophia as I originally thought. Must be a gender bias. Great Dictionary!

Tall, dark and aloof

There's something about someone tall, dark, and aloof. That is my type!

Aloof. What an interesting sound! It must be germanic or scandinavian. It sounds like alley-oop. It lifts you up and then lets you float down. But aloof means standoffish.

Maybe it is French. I wanted to put some words from French origins here. I had a discussion at the convention and we spoke about workd taken from other languages and inserted into the English dictionary. I asserted that many Greek words have done just that, but was informed that 100,000 words have come to us directly from French, with the same spelling and usually the same pronunciation. With Greek words the spelling is usually altered and the pronunciation murdered. Of course, the Greek do use a different alphabet, so that might have something to do with the spelling, anyway.

I had to go to the Huge Unabridged Dictionary (HUD), since my constant companion did not list an etymology for aloof. It just left it out, without any explanation or apology. But my HUD says it is from a Dutch origin. And it doesn't say standoffish, it says distant in sympathy, reserved.
Standoffish is, however, in my HUD and the definition for it includes the word, aloof.

With regard to tall, dark and handsome men, aloofness can be very alluring. A-llooour-ing. There's another interesting sounding word...

Deep

I was conversing with some colleagues of mine the other day. The topic of conversation included books we were currently reading, and turned to one of my favorite authors, Deepak Chopra. Someone said Doesn't he use all those big words? I replied, he does have a predilection for multisyllabic terminology!