[Air-l] Research request: word search

[Paula]

"overkill"?

Charles Hendricksen wrote:

> 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.
>>
>