Category Archives: Grammar

WOTD: raphanizein

Here’s another word off the request line, brought to you by Poet Master Blitzken. Today’s word is a noun that I defy any of you to copy and paste into Google and search for images.

On second thought, that might not be a very good idea.

Rhaphanidosis, you see, is the practice of inserting the large roots of plants into the anus. This is not for sexual/bondage purposes. During the 4th and 5th centuries B.C. in Ancient Greece it was a common punishment for adultery. Apparently, they took adultery REALLY seriously back then. Getting a large horseradish root shoved up your ass sounds a bit worse than having to wear a scarlet letter A on your chest for the rest of your life.

This word isn’t used very often these days, but one could perhaps use it to describe a situation that feels (hopefully metaphorically) kind of like having something large and bulbous inserted into your backside in the most painfully unwelcome way.

Oh man, watching that movie was a raphanizeinian experience.  (Baffle your friends.)

Incidentally, raphanizein wasn’t the only punishment for adultery back then. Sodomy by mullet fish was also common. And both the large radish and the fish would eventually run you through. Imagine having to choose between the two. Like having to choose between death by plague or cholera?

*shudders*

WOTD: needs

Today’s word is one of those words that has multiple linguistic functions.

It could be an adverb that is defined as, “of necessity, usually preceded by the word must.”

For example: “It must needs be so.” Which to me sounds very Shakespearean or even biblical.

It could also be a transitive verb, which is a verb that requires both a subject and an object:

“She needs money.”

Or indeed, it could be a plural noun described as what is required or needed:

“What are the needs of third world countries?”

Okay, that’s enough boring grammar stuff. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the “(Your first name here) needs…” game, and some of you might have done yours and posted it on Facebook. The instructions are very simple. All you need to do is go to Google or any search engine of your choice and type in your first name plus the word “needs” in the search field. Then press enter and write down the first ten hits you get, no matter how weird or stupid they are.

I’ll go first:

1. Gwen NEEDS to sign! (Sign what, I’m not really sure but it’s REALLY important that I sign it.)

2. Gwen needs to get Palin back on topic. (As long as it’s Michael Palin.)

3. Gwen needs to step down. (Difficult as I have a phobia of walking down stairs.)

4. Gwen needs no helmet…Ba! (For I am invulnerable…)

5. Gwen needs 5 man strat run. (Um…actually I need a nerd to explain this one as it’s related to WoW.)

6. Gwen needs to fire herself as her stylist. (If I do then does this mean I’ll have to pay unemployment benefits to myself?)

7. Gwen needs a doctor. (Preferably a rich well-built single doctor.)

8. Gwen needs an apartment. (I’m house broken. Can’t say the same for my 25 cats.)

9. Gwen needs to chill out a little. (Yeah, right. Chill this out, bitches!)

10. Gwen needs a hero. (He’s gotta be strong, and he’s gotta be fast, and he’s gotta be fresh from the fight…)

WOTD: pundit, and other loaned words…

The English language is one of the largest languages in the world. Not only is it one of the most commonly learned languages both as a first and second language, it also has an extraordinarily large amount of words. One of the reasons for this is the amount of loaned words (aka loanwords) from other languages. The word smörgåsbord (discussed in a previous post) is an example of a word borrowed from the Swedish language. According to the Oxford Dictionaries website:

The Second Edition of the 20-volume  Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries.

That adds up to over 230,000 words, which is huge compared to the number of words in, say, the Swedish language. (Estimated to be around 40,000) Learning English, particularly as a second language, is a monumental undertaking.

Other words loaned from Swedish include: moped, ombudsman, gauntlet and tungsten.

One might be surprised to learn that the word pundit is loaned from the Hindi language. While we think of a pundit as a kind of pompous talking head on the Fox network, the original Hindi word pandit means “learned scholar or priest.” Bill O’Reilly is good example of a pundit, although I don’t think he’s particularly scholarly nor very priestly.

Here are a few other loanwords of interest:

From Arabic: admiral, alcohol, coffee, guitar, lemon, magazine, sofa

From Chinese: ketchup

From Czech: robot, pistol

From Dutch: bazooka, aloof, bluff, coleslaw, cookie, golf, landscape

From French: abandon, bastard, and calorie to name a few. There are approximately 80,000 words of French origin in the English language due to a minor incident that occurred in the year 1066 near the town of Hastings.

From Hebrew: behemoth, canister, jubilee.

From Italian: balcony, figurine

From Turkish: balaclava, lackey, vampire

From Welsh: flummery (the pudding, that is)

Of course there are many (ten of thousands) more, but I think this is a good sample.

Bye for now.

WOTD: balaclava and other confusing words…

For some reason our British cousins have adopted this word, which according to Bill Bryson (author and keen observer of all things British from an American perspective), is a “truly bad word.” The American term is the decidedly less poetic but much clearer ski mask. Its “badness” lies in the fact that it really doesn’t sound like what it is:

“[It] could be almost anything – an obscure root vegetable, a type of geological formation peculiar to the Tibetian steppe, the basic unit of currenty in Albania, the sound of a large load of rocks coming out of the back of a dump truck, almost anything at all. It certainly doesn’t sound like something you would want to put on your head. No, the word you want for a kind of pull-down hat is haggis.”
Excerpt from I’m a Stranger Here Myself

He then goes on to explain that “haggis” has a warm and furry sound to it and that it doesn’t sound at all like a food. Furthermore, anyone who has ever tried it will attest that it doesn’t taste much like a food either.

This got me thinking about how many other words there are in the English language that don’t sound at all like what they are, and how confusing this can be for learners of it as a second language.

For example, why do we drive on the parkway, and park in the driveway?

Why do we say we’re getting ON or OFF the bus/train/plane when we’re really getting IN or OUT of it?

A pineapple is nothing like a pine nor like an apple. It doesn’t even come from a pine tree. How the hell did it get named that? And what about a grapefruit?

I’m sure there are many examples of weird words in Swedish as well, and the one I can think of at the moment is smörgås (sandwich) which translated literally into English means “butter goose.”

Finally, and with apologies for the indelicacy of the following language, why do we say we’re taking a shit when we’re actually LEAVING it?

Feel free to post your own examples of weird or inaccurate words in comments. Until next time…

WOTD: a “shower of bastards” and other collective nouns…

With many thanks to Cissi for the idea…

According to the Urban Dictionary (the unreliability of the source notwithstanding), the phrase “shower of bastards” is Irish slang for a “group of not altogether nice people.”

As in, “Look at that shower of bastards over there. They’re not even drinking Guinness.”  Oi, what a bunch of gobshites.

Anyway, this got me thinking about how many colorful, surprising, and just plain odd collective nouns there are. Wikipedia of course names all of them but here’s a few of my favorites:

A glaring of cats. (Hehe…I’ve certainly been glared at by my cat)

A coffle of asses.

A shrewdness of apes.

A chin of beards. (This one made me laugh out loud.)

A singular of boars.

A cheat of bursars.  (A bursar is the person responsible for billing you at a college or university.)

A threat of courtiers.

A murder of crows.

A busyness of ferrets.

A parliament of owls.

A storytelling of crows.

A drunkenship of cobblers. (You know, those guys who make and repair shoes.)

A neverthriving of jugglers. (Does this tell us something about juggling as a possible career choice?)

A number of mathematicians (Hahaha. This one might be a bit dubious.)

An obstinacy of buffalo.

A scathe of zombies.

An ugly of walruses.

And my number one all time favorite:

A sad of emos. (I shit you not)

Until next time…

WOTD: resplendent

With many apologies for not posting a WOTD yesterday but I was too busy being sick and watching coverage of the Royal Wedding. I just love stuff like that. Royal Weddings that is, not being sick. I just find all the negativity and complaints about it to be really sad. “I couldn’t care less!” Well, obviously you do care enough to state that you don’t care. “What a waste of tax-payer money!” Oh moan, bitch, whine, complain. Why can’t you just be happy for the young attractive couple and be happy in general? Also, if you’re really concerned about the cost you can always ask for your 69 pence (each British tax payer’s share of the money spent on the wedding) back from the British government.

But I digress…

I thought I’d choose a word that is inspired by the recent Royal Wedding. Resplendent is an adjective and it’s defined as “shining brilliantly.” It basically means the same thing as dazzling, radiant, gorgeous and magnificent.  As in:

Prince William looked resplendent in his bright red wedding coat. 

Word of the Day: spatula

Today’s word is not particularly special or meaningful. It’s doesn’t really have any qualities at all. I choose it simply because I think it sounds funny. What an amusing collection of sounds for such an ordinary object that does such an ordinary task.

It’s a noun. It’s Latin. The original word hasn’t changed all that much. Spatula, in Latin means, “broad flat tool or weapon.” Something that is spatula-like can be modified with the adjective spatular. As in, “The car smashed into the spatular part of a snowplow.”

Incidentally, it’s really hard to think of something that rhymes with spatula…

Any other funny-sounding words you can think of?

The Vestibules have a lot of ideas:

Stay tuned…

Word of the Day: obscene, profane, and vulgar

Today’s words are all adjectives and they all have similar meanings, but each word has a different quality.

The word obscene suggests something that is offensive to decency or morality and which is abominable, disgusting, or repulsive. For me the Jerry Springer Show comes to mind as the perfect example of something that is obscene par excellence.  However, the word can also be used to describe something that is in greater excess than it ought to be. For example: obscene wealth. A great example of an obscene word is cocksucker, one of the late George Carlin’s Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television. It’s nicely offensive isn’t it? And it’s certainly indecent and possibly immoral.

Moving on to profane, then. This word in its noun form: profanity, is often used to encapsulate all “bad” and “dirty” words, but the word profane itself has religious connotations. It’s the antonym of the word sacred. Something that is profane is characterized by an irreverence or contempt for God or sacred principles or things. I’ve never been particularly religious, but to me, the actions of the Westboro Baptist Church – pretty much everything they do – but particularly their picketing the funerals of soldiers and marines killed in action. Well, to me that’s just profane. They are the antithesis of everything decent and honest and good in this world.

Finally, the word vulgar pretty much describes much of the content of MTV these days. Vulgarity is characterized by a complete ignorance of or a total lack of good breeding and taste. (See: Jersey Shore) It’s inelegant, unrefined, ribald, low. In Shakespeare’s time, the word vulgar meant “common,” in a Kate Middleton-ish kind of way. Basically not royalty. Even farther back the word vulgar meant “vernacular.”  At one time there was huge controversy over the first bible written in a vernacular (non-Latin) language. It was called the “Vulgate” bible.  Interesting, huh?

Until next time…

Word of the Day: smörgåsbord

Today’s word is one of the few Swedish words that has been incorporated into the English language. I’ve chosen to use the original Swedish spelling, but of course the English spelling leaves out the Swedish vowels ö and å. One of the hardest aspects of learning Swedish is learning how to pronounce these vowels properly.

The word smörgåsbord is a compound noun, which are commonplace in Swedish but rare in English. It’s comprised of the words smörgås (sandwich) and bord (table) so the word translated literally into English is “a table of sandwiches.” In reality, it’s usually much more than that. The dictionary defines smörgåsbord as “a buffet meal of various hot and cold hors d’oeuvres, salads, casserole dishes, meats, cheeses, etc.”

I’ve always thought of a smörgåsbord as a variety of different dishes that don’t necessarily go together. That’s probably because years ago when I was staying with my grandmother, I remember she would say “Let’s have a smörgåsbord lunch.” This meant we would have a buffet of whatever leftovers that happened to be in the fridge. This could be spaghetti, beef stew, Greek salad and pineapple rings.

The word smörgåsbord also has a more figurative meaning, as an extensive array or variety.

For example:

During my last flight to the United States I was subjected to smörgåsbord of problems, everything from lost luggage to frozen toilet water. 

Of course in the above example, I’m using the word ‘everything’ metaphorically.

Until next time…