Reflections on Today's Musing...Words and Names

There seems to be a trend of transforming nouns (person, place, or thing) into verbs. I.e. "Stop bugging me!" instead of, "There's a bug on the windowsill. Around the turn of the century--while flappers jived--short, boyish haircuts became all the rage. Because of this, the word "bangs" turned into a noun, as in, "She just banged her hair." I wonder why verbs so seldom turn into nouns (there may be some cases in which this happens--I just can't think of any now). Perhaps because we need an object first, before we can describe movement manipulating that object.

Another interesting trend is that boys names often evolve into girls names--but never the opposite. For example: Robin, Beryl, Morgan, Leigh, Blair, Sidney, Lindsay, and Leslie all started out as boys names, but are now used almost exclusively for girls. Some names are unisex, like Taylor and Hunter. Other names are generally used as boys names, but are beginning to shift towards becoming girls names, like Drew (as in Barrymore), Charlie, Reese (as in Whitherspoon), and Payton. Curious. I can't think of a single girl name turned boy name. Is there such a thing? I'll keep you posted (no pun intended).

Vocab for Week Three

Unfortunately I was over-enthusiastic with this week's vocabulary--giving me an impressively lengthy list of words--but likewise rendering it difficult for me to actually learn them. Therefore, in the future I hope to have no more than four or five new words every week, which I will thusly become much more familiar with.

Aeolian~Relating to or caused by wind, an "aeolian harp," also pertaining to Aeolus, the Greek god of the winds

Oracular~Miraculous, pertaining to an oracle

Tempestuous~Stormy, as in tempest

Ope~Archaic word for "open"

Sultry~Oppressively warm, sweltering

Lodestar~A star that shows the way, something that guides

Fecundity~Fertility

Twain~Archaic word for "two"

Coronal~Of or pertaining to a crown or wreath

Triune~Three-in-one

Basalt~Volcanic rock made of cooled lava

Harbinger~A Herold, or something that foreshadows a future event

Malison~Archaic, a curse

Tintinnabulation~The sound of bells ringing

Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost...

My blog's name was extracted from the second line of a famous J.R.R. Tolkien poem (see below). The poem appears twice in his Lord of the Ring Trilogy--once at the Inn of the Prancing Pony in a letter from Gandalf to the hobbits, and the second time at Rivendell, when Bilbo ferociously recites the poem in defence of Aragorn. It turns out Bilbo wrote the poem in honor of Aragorn, reflecting his heritage as undercover royalty and a widely traveling Ranger.

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king

Week 1's Vocab Words

Here are this week's vocab words:

Loquacious--Talkative

Chthonic--of or pertaining to the deities, spirits, and other beings dwelling under the earth

Gubernatorial--Of or pertaining to a state governor

Comestible--Edible, or eatables

Ethos--A speaker's credibility, their position of authority on a topic

Pathos--A speaker's emotional appeal/manipulation

Logos--A speaker's use of arguments and logic to persuade their listener

These will soon be followed by Week 2's many vocab words gleaned from Dante Rossetti's The House of Life.

Vibrant Language!!!

Language is an amazingly complicated web of words, filled with subtle shades of difference and subconscious emotional contentions. For example, what's the real difference between "smart" and "intelligent"? Or "ridiculous" and "absurd"?
To a newly arrived alien, our many words might seem superfluous, especially considering that many are merely synonyms, like "little" and "small".

Another amazing thing about language is its fluidity. It adapts itself to best express what its users are trying to communicate. Many words that are today commonplace, like "router" or "laptop" were never heard of a hundred years ago, but entered our language as the need arose.
Even Shakespeare was not exempt from this frenzy of inventing words. If anything, he indulged in it more than most people--one source said that he invented c. 1,700 words! Among these words are: "lonely", "weird", "fixture", "madcap", "torture", and "Olympian." With this perspective, his plays read similarly to Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky...
Strangely enough, my humble family is presumptuous enough to add words to our language--because that's what you do with a living, breathing, pliable, absorbing language. Our specialty was combing words to derive new meanings from them. For instance, "dancerina" is a "Dancer" + "Ballerina" and a "Sitchenario" is a "Situation" + a "Scenario."
Discussing this one day with my neighbor, she said that her family created words also. "Celewreck" is a celephane mess, a "hoofhouse" is a barn, and a "flophouse" is when scads of relatives invade your house during the holidays and plop their loose articles everywhere while flopping inside their sleeping bags on the living room floor to create a living carpet. If any readers have invented new words, I'd love to hear them--please leave a comment!
Abbreviations are another interesting class of words--sometimes we use them so often that we practically forget what they originally stood for. Did you know that TIP stands for "To Insure Promptness"? English gentlemen would give their waiter a small coin at the beginning of their meal to insure that their meal arrived quickly. Does anyone in today's world actually remember that CD stands for "Compact Disc" or that DVD stands for "Digital Versatile/Video Disc"? Or that IMing and E-mailing are really abbreviations for 'Instant Messaging' and "Electronic Mail'?

Hurricane Hanna!!

Possessing a somewhat unusual name, its always been rather difficult for me to find pencils, mugs, or kiddie license plates with my name on them. There were always plenty of "Hannah's"--they were often sold out--but never any "Hanna's." Interestingly enough, I now have a class one hurricane named after me! It's expected to reach the coast of Florida early Friday morning. Here's a link to a Fox news article about it: http://weather.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/09/01/hurricane-hanna/

Garden Goodies

I just came inside from picking about 50 little yellow pear tomatoes from my over-exuberant tomato vines. Yellow pears are less acidic than normal tomatoes, small (about the size of a cherry tomato) and pear-shaped. They're absolutely gorgeous as a garnish on soups or crackers...but I'm not quite sure what to do with so many! Perhaps salsa/bruchetta?
Another unusual variety of tomato I'm growing this year is an heirloom called 'Russian Pink.' We saved the seeds from an especially yummy tomato from our farmer's market, but this is the first year I've tried to grow them. Being heirlooms they're quite fragile and difficult to transport, but rather scrumptious--at least so I've heard, personally I don't care for tomatoes.
As a side note, here's a link to the poem that inspired my blog's URL: http://www.geocities.com/thetropics/shores/5441/tiger.html