When I was not watching, the word "narrative" became popular. I first noticed this when an admissions officer at a college in the Midwest suggested that there needed to be a narrative around why college tuition costs so much. I could have thought of stories to explain this, but he seemed to have in mind an explanation without a story. Since then I have often noticed what are said to be narratives and seem to me explanations, commonly enough not good ones.
Some of them put me in mind not of the Latin "narro", to tell or relate, but the German "narrisch", foolish. I therefore propose a new word, which would cover many of the narratives one hears of:
narrischtive, n.: a tale told by the befuddled, full of context and self-consciousness, signifying nothing.
With the not so superfluous modifier: nugatory
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