surfeit ? 1 : an overabundant supply : EXCESS 2 : an intemperate or immoderate indulgence in something (as food or drink) 3 : disgust caused by excess Quoting Charles Hendricksen <veritas@u.washington.edu>:
superoptional / suboptimal
Ken Friedman wrote:
Dear Colleagues,
The Danish designer and author Per Mollerup wrote me a query.
He seeks a word for a specific concept to describe situations when more of something yields a worse result than fewer.
One example he gives is when you water a plant just enough, it helps the plant, while giving it too much water kills it.
Standards are another case in point. If you have one standard for an entire field, you are standardized. If you have twenty standards in the same field, you are less standardized..
Per also gives the example of romance. If you have one romance, it is romantic. If you have one hundred romances going on at the same time, it won't be romantic at all.
IF YOU EMPHASIZE EVERY WORD ON THE PAGE, NOTHING IS EMPHASIZED.
He suggests naming these phenomena with a neologism,
"more-is-lessuals."
I have the sense that a word may already exist to cover such cases, but I can't recall it.
If anyone knows of such a word, I will welcome a note at
<ken.friedman@bi.no>
Thank you.
-- Charlie Hendricksen, PhD Research Collaboration Architect
"Information technology structures human relationships." "Meaning arises from parsimonious redescription."
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