dictionary

Silly Sunday – Words Weird and Wonderful

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JUST WORDS, NO PICTURES…

DO YOU EVER HEAR A WORD ON TELEVISION OR RADIO, EVEN ON THE NEWS AND THINK IS THAT ACTUALLY A REAL WORD?

Coronated? What happened to Crowned? But then how did the crowning event turn into a coronation?

CIRCUMAMBULATION? CAN’T YOU JUST SAY CIRCLING? It does especially mean walking round a sacred object in a ceremony.

Do you ever write down words then forget the context or what they mean?

Encirculate? Who on earth said this. Probably not a real word, a search comes up with encircle.

Fabulate – to tell a tall tale.

Reheterosexualised – I can only find heterosexualised – which I think can be taken to mean that it is assumed that when you get old or need to stay in a care home it is assumed you revert to being heterosexual. When I came across reheterosexualised it referred to family reinventing the life of the deceased loved one to reclaim them as heterosexual.

Now for words easier on the tongue…

FURTLE – When I heard someone on Gardeners’ Question Time ( BBC RADIO 4 ) talk about furtling around in the compost heap, I knew exactly what she meant and was keen to use it in my writing. ‘To gently delve; to probe or rummage tentatively.’

Metafiction – I confess I had to look this up when another cleverer blogger used the word in a comment on one of my stories. ‘Metafiction is a form of fiction that emphasizes its own narrative structure in a way that inherently reminds the audience that they are reading or viewing a fictional work.’

Today on the radio they were talking about a trend in France to become part time farmers to get away from stressful jobs in the city. The commentator used a phrase I wished I had thought of, though I might well use it for one of my characters….’Those of us who are purveyors of words and tabulations will see the attraction of escaping to a farm.

Have you seen or heard any unusual words lately, or even better, invented some yourself?

Silly Saturday – Whatever

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When Cyberson 2 was a teenager, at that stage when you cannot be seen to be interested in anything or anyone, when you mumble with an imperceptible nod if you pass anyone you know in the street, he and his friends made up a word to use instead of conversation – BLOKO – pronounced blocko. They had T shirts printed with BLOKO, so then there was no need to utter a sound at all.
I was reminded of this paring down of the English language when I was reading Clive’s blog the other day –
‘I’ve noticed a growing trend among bloggers to dedicate an annual theme, or a word (or several) for their blog.’
Clive has settled on the word WHATEVER. As I also cannot think of any deep or meaningful words to inspire me for 2020 I decided to steal Clive’s. I presume he doesn’t have exclusive rights to WHATEVER.

https://cliveblogs.wordpress.com/2020/01/05/that-was-the-year-that-was/

Then it struck me we should share this wonderful word with others such as World Leaders and errant royalty. What most of them actually mean when they are spouting endless words in Parliament or on television is WHATEVER.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/whatever
whatever definition: 1. it is not important what is; it makes no difference what (is): 2. anything or everything: 3…. Learn more.
Whatever definition of whatever you choose, how it is said is just as important. Politicians should express WHATEVER just how a teenager would utter it to his parents or teachers.
If you want to impress fellow bloggers with intelligent comments, but can’t think of anything intelligent to say, you could always resort to WHATEVER – or perhaps not…

liebster-award

From News Book to New Blogs

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Long before the existence of Blogs, long before I had heard the term, I had Writer’s Block. Every morning in my Church of England junior school we had to write in our news books, dinky little notebooks with lined and plain pages; one side for script, the other to draw a picture. One Monday morning I said to my teacher ‘I can’t think what to write.’

Did you spend all weekend in a cardboard box? Was his reply.

Sometimes it was easy, one morning at assembly there was an incident. One boy wrote for his news Tony was sick in assembly. There was a lurid picture, the puddle of vomit had become a lake.

Parents’ evening was the only chance mothers and fathers had to see what their little darlings had written. Apparently I wrote regularly that Mum and Dad had moved the furniture around at the weekend. My mother claimed the teachers were nosy and wanted to know what went on in our homes; she was amused to meet another mother who was mortified. Her child had written Mummy went out dancing with John’s Daddy, her explanation was that their respective spouses did not like dancing…

If we finished our news book we could not be idle, we had to quietly get on with a dictionary exercise, but I enjoyed doing that. Only when that was finished could you do free reading. One time my friend had a new plan. On my unescorted one and a half mile walk to school I would call for her on the way. Her mother would wave us off, once out of sight we would slow down. If we were late for assembly we had to go straight to the classroom and get on with writing our news; thus having an advantage over the rest of the class. I did feel guilty about this, our parents didn’t know, the teacher perhaps guessed we did it deliberately, but God, being Omnipotent, was sure to know we were absent from hymns and prayers.

Scripture lesson was a better opportunity for creative writing. We had a similar little exercise book, but horizontal. We would write that morning’s bible story in our own words on one page and draw a picture on the other. Illustrations were easy, flat roofed houses and people in long robes were simple to draw. I can’t remember how much I elaborated the story, but even then I felt there was not enough back story and character development in The Bible. Maybe if the disciples had kept a news book there would have been more detail in the Gospels.

The first part of my novel Quarter Acre Block is inspired by my four years at junior school.