avi

In reply to my note suggesting that coins' features need not necessarily represent political or religious ideology of the political leader under whose reign the coins were minted, I confess that I do not know what "retrojection" means. My attempts to find a dictionary with a suitable definition have also met with failure:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/retrojection

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/retrojection

http://www.onelook.com/?w=retrojection&ls=a

Is this another example, like "falsification", in which spin employs a unique meaning to a word, or is he simply manufacturing a new word, in lieu of responding to the argument itself?

spin

It's strange that you take pride in your lack of knowledge.

Here's the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary:

retro'jection n. (rare) the action of putting something back to an earlier date E20.

You might buy a decent dictionary.

Uses of it are found here, here and here.

The aggressive parading of your lexical shortcomings as something positive is not a good reflection of yourself. It seems like a linguistic form of Ludditism.


spin

avi

Of course, I have no idea what a Luddite is, or was.
So, I had to look it up.
The first meaning was clearly not appropriate, i.e. textile workers ripping up machinery, and so on..., but the second meaning sounded approximately like something I might have anticipated from spin:
Well, I hadn't realized that I was a "Luddite", since I am an avid practitioner of technological innovation. It is true, however, that I disapprove of spin's use of "falsification", i.e. his "new" meaning, representing the concept of repudiation, rather than the "old-fashioned" meaning of "fraudulent manipulation", so, in that sense, yes, I must acknowledge that spin is correct, and I am an old fuddy duddy, who disapproves of introduction of meanings of vocabulary other than their traditional definitions.
Of interest to me, if no one else, is this little gem:
On entering "retrojection" into my on-line (n.b. NOT hardcopy) dictionary, above, the following message is received:
:wave:

Jeffrey Gibson

Ah, but the standard and most authoritative dictionary of the English language, the OED, has:

Your "gem" is worthless.

Jeffrey

spin

I wouldn't talk about the Collins Gem like that!


spin

Jeffrey Gibson

How would you talk about it, then?

Jeffrey

spin

Just as a point of clarification, the use of "falsify" meaning "Show to be false or erroneous" is from Late Middle English. The use you seem to prefer, meaning "Make in fraudulent imitation" is from middle 16th - late 17th centuries. You are in fact using a newer meaning for the term.


spin

spin

The Collins Gem? Venerable. Traditional. Convenient. Small. Unchallenging.

Had one when I was a kid. Looked up "dandy" and it said "fop", so I looked up "fop" and it said "dandy". I guess I should add to my description above the word "economical".


spin

J-D

If you want to know whether somebody is manufacturing a new word, surely an obvious test is to Google the word itself? It produces about 11,400 hits--that doesn't look as if it's a new word.

Independently, I can testify that I am familiar with the word, have seen it elsewhere before, have probably used it myself in the past in exactly the way spin used it, and understood the meaning in this case without reflection.

Finally, I did what avi did and searched for an online dictionary definition and had the same difficulty. But then I took the (surely obvious enough?) step of searching for an online dictionary definition of the stem-word, 'retroject'. The second hit gave me the definition 'project backwards', which tallies with my prior understanding.

avi

step 1: google "oxford dictionary online"
step 2: click on AskOxford dot com
step 3: enter "retrojection" into search window.
step 4: result:
Both "luddite" and "falsify" are defined at the site, and correspond as per the earlier description in this thread.
Conclusion:
1. I have no idea whether the "original" meaning of falsify is the current first definition, according to Oxford, or the second definition, according to Oxford.
2. Spin argues that the "original", i.e. earliest definition, corresponds to the current second meaning. If he is correct, and I assume that he is, then, my question is whether this Germanic notion (i.e. meaning of "falsch") has withstood the French (Norman conquest) modification of old English? In other words, is this "second" meaning of falsify, that is, the "original" meaning, a notion retained from Anglo-Saxon, hence, reflecting the original West German root of the old English language?

Personally, I am far more comfortable with anything French, in the realm of science, because of its proximity to Latin and Greek, ancestral sources for contemporary scientific jargon, and methodology. For this forum to progress in elucidating the most accurate acount possible, of the history of Christianity, given the various documents, monuments, coins, and archaeological information available, one ought, in my opinion, refrain from expressing controversial ideas in any but the most transparent terms, including use of conventional meanings of words, and minimizing employment of arcane, obscure, or non-existent vocabulary. "Retrojection" is an example of a word, which, notwithstanding the erudite presentations by several forum members, remains, at least for me, completely mysterious. Surely there is an alternate choice of vocabulary available to express the same sentiment: i.e. when attempting to ridicule someone's post challenging an interpretation of evidence: in this particular thread, spin's futile effort to repudiate (not falsify) my assertion that his interpretation of the significance of a feature on a coin minted in 315CE was superficial at best.