WORD/QUOTATION of the DAY Resurrected

[Sharon]

Kench!

... strolls away, giggling and whistling...

[Andre Jute]

Seb Kirby, a good writer, tweeted this:

Thomas Jefferson: The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

[J.A.]

Recently, a beta reader was reading over a scene in my book and then became confused because the word I'd used in the particular context, she didn't understand.

I admit I was a bit surprised because it didn't strike me as that confusing, but it did get me to thinking about the fine balance of maximum connotative specificity with word choice and accessibility, which admittedly, is more of an issue in some types of writing than others (i.e., certain types of self-conscious 'literary' writing may not have accessibility at all as a goal or a particular voice may be a bit less mainstream, et cetera).

[Andre Jute]

I'm an intellectual. I write like and for intellectuals. If anyone else likes my books, I'm happy, and I've often been surprised at which books became best sellers, but if I have consciously to write down I consider it hard work and want to be paid advertising rates. Since I earned seven figures in base salary, with more in expenses and still more in bonuses, you can grasp how impossible a demand that is.

I should probably also add that I can spot an Ivy Leaguer writing down so he can make a fast buck or be a talking head on the goggle box a mile away, and that the result never fails to ring a false note with me. Of course, some Ivy Leaguers are just badly educated, or dumb, or crude, or untalented. The fellow who wrote the monster hit of the 1970's, the tearjerker Love Story, wasn't too to bright to start with, and taught English at Harvard but wrote like Robert Ludlum wit a bunged-up head-cold: that was his best style. It was bad lit, but it wasn't hypocritical.

(Now he'll turn out to be another of Sierra's old boyfriends and she'll try to claim that, like that axe murder, whatsisname, that she ran away to Mexico with, Erich was really very sweet if you overlooked a few small eccentricities.)

[K.A.]

LOL - Sierra can really pick 'em.

[Andre Jute]

Everyone has a book in them. Sometimes jammed where an exasperated writer shoved it. -- Wendy C. Allen

[K.A.]

New word for the day:

Gormless - lacking intelligence and vitality.

Thanks to Katie!

[Andre Jute]

I always thought gormless was helpless and useless and resigned to your fate. "Gormless Henry just sat waiting for the flood to roll over him."

[Sharon]

I always thought gormless was having no cojones, grin...

[Andre Jute]

Sharon wrote: "I always thought gormless was having no cojones, grin..."

Not so sure a gormless fellow would have the energy to learn Spanish.

[Sharon]

Kench!

[K.A.]

mubble fubbles, n.
A state of depression or melancholy; despondency, low spirits. Chiefly in in (also out of) one’s mubble-fubbles .
. . . .
1610 Christmas Prince (1922) 152> And when your brayne, feeles any paine, with cares of state & troubles We’el come in kindnesse, to put your highnesse out of ye mumble fubbles.

[Andre Jute]

Zero zip?

[Andre Jute]

Paul Johnson, the historian, first quotes his namesake, Dr Johnson: “Sir, among the anfractuosities of the human mind, I know not if it may be one, that there is a superstitious reluctance to sit for a picture.”

Then Johnson, Paul, adds, "There are few people, perhaps none besides Johnson, who can work a word like 'anfractuosity' into a speech at a convivial gathering. What does it mean? Why, tortuous."

Perhaps you gentlemen would like to know that ROBUST can be reached by ouija board.

[K.A.]

Word of the day: hiraeth

(noun) A homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past.

[Andre Jute]

You win; Kat: I didn't know it. Now, for bonus points, tell us the pronunciation and etymology of hireath.

[K.A.]

The world is Welsh (a heritage I claim from my maternal Grandfather who was a Strobridge back in the old country.)

Look what I found on Google:

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/20...

It’s pronounced “here-eyeth” (roll the “r”) and it’s a Welsh word. It has no exact cognate in English. The best we can do is “homesickness,” but that’s like the difference between hardwood and laminate.

Homesickness is hiraeth-lite. A quick history lesson is a good idea before a definition: in 1282 Wales became the first colony of the English empire. Because England eventually ruled half the globe, we all know its first colony by the name the colonizers gave it: Wales, which means “Place of the Others,” or “Place of the Romanized Foreigners.”

[Andre Jute]

By the rivers of Wales I sat me down to weep...

[K.A.]

Nice quote! I'll have to look it up.

I would really like to see the UK one day. I'm a bit scared to leave the US, it's a big world and I might get lost. LOL

[Andre Jute]

Nah, the Welsh valleys are just like the area around Asheville, NC. As long as you remember that inbreeding is also a form of networking, you'll be okay.

[K.A.]

LOL - I guess people are the same everywhere.

[Andre Jute]

I'm swithering between telling you what the word means and letting you look it up for yourselves, and that introduction also defines its meaning.

Apparently of Scottish origin.

[K.A.]

Leave it to the Scots to have such intreging words.

[Andre Jute]

Hoon.

A hoon is an Australian road hooligan.

[Andre Jute]

Found on the net:

> Don't be evil - Google 2004
>
> We have a new policy - Google 2012

[K.A.]

BABBLEMENT (n.)
"Senseless prattle" or "unmeaning words," according to Webster. To twattle, incidentally, is to gossip or chatter.

[K.A.]

A TwoFer!

FOPDOODLE (n.)
The perfect name for "an insignificant fellow" -- Webster described this word as "vulgar and not used."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-an...

[Andre Jute]

FOPDOODLE (n.)
The perfect name for "an insignificant fellow" -- Webster described this word as "vulgar and not used."


It is now, in ROBUST on Goodreads!

[K.A.]

LOL - I thought they had some really fun words that we want to start using again. Fopdoodled is one of them.

[Andre Jute]

K.A. wrote: "LOL - I thought they had some really fun words that we want to start using again. Fopdoodled is one of them."

Vulgar people might misinterpret it, vulgarly.

[Dakota]

Fopdoodled!

As a verb it sounds obscene, all right.

[Sharon]

Hi everyone {waves...} Was feeling a bit hireath, thought it might be fun to babble on a bit with some old fopdoodle (is there a female version?) and gormless friends, but I swithered when I realized that's not you lot, so I guess I will take me mubble fubbles and scoot on out of here...

[K.A.]

LOL That was great!

[Andre Jute]

Sharon wrote: "Hi everyone {waves...} Was feeling a bit hireath, thought it might be fun to babble on a bit with some old fopdoodle (is there a female version?) and gormless friends, but I swithered when I realiz..."

You should be on stage, Sharon!

[Sharon]

Ha ha Andre, I would forget all my lines!

[Andre Jute]

What you need is a teleprompter.

Teleprompter.

Imagine what Dickens would have thought the word meant, even after television was explained to him. Perhaps a little man popping his head out of a Punch and Judy box to give prompts?

[Dakota]

With an iPad, Dickens could have been the Steve Jobs of the nineteenth century. On the whole, I'd rather have Dickens...

[Andre Jute]

As long as I am not forced to read Dickens, you can have him all you like.

[K.A.]

mogigraphia, n. Writer’s cramp.
. . . .
1891 F. Taylor Man. Pract. Med. (ed. 2) 339 The disease is hence called writers’ cramp and scriveners’ palsy; graphospasm and mogigraphia have been used as technical terms.

Something every writer should know. ;-)

[Andre Jute]

"... Scriveners’ palsy..."

You shoulda stuck to Microsoft Word.

[K.A.]

Oh, good one!

[K.A.]

réchauffé, adj. and n.
. . . .
A. adj.
Of food: reheated, heated or warmed up again; made from leftovers. Freq. fig.: reworked, rehashed; unoriginal, derivative. Also as a postmodifier, after French use.
. . . .
1838 Times 27 Dec. 5/4 This was a rechauffée version of the well-known story of Jane Shore.
. . . .
B. n.
A warmed-up dish; a dish made from leftovers. Freq. fig.: a reworking or rehash (chiefly depreciative).
. . . .
1870 R. Broughton Red as Rose I. xiii. 272 A réchauffé of one’s own stale speeches is not an appetising dish.

[Andre Jute]

You're so elegant, my dear.

[K.A.]

From The Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Day:
first foot, n.
. . . .
1. Eng. regional (north.), Sc., and Irish English (north.) The first person to cross a householder’s threshold in the New Year.
. . . .
1883 J. Parker Tyne Chylde 4 How glad..the dear soul was when she had a good ‘first-foot’ on New Year’s morning.

What if the first foot is a paw? Does it matter which species? LOL

[Andre Jute]

K.A. wrote: "What if the first foot is a paw? Does it matter which species? LOL"

Depends on the size, curvature, orientation and sharpness of the fingernail. Once you get past that lot, cleanliness seems a bit superfluous.

[K.A.]

Gee - it's pretty complicated. Kench

[Andre Jute]

Exactly. What if the first paw through the door doesn't belong to your poodle?

[K.A.]

Poodle?

Trouble (the Jack Russell) would have a fit if I brought home a poodle - unless it was female, then Ms Mocha (Jack Russel cross) would have a large farm animal. LOL

When it comes to critters, I can only bring home terriers (or terrorists).

[Andre Jute]

K.A. wrote: "I can only bring home terriers (or terrorists)."

Dyslexia makes for an interesting life!

[K.A.]

nuppence, n.
. . . .
No money; nothing.
. . . .
1886 A. Lang in Longman’s Mag. Mar. 551 The Americans can get our books, and do get them, and republish them and give us nothing—that awful minus quantity, ‘nuppence’!
1964 Observer 20 Sept. 27/7 Living on nuppence.