I have absolutely no idea what "ensconce" means so will ignore that for the moment

Satisfied that I correctly understand the broad meaning of the word "establish" I dare a glance at the pages of a hard cover English Dictionary, just to check. This tells me the word has been derived from "stable" or "stability", and is used in the sense of something having a solid foundation. OK, that's acceptable. Until now the story fits together very well indeed. 

Disestablished

This next word I find a bit hard to swallow. Surely it must be reserved for extremely rare situations. Obviously it is meant to have the opposite meaning of the word established, but when would one use it? If we establish a business or an organisation we're hardly likely at some point in time to disestablish it? Aren't we more likely to sell it, close it down, change it, lease it, wind it up, or simply abandon it?

If we establish a community, (Oh! my dream, on the clean, white beaches of some tropical island), we are unlikely to say we disestablished it at a later date. Perhaps someone referring to that community might say it became disestablished when Gary left and went to Heaven to take singing lessons but in all seriousness, who would use such a word?

According to Peter Roget its correct use is in the context of "displace" or "cancel". He is using this as meaning for example the displacement of a community, as would occur when the natives found us on the beach and sent us scurrying back to the mainland. If Myers or Woolworths moved in next door, your haberdashery business might become disestablished very quickly. If a new freeway was to be built 50 meters from your home, you too might become disestablished.

The "cancel" context as suggested by Roget is more along the lines that something is rescinded, abolished, dismissed, overruled or revoked. It would fit well with reversing, cancelling or finding void the precedent we set earlier.

In my usual congenial style I'll accept that some people prefer plums to false teeth or chewing gum and allow it to pass that somewhere, someone might wish to use disestablished in place of a more appropriate word. Let's move on, we are not there yet

Establishmentarian

What on earth is the meaning of establishmentarian? Is it a person, a thing, a weird preference, or is it just a state of mind?

Perhaps we might refer to our community elders as being establishmentarian; with all due respect to the elders but in the same way one would refer to a member of parliament as being a parliamentarian. Stretching the imagination a little I can see a broad tie between this and other words such as "disciplinarian". A school headmaster could be said to have a reputation as being one of those.

Authoritarian is another. A member of the establishment might be referred to as being authoritarian by nature, but that's more like an adjective.

Would a schoolmaster who believed in the virtues of the establishment be classified as an authoritarian, disciplinarian?

Another that comes to mind is octogenarian, a person is so labelled upon reaching their 80th year. Talking of birthdays, I was born in February and therefore I'm an Aquarian. Great stuff, let the mind wander and it provides lots of goodies. Humanitarian is another... they all end with the same sound .... artian. OK, lets accept there is a word such as establishmentarian but it's taking things a bit far isn't it? Are there any such people around? Would the nearest establishmentarian please stand and explain the nature of your business.

I absolutely refuse to believe the next offering. I dare anybody to give me a reasonable explanation of the word disestablishmentarian. Is this word really supposed to negate the above? But, if it does not, where have I gone off the rails?

Here is a better one.. disestablishmentartanism.

Establishmentarian was bad enough, but then if we reluctantly accept disestablishmentarian as being somehow its opposite, how and where does this new "..ism word fit into the picture?

We can all comprehend that a delinquent kid smashing windows is involved in an act of vandalism There are words such as truism, colloquialism, cynicism, scepticism, alcoholism, absenteeism and lots of other "ism's" but for someone to tack this funny little "...ism" on to the end of an already very doubtful disestablishmentarian, just takes my breath away.

You won't believe it but there is actually a word consisting of the above offering, prefixed with "ANTI" !! I thought two negatives cancelled each other but apparently they don't! Perhaps "DIS" is used more as meaning to "undo" rather than to "negate". But, how and where would anyone apply the word..
Anti-dis-establishment-arian-ism ??

My normally broad, powerful chest cavity has sunken to a weak, concave shape. I have no breath left to take away, the next one just kills me. The celebrated "WordPerfect 5.1 Dictionary" actually allows us to have MORE THAN ONE of those things. Yes, believe it or not, we can have several anti-dis-establishment-arian-ism-s

I will publicly apologise to the WordPerfect Corporation, if just one person writes a letter to the Editor of this magazine, for publication, providing a lucid, rational answer to the question.. WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

So, what does all this have to do with Computing? I typed a spelling mistake and Word Perfect let it through during a spelling check. I dare not ask the question "what is an 'asps'" because it's quite likely that someone will answer it. If you happen to know then PLEASE don't tell me because truly, I am NOT INTERESTED.

However, if you use any of the popular, present day word processors and run a cursory spelling check at the end of document preparation, DO NOT RELY UPON IT to pick up every spelling mistake.

Word Perfect will pick up a mistake such as "word parfect" but it will not pick up "word prefect". Sure, all sensible, thinking people will realise that, AFTER THEY READ THE WARNING IN THE MANUAL, and I'm only assuming this warning is in the manual. If you are like me and prefer to leave the dubious fun of fighting through 1,000 odd pages of cumbersome manual to others, TAKE CARE!

I think the real problem here is indicative of the dilemma faced by many software companies today. In this case the product is just TOO GOOD.

Give the software designers an instruction that they must make a product the biggest and the best, in this case the objective must have been to have every possible word in the dictionary, and it has backfired. There are TOO MANY WORDS in the damn thing.

I love the product, its terrific but the WordPerfect Dictionary will NOT always do what you expect it to do. Read your documents carefully!

Reprinted from the July 1991 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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