i’ve twice today come across the term soi-disant. the first time i skipped over it without trying to comprehend it. the second time i tried to comprehend but was foxed by a typo. i looked it up: self styled. so now i know.

what i’m not so sure on is why “soi-disant” is considered a better thing to say than “self styled” as they are much the same length and the latter would be much more widely understood. there’s something subtle that i’m missing.

which reminds me of a college lecturer i once had who didn’t understand the subtleties involved in the expression “so called”. anything with a name would be “so called”. references were made to the “so called runge kutta method” as if runge and kutta had nothing to do with the derivation of the method and just gave their names to it to get a little glory. since in many mathematical cases the names on the method and the names of those who invented it don’t match up i wonder if my lecturer was more skilled in english than i first thought.