Re: Find me the adjective

"Lesmond" <lesmond@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
news:yrfzbaqirevmbaarg.k0tthsj.pminews@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 

> On 13 May 2008 18:54:48 GMT, Dover Beach wrote:
> 
>>
>>
>>"Lesmond" <lesmond@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
>>news:yrfzbaqirevmbaarg.k0tlnzd.pminews@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
>>
>>> On 13 May 2008 15:23:36 GMT, Dover Beach wrote:
>>> 
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>"Lesmond" <lesmond@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
>>>>news:yrfzbaqirevmbaarg.k0t9se8.pminews@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
>>>>
>>
>>>>> Did anyone say "overwrought"?
>>>>> 
>>>>
>>>>Yeah, I did, initially, but when you look up the definition it turns
>>>>out that it doesn't mean what I think it means.  
>>>>
>>>>ADJECTIVE:     1. Excessively nervous or excited; agitated. 2.
>>>>Extremely elaborate or ornate; overdone: overwrought prose style. 
>>> 
>>> I think the song fits everything except maybe agitated.  No?
>>> 
>>> 
>>
>>The "extremely elaborate or ornate" doesn't seem to me to fit.
> 
> Are you kidding?  What could be more elaborate than the details of
> where he was coming from, where he stopped, who he had a drink with,
> who told him what, where he went to get the gun, etc.  Or am I
> confused about the definition of "elaborate"?
> 
> No....
> 
>    1.  Planned or executed with painstaking attention to numerous
>    parts or 
> details.
>    2. Intricate and rich in detail.
> 
> 
> "Well, Andy got scared and left the bar
> Walkin' on home 'cause he didn't live far
> See, Andy didn't have many friends and he'd just lost him one
> Brother thought his wife musta left town
> So he went home and finally found
> The only thing Papa had left him, that was a gun
> 
> And he went off to Andy's house
> A'skippin' through the backwoods quiet as a mouse
> Came upon some tracks too small for Andy to make
> He looked through the screen at the back-****ch door
> And he saw Andy lyin' on the floor
> In a puddle of blood and he started to shake"
> 
> Sounds pretty intricate and rich in detail to me.  And also
> painstakingly exceuted.  The song, not the plan, that is.
> 
> I'm open to disagreement, though.


Well, the more definitions I read, the more I think the word doesn't
have any generally agreed-upon meaning.  Here's the OED: 


   2. Excessively elaborate; over-laboured. Also (occas.) fig.
1839 I. TAYLOR Anc. Christianity I. 404 One cannot read these
overwrought passages. 1872 J. MORLEY Voltaire iii. 114 He is the most
trenchant writer in the world, yet there is not a sentence of strained
emphasis or overwrought antithesis. a1897 T. E. BROWN Coll. Poems (1900)
II. 510 The Curate's rhymes he haply thinks audacious, Emphatic,
overwrought. 1972 J. GATHORNE-HARDY Rise & Fall Brit. Nanny iv. 113
Occasionally the prose becomes over-wrought and even sentimental. 1996
City Paper (Baltimore) 23 Oct. 28/2 Overwrought family epics reigned on
the silver screen in the fabulous 50s. 


So I don't know, maybe TNTLWOIG is overwrought.  It's definitely
sentimental. ish.  In a revenge-oriented kind of way.