No I'm not going to write about the NH primary. I'll just say that I'm surprised that Hillary won, and I'm glad that the NH and Iowa votes canceled eachother out. In the end the Democratic nomination will be decided by the more populous states (as it should be).
Let's get on to more important issues.
Yesterday afternoon a very serious topic came up in our bay. You see baymate challenged me to a game of Scrabble (or it's facebook equivalent). I then made a big mistake and mentioned the infamous "reshaven incident".
You might be wondering what exactly is the "reshaven incident"? Click on the read more icon only if you are not of the faint of heart.
The whole episode started almost 10 years ago in a small cabin right outside of Woods Hole. We were away fr the weekend on a Gundersen lab retreat and had decided to play a game of Scrabble. At some point an "S" was added to "HAVE" to make "SHAVE". This was shortly extended with an "R" and an "E" to form "RESHAVE". Finally at some latter point someone appended "N" to the end of the word. The funny thing is that at the time this new ... construction ... was not challenged. We just continued playing.
But the next night, and I don't know why it took a full 24hrs to incubate, the whole topic of whether RESHAVEN was an actual word came up. And that's when it started. The room was split 50/50. And the debate went on throughout the night. One half claimed that if the word RESHAVED exists then RESHAVEN surely makes sense. The other half claimed that SHAVEN is a state. You're either in a state where you are shaven or you aren't. To say that you were reshaven was like stating that you were redead. No way! You're either alive or you're dead. You are either blue or you're red, you are never rered. The first group countered that RESHAVEN is state of having been reshaved. Then the anti-RESHAVEN crowd quipped that the if this logic is carried out further one could claim that the state of not being reshaved would be called UNRESHAVEN. If RESHAVEN is a word then surely UNRESHAVEN counts too? This went on for hours. And then for days. Years have past and we never did resolve this dispute.
Every once and a while the topic resurfaces and the debate rages on. A weird facit about this story is that whenever I recount the evnets of that night to an outsider, they too get swept into the discussion and instinctively chooses a side. In my experience about half become loyal RESHAVEN supporters while the other half argue fervently for what we now call the UNRESHAVEN side. Needless to say, baymate and I got into a debate too. Soon two other postdocs entered the discussion and all hell broke loose. Two colums apeared on a nearby white bord and people were listed in the two camps. That sneaky baymate was even able to convert one of the postdocs to her side!
P.S. I have to add that my wife and I fall on opposite sides of this decade long debate. But recently a potential breakthrough was reached. Just before the hollidays we were browsing at the local Barnes & Nobles when I noticed a copy of the Official Scrabble Dictionary lying on a display table near the cash register. We quickly flipped through the pages and sure enough the word reshaven was listed. This was the first time we have ever seen this word in any dictionary or any book. It's not in the OED or in MW. Will this end the debate? I have no doubt that the forces of the UNRESHAVEN would think otherwise.
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I think google disagrees with you.
reshaven: about 1,500
redead: about 33,700
The hits for reshaven are interesting. Almost nothing but scrabble and game word lists. In the first 4 pages of hits, there is only 3 actual uses of the word besides you (i.e. discarding foreign language sites, garbled lists of nonsense words, etc.). One is a medical paper describing how the mice were reshaven bi-weekly (but these papers can use all sorts of technical vocab). Another is a song title (does this even count?). It takes until the 40th entry to find an everyday use: a blog about a guy having his mohawk reshaven.
-Kevin
I got away with "JOYED" on Scrabulous once, and was surprised to discover that I wasn't just bluffing, it really is a word.
And, after an initial few minutes simply wondering at the things some linguists concern themselves with, I am now vehemently behind "RESHAVEN" as an obvious and necessary part of our lexicon. If you're returning to being shaven again, after a period in some other state, then what other word could suffice? Similarly, if a zombie is incinerated (or whatever you're meant to do to kill a zombie - I haven't brushed up on the manual lately), then it's surely gone through phases of dead, to undead, to RE-dead. The reasoning is clear.
ahem, baymate here. first of all, i converted BOTH postdocs to my side. secondly, i'd like to clarify my argument:
1) 'reshave' is most definitely a word. ex.: in swimming (and track), one shaves for big competitions to reduce drag. on the second day of the meet, they will shave again to get rid of stubble, or, they will reshave. more generally speaking, one 'reshaves' when he/she has to shave again in a finite period of time.
2) anyone who believes 'reshave' is a word MUST believe that reshaven also exists, as it's 'reshave' written in the passive voice- ex: 'he had a five o'clock shadow, so he reshaved; therefore his face is reshaven.'
3) unreshaven? please. at least hyphenate that sucker. (and we all know hyphenated words don't exst in scrabble-land).
listen to your wife, alex. she knows.
Dear baymate,
Are you engaging in push polling?? One of your "converts" upon questioning was actually an undecided. She sent the question to Grammar Girl. We shall see who is right and who is wrong (or rewrong? or unrewrong???)
i am not responsible for postdocs who say one thing to your face but vote another way in private.
I am now the #1 hit on Google for searches with "unreshaven", strangely there is a reshaven.com, but just like the word it is an empty shell. It was probably set up by the reshaven forces in order to back up their vacuous assertions.
Language is by definition arbitrary and conventional. It's arbitrary in that it follows no necessary logic. It's conventional in that the boundaries of a language (for example, the nature of "real worlds") are established by practice, not dictated by rules.
There is no bright, hard line between "real words" and "made-up words." Consider underwhelm. Only a few decades ago, underwhelm was a joke, an ironic play on overwhelmed. Now, I frequently hear this word used by serious people in serious situations, without a trace of irony. ("Gentlemen, I am seriously underwhelmed by our 3rd quarter results.") Overwhelm itself was once a redundant neologism for the obsolete word whelm.
I suspect that a linguist would describe reshaven as a "nonce word." It follows the usual rules of building words in English, but it describes a situation that is both rare and completely trivial. So it's unlikely to ever enter common parlance. Nonce words are "real" words, whatever that means, but you won't typically find them in dictionaries.
Of course, as a potential Scrabble word, the realness of reshaven is irrelevant. There is an Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary used in tournament play, and if it's not in the dictionary, it's not allowed.
The underlying question here is what makes a person deny a word the right to existence?
Also note the irony of letting a book, written by a supposed higher authority, decide your opinion on whether something exists or not.
BTW, reframing your debate, you may want to relabel those columns on your lab whiteboard as 'Language evolutionists' and 'Language creationists'.
I think someone owes someone else a notpology. You know who you are....
Oh my god Alex!
You did it again. The debate is on. let's see how long people will be talking about it in this entry! Good luck to all of you trying to find out an answer. I played this game (of finding the right answer) a while ago and for a long time, so I am not playing it again. but I think the word can exist. Why not?