ackack, n. Rapid-fire criticism. "I had scarcely finished my talk when I was cut down by a withering barrage of ackack" Hence ackerman, n. Rapid-fire critic (cf. thomson gun).

aiken, adj. Said of one who is in the grip of some urgently occurrent aesthetic emotion, or in whom merely pleasurable impressions of reflection have given way to paroxysms. "Leo was moved by the performance, but as the orchestra finished the adagio of the Beethoven, Henry was just aiken."

albritton, adj. Contraction of "all but written". "It's albritton here; I'll be with you in a minute."

alvinize, v. To stimulate protracted discussion by making a bizarre claim. "His contention that natural evil is due to Satanic agency alvinized his listeners."

ameliorortate, v. To complicate discussion of a theory or topic by drawing attention to a panoply of distinctions, difficult examples, and writings whose relevance had hitherto been conveniently underestimated. "We were really making progress until she had to go and ameliorortate the issue."

anscombe, v. (1) To gather for safe-keeping. "She anscombed with all the notes and letters." (2) To go over carefully, with a fine-tooth comb, in an oblique direction.

armstrong unit, n. Measure of the wavelength of belief (= 10 micro-smarts).

a fortiori, adj. For even more obscure and fashionable Continental reasons.

arthurdantist, n. One who straightens the teeth of exotic dogmas. "Little Friedrich used to say the most wonderful things before we took him to the arthurdantist!" - Frau Nietzsche

assearltion, n. A speech act whose illocutionary force is identical with the speaker. "He assearled himself across the room."

austintatious, adj. Displaying in a fine sense the niceties of the language. "I'm not sure what his point was, but his presentation was certainly austintatious."

ayer, v. (from Spanish, ayer, meaning yesterday) To oversimplify elegantly in the direction of a past generation. "Russell, in the Analysis of Mind, ayers a behaviorist account of belief."

B

bahm, v. To devastate with reprints. "He bahmed the country with his latest piece."

baier, n.m. One who obtains his ethical theory from a vendler. Also, n.f., one who obtains her philosophy of mind from sellers.

bambrough, n. (1) A rare and umbrageous tree in the shelter of which all philosophical perplexity can be charmed away.

Where the bread fruit fall

And the penguin call

And the sound is the sound of the sea

Under the bam

Under the brough

Under the bambrough tree.

(2) (from bang-brow) A comment of such transcendent obviousness that were any hearer actually informed by it, he would smite his forehead with the heel of his hand. "Such a bambrough! Why didn't I think of it?"

barcan, n. The cry of the bulldog. "Tho 'bitin' may scar us, no barcan can mark us" - Old Professor's Song at Yale.

bar-hillel, n. A whipping post. "We've got him over a bar-hillel."

barry, v. To infer dismissals of philosophical skepticism. Cf. hume. "It was barried in a long white stroud."

bedau, n. A water bed, equipped with a light show and a hi fi system with recordings of the sea surf; one lies gently lulled by the sound of the sea going on and on. It is reputed by its users to foster a heightened sense of social justice, and hence is often advocated by rehabilitationists as a benign alternative to the electric chair, "You'll get the chair for this - or at least the bedau!"

belnap, n. (from bel-, beautiful, + carnap) A carnap felicitously defined in ordinary idiomatic language (e.g. "synonymous" for "intensionally isomorphic").

benettiction, n. Praise for a philosopher for solving a problem that was not invented until several hundred years after his death. "His study of Kant concludes with a bennettiction of Kant for solving the problem of a private language."

bergson, n. A mountain of sound, a "buzzing, blooming confusion".

berlin, n. An old fashioned stage coach, filled with international travelers, all talking rapidly and telling anecdotes of vivid life elsewhere. "As the berlin came through town, one could hear many accents one had never heard before, and delightful tales."

bernard, n. (from St Bernard) A shaggy dog story. Hence bernard, v. to tell such stories in lieu of making general arguments. "The risk one takes in bernarding is that one may be outsmarted." baow n. the punch line of a bernard.

bertrand, n. (1) A state of profound abstraction of mind and spirit; a trance. "He went into a bertrand and began to babble about the class of all classes which are not member of themselves." (2) The state of a person who suffers from delusions (e.g. as of one who doubts that, when he sees a table, he sees a table), or has visions (e.g. of the present King of France). (3) A state of linguistic amnesia, as of one who believes that "this" is a proper name and "Plato" a description.

Black Max, the, n. Coveted decoration, annually awarded to the philosopher who stays aloft the longest by flying in circles.

blanshard, v. To turn deathly pale at the sight of an external relation.

block, n. (1) (shortened from mental block) A sort of organic stoprule or safety valve that prevents people from going crazy when they consider thought experiments exploiting combinatorial explosion. "It's a good thing I had a block just then! I was getting a trifle dizzy when he started going on about storing all the possible descriptions of the universe in a book made out of tiny galaxies pretending they're electrons." n. (2) A small but obdurate obstacle preventing the smooth operation of a mechanism, a spanner in the works. Hence, mental block, an objection to functionalism obsessively maintained in the face of all manner of refutations, blandishments and appeals to common cause.

bouwsma, n. The sound made by a dogma, hence bouwsmatic, said of one who philosophizes by ear.

boyd, (1) n. According to non-reductionist materialism, one of the basic constituents of the universe. (The term originated with Democritus who said, "by convention grue, by convention bleen; in reality only atoms and the boyd.") (2) adj. said of a philosopher euphorically afloat on a theory. "He was boyd up by his realism."

braithwaite, n. The interval of time between two books. "His second book followed his first after a long braithwaite."

brandt, v. To take a flexible and complex position and stun as by affixing a slogan description, with its own mark attached as a label. "The argument was good for a long run until he brandt it, and then all it could do was look dazed and sorry."

brodbeck, n. A female expert in a predominantly male field, especially one who can carry the extra load involved.

brouw, n. Intuition. Hence, heybrouw, adj. of refined intuition.

brownian motion, n. A very small oscillation about an almost invisible point, often found in minute philosophical analyses. "His chisholming of that definition was a textbook example of brownian motion."

buber, v. To struggle in a morass of one's own making. "After I defined the self as a relation that relates to itself relatingly, I bubered around for three pages." Hence buber, n. one who bubers. "When my mistake was pointed out to me, I felt like a complete buber."

bunged-up, adj. Full of unnecessary material.

C

carnap, n. (1) A formally defined symbol, operator, special bit of notation. "His prose is peppered with carnaps" or "the argument will proceed more efficiently if we introduce a few carnaps".n. (2) Loss of consciousness while being taken for a ride.

cartwright, adj. Characterizing one who takes such pains in constructing the cart that one never gets to see whether the cart is put before or after the horse. Hence, cartwrong, adj. slapdash.

castaneda, n. An elaborate musical instrument, emitting a confused sound when agitated. "The original theme was lost in the sound of the castaneda."

cavell, v. An exquisitely sensitive distinction of language, hence cavellier, adj. characterizing a writing style common among extraordinary language philosophers.

chihara-kiri, n. The death of aleph-nought cuts. 

chisholm, v. To make repeated small alterations in a definition or example. "He started with definition (d.8) and kept chisholming away at it until he ended up with (d.8'''''''')."

chomsky, adj. Said of a theory that draws extravagant metaphysical implications from scientifically established facts. "Essentially, Hume's criticism of the Argument from Design is that it leads in all its forms to blatantly chomsky conclusions." "The conclusions drawn from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle are not only on average chomskier than those drawn from Godel's theorem; most of them are downright merleau-ponty."

church, n. A tightly constructed, heavily defended medieval place of worship, now primarily a tourist attraction.

churchland, n., (1) Two-ring traveling circus, a cross between a chautauqua and Disneyland, at which philosophers are given entertaining religious instruction in Science and nothing to eat but "phase space sandwiches".n. (2) A theocracy whose official religion is eliminative materialism.

code, v. To render unintelligible by substituting a literal translation. Hence code, n. the product of coding. "What he says about Aristotle sounds like code to me." (See also kripkography.)

cohen, n. (from cohort and coven) A collection of philosophers.

copiwrite, v. To come out with a revised edition for some purpose (e.g. to remove inconsistency or cut off the used book market).

cornell, n. The tolling of the bell to mark the end of ordinary language philosophy.

croce, n. A method of knitting spaghetti; thus, an intricate tangle.

curry, n. A work well seasoned with neologism; hence, curried, adj. "His work was an indigestible mass of curried grice."

D

dagfinn, n. One of the two possible outcomes of crossing a shark with a dolphin (the other is the follesdal). The dagfinn is tough-minded and tenderhearted, while the follesdal is soft-minded and hard-hearted; travelling together in symbiotic pairs, they are the only intelligent creatures at home in deep waters.

davidsonic, adj. Of speed; minimum forward velocity required to keep a research program in the air. Superdavidsonic, of research program for which this speed is zero. Hence, davidsonic boom, the sound made by a research program when it hits Oxford.

dennett, v. (1) To while away the hours defining surnames; hence, dennettation n. (2) The meaning of a surname. "Every surname has both a meinong and a dennettation." n. (3) An artificial enzyme used to curdle the milk of human intentionality.

derek, n. A philosophical skyhook, purportedly capable of transporting one to the "standpoint of the universe". "The only way to raise yourself up to the point where you can understand how it can be good to do bad, and rational to be irrational, is to take a derek."

derrida. From a old French nonsense refrain: "Hey nonny derrida, nonny nonny derrida falala."

desousaphone, n. A musical instrument, descended from the harmanica (q.v.); like the bassoon, it is often used to provide comic effects in program music.

deweyite, adj. Full of vague and impractical but well-intentioned ideas.

donagan, v. To subject a thinker to periodic revival, as in "I thought it was time to discover Collingwood, but I found he had already been donaganed."

donnellan, v. Contraction of "don't know from nothing". "This stuff about reference I donnellan."

dreb(en), n. A function mapping the natural numbers onto the ineffable. Hence, dreb, v. to insist violently that something cannot be said, but to say it anyway. Hence, dreben, n. "He took the recalcitrant philosopher behind the barn and gave him a good dreben."

dretske, n. (usually in the idiom the straight dretske, a Midwestern German-American euphemism) Information with no admixture of misinformation. "Just give me the straight dretske, and none of your tricks!"

dreyfus, n. (from "dry" & "fuss") An arid ad hominem controversy. "What began as an interesting debate soon degenerated into a dreyfus."

dummett, v. Contraction of "thumb through it"; as in "I'm afraid the only index this book has is almost the same as the table of contents, so you'll just have to dummett."

dwork, v. (Perhaps a contraction of hard work?) To drawl through a well prepared talk, making it appear effortless and extemporaneous. "I bin dworkin on de lecture circuit" - old American folk song.

E

enc, n. The purported distance between a mechanical device and a mind.

ew, v. To work in an impenetrable medium. "He spent his whole life ewing an idealistic line."

 F

feigl, v. (with out) To give up a previously held position. "Once the antimony was pointed out to him he feigled out."

feinberg, n. A mountain of finely grained distinctions; hence feinberg, v. To work one's way out of a corner by building and mounting a feinberg. "I was pinned in my argument, but then managed to feinberg my way out."

feyerabend, n. (fr. German "feuer" & "abend") The last brilliant moment of a conceptual framework before death and transfiguration. Every conceptual framework has its feyerabend.

feys, n. An important work (text or reference) in an esoteric subject. "To all who observed him, the graduate student appeared to be going through a feys." Hence, feys, v. To seem on first reading to be an important work. "Quine's latest book did not feys him for a minute."

findlay, n. An implement used in the exploration of caves. It is not known exactly what it is because it is only used in total darkness.

fitch, v. To seek sound arguments for positions no one holds. "In his last article he really went fitching." Hence, fitch, n. Such an argument, and fitchous, adj. describing such arguments (e.g. a fitchous circle), also fitchy, adj. "His argument struck me as fitchy."

flew, (1) n. An old-fashioned device for blowing smoke into church. "He was so annoyed by the fitch that he stuck it up the flew." (2) v. To glide rapidly and superficially over difficult terrain (cf. foot and randall). "We were trying to heidegg the suppesitions in hampshire but he just flew right by."

fodor, n. (1) A jaunty hat worn at a rakish angle, under which one keeps one's katz-kradle (q.v.) n. (2) (short for fodorgraph). A fodorgraph is an explicit representation which is what is left when you take a literal physical image, subtract the spatial array of colored marks, and then throw away the paper.

fogel, v. (with in) (cf. feigl out) To adopt a position just after its futility has been widely acknowledged (e.g. to accept the chairmanship of Yale in the mid-sixties).

foot, v. To work one's way close to the ground, in a descriptive manner, avoiding all flights of construction. (cf. flew, randall)

foster, v. To insist on the importance or existence of something insignificant or unreal. "Qualia should not be quined, but fostered!" - commentary by J. Foster on "Quining Qualia", Oxford, 1979.

foucault, n. A howler, an insane mistake. "I'm afraid I've committed an egregious foucault."

frege, n. (only in the idiom, to beg the frege) To acknowledge the inconsistency of one's position but maintain it anyway.

  G

gadam, v. To expound the meaning of abstruse writings, dreams, arcane and necromantic symbols, and the rest of the universe, in ways pleasing to the humanist. Hence, gadamer, n. one who gadams. Hence, also the adjective, gadam, gadamer, gademest, of or pertaining to the activity of gadaming. "I done my gadamest."

gass, v. (1) To write philosophy like a novelist; (2) To write novels like a philosopher.

geach, v. (1) To hold onto a view in the face of difficulties you would be quick to find insuperable in an opponent's position. Particularly in the idiom, "geach to his own taste." (Cf. Fr. "bergson a son goo".) n. (2) Indefinable term, which can be learned only by ostension, having to do with the way one reacts to a philosophic issue or individuals. "It made me want to geach." "They were sitting in the bar, geaching at Whitehead." "It is hard to say whether he is seriously chisholming the definition or just geaching off."

gerasimos santas, interj. Ritual chant of the moravcsiki.

getty, adj. Describing a counterexample that obtains its conclusion. "Your first rule raises some interesting questions, but your second is gettier."

gibbard, n. A cumbersome balance-beam device used by decision theorists for deciding among equally unsavory alternatives. "Such a dilemma! That's one for the gibbard!"

glover, n. One who manufacturers utilitarian articles from materials supplied by a skinner.

glymour, n. An illumination, usually enveloped in darkness; often used metaphorically, as in "I read all the equations, but I just had a glymour of what they meant."

gnoam, n. Homunculus.

godel, adj. Said of a contribution: fundamental. (See Kleene.)

goldfarbrication, n. The alchemical transformation of slapdash investigations into previous philosophical ore. "In this day and age there are still some who believe that goldfarbrication is possible, even to the extent of devoting their careers to the attempt."

goodij, n. An entry in a utility matrix - more specifically, the utility of act in the event of outcome.

goodman, n. An apparent straw man that does not succumb to repeated glancing blows, a riddle that resists solution. "It's hard to keep a goodman down."

grice, n. Conceptual intricacy. "His examination of Hume is distinguished by erudition and grice." Hence, griceful, adj. and griceless, adj. "An obvious and griceless polemic." pl. grouse: A multiplicity of grice, fragmenting into great details, often in reply to an original grice note.

grunbaum, n. (in German folklore) A tree which, when one of its fruits is bruised, produces another of the same shape, taste, and texture but five times as large.

gunderstanding, n. Machine intelligence. Also, gunderstatement, n. a print-out.

gustav, n. Metaphysical abandon. "He conducts the argument with great gustav."

  H

habermass, (from the Middle High German halber Marx; cf. ganzer Marx) n. A religious ceremony designed to engender an illusion of understanding through chants describing socio-economic conditions. Hence also, habermass, v. "He habermassed Einstein; he attempted to deduce the special theory of relativity from the social structure of the Zurich patent office." "Nothing but a gadam habermass" - H. S. Truman.

hack, v. To deal vigorously with. "He spent years hacking his way through the stochastic jungle." See also ew, a gentler variant.

haksar, n. Sharp implement for boring intricately shaped holes.

hampshire, n. A scenic bit of English countryside, providing broad prospects and distant horizons, but one must foot one's way carefully; under the marsh there is a bog.

hare, n. Standard unit of moral indignation, as felt by Professor Hare when observing a motorist breaking the Highway Code. (Standard, of course, to be specified.)

harmanica, n. A musical instrument played with tongue in cheek. Also, harmaniac, n. One who does not realize a harmanica is played with tongue in cheek.

harnad, n. In the idiom to get a harnad (Obs.) To be seized with an insatiable appetite for academic miscegenation, with voyeuristic, exhibitionistic and sadomasochistic features; usually requiring the possession of an intact, bilaterally symmetric organ of dissemination (the harnads), capable of emitting an unrelenting stream of bbs.

harp, v. To converse at great length and with immense enthusiasm about something totally incomprehensible to one's listener.

heidegger, n. A ponderous device for boring through thick layers of substance. "It's buried so deep we'll have to use a heidegger."

hempel, adj. (only in the idiom hempel-minded) Said of one who insists on recasting the problem in the first order logic.

henk, v. To accuse someone of not having first-hand acquaintance with what he is talking about. (cf. the German daraus werde der Henker klug) The mathematicians held a henk-in at the philosophy colloquium." "I'm henked even if I know."

hessean, n. A kind of sackcloth worn at a habermass (q.v.) by those renouncing hemple mindedness.

hilary, n. (from hilary term) A very brief but significant period in the intellectual career of a distinguished philosopher. "Oh, that's what I thought three or four hilaries ago."

hintikka, n. A measure of belief, the smallest logically discernible difference between beliefs. "He argued with me all night, but did not alter my beliefs one hintikka."

honderich, interj. (contraction of "Hound the rich!") The battle cry of those who subscribe to the violent overthrow of inequality. "The toast at the dinner party in Hempstead was 'honderich!'"

hosper, v. To publish philosophical textbooks and anthologies with great frequency; hence, hosperous, adj. said of one who hospers.

hume, pron. (1) Indefinite personal and relative pronoun, presupposing no referent. Useful esp. in writing solipsistic treatises, sc. "to hume it may concern." v. (2) To commit to the flames, bury, or otherwise destroy a philosophical position, as in "That theory was humed in the 1920s." Hence, exhume, v. to revive a position generally believed to humed.

  J

jaegwon, n. (from oriental mythology) A small cat-like dragon patrolling the maze of metaphysics. Hence, to be on a jaeg: to engage in a relentless exploration of metaphysical avenues and byways.

jaspers, n. The hours when darkness returns; a time for self-examination, and meditation upon the human condition.

jerry-mander, v. To tailor one's metaphysics so as to produce results convenient for the philosophy of mind. E.g. "Paramecia don't have mental representations; therefore the properties they react to are nomic." Hence jerry-rigged, adj. said of an argument proceeding from jerry-mandered premises. "Paramecia only react to nomic properties; therefore, they don't have mental representations."