Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Things They Should Invent: unrespectively

Respectively is a useful word. Toronto and Quebec City are the capitals of Ontario and Quebec, respectively.

But you can't always get things to come out in the respective order. Sometimes when you're talking verbally and unscriptedly, things come out in a less organized order. Sometimes when you're constructing a complex sentence, it would be less unwieldly (more wieldly? wieldlier?) to put things in a different order.

So Toronto and Quebec City are the capitals of Quebec and Ontario, unrespectively. (This sentence doesn't demonstrate the need, but I forget the context where I first realized the need.)

Alternative coinage: disrespectively

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