WORD/QUOTATION of the DAY Resurrected

[Andre Jute]

Sharon wrote: "Yes, Andre, I see how that could have given you pause. Pissant is pretty much the opposite of PUISSANT. However, one can see how someone could occasionally be both simultaneously..."

However poncily those lesbians expressed themselves, what it came down to was that they thought I was getting too much credit, that should have belonged to them, for getting away with being the first person to say the f-word on live Australian TV. Later, after they decided I was an immovable object and instead of irritating me sucked up to me, I wrote a play for them in which they could prance naked on stage and outrage the middle classes. The Festival of Light boycotted the play and paraded outside with candles. That made my month! The play took in a lot of money. I must look it out and see where else it could be put on... Probably too tame by now, forty years later.

[Sharon]

"...its Australian variants told me "rat shit" wasn't a particularly inventive Australian phrase for disapprobation but a mispronunciation of "wretched..."

That's funny!! Who knew? We will be discovering many such disparities across the world, some funny, some insulting, many rude, as Pinglish takes over the world....

[Andre Jute]

Found on the net:

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal labotomy."

[Dakota]

Ferry is curled up on the carpet laughing his head off:

[Andre Jute]

His Holiness can't wait to get his hands on the Popemobile... That'll have a calming effect on Rome traffic as they all stop -- well, we hope they will stop -- to make obeissance as he passes.

[Sharon]

Andre Jute wrote: "Found on the net:

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal labotomy.""

Ha ha ha, conjures up all kinds of mad scientist scenarios...

OBEISANCE - now there's a word that deserves some of its own...

[Wayne]

Quotations? Ok, three from Llewelyn Powys:

The first about writing: "Everything cut out increases the value of what's left."

The second philosophical: "There is no magic because all is magic. There are no miracles because all is a miracle."

This is from his book "Advice to a Young Poet: the Letters of Llewelyn Powys to Kenneth Hopkins." "I'm going to pretend I'm Lord Chesterfield and you are my bastard son."

Among other things, he urges Kenneth Hopkins to never wear artificial scent, and to always wash his underwear by hand.

[Andre Jute]

[Wayne]

It's a very romantic pic. Tiger and Lindsey Vonn have competition.

[Sharon]

Wayne wrote: "...he urges Kenneth Hopkins to never wear artificial scent, and to always wash his underwear by hand..."

Kench!

[Wayne]

The quotation about the bottle in front of me is from Tom Waits: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_0E7x...

[Andre Jute]

Wayne wrote: "It's a very romantic pic. Tiger and Lindsey Vonn have competition."

The look of ecstacy on his face...

[Andre Jute]

Wayne wrote: "The quotation about the bottle in front of me is from Tom Waits: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_0E7x..."

Thanks for that, Wayne. Hilarious.

[Wayne]

And her brave Stoicism wot wiff her boob touched, mate.

[Sharon]

Kench!

[Sharon]

QUIDDITY

Two meanings:

1. The Whatness essence of a thing. "The quiddity of Andre is humanness."

2. A trifle; a nicety or quibble. "Andre often quiddits quite naturally."

Not to be confused with HAECCEITY, though it often is...

The Thisness essence of a thing. "Andre is a man. His haecceity is his writerly life."

[Andre Jute]

You're amazing Sharon. Where did you find those two?

[Sharon]

I actually found the word quiddity in a book I was reading, looked up its definition and discovered that its use today pretty much encompasses the meanings of both words. Which, duh, who could even pronounce haecceiy.

I like the way quiddity rolls off the tongue, though its composition seems more suited to the 2nd meaning. I'd love to use it sometime but as I'd never heard it before I reckon that would be the case with most folks.

[J.A.]

When we used to visit our grandmother as a child (she's still alive, but, unfortunately quite gone), we always played this game, "The Dictionary Game."

We'd crack out a dictionary and then find a word that no one knew. The point of the game if you were the person who had picked the word was to write a reasonable definition of the word that was true but didn't sound necessarily like the "dictionary" definition, so that people wouldn't pick it.

The goal of all the other players was to write a definition that would fool the other players, so that they'd pick your word.

All sorts of fun and wacky definitions.

[Sharon]

That is so cool, Jeremy. What a wonderful example she set! We played a lot of Scrabble and to this day my children and grandchildren love to get the game out when the family gathers. In fact my eldest dd plays the 'Words with Friends' with several different groups. She's constantly yelling at her phone, kench!

Bye the bye, I was telling her about the word haecceity and she looked it up in her dictionary and it wasn't there!

Edit - Mwah - I had a typo on the spelling of haecceity and then proceeded to repeat the mistake on all subsequent posts. No wonder I couldn't pronounce it! I think I've fixed them all now. Some days the old brain cells just do not work properly, kench! Still not found in some dictionaries though...

[Andre Jute]

J.A. wrote: "When we used to visit our grandmother as a child (she's still alive, but, unfortunately quite gone), we always played this game, "The Dictionary Game."

Jeremy, I'd have started you grandmother in my ad agency at more than they pay the President. She' would've driven the FDA crazy trying to pin something on her!

[J.A.]

The one thing that game always reinforced in my mind is that even very "educated" people know only a small fraction of the existing words in the English language.

[Sharon]

J.A. wrote: "The one thing that game always reinforced in my mind is that even very "educated" people know only a small fraction of the existing words in the English language."

Amen to that. And a good thing for a writer to know...

[Wayne]

Interesting thread. I write more or less the way I speak, and I know that's not for everyone. I came across the word "quiddity" in an essay by one of my great literary heroes, the Brit essayist Llewelyn Powys, many years ago. A wonderful word! And the way I write has little to do with what I read. One of my favourite novels is Nabokov's "Ada" and a very verbose guy old Vlad the Literary Impaler was.

[Sharon]

Hmmmm.... I see another GR post was lost in cyberspace. Let's see if I can remember what clever thing I wrote.

When I'm writing I never use a word that has not either come naturally as I type or that I would use in conversation. Still, one of the reasons writing instructors insist authors read, read and read some more is that in doing so one might re-discover words which have fallen out of use or broaden their personal lexicon.

I'm curious. Do you recall in what context Powys used the word quiddity?

[Wayne]

Sorry, no, it was a long time ago I came across it.

[Andre Jute]

Andre Jute wrote: "Found on the net:

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal labotomy.""

Heard in a Tom Waits clip someone recently referred us to on ROBUST.

[Andre Jute]

Sharon wrote: "When I'm writing I never use a word that has not either come naturally as I type or that I would use in conversation."

Is there a secret vocabulary that speaks to readers? Maximizes sales?
http://coolmainpress.com/ajwriting/ar...

[Sharon]

That's a great article, Andre, nicely sums up my own conclusions. Love your stats. It's a tight wire we walk sometimes.

[Andre Jute]

Sharon wrote: "That's a great article, Andre, nicely sums up my own conclusions. Love your stats. It's a tight wire we walk sometimes."

Thanks, Sharon. Some are wishing the wire would snap under me.

The Wannabe Flame Warriors of Gurl Power on at KBoards have ruined what could have been a good thread on the article with retrospective political correctness about "housewives", and attempted emotional blackmail because they claim my stats "denigrate" housewives. One wants me to lie retrospectively that my stats are about "the average person" rather than about housewives... I give up.

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topi...

[Sharon]

I stopped using kindleboards long ago - in fact when I clicked on your link it took so many tries for my user and passwords, I had to look it up.

You did get some good responses, they appeared more intelligent than the last time I visited.

[Andre Jute]

On KB it sometimes depends on the material you start with. But the constant tendency of certain little gangs to ruin every thread with their bullying isn't encouraging for the longterm utility of the place.

You're right. I did get some good contributions. Onwards, looking only to the positive.

[Andre Jute]

Interesting comment on my blog from William Marantz, an entertaining humorist. See
http://coolmainpress.com/ajwriting/ar...

[Andre Jute]

etoliator n.
a person who stretches the meaning of happenstance to breaking point in his attempts to sound elegant
PS. NOT a real word, but a perverse derivation and definition created only for amusement.

[For the derivation, see http://coolmainpress.com/ajwriting/ar... ]

[Sharon]

That sounds like me...

Hard to imagine why one would want to use the word etiolated, there is nothing to recommend it - either its definition or the sound of it. What, 'he etoliated the poor woman by his choice of words'?

[Andre Jute]

I can see someone use the root word, etiolated. Try this: Lytton Strachey, etiolated to the point of enervation, would today be called a wimp. In fact, Paul Johnson, to evoke Strachey's faux elegant uselessness, did described him as etiolated.

[Sharon]

That certainly reads much better than what I came up with. I enjoy occasionally looking up an obscure word I find in the pages of a book, but I cannot see me ever using this one, in writing or in conversation, so would likely simply gloss over it - and lose most ('enervation' and 'wimp' would save the day) of the imagery...

[Wayne]

Quotation: "It has taken me sixty years to learn with what weapons, and with what surrender of weapons, I'm to begin to live my life." -John Cowper Powys, Autobiography. It's available in paperback on amazon. Henry Miller said it was "the greatest, the most magnificent of all autobiographies".

[Andre Jute]

Clearly, it's not an NRA memoir. So what are the metaphorical weapons of that intriguing sentence?

[Wayne]

He doesn't say.

[Sharon]

Likely on purpose, that way the reader can ponder their own weapons and which ones to surrender.

Everyone eventually determines the wisdom in choosing the hill they are prepared to die on...

[Andre Jute]

Why do you have to choose? It seems to me smarter to keep living until you fall down. Posterity has had a good deal of experience looking after itself.

[Sharon]

Yeah, that's pretty much the point. We most definitely do not need to fight any battle, it is always wisest when one gets involved in a discussion, issue or cause, to stop and ask, "Is this the hill I am prepared to die on?'. The question is rhetorical of course, but can give one pause before jumping in...

[Andre Jute]

Ha, it looks like I misunderstood, "choose the hill to die on" rather than "choose which battles to fight". Yah. When I was younger, I fought every battle to the end. Now I just can't be bothered straightening out fools. That's one of the points of ROBUST: fools don't last here, and consequently don't tempt me into wasting resources.

[K.A.]

mallemaroking, n.
‘ The boisterous and drunken exchange of hospitality between sailors in extreme northern waters.’

That sounds exactly like my hometown of Ashtabula Harbor. All KINDS of mallemarking going on.

[Andre Jute]

Mallemaroking is roistering that leaves hangovers, mallemarking leaves bruised faces.

(NOT. Look it up before you use it!)

[Wayne]

I'd pick the former, though I've experienced the latter.

[Andre Jute]

I don't go into bars unless they serve food, in which case I eat and go about my business. But in the long ago and far away, I was in a bar fight once. I had just finished school and was travelling with a young lawyer. In some railway town where we broke our journey, in a pub full of Irish navvies, I said that if President Kennedy hadn't been assassinated, there was a good chance he would have been impeached, and that in any event he was a very poor manager of Congress, with every single bill of his legislation stalled. That this was objectively correct (the so-called Kennedy Legislation was all moved through Congress by a real politician, LBJ, after Kennedy was shot) was of course irrelevant; even today most people don't want to hear that. My companion, a burly rugger forward, waded into the fight, but I shot my cuffs and said to the fellow squaring off in front of me, "I'm required to warn you that I'm the junior national karate champion and my hands are—" and that was as far as I got before someone behind me knocked me out with a bar stool. When I came to the next morning in a police cell with a very thick head, I decided I had no skill at bar fights, and should stick to what I do well. The magistrate said he'd be writing to my mother and not to be stupid again, case dismissed, which added humiliation to a sore head.

[K.A.]

I've seen my share of barfights.

Never liked the clean-up afterwards.

I became skillful at heading off trouble before it got that far. An excellant skill for a 5'3" bartender who only weights 110 lbs. Kench

[Wayne]

Some guys were at the table behind us in the bar. I caught him putting cigarette burns in my leather jacket. I set his hair on fire when he wasn't looking. An over-reaction? Then the milieu (sp?).