Any wordsmith there who could give me a hand?

wilkie2006

About ten years ago I was leafing through a dictionary, not really looking for anything, and came across a word that really piqued my interest. As I reached for a pen I dropped the book and lost my page. Despite my best efforts, I've never been able to find the word again or meet anyone who recognises it from my definition...

I think it was a verb, and meant to hope or dream for a specific thing to happen (like becoming an actor etc) but not actually doing anything to realise the ambition. As I said, I think it was a verb but it may equally have been a noun for someone who experiences this. Also, I have a feeling that the word started with a "p" but can't be certain.

The closest I've come to it is velleity, a noun meaning "an inclination not strong enough to lead to action".

I appreciate that I'll probably never have cause to use the elusive term (probably too verbose for any piece of writing) but I rather enjoy words and I'd like to know what it is!!

Cheers

Arpa

If you can't be certain if it was a verb or not, what exactly it's meaning was or what letter it started with I'm afraid you've posed us with quite a challenge.

Is it something along the lines of ambitious procrastination maybe? That's what first came to mind. Although, procrastination on it's own would not indicate a desire to achieve something. Thanks for the query though, I learned a new word doing a quick search. Inchoate, meaning: not yet completed or fully developed.

A quick glance at the thesaurus in relation to velleity and failed aspiration has yielded these:

apparent, beguiling, chimerical, deceiving, deluding, fallacious, false, fanciful, fantastic, illusive, illusory, imaginary, misleading, ostensible, quixotic, seeming, specious, spurious, visionary

absurd, aerial, bizarre, blue sky, capricious, castles in the air, chimerical, curious, dreamlike, extravagant, fabulous, fairy-tale, fancied, fantastic, fantastical, fictional, fictitious, fictive, flaky*, floating, ideal, illusory, imaginative, imagined, incredible, kinky*, legendary, mythical, notional, offbeat, on cloud nine, pie in the sky, pipe dream, poetic, preposterous, shadowy, suppositious, unreal, visionary, whimsical, wild,

air castle, airy hope, castle in the air, castle in the sky, castle in the sky, chimera, daydream, false hope , fantastic notion, fantasy, fool's paradise, fool's paradise, golden dream, pie in the sky, unreal hope, wishful thinking,

appetite, ardor, aspiration, avidity, craving, desire, drive, eagerness, earnestness, emulation, energy, enterprise, enthusiasm, fire in belly, get up and go, hankering*, hope, hunger, initiative, itch, keenness, longing, love, lust, moxie*, passion, pretension, push, right stuff, spirit, striving, thirst, vigor, yearning, zeal

amorphous, elementary, embryonic, formless, immature, imperfect, inceptive, incipient, just begun, nascent, preliminary, rudimentary, shapeless, unfinished, unformed, unshaped


Maybe follow some of the synonyms of these words here, you may just stumble across it. Let us know if you do. Good luck

pickarooney

I think this is more suited to the English forum. I can't help feeling that you've been wanting to know this word for ten years but haven't really tried that hard to find it


Moved from Creative Writing to English

Antilles

I'm nt sure any of the below fit the part about not taking action, but here's some I came up with.

To be honest, 'velleity' sounds very close to what you're describing anyway!

inclination
vagary
disposition
druthers
penchant
persuasion
prediliction
proclivity
propensity

wilkie2006

Thanks for the reply Arpa.

Arpa wrote: »

Is it something along the lines of ambitious procrastination maybe?

Yes, it is. If my definition is accurate, I think it would be wonderfully descriptive for a character I'm writing who talks a lot about getting a better job, losing weight and being generally happier but never actually does anything to achieve these things. So it's not just about procrastination but rather cause and effect.

Thanks for the synonyms though; I'd forgotten about chimera. What an evocative word!

wilkie2006

pickarooney wrote: »

I can't help feeling that you've been wanting to know this word for ten years but haven't really tried that hard to find it

Touche

wilkie2006

Antilles wrote: »

I'm nt sure any of the below fit the part about not taking action, but here's some I came up with.

To be honest, 'velleity' sounds very close to what you're describing anyway!

inclination
vagary
disposition
druthers
penchant
persuasion
prediliction
proclivity
propensity

Thanks Antilles Yes, velleity is close but not exactly what I want! Grrr, it's frustraing!

Antilles

wilkie2006 wrote: »

Thanks Antilles Yes, velleity is close but not exactly what I want! Grrr, it's frustraing!

Is it possible "velleity" is actually the word you're looking for? Maybe the dictionary you had used a specific example and it's that example rather than the word itself you are remembering?

I once read a paragraph that I loved, and tried to find it again years later but couldn't remember where I'd originally read it.

It was about how young guys think that if their family were killed, they could go to Tibet, and train to become a ninja crimefighter like Batman. The Batman reference was the bit I remembered, and all my google searches included a "+batman", but when I finally found it, he wasn't mentioned. The paragraph had all of the above, and I'd just added in "like Batman" in my head without realising it

wilkie2006

Antilles wrote: »

Is it possible "velleity" is actually the word you're looking for? Maybe the dictionary you had used a specific example and it's that example rather than the word itself you are remembering?

Unfortunately, no. The dictionary I originally consulted is still in my parents' house and, over Christmas, I had a look if "velleity" is what I was looking for but it isn't.

I think the only way I'll find it again is by reading all the entries in it under "P" :eek: I even went to the lengths of emailing this guy (who suggested "velleity"):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7654511.stm

Antilles wrote: »

I once read a paragraph that I loved, and tried to find it again years later but couldn't remember where I'd originally read it.

It was about how young guys think that if their family were killed, they could go to Tibet, and train to become a ninja crimefighter like Batman.

That sounds interesting. What's the paragraph?

Antilles

wilkie2006 wrote: »

That sounds interesting. What's the paragraph?

"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherf*cker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad. Hiro used to feel this way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this was liberating. He no longer has to worry about being the baddest motherf*cker in the world. The position is taken." -- from Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

tac foley

Aspiration.

tac