In a message dated 9/23/2004 1:57:57 PM Eastern Standard Time, ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes: She elaborated: Its just an odd way of saying it. "togetherness". I mean, I have heard of toughness, together, the loch ness monster, but I have not heard anybody use the form "togetherness" Was denkst du? ---- From a biography of Charles, Prince of Wales: "Early November saw the royal press corps off with the Waleses to South Korea." "The princess had tried to pull out of the trip, but Charles had insisted that she could not let down their hosts." "Clumsily billed by his press office as 'the Togetherness Tour', the visit saw the final death throes of their marriage finally enacted before a world that watched slack-jawed." (Anthony Holden, _Charles_, p. 270). Back to the hilarity of Fichte. Cheers, JL I tried again: The dictionary says that the word was first used in the seventeenth century but...but...it only says this in the addendum, which is to say that it was so rare when the Oxford Dictionary was being compiled--first half of the twentieth century--that no one knew to put it in. Here's an odd example: "TOGETHERNESS" Thomas H. Pynchon, Bomarc Aero-Space Dept., Boeing Airplane Co., Seattle Airlifting the IM-99A missile, like marriage, demands a certain amount of "togetherness" between Air Force and contractor. Two birds per airlift are onloaded by Boeing people and offloaded by Air Force people; in between is an airborne MATS C-124. One loading operation is a mirror-image of the other, and similar accidents can happen at both places. Let's look at a few of the safety hazards that have to be taken into account when Bomarcs are shipped. . . . What say you? Is "togetherness" relatively new? ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html