murmur & shout
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“Give it a name.”— Everyone, in Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead
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TOD: 11:47 pm
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“Tell me a lie in December and I’ll spit in your face. Tell me the same one in July and I’ll smile and want to hold you closer.”
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girl talk.girl 1: what do you think it is, about men who write?girl 2: i don't think it's so much about men who write. it's more about men who think. the writers among them just have proof.
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If you cannot understand my argument, and declare: It’s Greek to me, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger; if your wish is father to the thought; if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool’s paradise -why, be that as it may, the more fool you, for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I was dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then - by Jove! O Lord! Tut tut! For goodness’ sake! What the dickens! But me no buts! - it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare.
Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Today in words I want to say and say and say: lollop.
Isn’t it funny how long you can wonder about something without making any effort to find the answer?
From the Wikipedia entry for Romance languages:
The term “Romance” comes from the Vulgar Latin adverb romanice, derived from Romanicus: for instance, in the expression romanice loqui, “to speak in Roman” (that is, the Latin vernacular) […] From this adverb the noun romance originated, which applied initially to anything written romanice, or “in the Roman vernacular”.
The word romance with the modern sense of romance novel or love affair has the same origin. In the medieval literature of Western Europe, serious writing was usually in Latin, while popular tales, often focusing on love, were composed in the vernacular and came to be called “romances”.
Now we know.
woebegone (adj.): exhibiting great woe, sorrow, or misery
This word has been stuck in my head for several days now, as part of the phrase “a woebegone lament,” which I read somewhere recently but can’t remember exactly where. It’s an interesting word, not often used but clear in its meaning, and pleasing to say out loud and to hear. (Whenever I get stuck on a word, I putter around mumbling it like a because I am a crazy person.) I was idly wondering about its origins, since it would appear to be a collapsed phrase (or whatever the real term is - help me out, academics): “woe, be gone,” so sad and miserable that you wish for relief. But I was wrong. It’s real origins are from Middle English: woe, from wo (misery, distress); and begone, from begon (to beset) = beset with woe. Aha.
künstlerroman • a novel that has as its main theme the formative years of an artist.
some english examples of this sub-sub-genre are »
David Copperfield, The Tragic Muse, Martin Eden, In Search of Lost Time, Sons and Lovers, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Of Human Bondage, This Side of Paradise, To the Lighthouse, Black Boy & Life Is Elsewhere
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yesterday in intriguing german loanwords:
a while back i made a post about the very intriguing geisterfahrer “a driver who mysteriously appears on the wrong side of the road.” i wondered why there was a need to name this seemingly rare phenomenon and was content with urban dictionary’s explanation: daredevils, drunks and suicides. and then this guy named luke (who is a real person) wrote to me with the following tale that sheds a whole new light on the geisterfahrer. said luke:
Before WWII, Austria’s drivers motored on the left side of the road. Being quite close physically and culturally, Germans and Austrians visited each other and understandably struggled to stay on the proper side. During WWII the Austrians changed their driving laws (cough, Hilter’s invasion and subsequent martial laws, cough).
My friends grand father was killed by a geisterfahrer after the rules changed. The anonymous on-coming driver had reverted to old habits and was on the wrong side of the road.
donnybrook (n.): a scene of chaos; a brawl or fracas
Chabon’s language is interesting not only for its complexity but also for his tendency to use familiar words in unfamiliar ways and, at least in the case of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (which is set for the most part in the early 20th century), delightfully old-fashioned words, like this one.
Besides how quaint the word itself sounds compared to its definition, the etymology is pretty good too: the Donnybrook Fair, held in Donnybrook, a suburb of Dublin, was an annual fair that ran from the 11th to the 19th century, by which time it had become such a notoriously rowdy, drunken public party that the location itself (like the Bikini Atoll and Lesbos) entered the lexicon with an altered meaning.
(via nprfreshair)
echt (adj.): authentic, genuine; typical
Today’s vocabulary word is, bizarrely, courtesy of a review of Our Idiot Brother. You never know where you’ll find a new word.
Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
I love this but I don’t know why.
Jonathan Lethem, The Fortress of Solitude
Say it out loud once or twice. I’ll wait.
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It’s nice, right?
A small research arm of the U.S. government’s intelligence establishment wants to understand how speakers of Farsi, Russian, English, and Spanish see the world by computationally evaluating it through their use of metaphors.
That’s right, metaphors, like Shakespeare’s famous line, “All the world’s a stage,” or more subtly, “The darkness pressed in on all sides.” Every speaker in every language in the world uses them effortlessly, and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity wants know how what we say reflects our worldviews. They call it The Metaphor Program, and it is a unique effort within the government to deal with how we use words.
“The Metaphor Program will exploit the fact that metaphors are pervasive in everyday talk and reveal the underlying beliefs and worldviews of members of a culture,” declared an open solicitation for researchers released last week. A spokesperson for IARPA declined to comment at the time.Read the rest at The Atlantic.
