Talk:magnum opus

RFV discussion

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The sense meaning the crux of an argument. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 11:41, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I've never encountered this sense and do not think it is valid. Below are all the hits at Onelook.com for "magnum opus." I read them all and not one supports this sense. Neither does the OED or the Random House Webster's Unabridged Electronic Dictionary. This sense is also not very consistent with the Latin meaning of the term. -- WikiPedant 14:21, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

  1. magnum opus : Encarta® World English Dictionary, North American Edition [home, info]
  2. magnum opus : Compact Oxford English Dictionary [home, info]
  3. magnum opus : Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary, 10th Edition [home, info]
  4. Magnum Opus : Wiktionary [home, info]
  5. magnum opus : The Wordsmyth English Dictionary-Thesaurus [home, info]
  6. magnum opus : The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language [home, info]
  7. magnum opus : Infoplease Dictionary [home, info]
  8. magnum opus : Dictionary.com [home, info]
  9. magnum opus : UltraLingua English Dictionary [home, info]
 10. Magnum Opus : Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia [home, info]
 11. magnum opus : Rhymezone [home, info]
 12. magnum opus : The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy [home, info]
 13. Magnum Opus : Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898) [home, info]
 14. magnum opus : WordNet 1.7 Vocabulary Helper [home, info]
 15. magnum opus : LookWAYup Translating Dictionary/Thesaurus [home, info]
 16. magnum opus : ArtLex Lexicon of Visual Art Terminology [home, info]
 17. magnum opus : ODLIS: Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science [home, info]
 18. magnum opus : A Word A Day [home, info]

OK; thanks for that. We’ll give it its month. If someone does come along and verify it, and can’t imagine that there’ll be much of a problem in tagging it as non-standard. † Raifʻhār Doremítzwr 21:16, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

rfvfailed Cynewulf 08:26, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Edit History

This page was m:Transwikied from Wikipedia. Below is the edit history for the Wikipedia article.

• Time: 2003-10-24T10:31:58Z - By: w:User:68.167.250.143 - Comment: A short definition with examples
• Time: 2003-10-24T10:34:09Z - By: w:User:217.168.172.172 - Comment: the best or most renown achievement -> the best or most renowned achievement
• Time: 2003-10-24T10:34:20Z - By: w:User:Dysprosia - Comment: bold title
• Time: 2004-05-15T06:26:00Z - By: w:User:Darrien - Comment: Linux was not written by Linus alone.
• Time: 2004-05-28T12:07:27Z - By: w:User:217.228.181.64
• Time: 2004-05-28T12:11:29Z - By: w:User:217.228.181.64 - Comment: added a few more examples
• Time: 2004-07-13T19:16:47Z - By: w:User:SousaFan88
• Time: 2004-08-06T03:18:49Z - By: w:User:69.22.250.185
• Time: 2004-08-31T08:59:49Z - By: w:User:Benc - Comment: see also masterpiece
• Time: 2004-08-31T09:10:12Z - By: w:User:Benc
• Time: 2004-08-31T09:16:33Z - By: w:User:Benc
• Time: 2004-09-17T09:34:25Z - By: w:User:212.56.128.188
• Time: 2004-09-17T09:36:44Z - By: w:User:169.226.239.229
• Time: 2004-10-16T06:35:06Z - By: w:User:Diaz - Comment: added one example
• Time: 2004-10-18T19:32:20Z - By: w:User:Janderk - Comment: Trying to focus on examples famous around the world. Added picasso, michelangelo, Márquez. Removed metal band and Rand, sorted on last name. African, asian examples should be added.
• Time: 2004-11-05T22:35:28Z - By: w:User:216.164.17.190
• Time: 2004-11-05T22:36:33Z - By: w:User:216.164.17.190
• Time: 2004-11-05T22:37:18Z - By: w:User:216.164.17.190
• Time: 2004-11-10T02:14:50Z - By: w:User:SousaFan88
• Time: 2004-12-05T01:57:51Z - By: w:User:24.64.223.203
• Time: 2004-12-12T13:11:22Z - By: w:User:Neilc - Comment: remove list (see talk page)
• Time: 2005-01-14T11:57:00Z - By: w:User:194.66.229.8 - Comment: {{msg:stub}}
• Time: 2005-02-07T21:22:29Z - By: w:User:J'raxis - Comment: Added category.
• Time: 2005-02-10T00:55:37Z - By: w:User:Tabletop - Comment: delete stub
• Time: 2005-02-19T11:57:31Z - By: w:User:Ellywa - Comment: robot Adding:nl
• Time: 2005-03-14T20:00:56Z - By: w:User:Lowellian - Comment: ital
• Time: 2005-04-10T21:40:18Z - By: w:User:24.251.234.191 - Comment: {{move to Wiktionary}}

Wiktionary:Requests for verification - kept

Kept. See archived discussion of October 2007. 07:10, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Wiktionary:Requests for verification - kept

Kept. See archived discussion of March 2008. 06:00, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

There are more like magnum opi out there…

Having read WT:RFV#magnum opi, I was curious about how many other mangled plurals of magnum opus — besides magnum opi — there are out there (magna opera being correct and magnum opuses being excusable). This is what I found:

1. magna opi:
   • 1949: The Alabama Library Association, The Alabama Librarian, p24

     […] much at the degree of condensation of these magna opi made necessary by the limitations of the printing budget.

   • 1964: Author unknown, International Review of History and Political Science, volume 8, p58

     For example, the publication of Cheng’s magna opi, Chung-kuo wen-hsueh shih (“A History of Chinese Literature”, 4 volumes ; Peiping : Pu-she, 1932), Chung-kuo wen-hsueh lun-chi (“Collected writings on Chinese Literature,” […]

   • 1997: “Daniel A.K. Halsey”, comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing (Google group): Is Raytracing Art? (Was YKYBRTLW), the 25^th day of May at 8 o’clock a.m.

     I would consider most of my magna opi* from my early childhood to be closer to “art” than anything I’ve done recently (though I’ve had fun doing it, I don’t see my works to be an expression of my “self”)
     

     *(for at that age, I believed each work to be my greatest; didn’t everybody)

   • 1998: “Ken Mondschein”, rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated (Google group): JMS “ripping off" Tolkien, et. al., the 13^th day of April at 8 o’clock a.m.

     Having read the posts comparing B5 to “Lord of the Rings”, and other operatic “good vs. evil”-type magna opi (if I got the declensions right), I felt that I had to repond.

   • 1998: “Gerthein Boersma”, alt.games.wing-commander (Google group): WC Novel Box Set: good idea or not?, the 3^rd day of May at 8 o’clock a.m.

     I’m sure Forstchen won’t consider his WC-novels his magna opi, but that doesn’t mean he wrote them on the back of a napkin when he had some spare time inbetween writing his more highbrow works.

   • 1998: “Jeff Best”, uk.adverts.personals (Google group): This NG Needs an Interesting New Thread!, the 8^th day of October at 8 o’clock a.m.

     I don’t remember “The Case of the Silly Hat”. Is this one of your forthcoming magna opi?

   • 2006: “Max Leggett”, rec.music.makers.guitar.jazz (Google group): Basic question about Finale, the 29^th day of October at 12:28am

     I agree it’s a powerful programme, but as I have no intention of publishing my magna opi then I’ll stick to pencil and paper.

2. magna opus (which, nota bene, is used as a singular noun):
   • 1828: Katherine Augusta Ware, Bower of Taste, p385 [This may be an invalid citation — in it, (deprecated template usage) magna opus seems to be part of a longer noun phrase (magna opus domi).]

     Among the rest, he was a firm believer that there was one genius in every family. I was pitched upon unfortunately as the brightest child in ours — the real genius — magna opus domi.

   • 1971: Andrew T. H. Tan, A Handbook of Terrorism and Insurgency in Southeast Asia, p98 (Edward Elgar Publishing; →ISBN (10), →ISBN (13))

     As argued by Van Dijk in his magna opus Rebellion Under the banner of Islam: The Darul Islam in Indonesia, it provided a tangible taste and a real-life manifestation of the possibility of the Islamic state as an alternative to the Indonesian republic.¹⁰¹

   • 2002: Jin-young Choi, Unspoken Voices: Selected Short Stories by Korean Women Writers, p259 (Homa & Sekey Books; →ISBN (10), →ISBN (13))

     But her magna opus, The Land is the novel that crystallizes the uniquely Korean emotion of “Han,” a long repressed frustration, expressed in what the critics call “a treasure chest of the Korean language.”

   • See Google Book Search for many more examples.

3. magni opi:
   • 1924: Mark Lemon, Henry Mayhew, Tom Taylor, Shirley Brooks, Francis Cowley Burnand, and Owen Seaman, Punch, p392

     The theory is that these artist fellows steal out of a night under cover of darkness their pictures under their arms, and land the magni opi furtively on […]

   • 1986: Donald McQuade, The Territory of Language: Linguistics, Stylistics, and the Teaching of Composition, p17 (Southern Illinois University Press, →ISBN

     […] Leonard Bloomfield had published their magni opi, both entitled Language, in 1921 and 1933, and in the thirties their students moved more and more rapidly toward a genuinely scientific linguistics.

   • 2001: Lou Marinoff, Philosophical Practice, p126

     Horror stories abound about well-known philosophers who used PhD students as research assistants, burning the students out while producing magni opi to their personal credit.

   • And more using Google Groups Search…

Pretty interesting, I thought. How should these be dealt with? –A matter for discussion… † ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 22:19, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Some more…

1. magna opuses — a couple from a web search:
   • RINKER ON COLLECTIBLES — Column #662 Copyright © Rinker Enterprises, Inc. 1999; Researching Collectibles Part I, link

     Having once had a foot in the academic camp, I assure you that many collectibles titles I have read written by “amateur” researchers put a significant number of scholarly PhD dissertations and university press titles to shame. What galls many of these ivory tower purists is these insignificant, inconsequential collectibles titles usually outsell their magna opuses by five-, ten-, and even fifty-to-one. Who said there is no justice in the world?

   • 2008, July the 10^th: Digg — If You Build a Wiffle Ball Field, They (Lawyers) Will Come, link

     The hilarious think about this all is that – according to the theorists – the era of “magna opuses” and great well-known artists like

2. magnae opus — just the one English result (an internet discussion board):
   • 2007: “Corporal Parmenio”, +CGO+ — ACLU, May God have mercy on the soul., Thursday the 29^th of March at 11:57pm

     An America hater? EZ, are you serious? Because I uphold the values that the Founding Fathers set forth in their magnae opus? I don’t slight them, I simply assert that things were not perfect in 1787.

3. magni opera:
   • 1874: Cornelius Nepos, Cornelii Nepotis Vitae, with notes by J.F. Macmichael, page 170

     …reditary estate. A plot of two soldier. —annorum] Cf. Ages. viii. 2. acres, assigned ‘viritim’ in the —magni opera] Cf. Datames i. 2.

   • 1965: Peter Bull, I Say, Look Here!: The Rather Random Reminiscences of a Round Actor in the Square, page 148 (P. Davies)

     I don’t know how many magni opera we turned out during the next few years but we have quite a little collection of untold and unsold children of our two brains.

   • Sift through these 1,250 Google Book Search hits for more examples.

4. magni opus: There may be some English uses amidst all the Latin ones in these 319 Google Book Search hits.

† ﴾^(u):Raifʻhār ^(t):Doremítzwr﴿ 18:45, 17 November 2008 (UTC)