[Air-l] Research request: word search

[Karen Lunsford]

surfeit ?

1 : an overabundant supply : EXCESS
2 : an intemperate or immoderate indulgence in something (as food or drink)
3 : disgust caused by excess

Quoting Charles Hendricksen <veritas at u.washington.edu>:

> superoptional / suboptimal
>
> Ken Friedman wrote:
>> Dear Colleagues,
>>
>> The Danish designer and author Per Mollerup wrote me a query.
>>
>> He seeks a word for a specific concept to describe situations when more of
>> something yields a worse result than fewer.
>>
>> One example he gives is when you water a plant just enough, it helps the
>> plant, while giving it too much water kills it.
>>
>> Standards are another case in point. If you have one standard for an entire
>> field, you are standardized. If you have twenty standards in the same field,
>> you are less standardized..
>>
>> Per also gives the example of romance. If you have one romance, it is
>> romantic. If you have one hundred romances going on at the same time,
>> it won't be romantic at all.
>>
>> IF YOU EMPHASIZE EVERY WORD ON THE PAGE, NOTHING IS
>> EMPHASIZED.
>>
>> He suggests naming these phenomena with a neologism,
>>
>> "more-is-lessuals."
>>
>> I have the sense that a word may already exist to cover such cases, but
>> I can't recall it.
>>
>> If anyone knows of such a word, I will welcome a note at
>>
>> <ken.friedman at bi.no>
>>
>> Thank you.
>>
>
> --
>   Charlie Hendricksen, PhD
>   Research Collaboration Architect
>
> "Information technology structures human relationships."
> "Meaning arises from parsimonious redescription."
>
> Dissertation link: http://depts.washington.edu/bkn/public/pubs/diss.html
> DocReview link: http://purl.oclc.org/DocReview/get
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--
Karen Lunsford, Assistant Professor of Writing
Mailing address:
Writing Program, South Hall 1520
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3010
klunsford at writing.ucsb.edu
805-893-8556