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A Word a Day
For anyone who finds MBA-speak infiltrating daily life (I'll admit to once telling a friend we could "table the discussion for later"), learning new, cool, real words is a good way to spend a rainy afternoon. Anu Garg runs A.Word.A.Day, the website, where, instead of the morning's daily dose of spam, acolytes can receive daily linguistic edification. (The urge to use big words in a review like this is difficult to suppress.) Now he's taken the best of these words and themes and collected them in a slim little volume good for both casual grazing and sit-down-reading.
What's to Like Garg has a logical mind, dividing the book into small chapters with clever themes. There are some humdingers of words, but there are also many surprisingly small entries, as in the chapters "Words that Make the Spell-checker Ineffective" (example: specie, meaning "in kind") and "Words Not to Put on Your Resume" (example: distrait, or absentminded). Anyone who wants to get really meta will like the chapters that are words about words (example: verbigeration, the obsessive repetition of meaningless words and phrases). The truth is, it's just fun to learn new words, stretch the brain a little bit, and to find out how certain etymologies came to be. Pixilated (as opposed to pixelated), meaning whimsical or eccentric, came from the word "pixie," for example, while cremains (from the combining of the words cremate and remains) means exactly what you think. What's to Consider Late in the book, Garg introduces the concept of the malapropism ("the humorous misuse of a word by confusing it with a similar-sounding word"), which seems like an important idea in geek culture. Lots of geeks are autodidacts and readers, and we fall into the habit of mispronouncing or slightly misusing big word. (For years I said prejudice as "pre-justiced" because that was how I thought of the meaning.) To be exact in language -- both in pronunciation and in meaning -- is to have a certain kind of power. It may seem a little prissy to worry about it, but communication is one of those things in daily life that really matter, that people use to make a judgement about how smart or interesting a person is. A weblog filled with all "like, you know" kind of commentary is tedious; a witty one gets forwarded to friends.As corporate-speak becomes more and more intertwined with technology, it's up to all of us to create a discourse community (a concept a friend from Harvard told me about) that makes conversation sparkly and yet exact, even in the middle of a cube farm. But mostly, it's just fun to think about words and how they could be used. Not that it will ever happen, but maybe at the next meeting, during the next inane bizdev presentation, someone will lean over and whisper "Clearly Manager X must have been decerebrated over the holidays, or he would never have perorated like that this afternoon." And we'll all actually know what he's talking about.
Summary Anu Garg loves words, and the book reflects it. He has a natural curiosity and desire to explain bigger concepts about how language evolves and becomes useful. Playful and humorous in his writing style, he's created a book that other people will want to borrow from you.You can purchase A Word a Day from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Example
GROYNE n. ~ This is the correct term for one of those little wooden fences or brick walls that run down English beaches and out into the water for some distance, as a device to check the drifting of the same. Pronounced, and sometimes spelled, groin. "Shall we get together down by the groyne?"
I'm a bit of a wordsmith, and find that while learning words on a day by day basis is a good idea, it's actually using them that helps me retain them.
But more importantly, you can learn MANY more than 365 words a year if you look up the 'etymology' of the words you learn (the history and background of how they came into being).
Why? Well, take the word 'malapropism' that was highlighted in this review. It's find learning what it means, but if you rattle along to its dictionary.com entry you find out it comes from the word 'malaprop'. Digging further, you can learn what this really means.
Any French student knows that mal means 'bad' or wrong.
Now, à propos means 'to the subject/purpose'. But what does it also sound like? It's sounds like malappropriate doesn't it?
Now it's a lot easier to remember.
bad + appropriate + for subject = malapropism
a word that's inappropriate for the topic = malapropism.
Now next time you hit words like malice and malfunction you won't have to wonder whether mal meant good or bad.. because you looked up the etymology!
So, look up the history of words you learn, because you could easily end up being able to guess many hundreds of OTHER words simply by knowing the roots.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Noone it's/its/its'/i'ts/ets
The archives of AWAD is located here. What's the point of linking to the main site?
I'll probably buy that book just because I love the service they provide (for free) so much, but really, it's all in the archives if you want to spare a few bucks.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
I think AWAD on Slashdot is a great idea. As the first word, I suggest:
hacker n.
1. One who is proficient at using or programming a computer; a computer buff.
2. One who uses programming skills to gain illegal access to a computer network or file.
3. One who enthusiastically pursues a game or sport: a weekend tennis hacker.
That's been debated for far too long. And as for the argument that use define word meanings, dictionaries don't, that's basically shooting yourself in the foot, as everyone and his brother using "hacker" as in "cracker" is what prudists are arguing against in the first place.
Runner-ups: computer science, operating system, free, theft, intellectual property.
I have a nagging feeling that all the stuff being debated daily on Slashdot could be easily settled in a day or two if we could just agree on what certain keywords mean.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
Yeah, and he meant "Weird" and "Definitely" too. That's the point. It's a joke, son.
Let's not leave out mute. Not the inability to speak, but when used instead of moot.
Every time I hear someone say it's a mute point, I want to rip their tongue out and render them mute. Then their poor spoken grammar would be a moot point.
Sigh...I feel better now.
-- Apparently, some people are calling me 'Maurice' merely because I said something about the pompitus of love.
Also:
seperated
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect