hadeharia
n. constant use of the word “hell”
Search Results for: in a word
In a Word
wittol
n. a man who knows of and tolerates his wife’s infidelity
Late Word
A week after songwriter Jim Croce died in a plane crash in 1973, his wife, Ingrid Jacobson, received this letter:
Dear Ing,
I know I haven’t been very nice to you for some time, but I thought it might be of some comfort, Sweet Thing, to understand that you haven’t been the only recipient of JC’s manipulations. But since you can’t hear me and can’t see me, I can’t bullshit, using my sneaky logic and facial movements. I have to write it all down instead, which is lots more permanent. So it can be re-read instead of re-membered, so, it’s really right on the line.
I know that you see me for who I am, or should I say, as who I are. ‘Cause I’ve been lots of people. If Medusa had personalities or attitudes instead of snakes for her features, her name would have been Jim Croce. But that’s unfair to you and it’s also unhealthy for me. And I now want to be the oldest man around, a man with a face full of wrinkles and lots of wisdom.
So this is a birth note, Baby. And when I get back everything will be different. We’re gonna have a life together, Ing, I promise. I’m gonna concentrate on my health. I’m gonna become a public hermit. I’m gonna get my Master’s Degree. I’m gonna write short stories and movie scripts. Who knows, I might even get a tan.
Give a kiss to my little man and tell him Daddy loves him.Remember, it’s the first sixty years that count and I’ve got 30 to go.
I Love you,
Jim
(From Ingrid’s 2012 memoir, I Got a Name: The Jim Croce Story.)
In Other Words
Lexicon Recentis Latinitas, published by the Vatican, invents Latin versions of modern words and phrases, so students can refer to items that didn’t exist in the ancient world:
bestseller: liber maxime divenditus
car wash: autocinetorum lavatrix
Christmas tree: arbor natalicia
disc brakes: sufflamen disci forma
dishwasher: escariorum lavator
to flirt: lusorie amare
leased property: locatio in emptionem convertibilis
pinball machine: sphaeriludium electricum nomismate actum
refrigerator: cella frigorifera
to slack off on the job: neglegenter operor
television: instrumentum televisificum
traffic jam: fluxus interclusio
washing machine: machina linteorum lavatoria
These examples are from a selection published in 1991 in Harper’s, which said that 75 percent of the 18,000 entries in that year’s edition were terms that had never had Latin equivalents. I can’t find the whole book, but the Vatican website offers an Italian-Latin glossary with some entries in English (hot pants are brevíssimae bracae femíneae).
In Other Words
In the 19th century, British polymath William Barnes tried to reform English by limiting it to words of Saxon-English origin. Where no “Teutonic” words were available to express his meaning, he made up alternatives, such as sky-sill for horizon, glee-craft for music, wort-lore for botany, hearsomeness for obedience, somely for plural, and folkwain for omnibus.
In 1948, Richard Lister challenged the readers of the New Statesman to write the opening paragraphs of a novel set in present-day London in this style of reformed English. Reader D.M. Low offered this:
As Ernest was wafted up on the dredger from the thorough-hole at Kingsway he was inwardly upborne to see Pearl again; but, alas, evenly castdown for the blue-eyed bebrilled booklearner was floating downwards on the other ladderway. It was now or never. Ernest fought back against the rising stairs and the gainbuildfulness of hirelings bound for work. Pushing aside fingerwriters, shophelpers and even deeded reckoning-keepers, by an overmanly try he reached the bottom eventimeously with Pearl.
‘What luck! Can you eat with me tonight? I know a fair little upstaker near here.’
‘Oh! I can’t. My Between-go is in Fogmonth, and I must get through and …’
The rumble of the ambercrafty wagonsnake drowned her words.
‘Hark! There’s the tug. I must fly.’
It was hard to be wisdomlustful. Forlorn in his trystlessness Ernest sought Kingsway again and dodging hire-shiners and other self-shifters recklessly headed towards the worldheadtownly manystreakiness of the Strand.
He appended this glossary:
dredger: escalator.
ladderway: escalator.
upborne: elated.
evenly: equally.
bebrilled: bespectacled, (German Brille).
booklearner: student.
gainbuildfulness: obstructiveness.
fingerwriters: typists, cf. dattilografa.
deeded reckoning keepers: chartered accountants.
overmanly: superhuman.
eventimeously: simultaneously.
upstaker (less correctly upstoker): restaurant.
Between go: student slang for Between while try out i.e., Intermediate Examination.
Fogmonth: November.
ambercrafty: electric, lit. electric powered.
wagonsnake: train (archaic and poet.).
tug: train cf. German Zug.
wisdomlustful: philosophical.
trystlessness: disappointment.
hire-shiners: taxis.
self-shifters: automobiles.
manystreakiness: variety.
worldheadtownly: cosmopolitan.
Other readers had suggested eyebiting for attractive, lip-hair for moustache, slidehorn for trombone, and smokeweed for cigarette. The winning entries are here.
Words and Music
Wikimedia user Tarquin points out that the natural rhythm of spoken language can be used to teach polyrhythms.
Above: The phrase “cold cup of tea,” spoken naturally, approximates a rhythm of 2 against 3.
Below: The phrase “what atrocious weather” approximates 4 against 3.
In Other Words
Raymond Queneau’s 1947 book Exercises in Style tells the same story in 99 different ways, from telegram to ode:
Narrative:
“One day at about midday in the Parc Monceau district, on the back platform of a more or less full S bus (now No. 84), I observed a person with a very long neck who was wearing a felt hat which had a plaited cord round it instead of a ribbon. …”
Apostrophe:
“O platinum-nibbed stylograph, let thy smooth and rapid course trace on this single-side calendared paper those alphabetic glyphs which shall transmit to men of sparkling spectacles the narcissistic tale of a double encounter of omnibusilistic cause. …”
Sonnet:
“Glabrous was his dial and plaited was his bonnet,
And he, a puny colt — (how sad the neck he bore,
And long) — was now intent on his quotidian chore —
The bus arriving full, of somehow getting on it. …”
In response, Colin Crumplin’s 1977 book Hommage à Queneau features 100 different drawings of a cup, and Philip Ording’s 99 Variations on a Proof proves the same mathematical result in 99 different ways.
In Other Words
Writing in the New Beacon in 1938, blind poet W.H. Mansmore describes a process he calls “mental alchemy,” “a transmutation of sensations from one order to another.” He takes up this visual description from Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, in which the nymph Asia watches dawn break over the mountains:
The point of one white star is quivering still
Deep in the orange light of widening morn
Beyond the purple mountains; through a chasm
Of wind-divided mist the darker lake
Reflects it; now it wanes; it gleams again
As the waves fade, and as the burning threads
Of woven cloud unravel in pale air;
‘T is lost! and through yon peaks of cloudlike snow
The roseate sunlight quivers; …
“I give below an attempt to render the same passage in terms of touch:”
One cold metallic grain is quivering still
Deep in the flood of warm ethereal fluid
Beyond the velvet mountains: through a chasm
In banks of fleece the heavier lake is splashed
With fairy foam: it wanes: it grows again
As the waves thicken, and as the burning threads
Of woven wool unravel in the tepid air:
‘Tis lost! and through the unsubstantial snow
Of yonder peaks quivers the living form
And vigour of the Sun …
“Or it may be put into sound, thus:”
One star pierces with thin intensity
The large crescendo consonance of morn
Beyond the drumming mountains: on the lake
Through stolid silence ghostly-faint is thrown
An echo: now it wanes: it grows again
Its echo fades, and splits into a swarm
Of singing notes that scatter in the faint air:
Then through a sound of breathing winds afar
Begins the throbbing anthem of the Sun.
He adds, “I owe Shelley an apology for publishing the above travesties of his work, but with all their inadequacy they may serve to make clear our method of realising the unreal world of light in the real world of sound and touch.”
Words and Pictures
This just caught my eye: In his manuscripts and notebooks, Alexander Pushkin often sketched the characters he was describing, as well as friends, family, romantic partners, and other literary figures. One biographer calls the drawings Pushkin’s graphic diary. This page is from his 1822 poem The Prisoner of the Caucasus.
A Story Without Words
Subtitled “A Novel in Woodcuts,” Lynd Ward’s 1929 parable Gods’ Man unfolds in images, making it an important forebear of the modern graphic novel. A young artist makes his way to the big city, where a masked stranger gives him a magic paintbrush. The adventures that follow remark on the roles of love and commerce in an artist’s life; in the end the stranger returns to claim a reward.
Despite its unusual format, Ward’s book sold more than 20,000 copies during the Depression, and he followed it up with five more wordless novels. When he died in 1985, he was at work on an ambitious seventh, which Rutgers published in 2001.