Normalcy or normality > General Discussion

Posted: 9/16/2004 12:24:33 AM EDT

Which is the right word. Thank you.

Signed,
the girl Mr. Vu hired to type his posts for him

Posted: 9/16/2004 12:25:53 AM EDT

[#1]

Use both !!

Posted: 9/16/2004 12:27:12 AM EDT

[#2]

Normalcy requires that normality be present, normally. IT MUST ALL BE NORMAL TO WORK RIGHT!!!

Posted: 9/16/2004 12:28:44 AM EDT

[#3]

Damn President Hoover!

Posted: 9/16/2004 12:32:38 AM EDT

[#4]

Neither are an accurate description of you however.

Posted: 9/16/2004 12:33:42 AM EDT

[#5]

Ooh, 1GUNRUNNER is being harsh tonight

Posted: 9/16/2004 12:35:02 AM EDT

[#6]

We are now cruising at an improbability factor of one million eight hundred and thirty three to one against and falling, Please don't panic normality will soon return.

Posted: 9/16/2004 12:36:21 AM EDT

[#7]

Quoted:
Neither are an accurate description of you however.

+1

Posted: 9/16/2004 1:00:49 AM EDT

[#8]

It all depends on how you can tactically integrate the word into a conversation. You need to use proper strategery.

Posted: 9/16/2004 6:06:50 AM EDT

[#9]

Quoted:
Damn President ~~Hoover~~!

Harding. Warren G. Harding is the one who coined it.

ETA as a consequence, since Harding was a gaseous windbag, use "normality" instead. Don't give that corrupt clown (the Clinton of his day) any sort of immortality, please.....

Posted: 9/16/2004 6:10:57 AM EDT

[#10]

I usually use "normality" when talking about statistical analysis - not sure I've ever used the word "normalcy"

Posted: 9/16/2004 6:19:49 AM EDT

[#11]

I thought it was Calvin Coolidge who invented 'normalcy.'

Posted: 9/16/2004 7:02:33 AM EDT

[#12]

Quoted:
I thought it was Calvin Coolidge who invented 'normalcy.'

I stand somewhat corrected. Neither Coolidge nor Harding invented it, but Harding popularized it.

Harding's normalcy is perhaps the most successful

presidential word. The O.E.D. has it from 1857, but the

word did not take flight until Harding used it in a stump

speech in his 1920 presidential campaign: ''America's

present need is not heroics but healing, not nostrums but

normalcy, not revolution but restoration.''

The word Harding might have used, normality, made its debut

in 1849, in Edgar Allen Poe's ''Eureka.'' But Harding was

notoriously ill spoken. He so fractured the language that

H. L. Mencken dubbed Harding's English ''Gamalielese,''

alluding to Harding's middle name, Gamaliel. Of Harding's

speech, Mencken wrote, ''It reminds me of stale bean soup,

of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through

endless nights.'' It is said that when Harding got to the

word normality in the course of reading the speech, he

misread it as ''normalty,'' then mispronounced that. Out

came normalcy. The press noticed, so Harding repeated it

throughout the campaign, which adopted ''Return to Normalcy'' as its

slogan.

I asked Fred Shapiro, editor of the coming Yale Dictionary

of Quotations, to check recent data for normalcy vs.

normality. From his search of Nexis, the vast

newspaper-and-magazine database, for all occurrences of

these words in July 2002, the score was normalcy 308,

normality 289. Harding's normalcy not only stuck (and

helped win him the presidency), but it now seems to be

ousting its senior synonym.

web.sunybroome.edu/~stoner_r/ENG111NYTnuclear.htm

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