Allegator

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Dr. Goodword
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Allegator

Postby Dr. Goodword » Sun May 04, 2014 10:42 pm

• allegator •

Pronunciation: æ-lê-gay-dêr • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: An alleger, someone who alleges, who claims something to be true, especially to make a claim without proof.

Notes: Allegator comes from a synonym of allege: to allegate. The latter rarely rises to the surface of conversation but it does exist. It has an interesting personal noun, allegator, that indicates the doer of the deed. Even if it is rarer than alleger, it certainly has more potential for play, given its homophone, alligator.

In Play: Now, when you are subjected to false allegations, you have a more emotionally charged word for your accusers: "Ben Downe is nothing but a cold-blooded allegator who made up the whole story about me putting the frog in the water cooler." How's that for an image of your accuser? Around the house? Sure: "Mom, I am not picking on Billy; he is just an irresponsible allegator." Now, doesn't this word cast a much more powerful beam than calling Billy a commonplace liar?

Word History: This word is a creation from Latin allegat(us), the past participle of the verb allegare "to send off, relate, recount". The verb comprises ad- "(up)to" + legare "to appoint, assign". So, the prefix al- here is really ad-, whose consonant becomes like any other consonant to which it is attached (arrest, attest, and adduce also contain a hidden ad-). The primitive root, leg-/log-, gave us Latin lex, legis "law" and Greek logos "speech, word, idea". The best guess as to how these two meanings crossed paths is that this root goes back to the day when a king's word was the law and his subjects were as good as their word.
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George Kovac

Re: Allegator

Postby George Kovac » Mon May 05, 2014 9:02 am

I am reminded of dialog from a sitcom from the 1950s in which one of the outraged characters, when caught in a lie, said "Not only do I resent those allegations, I resent the allegator."

Down here in Florida we have more mixed feelings and keep a respectful distance from our alligators.

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Re: Allegator

Postby LukeJavan8 » Mon May 05, 2014 12:25 pm

I took a double-take as well at the spelling at first.
I would respect the alligator as well.
-----please, draw me a sheep-----

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Re: Allegator

Postby Perry Lassiter » Mon May 05, 2014 2:12 pm

I would have figured the accent on the e, as from allege.
pl

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Slava
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Re: Allegator

Postby Slava » Mon May 05, 2014 8:12 pm

Would put it on the e in allegation, too? :wink:
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Re: Allegator

Postby Perry Lassiter » Tue May 06, 2014 3:08 pm

No, I'm used to the accent on the a. Alleger and allegation are the most frequently uses I encounter.
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Re: Allegator

Postby misterdoe » Fri Mar 20, 2015 2:07 pm

I am reminded of dialog from a sitcom from the 1950s in which one of the outraged characters, when caught in a lie, said "Not only do I resent those allegations, I resent the allegator."
I was just wracking my brain to recall how that line went. Glad someone else thought of it. I remembered it as "I resent that allegation, and the allegator that made it." At the time I had never heard of today's Good Word, so I thought it was just a fitting pun. :)

George Kovac

Re: Allegator

Postby George Kovac » Fri Mar 27, 2015 11:53 am

Thanks for the observation, misterdoe.

About jokes (and remembering them: there is a hysterical scene in the movie "My Favorite Year" about how challenging it is to retell a joke correctly, even one you just heard), a key is that the funny word must be the last one uttered. Thus I knew the joke I remembered from the 1950s sitcom had to end with "allegator" otherwise the impact of the joke would be weakened, and my memory worked backwards from that premise. Imagine the stand up comic cuing the drummer for the "bada-bing" on the punch line: the drum fill has to immediately follow the funny word, and you can't do that in the middle of a sentence.

There is an order to how we organize our communications and how we react to them, and that order pervades a wide range of types of communication.

Quite seriously, the same rule for jokes applies in persuasive writing. The last word in a sentence, especially the last word in the last sentence of a paragraph, is the strong word, and you must emphasize it as if it were the punch line of a joke--it is the punch line of an argument or a narrative, after all. Compare the strengths of these two sentences: "Nothing less than justice for the victims is what we demand." vs "For the victims, we demand nothing less than justice." The first sentence is about "our demands." The second sentence is more compelling because it is about "justice." The power word, the key word, persuasive word, the funny word: end with the punchline.

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Re: Allegator

Postby Perry Lassiter » Sat Mar 28, 2015 4:54 pm

Just as much you strengthen the sentence by transforming inot active voice - "we demand..."
pl


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