Mesomorph?

[Ozzyjack]

In quite a lot of detective shows, I have heard the statement "I don't believe in coincidences"

Perhaps the Target setter is also a Chihuahua addict like the rest of us.

[Alan W]

It will be interesting to see what they give in the answers tomorrow - will they list both mesomorph and sophomore, or only one, and if so which one? Not that I would take that puzzle as a reliable guide to suitable seed words.

[guyd]

I was holding back on making the same observation for fear of being called a spoiler!

It cannot be a coincidence - in decades of playing the Target game in what are now the Peter Costello Bugles in Melb and Sydney, I cannot recall mesomorph ever appearing beforehand.

Guy

[yelnats]

As it is only a 9 letter puzzle sophomore won't be possible as there are only 2 x o.

And I have wondered about them using Chi as a source. There was one day I couldn't enter the Age puzzle in user generated as it was in the previous afternoon  Chi.

[Alan W]

As it is only a 9 letter puzzle sophomore won't be possible as there are only 2 x o.

Quite so. I forgot that it was a 7 by many Chi that had the two words, so I was thinking the letters were exactly the same.

[Calilasseia]

I've been aware for some time, of the use of the word mesomorph as a body type descriptor, as seen here ...

Never heard it used in an undergraduate year context at all ...

[Alan W]

A few issues were raised in this thread.

As far as mesomorph is concerned, it seems an obvious case for reclassification to rare. The word is part of a classification of body types proposed in 1940 by a psychologist named William Herbert Sheldon. The two other principal categories in this system, endomorph and ectomorph, are treated as rare in Chi.

I feel these terms had a brief post-war period of being in fairly wide use, partly relating to Sheldon's theory that personality was strongly correlated with these body types. The OED quotes W.H. Auden in 1952: "Behold the manly mesomorph Showing his splendid biceps off." However these terms are seldom used in recent years. Mesomorph is used very much less frequently than sophomore in publications from Britain and Australia, etc, let alone the US. Thus some of the forumites writing in this topic that they'd never encountered the word.

I'll make mesomorph rare, and remove it as a seed word for 7-by-many puzzles. Interestingly, it never was a seed word for 9-letter puzzles.

Of course, the same letters are used in sophomore, so if I agreed to make that word common, the letters could be reinstated as the seed for a 7-by-many. I'll rule on the sophomore question shortly.

[Alan W]

As regards sophomore, I feel it does have a case for being considered common according to our criteria. Even though it is mainly used in the US (and in the Philippines, apparently), it is used from time to time in non-American publications. Sometimes this is in news stories from the US relating to college students. Editors outside the US don't necessarily feel they need to change the wording for their readers. But also, as some forumites mentioned, the word is increasingly used of a singer's second album, a sports player's second season with a team, etc.

Matt wondered why it would be thought necessary to have a special word for a second year student. Perhaps one reason is that the word is sometimes used to convey the idea that such a student might start to think they know everything - which of course is not true. In fact the word's origin is sometimes given as the combination of Greek words for wise and foolish. This is generally the sense conveyed by the derived adjective sophomoric.

Still I feel the word may not yet be sufficiently well known in Britain, Australia, etc, to warrant common status. So it will remain as rare for now.

[guyd]

“Sophomore” was the answer to a clue in today’s DA Cryptic puzzle in the Age/SMH newspapers!

One of the few I got.....thanks Chi.

Guido

[Alan W]

During the discussion, yelnats requested that homosphere be accepted.

This is not a word previously known to me. It seems there is also a heterosphere. These are not two areas in a singles bar. They are zones in the Earth's atmosphere. The homosphere is the lower part, whose chemical composition is fairly uniform. The heterosphere is the upper part where the composition varies a lot. Other zones that are probably somewhat better known - the troposphere, stratosphere, ionosphere - are regions within these two.

Homosphere is not in many general dictionaries, but it is in a couple. I'll add it, along with heterosphere, as rare words.

[jem01060]

A listing of what students were called in early modern England is provided in Randle Holme’s 1688 An Academy of Armory, an authoritative guide to 17th-century society. The detailed treatise remarks on everything from the meanings of colors in coats of arms to how much heralds should be paid at ceremonies to the appropriate robes of the clergy. Under the heading “The several degrees of persons in the University Colledges,” Holme lists the sophisters (students were also known as commoners) in order: "Commoners, are such as are at the University Commons, which till they come to some Degree or Preferment there, are distinguished according to their time of being there; as 1. Fresh Men. 2. Sophy Moores. 3. Junior Soph, or Sophester. And lastly Senior Soph."

source | https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/learned-fools-freshman-sophomore-and-the-rest

[birdy]

Catching up on all the words posted here after a long absence, I was interested in seeing "mesomorph." I learned that word, along with endomorph and ectomorph,  in my sophomore (!) year in college, back in the early '60s. The body type/personality connection was still being taught, and an example was the Kennedy family - then-president Jack, along with his brothers Robert and Teddy.