If you recall, back in… October… (seems like a lifetime ago in this pandemic), I had a post titled “FAVORITE WORDS and why I love them”. I promised you my next set of words… and here they are. What are your favorite words? Do they come from grandma, family jokes, or a book ? Let me know in the comments.
Petrichor
(n): the scent of rain on the earth
pronounciation: pet-ri-kawr, pe-trahy-kawr
Psithurism
(n): the sound of the wind through the trees
Scripturient
(adj): having a consuming passion to write
Callipygian
(adj.): having shapely buttocks
pronounciation: kal-uh–pij-ee-uhn
Palimpsest
(n): writing material used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased; something with diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface.
pronounciation: pal-imp-sest
Editor Note: Check out the ghost ads that I am researching, since palimpsest is one of my current favorite words from that! Also, be on the lookout for the “FADED” book I’m working on with Edward Branley.
Do you have a word list, a list of favorite words that you have kept forever? I do. I guess I’ve always been fascinated by words, how they roll of my tongue, when they bring shock, or awe to a conversation. “How do you know this word? Where did you hear that?”
Some words are meant to be spread out in the world, some are meant for those quiet, introspective times, and some are those personal words meant for one-on-one with your significant other, spouse, or lover; bedroom talk that you’d embarrass your kids with if it came out in mixed company.
I remember using a word in a conversation with my dad when I was in college. He looked at me and said “well, I know that’s worth every bit of education you’re getting- that’s a COLLEGE level word!”
I’ve decided to share some of them with you, I’m thinking of making this a weekly thing for a few weeks, and I’m always interested in knowing : What is YOUR favorite word, and why?
Without any further adieu, here’s the start of the “My Favorite Words” list – in no particular order ( of course I have Julie Andrews singing “My Favorite Things” – music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein in my head as I type this).
(n, German): An ache for distant places; the craving for travel
pronounciation: FEIRN-veyh
Sehnsucht
(n, German): “The inconsolable longing in the human heart for we know not what”; yearning for a far, familiar, non-earthly land one can identify as one’s home.
pronounciation: /zeɪnˌzʊxt/
Note: Sehnsucht is divisible into two parts: Sehn from sehnen (to yearn) and Sucht (addiction, craving).
Gezellig
(adj, Dutch): Describes an atmosphere that is warm, softly lit, airy and friendly
pronounciation: heh-SELL-ick
Back in the day I had notebooks full of words, (remember composition notebooks?), now I invite you to join me on my “Wordsmithing” pinterest board and see that I am seriously a crazy word lover.
Today’s Lunchbox Lesson: ALUMNUS, ALUMNI, ALUMNA, and ALUMNAE
These words all describe attending or graduating from a particular school, but they differ in number and gender. Here’s how it works:
ALUMNUS: a singular noun referring to one male attendee
ALUMNI: a plural noun referring either to a group male attendees or to a mixed group of both male and female attendees (but not *only* female attendees)
ALUMNA: a singular noun referring to one female attendees
ALUMNAE: a plural noun referring to a group of only female attendees
Alumnus means “pupil,” or “nursling” in Latin. This is where it gets interesting! The Latin term for a former school is “alma mater,” meaning “nourishing mother.” Thus, an alumnus can be seen as the “nourished one/pupil” of the “nourishing mother,” the school.
These words are Latin “loanwords,” meaning they preserve their original forms when we use them. The difficulty arises because many Americans have not taken Latin, so they are unfamiliar with Latin forms (i.e. genders and plurals). As a result, the words are often used incorrectly.
One fairly popular trend is to avoid using these specific words altogether. Instead, the word ALUM is used for the singular and ALUMS is used for a group. These constructions avoid the possibility of using the Latin words incorrectly. It is considered acceptable for casual writing and conversation, but it is not acceptable (yet) for formal writing. It’s best if you can try to remember the Latin words — and you’ll look smarter too!
In morphology and lexicography, a lemma (plural lemmas or lemmata) is the canonical form, dictionary form, or citation form of a set of words (headword). In English, for example, run, runs, ran and running are forms of the same lexeme, with run as the lemma. Lexeme, in this context, refers to the set of all the forms that have the same meaning, and lemma refers to the particular form that is chosen by convention to represent the lexeme.
In lexicography, this unit is usually also the citation form or headword by which it is indexed. Lemmas have special significance in highly inflected languages such as Arabic, Turkish and Russian.
The process of determining the lemma for a given word is called lemmatisation.
The lemma can be viewed as the chief of the principal parts, although lemmatisation is at least partly arbitrary.
So, in short … A lemma is the dictionary term for the word you’re looking up. If you were to look up the word “jumping” in an English dictionary, you wouldn’t find it as a headword. What you would find is “jump,” the word that represents “jump,” “jumping,” “jumped,” and “jumps.” In this case “jump” is the lemma.
Editor Note: “The More You Know…” >> Took a linguistics class in college, and decided to share the craziness running around my head tonight. Enjoy! PS: Sorry this isn’t Word Wednesday… SURPRISE.. it’s WORD THURSDAY?
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