Sunday, December 19, 2010

Ostensibly...

While writing my own tangential thoughts on Paul Fry's articulation of "the ostensive moment," I've noticed a tendency to write "ostensible" when I mean to write "ostensive." Freudian slip? Do these two adjectives have identical meanings in general usage? Or, more precisely, is Fry deploying the word in a specific, technical sense, while my own mind ambles along blindly through a backwoods of common vernacular? I sense a difference between the two words and ostensibly allege that my unconscious confusion actually reveals an ostensive form of contextual irony. Except that I deny any demonstrable attribution of skeptical significance to this habitual slip.

[think about it]

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