symphoric

comparative more symphoric · superlative most symphoric

1. archaicrareClumsy; accident-prone.

   "Just unhook it and come on down. It’s very simple I assure you, old fellow. And perfectly safe unless you are symphoric perhaps."

   2008, Joan F (MI), quoting K. K. Stevens, Moonspins and Widdershins (2005), “Today's Word is for Janie”, in alt.fiftyplus (Usenet)

   2 more examples

   Who would have endured in this place to have seen two such words as the phthano-paranomic or crime-preventing, and the phthano-symphoric or calamity-preventing, branches of the police?

   1789, Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

   Walk a mile in my snowshoes, I say, before you deal thus harshly with a poor, unfortunate symphoric nyctalopian, come at the dwindling twilight of his life to a state of repentance and hiatus hernia. Ah, you nullifidians, you!

   1989, Harlan Ellison, Harlan Ellison's Watching, →ISBN

2. Relating to or involving symphoria (any sense).

   Senn’s paper on “Symphoric Joyce” queried where the pun begins and ends and noted the “symphoric” quality of Joyce’s writing—bringing various nodes of signification together in the text.

   1998 April 1, Donald Theall, “Beyond the Word: Reconstructing Sense in the Joyce Era of Technology, Culture, and Communication”, in Canadian Journal of Communication, volume 23, number 4, →DOI

   1 more example

   Both the symphoric (integrational) phase of the metaphysical, namely ‘mediation’ (cf. ⑥ and ?⃝) and our intermodal triad, termed ‘module’, derive from templates as ancient as the fundamental PH-PX asymmetry and the fundamental PX-SZ asymmetry. All of metaphysics is ultimately aimed at mediating between immortal PH and mortal PX.

   1983, Manfred Faust, Roland Harweg, Werner Lehfeldt, Götz Wienold, editors, Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie und Textlinguistik: Festschrift für Peter Hartmann