Browsing Month February, 2006
Talk About Your Wedding Showers!
That torrential rain we were supposed to get never quite materialized. As the afternoon turned beautiful, though, I was reminded of the South African term for when the sun is shining while it’s still raining: monkey’s wedding. It may be adapted from the Portuguese term for same, which translates as “vixen’s wedding,” or a Zulu more…
Today’s Word: Stilliform
Lots of talk here in sunny San Diego about heavy rain on the way. I’m reminded of one of the most beautiful words in the English language: stilliform, or “drop-shaped.” It’s from Latin stilla, “drop,” and a relative of the drippy words distill (to “drip down”) and instill, “to put in drop by drop” — more…
Life is Just A Bowl of Back-Formations
As I said, strictly speaking, the word kudos, or “glory,” is singular. Over time, those unfamiliar with its Greek root mistook it for a plural, leading to what’s called a “back-formation”– in this case, kudo. Kudo may raise some folks’ linguistic hackles, but two other respectable words arose this way. In Middle English, pease (as more…
Why I Didn’t Say “A Big Kudo to Our Quizzicist”
The reason I didn’t offer a great big kudo to our deserving Quizzicist is this: Not long ago, there was no such thing as a kudo. Our word kudos was lifted directly from Greek, where kudos means “magical glory.” Later, English speakers sometimes mistook kudos as a plural, forming kudo as the singular. These days more…
Kudos to Our Quizzicist
Permit me to kvell about “A Way with Words” Quizzicist Greg Pliska. (If you caught last week’s show about Shakespeare, you’ll recall Greg’s funny puzzle about the Bard’s lesser-known rival, William Snakespeare.) Besides being a clever quiz concoctor, Greg’s also a musician and conductor who does musical arranging for the highly regarded band, HEM. Last more…
Today’s Word: Quincunx
You knew there had to be a word for the pattern of five objects arranged like the dots on the “5” side on dice, didn’t you? It’s quincunx (KWIN-kunks), from the Latin for “five-twelfths.” As crossword fanatics know, an as was a coin of ancient Rome. Another Roman coin, the quincunx, was worth five-twelfths that more…
Bursting Into Tears Yet?
Recently a listener described rushing through the Louvre to meet a friend, when out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a painting. She stopped dead in her tracks, slowly turned to face it, and promptly burst into tears. Thirty years later, she was wondering if there’s a term for that. So more…
Ancora Imparo: Another Learning Experience
I love this Italian phrase attributed to Michelangelo. I mean, how great is it that toward the end of his life, one of the world’s most brilliant artists would say, “I am still learning”? So there I was on the plane yesterday, thumbing through SkyMall magazine, when I came across a plaque with those very more…
Today’s Word: Hypallage
On our latest show, we discussed hypallage (hye-PAL-uh-jee), a.k.a. “the transferred epithet,” which occurs when a modifier’s misplaced or misapplied, as in a worrying development. (The development isn’t actually doing the worrying–someone else is.) Garner’s Modern American Usage has more examples, including feminine napkin. (Technically, the napkin’s not feminine–—that is, you can’t turn it over more…
