Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder8.news.weretis.net!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Aidan Kehoe Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english Subject: To waffle, =?utf-8?Q?=E2=80=98to?= waver, to vacillate, to equivocate, to =?utf-8?Q?dither=E2=80=99?= Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2024 07:43:54 +0100 Lines: 14 Message-ID: <874jbqlz6d.fsf@parhasard.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: individual.net 5lDMz7uaw1kwAMKbv0L0ugf+AaFByqXDsuFtiQ8kgJpXwRkXZE Cancel-Lock: sha1:2cpxlKOaiuZLmRu/o7FduZ6SadA= sha1:TozvDRu7UvSyAYfDu9fM7pivaqg= sha256:pzxBXLLsRZm0WdYLP0dWXZ+yeK/5ek5FiYKenSM13iU= User-Agent: Gnus/5.101 (Gnus v5.10.10) XEmacs/21.5-b35 (Linux-aarch64) Bytes: 1486 Speaking (in sci.lang) of Andy Grove, he uses waffle in the above sense in his good, well-edited ‘High Output Management.’ In my youth I would only have used or understood the word in the meaning ‘to ramble on, to say nothing of much consequence,’ and OED2 documents that the fail-to-make-a-decision sense is colloquial or non-standard. I presume I have misunderstood various Americans over the years in not picking up on the ‘dither’ meaning. How universal is that meaning over there? -- ‘As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out / How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout’ (C. Moore)