Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñez Villegas, by Juan van der Hamen, 17th century (Instituto Valencia de Don Juan)

I learned a new word today: “derp,” meaning “foolishness or stupidity.” Here’s the context:

So that’s why I’m a crypto skeptic. Could I be wrong? Of course. But if you want to argue that I’m wrong, please answer the question, what problem does cryptocurrency solve? Don’t just try to shout down the skeptics with a mixture of technobabble and libertarian derp.
[Paul Krugman, “Transaction Costs and Tethers: Why I’m a Crypto Skeptic,” NYTimes]

Irrelevant Postscript: I wanted to confirm my instinct not to capitalize “with” in my title. (I recalled learning not to capitalize prepositions.) I consulted the World Wide Wind. It passed the following:

“Short” words, those with less than five letters, are lowercase in titles, unless they are the first or last words.

And there we are. I’m taking language advice from a site that says “less than five letters” instead of “fewer than five letters.”

Copyright (c) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.