Meaning of "duprass"

Question

I've GOOGLED around, and can't get a real feel for what that word means.How would it be pronounced?Thank you.. Lee Carkenord

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]I've GOOGLED around, and can't get a real feel for what that word means. How would it be pronounced? Thank you.. Lee Carkenord[/nq]
It's a term from a fictional religion created by Kurt Vonnegut for his novel *Cat's Cradle.* See the Wikipedia article at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BokononAccording to that site, "A karass is a group of people who, unbeknownst to them, are collectively doing ***'s will. A karass is driven forward in time and space by tension within the karass." According to other Web sites, a "duprass" is a karass of two. It seems to me likely that "duprass" is a form influenced by words such as "duplicate" and "duplex," so that the pronunciation of "dup" would be (d(j)up), "d(y)oop," (rhyming with "scoop"), depending upon whether the speaker said the first vowel of "duplicate" and "duplex" as (u) (the "oo" of "hoop") or (ju) (the "ew" of "pew").

The question, then, is how the last vowel is pronounced, whether as

, the "a" of "brass," or a less tense vowel, such as (A), the vowel in "hop." My guess is that Vonnegut intended "duprass" to rhyme with "brass."

Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I've GOOGLED around, and can't get a real feel for what that word means.[/nq]
Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle (1963, highly
recommended) describes the end of the world owing
to a scientific catastrophe. The subplot describes a new (persecuted) religion called Bokononism with its own rituals and language. A Kuprass is a Bokonist community (real but immanent in the word, i.e. the Bokonist's first task is to locate the Kuprass to which he truly belongs) and a Duprass is a variety of this, a Kuprass of only two people (usually husband and wife.)

Author Vonnegut is a strong advocate of common
sense. He would recommend these words be
pronounced in the most common-sense way.

Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

Meaning of "duprass"

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