Klarinet Archive - Posting 000065.txt from 2003/03

From: "Andy Raibeck" <cactus@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] cute names
Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 03:07:43 -0500

> I had always thought that "whippersnapper" implies a combination of
> youth and misguided self-assurance with a touch of aggression, but the
> dictionaries agree that youth is not part of the word's definition.
> Rather, the definition is "an insignificant and pretentious person".

The online Merriam-Webster dictionary (from www.yahoo.com) gives this
definition:

a diminutive, insignificant, or presumptuous person

I think that "presumptuous" captures the essence better, and is closer to
"misguided self-assurance", which also happens to be my own sense of what
the word meant before I looked it up in the dictionary.

I've always heard the adjective "young" used in conjunction with this word,
as in, "You young whippersnapper!", so it doesn't surprise me that youth is
not a part of the definition. Though I suppose that "diminutive" and
"insignificant" can apply (but not necessarily exclusively) to children,
i.e. (a) most children are physically smaller than most fully-grown adults,
and (b) there is the old saw, "children should be seen but not heard".

Regards,

Andy

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