Category Archives: Words

2025, education, Mysteries, Words

Weird Words

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Vocabulary has always been a fun topic for me.  It started in the fifth grade when Mrs. McCracken offered extra credit if we found the week’s vocabulary words out and about in the real world (books, newspaper, etc.) 

I get an email every day with a new vocabulary word from a dictionary site.  I’d say that about 60% of the time, I know the word or can work it out based on its parts.  Nothing else, just a few seconds of each day.

But in the last couple of weeks I’ve come across two that not only did I not know, but I had to look up how they would be used in a sentence to make sense of them. 

Animadvert – to comment unfavorably or critically.  First recorded in 1630–40.  From the Latin animadvertere, meaning “to heed, censure;” combines animum, meaning “mind,” + advertere, meaning “to notice or advert¹.”   Here are two examples.  “The famous director was not afraid to animadvert on the lack of originality in modern filmmaking” and “The union leaders publicly animadverted on the company’s decision to cut wages, arguing it was retaliation”. 

Carpophagous – feed on fruit, fruit-eating.  First recorded in 1830–40.   Combines carpo-¹, meaning “fruit,” + -phagous, meaning “eating.”   Again, two examples.  “The carpophagous bat species are crucial for pollination as they feed on nectar and fruit” and “The carpophagous diet of the iguana primarily consists of fruits and leafy greens”. 

Both of these words strike me as not being too useful these days.  I suppose in biology circles you might eventually stumble across carpophagous but even having sentences for animadvert, I’m having trouble imagining anybody using it these days.  I could be wrong – but I don’t think so (Monk theme song…)

Any words you think the English language would be better off without?

2024, Family, Uncategorized, Words

Words To Live By

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My mother told me more than once when I was young that I shouldn’t get married until after I was 19. She was likely to say that after my father did something exasperating. It was no secret that she was 19 when she married my father. They were married for more than 70 years and were very happy together, but I took her words to heart and waited until I was 25.

Husband stands by his assertion that if we are going to do much traveling in the fall, we better have it done by Veterans Day, because you can’t depend on the weather after that. He is usually correct.

I stand by the assertions that lefse needs to finished and in the freezer by Christ the King Sunday, that pepper seeds should be started by March 15th, don’t plant your garden here until after Memorial Day , and Montana is not a sane or reasonable place to live, so don’t even think about moving there.

What are your words to live by? Any words of wisdom that you remember from your parents? What words of wisdom would you like to impart on young persons?

2024, Gatherings, Uncategorized, Words

Edits

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A couple of months ago I was the assisting minister at our Lutheran Sunday service. Part of that job is reading, with the presiding pastor, the prayers she wrote for the service. I read through the prayers and found some grammatical errors which I corrected. I explained to the pastor what I had done, and she was grateful. Our senior pastor overheard me and got really excited and asked me if I liked editing. I told her I did. She asked me if I would be willing to edit a book she was writing, and I said I would.

She has written and published a book already. The current book is a series of twenty four devotions for Advent. The basic premise of the book is that our families of origin hand down all sorts of unhealthy expectations to us that make the Christmas holidays onerous. She is using many of the theories of one of my favorite family therapists, Murray Bowen, in the book. What could be more fun?

I have edited the first five devotions, and she plans to get the next installment to me next week. I am a devotee of the Oxford comma, and I like active verb usage. She writes well and it will be nice to see the final product when it is printed.

What kind of a manuscript editor would you be? Name some authors whose styles you like and dislike.

2024, Uncategorized, Weather, Words

Climate Control

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I work in a two story office building that was converted from an open design with few walls or offices to a labyrinth of cubicles and offices to meet the needs of our agency. I have a lovely office with a window. It is the most uncomfortable place I have ever worked.

When all the walls were put in to replace the open concept that the previous company had, the contractor had to also put in a heating and cooling system for each new work space. There are several different heating and cooling zones on each floor, each with its own thermostat and heater/cooler. It is unfortunate that the contractor didn’t make a schematic of what offices were in which climate zones. It appears that some of the upstairs offices are on some of the downstairs thermostats. It is impossible to control the heat and cooling. No matter what the thermostats are set at, they each stay at 70 degrees, while the office temperatures are sometimes in the lower 60’s or upper 50’s.

My office is usually freezing. The office across the hall from me is usually too hot. I have two ceiling vents, and we suspect they are on different thermostats. The day it was 108 outside last week, I had my space heater on and was wrapped in a shawl while I worked at my desk. Many of my coworkers have space heaters they use on a daily basis. The temperature control is no better in the winter. None of the windows can be opened, so we can’t cool or heat using outside air either.

What is the best/worst work environment you ever had? Are you usually too hot or too cold?

2024, books, education, Mysteries, Uncategorized, Words

Rules of Engagement

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When I was in junior high I never did really figure out how to diagram a sentence.  In my mind’s eye I can still see the examples that the teacher had written up on the board but I’m pretty sure if it were ever on a test, I probably missed that question.  I think my grasp of the English language is sufficient without that bit of knowledge.  Although I couldn’t point out a dangling participle to safe my life, I do recognize the subjunctive.  In fact, I remember how excited I was that the first paragraph of Uprooted by Naomi Novik not only mentioned dragons but also used the subjunctive correctly.  Twice!

Correcting someone else’s English use isn’t a habit of mine; since I can’t claim perfect usage, I stop short of deciding if anyone else does.  In fact, I’m re-thinking the idea that anyone has perfect usage.  Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue (which I just finished) has pretty well convinced me that most of the “rules’ that we think know were just made up (fairly willy-nilly) by folks whose only qualification was their strong opinion!

Imagine my surprise when I found that someone else obviously had a strong opinion about grammar.  I turned the page on a book yesterday to find the above edit.  In red pen in a library book no less.  I can’t imagine that anyone would care enough to do this. It’s clear what the author meant – I’m sure every single person reading this book knew exactly what she was saying.  Makes me think of a t-shirt I’ve seen online recently that made me laugh:

I doubt seriously if this “correction” will give other readers an “ah ha” moment.  No one will look at those red letters and say “Oh, I’ve been using that and because wrong all these years”.  So I’ve decided that I don’t care if the way the sentence is written is wrong by anybody’s standards.  I DO think it’s a heinous crime to write in a library book in red ink.  `Nuff said.

Do you write in your own books?  Margins or editing?

2024, Family, home, Kids, Uncategorized, Words

What’s That ?

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Last Monday I announced to my coworkers on the Youth and Family Team that Husband and I had worked like navvies all weekend getting the garden planted. They had no idea what I meant.

We picked up some handy words and phrases when we lived in Canada that most people here find odd or quaint. Our whole family calls Mail Carriers “Posties”. We phone one another instead of call one another. The sofa is sometimes a chesterfield. People we are annoyed with are jam tarts. Those trying hard to get ahead are keeners.

Just in our family, Spaghetti with olive oil and garlic will forever be called Pasta with Invisible Sauce. A massage at bedtime was always called a backrub scratchrub by our children. A bedtime breakfast was a bowl of cereal before bed.

l grew up with some odd family words for things. My maternal grandmother said that a bottle of soda that had lost its fizz was ausgespielt (all talked out). My mother said that someone who had too much to drink was a little gemutlich. Farts were “little noises from behind”, according to my mother.

What phrases or word usages are specific to your family or place? What words or phrases would you like to introduce into everyday speech or see back into everyday speech?

2024, Media, Poems, Uncategorized, Words, work

National Haiku Poetry Day

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The other day Husband and I made a quick trip to Bismarck-Mandan to Costco. We also went to a favorite butcher shop in Mandan. Down the street from the butcher shop is the office for the National Day company. They are the ones who post all the “National Day” declarations. I assume that they make it all up, It was fun to see where it actually takes place. It is a pretty unassuming building right there on the Mandan “strip”, the main drag in town.

I noted that today is National Haiku Poetry Day, and that yesterday was National Wear Your Pajamas To Work Day. That is interesting, as our clinical director declared that anyone who wants to wear pajamas all day this Friday can do so, as long as they pay $5.00 to the social committee. This is my pajama day haiku:

If I pay five bucks

Friday I will work in PJ’s

I will wear my sweats

I don’t have any clients on Friday, just meetings, so I won’t feel too unprofessional in my sweats.

What did you consider “professional attire” at work? Make up a haiku about your clothes. What kind of pajamas do you prefer?

2024, animals, education, Words

Laughing Matter

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Some days it’s all about laughing.

On Duolingo yesterday morning, I started a new section – with words such as lazy and messy.  Clean and dirty have come up before so it was nice to have a few more to go with them.  Then came “stinks”.

Several animals have made it into the lessons: cat, dog, bird, penguin, snake, duck, elephant (the very first lesson!).  But yesterday was the first appearance (after 3 years) of hamster.

Duolingo doesn’t just give you words, they put all the words together in sentences and stories for you.  After all these months, I should have seen this coming.

I tuoi criceti puzzano

This translates to “your hamsters stink”.  Not a euphemism for anything that I can find although it does remind me of the Holy Grail line “your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries”.

I can’t imagine that stinking hamsters comes into conversation too often in one’s lifetime.  My sister had hamsters and I don’t remember them stinking….

What pets did you have growing up?  Did they stink?

2024, Gatherings, Music, Songs, Uncategorized, Words

Musical Ear

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We have a new assistant pastor at our Lutheran Church who is working out rather nicely. She is good with youth, preaches good sermons, and is fitting in well with the congregation. There is only one problem, and that is her lack of musicality.

Our pastors sing much of the of the liturgy, and to do that the they have to know to listen to the note the organist gives them to start on the chant. Our new pastor can’t carry a tune in a bucket. No matter how emphatic the organist is in giving the note, the new pastor invariably starts on a pitch three notes below where she should start, and can’t seem to read the intervals between the notes to sing the chant correctly. The liturgy is such that the pastor sings, then the congregation comes in on a pitch based on where the pastor leaves off. We now have to listen for a prompt from the organist to know what our pitch is.

It would be fine with me if our new pastor read the liturgy instead of singing it, but I guess in Lent things need to be sung. We are all suffering through these forty days together!

How are you at singing a capella? What are your favorite metaphors and idioms?

2024, animals, books, Mysteries, Words

Chewing on Words

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I’m still working at my Italian every day… some days more than others. Having done some Spanish and French in my youth, I love seeing some of the resemblances. Every now and then though, I get thrown for a loop. Yesterday Duolingo served up “in bocca al lupo” for “good luck”. In bocca al lupo means literally “in the mouth of the wolf”. I have actually heard the phrase “buona fortuna” in the past so finding a reference to a wolf sent me straight to the internet. Apparently In the mouth of the wolf is when something needs to be warded off… like when they say “break a leg” in the theatre. “Buona fortuna” is your basic good luck.

Thinking about this reminded me that a few months ago Duolingo let me know that “bookworm” is “topo di biblioteca” which translates to “mouse of the library”. Fascinating. In looking into that one (yes, I do check up on Duolingo occasionally), here are some others I found:

• English/Serbian/Russian/Thai – bookworm
• Italian/Romanian – library mouse
• Arabic – book moth
• Chinese – book fool
• Greek – book eater
• Danish – reading horse
• French – ink drinker

Of course the reading horse is the most intriguing (PJ, is this correct?) but I think it’s interesting that there are so many varieties. Just a side benefit to learning a new language!

If you were asked to come up with a better phrase for “bookwork”, what would you choose?