Word of the Week: pulchritudinous

It's not as if I don't come across new words all that often; I like to think I read enough variety that I should be coming across new words on a frequent basis, but more often than not, the beautiful words I come across are those of which I already have a knowledge. Or vice …

What would you regret…?

I just wanted to share this video by YouTuber 'LindyBeige', a man whose intelligence and witticisms I much admire. Perhaps, I feel like we should take more stock of what questions are actually saying, rather than what they purport to ask. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohg2ZQcZ_h8&t=0s And what would you regret not having told someone?

Quick Takes: Two Weeks

I fully meant to be part of the blog-hop last week, but, somehow, it escaped me, and this I guess this is a culmination of last week's and this week's adventures. ~1~ I must say it every week, but my time is being swept away from me now, though not necessarily in a bad way. …

7 Quick Takes: Of Work and Play

It's Friday, which means it's that time again for 7 Quick Takes, hosted over at This Ain't the Lyceum. ~1~ This week has been a hectic one. I suppose it started as it meant to go on. Non-UK people probably didn't hear, but I bet if you live in the south of England, you would've …

Beautiful People: H’s Cathy

*gasp* What is this, an actual Beautiful People post on my blog in 2016? I know, I’ve been as lax in keeping up with the writing tag as a printer sans ink, partly because I’ve not tackled any new big novels for a while and instead have been trying to focus on the importance of …

Elizabeth Stokoe Talks About Analysing Conversations

Although this TED talk is a year old, I have only just come around to it, and I couldn't not share it. This is fascinating, and exactly what I try and think about when I am writing dialogue. It's also one of the reasons I am drawn to want to understand the pragmatics of Linguistics …

Beautiful People: The Resolutions Edition

Hello, blogosphere. 🙂 Today, I’m linking up with Cait and Sky’s beautiful monthly linkup Beautiful People. And this month it’s about the authors – new year, new goals (supposedly). So I guess that makes me a Beautiful Person. What were your writing achievements last year? I culled and rewrote so many darhlings… I got some …

Quick Takes Friday: Editing and Essays

Well, the term has officially finished for everybody, but I’ve still things to do. Seven Quick Takes is hosted this week by Written by the Finger of God. ~1~ Why? Primarily – an essay for Typical and Atypical Reading due on Monday. I’ve really enjoyed this Psychology module for this term because it links nicely …

Diction: Latinate versus Anglo-Saxon

Reblog Thursday is back! (Ish) This reblog post is from all the way back in 2012, but I only stumbled across it a couple of days ago, as I only started following Lara’s blog last year.

Ever wondered why synonyms are sometimes so very different to each other? Or why some words, especially in writing, are sesquipedalian and polysyllablic ( 😉 ) whilst others are short and simple? In this post, Lara explains how the roots of words can effect how they are read and which genres they better suit.

Kind of explains how my Latin studies effected my propensity for lengthy sentences and florid oratories! 😛

Lara Willard

Diction = word choice

Synonym = a word’s twin in meaning, e.g. “big” and “large” are synonyms.

Ever wonder why English has so many freaking synonyms? Because it’s the lovechild of Germanic and French languages. (French isn’t called a romance language for no reason. ) While having so many choices can be a wonderful thing, it can also be disastrous. With great vocabulary comes great responsibility. I’m talking to you, Christopher Paolini. Step away from the thesaurus.

You’ll notice the language split when two political candidates start campaigning and one plays the “smarter than thou” card and the other plays the “average joe” card. Smarter-than-thou is going to try to dazzle you with a academic, million-dollar vocabulary. Average Joe is going to give you a pat on the back with neighbor-speak. John Kerry vs. W. Bush. I’d watch their debates for examples if I didn’t hate politics so much.

Latinate

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Freudian Time Slip

Just something to think about for your Thursday. Does linguistic variation over time and the way society’s use of language changes it (sociolinguistics) stem from subconscious – and/or extraterrestrial – formation of what it means to be human?

Davetopia

We all, I suspect, have words and phrases we repeatedly remember differently from the majority, whether in spelling or meaning. Often, they seem to stem from mere rote, such as my mistyping ‘from’ as ‘form’ but not vice versa because of a slight difference in the speed my fingers move when touch-typing. But sometimes they seem more meaningful.

Take the case of the anthropic principle: a series of philosophical considerations in astrophysics that observations of the physical universe must be compatible with the observer. While both the literature and experts (as far as I know) apply the correct name, I have noticed a significant minority of interested laypeople call it the anthropomorphic principle.

Assuming from context it is not a deliberate reference to a theological term that received some mention in the mid-1800s, it would be easy to dismiss the confusion as stemming from ‘anthropomorphic’ being a much more common…

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