Monty by Jim Meddick for May 18, 2021

Or just google it.

Without looking it up I’m going to guess it’s something to do with the growth or swelling of something.

ter·giv·er·sate (tər-jĭv"ər-sāt′, tûr"jĭ-vər-)

intr.v. ter·giv·er·sat·ed, ter·giv·er·sat·ing, ter·giv·er·sates

1. To use evasions or ambiguities; equivocate.

2. To change sides; apostatize.

[Latin tergiversārī, tergiversāt- : tergum, the back + versāre, to turn; see wer-2 in Indo-European roots.]

ter’gi·ver·sa"tion n.

ter"gi·ver·sa′tor (-sā′tər) n.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright© 2006, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Who else looked this word up?

How meta that the cartoon itself performs tergiversation about the meaning of the word

I looked it up. It still isn’t a word I would use in conversation or writing. I’ll bet George Will has a place for it.

I had a set of encyclopedias, an old set that may have had some interest to somebody; and a set of children’s encyclopedias. I literally could not give them away: the huge used-bookstore refused to take them. Even the store cats turned up their noses. I have a dictionary on my shelf, and several versions of Bible: never crack them open. Quicker to search online.

but let’s not be mealy-mouthed…

I’ve got an Oxford English Dictionary, the one volume version that has the complete text, but in such tiny print that it came with its own magnifying glass to let you read it. I’ll go to it if I can’t find a word anywhere else. I also have a Webster’s Unabridged, which doesn’t need a magnifying glass, and my old American Heritage Dictionary, which I think was a twelfth birthday present.

But I have to admit that I look on the Internet first, or the dictionary app on my computer. And of course, that’s not even the main point of today’s strip, as Simon Seamount pointed out above.

Guess we can do without that word pretty easily. Although, it wouldn’t be my first choice to eliminate.

I’m too much of a floccinaucinihilipilificator to shell out that much money, sight unseen.

I once bought a “pocket dictionary”. I looked up “dictionary”. Honest to God, the definition given was “this is one”. It was not and I immediately threw it away.

“And how are you, Mr. Wilson?”

(⚆﹏ʖ ⚆)

It always bothered me when I asked the teacher how to spell a word and she said to go look it up in the dictionary. How the heck do you look it up if you can’t spell it?

Or just use a better word

1 : evasion of straightforward action or clear-cut statement : equivocation. 2 : desertion of a cause, position, party, or faith.

Monty, I’m not sure if you are just weak-vocabularied, or if you are yourself a sly tergiversator….