Source: Kobal

Behind the name: ¡®Roget-ing¡¯ describes the creation of absurd phrases

The academic who came across baffling phrases such as ¡°bequest mazes¡±, ¡°Herculean liturgies¡± and ¡°sinister buttocks¡± in a student paper was left scratching his head for a while.

Then it dawned on him: it was the product of what he now calls ¡°Rogeting¡± ¨C the creation of new meaningless phrases through the thoughtless and ill-considered use of a Roget¡¯s Thesaurus, generally to hide plagiarised material.

Chris Sadler, principal lecturer in business information systems at Middlesex University, suggested the neologism after spotting several potential ¡°Rogetisms¡± in a student¡¯s piece of work.

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After reading that ¡°common mature musicians [and] recent liturgy providers are looking to satisfy¡­Herculean personalised liturgies¡±, Mr Sadler attempted to trace the sentence¡¯s origin, suspecting that the nonsense had been generated through extensive synonym swapping.

¡°Even if the sentence had made sense, it seemed out of place in [a paper on] business information systems and I was motivated to seek out the source,¡± he said.

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He eventually located the original text, which read: ¡°the current big players and new service providers are looking to supply more powerful personalised services.¡±

Mr Sadler added that he had ¡°seen quite a bit¡± of ¡°Roget-ing¡±, which he described as ¡°disguising plagiarism by substituting synonyms, one word at a time with no attempt to understand either the source or target text¡±.

Other new phrases coined via the splendidly inept process include ¡°bequest mazes¡±, a rough translation of ¡°legacy networks¡±, a term used to describe web networks using outdated computer formats.

To ¡°stay ahead of the competition¡± became the quaint ¡°to tarry fore of the conflict¡±, while ¡°new market leaders¡± was turned into ¡°modern store guides¡±.

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Sadler¡¯s favourite Rogetism, however, is a rendering of the phrase ¡°left behind¡±, which was marvellously converted into ¡°sinister buttocks¡±.

¡°This was a sad business for me and especially [for] my student, but I do think ¡®sinister buttocks¡¯ deserves a prize,¡± said Mr Sadler, who entered the student mistake for this year¡¯s Times Higher Education exam howlers.

In light of Mr Sadler¡¯s experience, any student tempted to deploy Roget¡¯s Thesaurus in future might well heed the counsel of horror writer Stephen King in his guide to good writing.

¡°Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word,¡± he advised, adding ¡°there are no exceptions to this rule¡±.

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jack.grove@tsleducation.com