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temporal1 wrote:diplomacy

gratitude

humility

integrity

i doubt these are the sorts of words you’re aiming for, but, they are often on my mind.

Sudsy wrote:Copacetic

Hats Off wrote:

Sudsy wrote:Copacetic

Can you give me a dictionary meaning for that word?

Hats Off wrote:I tried looking up the word but did not find it in the dictionary I was checking.

The Mysterious Origin of copacetic
Theories about the origin of copacetic abound, but the facts about the word’s history are scant: it appears to have arisen in African-American slang in the southern U.S., possibly as early as the 1880s, with earliest known evidence of it in print dating only to 1919. Beyond that, we have only speculation. One theory is that the term is descended from Hebrew kol be sedher (or kol b’seder or chol b’seder), meaning “everything is in order.” That theory is problematic for a number of reasons, among them that in order for a Hebrew expression to have been adopted into English at that time it would have passed through Yiddish, and there is no evidence of the phrase in Yiddish dictionaries. Other theories trace copacetic to Creole coupèstique (“able to be coped with”), Italian cappo sotto (literally “head under,” figuratively “okay”), or Chinook jargon copacete (“everything’s all right”), but no evidence to substantiate any of these has been found. Another theory credits the coining of the word to Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, who used the word frequently and believed himself to be the coiner. Anecdotal recollections of the word’s use, however, predate his lifetime.

MaxPC wrote:I never really thought about the origins of "copacetic" but found this interesting note at Merriam-Webster:
I think it's a lingua franca term because of it's similar phonetics in other languages. Perhaps Neto can give some insight?