diss --- appointed

[les303]

From the "dishonest " challenge game of a couple of days ago.
With my hit rate sitting on 100% ( a pretty rare achievement for me ) , i needed to find just one more common word for a rosette.
I thought that i had found it when i played doss but it came up as rare.
I was tempted to play diss but reckoned that at best it would also be classed as rare so i went looking elsewhere.
Of course when i viewed the solution diss was revealed as a common word.
My suggestion is that diss should be added to this list from 2011 ;

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Melbourne, Australia
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Words made rare
« on: August 13, 2011, 04:17:49 PM »
Quote
The following words have just been switched from common to rare:

nohow
sabra
doss
dosses
dossed
dosser
dossing
dosshouse
prepuce
bestrid
scad

[Jacki]

Re that list - is bestrid like beclad? Hee hee. Anyhow for what it's worth I think doss is better known to me than diss, which I think of as an American word. If the criteria is have you heard of them they should both be common.

[mkenuk]

re diss

Reminds me of the old schoolboy pun /joke

Q. Why is Diss (a small town in Norfolk) the weirdest town in England?

A, Because as you approach it, the town 'Diss appears'!!

[les303]

The stats seem to support your point of view, Jacki ; out of 417 players, 260 played diss & 195 played doss.
Doss is listed in my dictionary while diss is not.
Alan changed the status of doss back in 2011.
There is no way that he will reverse that decision so in my opinion the only way to be consistent is downgrade diss.

I will beglad either way.

Like your clever diss joke, Mike.

P.S. it does raise an interesting question for Alan.
After having changed the status of a word, have you ever been persuaded to reverse a decision?

[mkenuk]

Like your clever diss joke, Mike.

Not my joke, Les. As the saying goes, it had whiskers on it when I heard it back in the 1950s

After having changed the status of a word, have you ever been persuaded to reverse a decision?

Didn't eland recently revert to 'common' after previously being made 'uncommon?

[TRex]

Didn't eland recently revert to 'common' after previously being made 'uncommon?

Indeed, it did!

[les303]

Okay , so do we have a precedent for doss to be reinstated as common?

[Alan W]

A change can be reversed - but only if the original decision was wrong. The previous comments on the issue were here and here.

[les303]

Thanks for the link, Alan.
I still may not agree but i do now understand why doss was changed to rare.
So what about my original suggestion of changing diss (North America, British slang ) to rare?

[mkenuk]

Sorry, Les, I don't think it is rare. A word played by roughly 62.5% of those taking part in a game must be classed as 'common'.

Over my years of playing Chi, I've come to accept that many words that I would regard as 'American'and probably never use myself : (rube, stogie, sass/sassy to quote just three examples) are probably 'familiar to native speakers everywhere in the English-speaking world' and consequently 'common' in the the world's favourite online word-game.

Put it down to the Internet, to pop songs, to Hollywood, To TV (Netflix is currently in the process of taking control of the televiewing habits of the entire world), to whatever, we have to (albeit reluctantly in some cases) accept that 'American' is now the dominant form of English.

[les303]

Thanks Mike, i do appreciate your feedback & your very sound logic to support your point of view however i would point out this partial quote from Alan which i have pinched from the " A moderate proposal " thread.

" However, to class a word as common simply because most players find it in puzzles where it can be made, would be, as you say ilandrah, to gear the game more towards its usual users, and this is precisely what I don't want to do. I want the game to appeal to new players as well as long-time players. Of course there's a learning curve. People can get better at Chihuahua with experience - partly through expanding their vocabularies, but also by getting better at seeing the words that can be made. "

Also Mike, if you do not mind, i would really appreciate getting your opinion on the downgrading of doss. ( it was found by 46.5% of players )

[mkenuk]

i would really appreciate getting your opinion on the downgrading of doss. ( it was found by 46.5% of players )

As I said earlier, Les, if the word is genuinely unknown in US (which has, I believe, roughly 40% of the world's native speakers of English) then by the rules of the game it has to be rare.
The argument doesn't work in reverse, however, since with US films and TV progs, all around us, it's impossible to say which words are familiar or not to non-Americans.

[les303]

Thanks Mike, i think that by trying to apply the rules in reverse is exactly how i have managed to confuse myself & get this totally upside down & back the front.

The positive is that i am now very confident that the next time diss appears in a game, i will have no trouble finding & playing the word.