I had a student (about ten years ago) named Kim who referred to the portion of her personality that included her own compulsive behaviors as "uber-Kim." So it can work with proper nouns, even.
What about with verbs: after all, we have "overkill." Has anyone heard any 'uber + verb' combinations?
Seth
Dr. Seth Katz
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Bradley University
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Miller, Robert
Sent: Thu 6/12/2008 8:42 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: "Uber"-use
I have been hearing (and admittedly using) "uber" for about a decade.
Perhaps, its use began with a film or song, but I just cannot recall.
Bob Miller
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Carol Morrison
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2008 9:36 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: "Uber"-use
Thank you, Paul. I am wondering if you can place "uber" in front of a
noun or an adjective. For instance, one could refer to Ben Stiller in
the movie "Zoolander" as an uber-model or as uber-cool. Either way, he
is over the top in terms of a being a modeling prototype of sorts and in
terms of contrived coolness (or coolness in the extreme). Am I close? I
just want to be sure that if I use the term that it is correctly
employed. (I'm sure that my students will be impressed with my hipness)
Thanks!
Carol
--- On Thu, 6/12/08, Paul E. Doniger <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Paul E. Doniger <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: "Uber"-use
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Thursday, June 12, 2008, 7:35 AM
Carol,
'Uber' is a German word, meaning 'over'. As far as I understand
it, it indicates some sort of a "pejorative superlative," if such a
thing is even possible. Thus, an "uber-geek" is a geek who is so "geeky"
that he or she is way over the top of "geekness" (so my students might
rightly call me an "uber-theatre-geek"). Does this make any sense?
Paul
Sorry, I did not mean to hyphenate "prefix."
--- On Wed, 6/11/08, Carol Morrison <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Carol Morrison <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: "Uber"-use
To: "Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar"
<[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wednesday, June 11, 2008, 9:22 PM
Can anyone tell me what the English usage of "uber" as a pre-fix means?
(ie. uber-geek, uber-hip). I recently returned from a trip to Seattle
(over Memorial Day) where I first heard this word used by my younger
brother and his friends in conversation. Now I'm seeing it everywhere...
Carol
--- On Wed, 6/11/08, Spruiell, William C <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Spruiell, William C <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Anthimeria: Hell in a handbasket
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Wednesday, June 11, 2008, 9:10 PM
Peter,
The heavy use of "name" in those definitions may be partly a
legacy
of the history of the term itself ("noun" basically meant
"name") and partly because the Renaissance tradition Lowth et
al.
had inherited was itself influenced (unsurprisingly) by medieval
philosophy,
and there were some important philosophical consequences of
viewing a noun as a
name rather than as a cue that led to representation. I doubt
Lowth was weighing
in on any of those philosophical arguments by using the
definition he did -- it
had just become common practice when defining nouns in any
language by the time
Lowth was born.
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of
Peter Adams
Sent: Wed 6/11/2008 12:40 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Anthimeria: Hell in a handbasket
Definitions have all the vices Jesperson and Ed complain of, for
sure. And
yet, how my students cry out for them. They seem to think, and
they may be
right, that being able to sort things--words, for
instance,--into categories is
a necessary step on the path to using them effectively.
By the way, I've always wondered why Lowth and almost every
handbook author
since want to say a noun is the NAME of something. My students
find that
definition very confusing when they come to learn what proper
nouns are . . .
names of things in a different sense. Perhaps it would be
clearer for novices
to say nouns are words that represent . . . persons, places,
things, abstract
ideas, anything that exists. The last part is the hard part,
but I've
always resisted saying nouns are names.
Peter Adams
On Jun 11, 2008, at 12:28 PM, Edgar Schuster wrote:
Bill (and others),
For what it's worth---and I'm not sure it's worth
much---I
have a Murray definition of noun as "the name of any thing that
exists, or
of which we have any notion." Lowth wrote "the Name of a thing;
of
whatever we conceive in any way to subsist, or of which we have
any
notion."
Maybe this comment from Otto Jespersen is worth a lot
more: "If
there is one thing I dislike in grammar, it is definitions (of
parts of speech)
too often met with in our textbooks. They are neither
exhaustive nor true; they
have not, and cannot have, the precision and clearness of the
definitions found
in textbooks of mathematics . . . . And thus we might go on to
the definitions
found even in the best grammars: they are unsatisfactory, all of
them, and I do
not think they are necessary."
The English Journal [!!!], 1924
Ed Schuster
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