Archive for the ‘Grammar / Syntax’ Category
Posted by kazvorpal on January 10, 2011
Aphorism
A defining observation of the truth, always short
Examples:
The great writers of aphorisms read as if they had all known each other very well.
— Elias Canetti, The Human Province (1942–1972)
Santayana’s aphorism must be reversed: too often it is those who can remember the past who are condemned to repeat it.
— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr, The Bitter Heritage: Vietnam and American Democracy
The poem and the aphorism are Nietzsche’s two most vivid means of expression but they have a determinate relation to philosophy.
— Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and philosophy (1962)
Etymology:
- Aphorismus, Latin for “to define”
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Posted in Grammar / Syntax, Knowledge | Tagged: aphorism, canetti, definitions, etymology, high vocabulary, language, lexicon, santayana, sayings, schlesinger, vocabulary, vocabulary expansion, word of the day, words, words of the day, wotd | Leave a Comment »
Posted by kazvorpal on January 7, 2011
Chthulu, on the Nefandous Southpark
Nefandous
Unspeakable.
A most severe pejorative
Examples:
Then the earth
In birth nefandous Coeus life produced
And Iapetus and Typhoeus dire
And that bad brotherhood which joined in league
To abolish heaven
— Dante Alighieri, Inferno (1308)
Only the bricks of the chimney, the stones of the cellar, some mineral and metallic litter here and there, and the rim of that nefandous well.
— H.P. Lovecraft, The Colour out of Space (1927)
No Topsman to your Tarpeia! This thing, Mister Abby, is nefand.
— James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)
Etymology:
- In Latin, ne = not, fandus = to speak
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Posted in Grammar / Syntax, history, poetry | Tagged: chthulu, dante, dante alighieri, divine comedy, english, etymology, finnegans wake, h p lovecraft, high vocabulary, iapetus, inferno, james joyce, joyce, latin, lexicon, lovecraft, nefand, nefandous, religion, south park, southpark, the colour out of space, vocabulary, vocabulary expansion, vocabulary words, word of the day, words, words of the day, wotd | Leave a Comment »
Posted by kazvorpal on July 28, 2010
Logolepsy
n. A severe fascination or obsession with words
Pretty straighforward
Examples:
Thanks to the magic of teleconferencing, often the format for a given show is call-in, and the phones and airwaves crackle with logolepsy.
— Richard Lederer, A Man of My Words (2003)
A case of logolepsy is easily distinguished from the perfectly sane mood which demands and imperiosly seizes the pregnant sign, and makes it the exponent of a hidden power.
— Maurice Thompson, My winter garden: a nature-lover under southern skies (1900)
Etymology:
Logos is Greek for “word”, -lepsy is Greek, “to seize”
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Posted in Grammar / Syntax, Knowledge | Tagged: english, etymology, high vocabulary, information, Knowledge, language, lexicon, logolepsy, logolept, logoleptic, maurice thompson, richard lederer, verbiage, vocab, vocabulary, word of the day, words, wotd | Leave a Comment »
Posted by kazvorpal on October 4, 2009
We said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.
Solecism (plural Solecisms)
n. A grammatical mistake or absurdity, or even simply a non-standard language usage.
- We don’t need no education! (Pink Floyd’s infamous double-negative self-refutation.)
- This is just between you and I. (Hypercorrection to avoid the common, nonstandard “you and me” form in the subject of sentences…in this case, “me” would have been correct, the standard pronoun for the object of a preposition.)
- Surely there is no fitter solecistic archetype than Huck Finn. (While fitter is a valid construction, the grammatical norm in English is to say “more fitting” — an example of how valid language can still be a solecism.)
Etymology:
In ancient Greece, the colony of Soli in Sicily spoke a very corrupted version of Greek, and came to be seen as a model of silly language usage.
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Posted in Grammar / Syntax | Tagged: absurdity, dictionary, english, grammar, high vocabulary, huck finn, huckleberry finn, language, lexicography, lexicon, pink floyd, solecism, soli, syntax, thesaurus, vocabulary, words | Leave a Comment »
