Just sit their little selves in front of the puter, type in wordsmith.org and let it eat. Anagram heaven, have the kids type in their names and hit the go button.

-- mitch hearn (moopups@citlink.net), January 30, 2002

Answers

Mitch, I'm a subscriber of Anu's email list for some time now. Really good stuff. I also like Merriam-Websters Word of the Day. Helps me keep my English up to par.

Gonna try to paste today's word from wordsmith.org, if it'll work.

psychobabble (SIE-ko-bab-uhl) noun

Language laden with jargon from psychotherapy or psychiatry used without much concern for accuracy.

[Coined by journalist Richard Dean Rosen (1949- ). From Greek combining form psycho- (mind) + babble (drivel, blather)].

Here is how Rosen describes the term in his 1997 book "Psychobabble: Fast Talk and Quick Cure in the Era of Feeling" :

"Psychobabble is ... a set of repetitive verbal formalities that kills off the very spontaneity, candor, and understanding it pretends to promote. It's an idiom that reduces psychological insight to a collection of standardized observations, that provides a frozen lexicon to deal with an infinite variety of problems."

"Only a few missteps jar the play's dreamy atmosphere. Unable to resist knee-jerk references to Freud and Jung, Ms. Zimmerman has her actors spout some psychobabble about myths as public dreams, dreams as private myths, and the like." Amy Gamerman, Theater: A Timely Gift of Timeless Ovid, The Wall Street Journal (New York), Oct 10, 2001.

This week's theme: coined words.

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Pronunciation: http://wordsmith.org/words/psychobabble.wav http://wordsmith.org/words/psychobabble.ram

-- Randal in Brazil (randal@onebox.com), January 31, 2002.