Walkhighlands

Without wishing to stir up controversy a recent report on here of a member reaching the magic 282 has re-ignited my curiosity on the term used to describe this.

Compleat is an archaic form of the current usage which is complete. Can anyone enlighten me as to why compleat seems to be used to denote completion of the Munros rather than the modern complete? Is this a harking back to a bygone age tinged with nostalgia or perhaps a feeling the archaic word is somehow more romantic?

What do members think?

From the SMC page on the Munros:

Incidentally, the archaic spelling compleation is often used here, as a nod both to Izaak Walton's book 'The Compleat Angler', and a compliment to another noteworthy sport - Munro-bagging.

It's an old SMC tradition: I quite like it!

I don't like it . I always thought it was anachronistic as Munro wouldn't have used that spelling, and a wee bit pretentious. The SMC say they've adopted the old spelling as a nod to Walton, but are using it as a verb so it doesn't really make sense...unless they mean you haven't definitively completed if you haven't registered with them? So it's a recent tradition, possibly started by the SMC to keep them connected to the growing numbers of Munro baggers. Maybe I'll change my mind after I complete & start using ye olde English for emails

I always thought the majority of completest were as old they just didn't know there was a new term for it.

RyanfaeScotland wrote:I always thought the majority of completest were as old they just didn't know there was a new term for it.

Bah - cheeky youth

Well for what it's worth I quite like the archaism

I think it’s from the French meaning “like peat”… compeat
Must have gained an l somewhere along the way 😂

I wrote about "compleating" the Munros because everyone seemed to at the time. However, Corbetts and Grahams seemed much more scientifically defined and less subjective, so I wrote about "completing" them as with the Donalds. I don't know what people say about the Wainwrights which I am after now. I just want to get to 214, but probably won't "compleat"/"complete"/"bag 'em all." As to Hewitts, they just seem to spring up on the box to my right, and I have no idea how much longer it would take me to finish them, or what they really are...a list too far, I suspect.

One way of looking at it: the dictionary definition of to complete is to make whole or perfect. Therefore the Munros were completed by the natural forces that created Scotland's geography and geology. So to compleat the Munros means to complete the task of climbing all the Munros.

Recommend reading Andrew Dempster's The Munros: A History (2021). That contains some information on munroing vocabulary.

Compleat / compleation / compleatist / compleating : all pretentious and antediluvian.

Am I the only one who just says "I've done the Munros"?

Tinto63 wrote:Compleat / compleation / compleatist / compleating : all pretentious and antediluvian.

Do you have a similar analysis for the use of the word antediluvian?

Compleat seems to be one of those rather twee oddities that tend to emerge in somewhat niche interest groups. I'm sure the trainspotters and stamp collectors will have their own.

If it makes folk happy...

Tinto63 wrote:Compleat / compleation / compleatist / compleating : all pretentious and antediluvian.

Do I detect a hint of irony in your use of antediluvian or are you just being provocatively pretentious or maybe pretentiously provocative?