English language

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?

Happy Birthday William Shakespeare – 1564

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It is also Saint George’s Day, but a saint that doesn’t mean much to us. Whereas William, even with his imagination, could not have predicted how many millions of people would be seeing his plays, saying his sayings and coming to visit his home town. He would probably not have liked what we did to his wonderful language, but living languages change all the time. He was also not responsible for the ways in which English has been spread around the world, but with the negatives come the positives. Around the world bilingual and multilingual folk can communicate with a common language and if we only speak English we must applaud them for learning and talking to us. No doubt Shakespeare would have his own blog and smart phone if they had been around then.

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…

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