Posts tagged as:

intelligence

AD HOMINEM [ad HOM-uh-nuhm] : appealing to one’s prejudices, emotions, or special interests rather than to one’s intellect or reason*

March 8, 2013

[NOTE:  TODAY IS THE VERY FIRST DAY OF A NEW CONCEPT. I am inviting you, my readers, to submit words that you think would be fun to discuss.   This submission comes from my good friend, David Hume, of Enid, Oklahoma.  David is one of the founders of Park Avenue Thrift, one of most creative outreach [...]

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GOD GAVE A GOOSE: refers to someone who is very foolish

December 22, 2012

I was listening to a very serious commentary on the Fiscal Cliff issue on television when I heard the commentator say that he had been talking with a prominent member of the House of Representatives who said that there were “50 people in the House he believed God gave a goose for.” (paraphrased from an [...]

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INTUITIVE: [in-TOO-i-tiv] capable of perceiving through instinct and without intellectual knowledge

March 3, 2012

It may sound like the title of today’s posting is using a redundancy.  The term “intellectual knowledge” sounds like it is saying the same thing twice.   But that assumes that the word “knowledge” has only one meaning, that being “information gained through mental processes which employ traditional thinking processes. “  You know, a person reads [...]

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INDECISIVE: unable to be clear; wandering around amidst the options

November 17, 2011

The phrase currently in use in the media is flip-flop.  If it doesn’t appear at least once a day in an article in the major newspapers and on TV, there is something wrong.  It is not only a word that refers to cheap, casual footwear; it is also a jargon term meant to describe a [...]

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HUNKY-DORY: everything’s just fine!

July 22, 2010

I have no idea where it came from.  It’s been part of my vocabulary for years.  In fact, I haven’t even thought about it being there, in the sense of identifying it. It wasn’t until I was sending an email to my daughter, responding to a question she had for me.  I started to write [...]

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CONNECT THE DOTS: a metaphor to illustrate a person's ability (or inability) to associate one idea with another

January 15, 2010

There is a puzzle game called “Connect the Dots.” Sometimes it was called “Follow the Dots.” I used to play it when I was a kid. It wasn’t the most imaginative puzzle. There would be a page with lots and lots of numbers spread all over it. The idea was to begin with 1 and [...]

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RIGHT BRAINED: being more adept at spatial and nonverbal concepts and being more creative and emotional than logical and analytical.

December 28, 2009

I’m not good at math. I mean…I’m really not good at math. In undergraduate school they offered what one might call “Math for Dummies” in order to allow people like me to fulfill the math segment required for graduation. I liked the course so much that I took it three times. Finally I squeaked through. [...]

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NOETIC: of, relating to, or based on the intellect*

December 19, 2009

Intelligence is one of those concepts which is easier to say than to define. Noetic is a word used in research circles to describe anything related to studying, discovering,speculating, or otherwise commenting on the intellect. The noetic data available fills huge libraries. Yet, most people would be at a loss to give a clear definition [...]

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