Narrowly averted

So, Double Dactyls. Pretty sweet, no? Here we see a bunch of Latinists nerding it up with classics-themed examples. (My favorite two are the ones whose hexasyllabic words are "antejentacular" for the one and "aviannutritive" and "multihellenicide" (look at the showoff, including two, if you count "aviannutritive" as a word in its own right and not just a mishyphenated compound) for the other.)

In the very near past the following three things struck me, in this order:

1. "Nonobservational" is hexasyllabic and can be massaged into being pronounced as two dactyls without two much damage done.
2. "Elizabeth Anscombe" is not a double-dactylic proper name, but "Anscombe, Elizabeth" is.
3. Is there any possible better candidate, at least given the foregoing, for the first line, which is supposed to be "repetitive nonsense" along the lines of "higgledy-piggledy", than "Wittgenstein Wittgenstein"? There is not.

Fortunately, before things could progress much further, I realized that allowing that (viz., further progress) to happen would certainly result in my becoming someone no one wants to talk to at parties, or in my being consigned to some yet more horrible fate.

The fact that things went unchecked so far is cause for concern, certainly certainly.

Comments

[Ben Wolfson]

This was inevitable:

Wittgenstein Wittgenstein
Anscombe Elizabeth
Gave to phil action its
Modern rebirth,

Granted to agents some
Nonobservational
Knowledge of action, and
Doubted Hume's worth.

I may as well become a medievalist.