User talk:MikevanEerden

habituous
Hi there,

I don't suppose you could tell us where you encountered the word habituous? Because I'm not finding much evidence that it's a real word, much less of the distinction you claim exists between habituous and habitual.

Thanks for your help,

—Ruakh TALK 01:35, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

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—Ruakh TALK 01:35, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Some usage is not remedied by replacing with "habitual".
I'm sorry that I don't have any official sources for the word "habituous." But this was a little more than just an experiment to see if a word I like but isn't in any dictionary could survive for more than a few minutes on Wiktionary. I don't want to spend time trying to find instances unless there was a possibility I could make a word legitimate by doing so -- BUT it does seem to me that some uses of the word "habituous" (most of which are properly replaced by "habitual") do not bear this replacement. It just doesn't quite mean the same thing.

I know there is no recorded difference between habituous and habitual (since habituous isn't a word, of course), but the difference between "-ous" and "-al" is understandable, and I believe it is this correct understanding that influences the "incorrect" usage of habituous.

The problem is that there is no word to express what is intended with my use of "habituous." It comes from a philosophical conviction, stemming from the philosophy of Charles Peirce. So maybe I should just learn a lesson from him (the one who invented the term "pragmatism")(and then "pragmaticism" when pragmatism became misused) and write essays rather than Wiktionary articles to make a word really usable!

Again, I didn't intend to be obnoxious with this. I really believe there is some usage of this non-word "habituous" which makes sense. No need to reply, unless you can offer some sympathy for this gap in the English language, or, better yet, the word I am looking for!

Thanks much for your time. Mike


 * We don't actually need "official sources", just evidence of actual use in the world — specifically, of durably archived use (so, books, journal articles, print newspaper and magazine articles, and so on), in the form of actual quotations in the entry. As for the word you're looking for — well, usually we say that man is a . This doesn't fit your sense perfectly, as it refers to the fact that we're already habituated to things rather than to the fact that we habituate easily to things, but it's the same general idea. :-/ —Ruakh TALK 04:39, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok, well in that case I'll give it a try!

I found a few examples that I think fairly fit both your and my criteria (and is not just a misuse where "habitual" might have been better used). The first one is the strongest, while the other two are arguably so-called "misspellings" -- but also arguably leaning toward the meaning I intend.

1. "From one day to the other the patient will lose the pattern of life that had been habituous to himself, his profession, the interactions with partner and friends as well as his independence."

2. "We cannot know anything general about the world, which means that even deductive reasoning will always rely on general presuppositions that are merely habituous, not established by reason." (page 58-59)

3. (I include the link, but it costs $17 to get the article from JSTOR, so I don't know how the sentence ends... But the clip from Google is this): "In his opening remarks, Kawin distinguishes between two kinds of repetition: the "repetitious," which is boring, habituous, and even destructive when it ..."

What do you think? Mike


 * The first one gives me a 404 Not Found error. In neither the second nor the third is it obvious to me that the sense is the one you describe; but, it does suggest that we should include this word, even if we don't have a definition for it.
 * The complete third quote, by the way, is this:
 * 1974, Carolyn Geduld, “Film and Literature”, book review in Contemporary Literature, volume 15, number 1 (winter 1974), University of Wisconsin Press, pages 128-9,
 * In his opening remarks, Kawin distinguishes between two kinds of repetition: the “repetitious,” which is boring, habituous, and even destructive when it descends into compulsive or neurotic behavior; and the “repetitive,” a positive and constructive cycle that reoccurs with greater and greater impact.
 * —Ruakh TALK 14:55, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

missing link
Hmmm, how's this: http://verlag.hanshuber.com/Zeitschriften/Pflege/98/pf9805.html

Any example will of course not quite fit because it isn't a commonly used word -- maybe isn't even a word. This one may blur the line a little bit, but you could of course argue the author still meant "habitual", even if something stronger or more-ingrained is implied. It is very hard to argue that someone meant a word that doesn't have a proper meaning! Cheers.