indubitably buoyant words

[darkoshi]

Tongue twister: Indubitably undebatable; undebatably indubitable.

(Despite "Indubitably, my dear Watson"*, I have a hard time remembering the doob syllable should be accented.)

Heard on TV: "Feeling buoyed".
(I believe it was said in regards to a town receiving support after the recent hurricane.)
The speaker pronounced it "feeling boo-ied", which is an accepted pronunciation for the word, but that sounds similar to "booed" to me. As "booed" and "buoyed" have rather opposite meanings, it seems a bad word choice to me. I would pronounce it more like "boid" or "bwoid", which wouldn't have the same problem.

Word! Word up! (interjections)
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/25086/what-are-the-meaning-and-possible-origin-of-word-and-word-up


*It seems that phrase doesn't even occur anywhere in The Complete Sherlock Holmes. There are many instances of "my dear Watson", but none of "indubitable" or "indubitably". Was the phrase used in one of the TV series then, or where did it originate?

Comments

[frith]

Whence indubitably. Perhaps Star Trek TNG? It sounds like something Data might say. It's seems mostly to be a snobish way to say 'undoubtedly". Indubitably pops up in the dialog in the 1944 movie The Spider Woman.

[darkoshi]

Yes, Data did say it:
https://youtu.be/5YBb6LabE9U?t=58

It is more likely I picked it up from Data than the 1944 movie, which I'm not even sure I've seen.

[frith]

Good catch! I think there is a very good chance that the writers/actors were using movie depictions of Sherlock Holmes for inspiration and picked up that nugget from the 1944 film. Those holodeck adventures, such a waste! My guess was that it was a way to fill in the series with content on the cheap. Just dip into the old sets and wardrobe gathering dust at Paramont and away you go.

[darkoshi]

At least the holodecks gave us a chance to see the characters in different outfits and different hairstyles once in a while. And I can't blame them for using the holodecks; that's a pretty nifty thing to have - although as many times as things went bad when using them in the show, one might think they'd get wary of them.

[frith]

Oh, if I was stuck on an antiseptic, plastic underground warren of a starship out in the middle of nowhere and I had access to a holodeck, I would be lining up at the door too. Better yet, I would be looking into how to turn my quarters into a private holodeck.