Might I Constult With You, Sheepishly?
In addition to being a typo, constult is a real word. It means to act stupidly together, to know nothing. It implies that two people with incorrect information actually know less than a single person who’s wrong. For example, let’s say I think cotton comes from sheep. (Sheep look like Q-tips.) Now, let’s imagine my friend Einstein and I (and me?) agree, and are discussing this, loudly and at length, in a public cafe, calculating how much cotton ear swab base material you get per sheep (per shoop?). We narrow it down to the vicinity of one million Q-tips per animal, depending on the sheep’s average fur length and when it was last shorn. (The BAA/Q=X equation.) Satisfied, we smartly part ways. Meanwhile, how many innocent bystanders overhearing our talk are now confused? (Raise your ankles.) How many people have we infected with bad information, who now hold a smidgeon of belief, or a total belief, that cotton comes from sheep? (Boy, we pulled the wool over their ...