Each week, we take a look at a common confusions and ambiguities in the English language (that gives us about a century’s worth of material!) – making things easier through the power of friendly conversation… This week, which phrase is correct? Q: Hi there – a friend of mine wrote
Each week, we take a look at a common confusions and ambiguities in the English language (that gives us about a century’s worth of material!) – making things easier through the power of friendly conversation… This week, which word is correct? Q: I couldn’t wait to ask you a question
If so, fear not, you’re not alone. In fact, it would be quite difficult to be alone with this one. Despite its rather ominous-sounding title, ‘gargalesis’ is actually “heavy tickling, often resulting in laughter”. So it’s more than likely going to require at least two people to get a bad case of this condition.
And it has a sibling. To perform or receive a feathery ‘light tickling’ (and actually, sometimes they’re even worse) goes by the name, KNISMESIS. The names themselves have very scientific origins, coined in 1897 by a couple of psychologists clearly with too much time on their hands. As words, they’re pretty rare – confined usually to medical journals and smarty-pants know-it-all blogs.
Happy birthday America; 238 years old and looking good (although it could be all that Botox you’ve had done on your West coast).
You truly are the land of the free. Home of the brave. Land of colorful humor, high fiber, cozy pajamas and gray aging neighbors. Home of the 50-story theaters, favorite jewelry, organized travelers, snowplows, sizable paychecks and open dialog.
Sigh. Land of the red-underlined-word. Okay America, it’s one thing to take a stroll on the sidewalk with your fanny pack during Fall. (Period.) But why, when it comes to spelling, is it You (Ess-Aye) vs The Rest of the World?
Each week, we take a look at a common confusions and ambiguities in the English language (that gives us about a century’s worth of material!) – making things easier through the power of friendly conversation. This week, a breakfast conundrum… Q: Breakfast time! Oh no. I spilt some milk because
Each week, we take a look at a common confusions and ambiguities in the English language (that gives us about a century’s worth of material!) – making things easier through the power of friendly conversation… This week, do blondes have more fun? Q: Hi Australian Writers’ Centre! I have blonde
Each week, we take a look at a common confusions and ambiguities in the English language (that gives us about a century’s worth of material!) – making things easier through the power of friendly conversation… This week, we head out for a night on the town… Q: My friend Henrietta
The humble keyboard. Fifty years ago no one could have predicted just how ubiquitous and how vital to our every day lives it would become. But it’s now something few people could say they live without, and us certainly writers are big users of the keyboard.
Which brings us to this week’s wacky word – qwerty. (Or QWERTY, as you’ll sometimes see it written.) This one has a very specific meaning and it’s not a word you could use unless you’re describing a keyboard. But it’s one of the few words in English that doesn’t subscribe to the ‘u after q’ rule, and when you know the story of the qwerty keyboard, you can understand why.
There’s just one word in the English language with three ‘y’s. That word is syzygy – pronounced siz-uh-jee. It’s a word that astronomists would most likely be familiar with, and possibly even poets.
The Macquarie Dictionary lists one definition as “the conjunction or opposition of two heavenly bodies; a point in the orbit of a body, as the moon, at which it is in conjunction with or in opposition to the sun.” Other references suggest syzygy actually describes the alignment of three celestial bodies – something that happens when there’s a full or new moon.
The unique thing about the definition of syzygy is that it describes both opposition and conjunction with the sun. The original meaning of the word only applied to conjunctions – when the moon is between the Earth and the sun. It came from the Latin suzugia and the Greek suzugos, which meant “yoked or paired”.
What do you imagine when you hear the word flibbertigibbet? Me, I picture a restless, fretful and voluble person. Not necessarily someone you don’t want to be around, but you’ll require lots of energy to manage them. And that’s fairly close the definition of this tongue-twister of a word. The
We’re venturing into the world of the truly rare with this week’s wacky word. It’s obnubilate – to make something less visible or clear, or to obscure.
This is one of those smarty-pants words you might use to show off your Latin skills. (And if you need any evidence of that consider the fact that obnubilate made it into famous lexicographer Eugene Ehrlich’s book, The Highly Selective Thesaurus for the Extraordinarily Literate.) It comes from the Latin word nubes, meaning ‘cloud’. It first came into use in English in the mid-16th century.
The definition of obnubilate doesn’t necessarily suggest a negative connotation but, according to World Wide Words, it was a favourite of 19th century literary critics who used it when they felt “a writer had been less than transparently clear in his exposition”. This comment on author Walt Whitman in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1860 is a perfect example.
Appropriately (for Writing Bar) this week’s wacky word describes a commonly used literary device. It’s one most readers would immediately recognise on seeing it used, but may never have realised just how common, and clever, it is. It’s zeugma, a rhetorical device where a single word is linked to two words in a sentence but is really only appropriate to one of them.
So, that makes a zeugma sound more like a grammatical error than a writing technique. But used well, the zeugma can add drama, humour and beauty to writing. The Macquarie Dictionary describes zeugma as “a figure of speech in which a verb is associated with two subjects or objects, or an adjective with two nouns, in a way that is unexpected”.
There’s mystery surrounding this week’s wacky word. Despite a listing in Peter Watts’s 1977 reference book A Dictionary of the Old West – and an almost plausible explanation for its etymology – the word hornswoggle remains unexplained.
This word should be immediately recognisable as an American colloquialism, though it is listed in the Macquarie Dictionary also. It means “to deceive or con”, and the phrase “I’ll be hornswoggled” can also be an exclamation of amazement. It first appeared in print around 1829 and has remained popular in the US. (Even the World Wrestling Entertainment has its own Hornswoggle, a diminutive and popular wrestling champion.)
In 1920 hornswoggle popped up in PG Wodehouse’s Little Warrior.
You probably come across this week’s wacky word more than you know. Described in the Macquarie Dictionary as ‘bragging; bravado or bluster’ it’s the kind of behaviour we’re not unused to seeing, probably more so among the rich and famous. If you were paying attention you probably saw some of it at this week’s Oscars ceremony. Well, now when you come across a boastful, blustering braggart’s crowing you have one perfect word to describe it – fanfaronade.
Fanfaronade, or arrogant or boastful talk, has its origins in French. Around the mid-17th century it comes up in English in Sir Thomas Urquhart’s Logopandecteision (or An Introduction to the Universal Language – actually, I’m sensing some fanfaronade in that title…). Sir Thomas was a Scottish writer and translator who is most famous for his translations of Rabelais. In Logopandecteision he wrote:
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