I now have the internet in the Ville, leaving me with no excuse for not posting. Other than, I guess, not having anything to say, but it hasn’t stopped me for, what, about 5 years, so I don’t think it should stop me now.
Now, Hanlon, while defending his honor or somesuch on AE’s site used the word “sophistry” the other day. In typical word of the week fashion, I have been unable to expunge it from my head. It’s sophistry this, sophistry that, here a sophistry, there a sophistry; it’s almost like an internalized tourette’s syndrome until I blurt it out in public or on the website. Unbelievable, I’m actually honest to goodness insane, I love it.
Meanwhile, we have sophistry. Now, I will feely admit here, because I’m a generally honest person, that I was unclear on the definition of sophistry. Given the word etymology, I want to modify the definition such that it indicates that not only is the argument fallacious, but it is cast under the pretense of academic import. Namely, I claim knowledge, give my spiel as though I am both brilliant and articulate, when really I’m all jargon.
Here, riddle me this my English scholar friends…I wanted to go with “all jargon no [substance]” where substance is replaced with a similar word starting with a j or a g sounding like a j. Genuineness is the closest I could come, but I hate using words whose part of speech is artificially manufactured via suffix. Don’t you?
Confidence is very sexy, don’t you think? Now, imagine I’m a 68 year old wrinkly TV cowboy. How about now? Still sexy?
Words 
I’m intrigued by “all jargon no [substance]” – while i’m not at the level of hanlon, my meager ba in english did teach me to look things up in the dictionary – might i suggest the following?
gist – the main point
grasp – comprehend
ground – basis for argument
or changing the saying to “all jargon, just jive” – with jive meaning glib, deceptive, foolish talk
Well, grasp and ground have hard g sounds, like goat and goliath. Maybe if it were “gargon” we were after. Gist could work from a sound standpoint…if it made a little more sense in context. Really, I wanted to use jargon, and I hate using words that I don’t want to use because I can’t think of the way to successfully parallel it with something.
I don’t mind the “all jargon, just jive”. I wasn’t thinking outside of the box. In fact, I thought for about 30 seconds and then gave up and did some other task.
I suppose I thought that general alliteration was what you were after – grasp and ground would work because of the hard g and r in the middle of jargon. But you’re right – it’s time to move on to something else.
I’m not complicated enough to alliterate anything other than the first syllable. Maybe I should start.