Tag: language

Word Wednesday: Circular Logic

Word Wednesday: Circular Logic

It should come as no surprise that I subscribe to two different “word of the day” emails – I love language and jump at any chance I get to expand my vocabulary. Sometimes I already know the “word of the day”, and other times they’re so obscure I can’t find a use for it in my everyday life, but file it away in my brain for later use. Once in awhile a word comes into my inbox that is new to me and fits perfectly into my life – and today’s word is one of those.

Being a word nerd from a very young age (I was reading chapter books in kindergarten and read the Hobbit for a grade 2 book report when the rest of my class chose Clifford or Franklin books) means that I have a pretty decent vocabulary, and the fact that I took Latin and French in high school helps me figure out words I haven’t come across before. I have a predilection for words that roll off the tongue nicely. Some words just feel right as you say them, and others just always feel awkward and no matter how much you try to make yourself like them, you find yourself using them less and less. I have tons of words that fall into this category – I still try to use them but they never feel right.

%{include image.html url=“/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/coollogo_com-187152691.png”” alt=“Stylized word Lexical1” description=““}

Words have a tendency of being tied up in their grammatical rules and losing favour because of that. I’ve often wished there was a way to look at words on their own, separated from all the grammatical constraints that can render them useless. It turns out there is a word for that. The fact that there’s a word specifically for the study of words and vocabulary of a language separate from grammatical aspects, means that I’m not the only one who wants this kind of information. We should start a club or something. There would have to be a ban on word games though, us word nerds can get super serious and uber competitive about Scrabble, Bananagrams, or Upwords, and that wouldn’t be much fun. Hrm. A word nerd club. I’m going to put that on my “great ideas” list that I never seem to manage to get to. How does one start a club anyway? Can anyone start a club? Related idea: a club for people who like to go off on tangents… or have ADHD… or both. I could totally be president of that club.

Squirrel! Wait… what was I saying?

Back to my word though. It’s a fairly recent word. though significantly older than grok was when I talked about it last month. Lexical dates from the mid 19th century, when I suppose people had time and the literacy skills to start thinking about words more. It comes from the Greek root lexikos which means “of or relating to words”. Not to be confused with the Latin root word Lex which relates to laws or ruling.

Lexical (lex·i·cal) adjective

Of or relating to the words or vocabulary of a language

March 17, 2016
#WordWednesday: The sequel

#WordWednesday: The sequel

Okay, So it’s looking like this may stick. At least for the next little while. Today’s word is one that I love using and as many of my friends will attest, I have been known to seek out occasions to use this word. Granted, sometimes I have had to shoehorn in in but it’s such a fun word, it’s totally worth the effort. You might say that playing with words is my thing. It’s my happy place, something I do for my own personal enjoyment.

In other words, playing around on the linguistic jungle gym is my bailiwick.

Today’s Word Wednesday is Bailiwick

There are plenty of synonyms I could use, wheelhouse, domain, even ‘thing’ – as in ‘it’s my thing’ but bailiwick just sounds so cool. It rolls off the tongue. I was surprised to learn that the word bailiwick isn’t as old as I thought it was – it’s late middle English so not exactly new but not a Latin based word either. It does have a secondary meaning (which used to be the primary meaning) which is the one that it literally translates to. The original meaning of bailiwick was “an area under the supervision of a bailiff (this could be a mayor, sheriff, or other official instead of the bailiff we think of today – though I still picture Bull from Night Court whenever I hear that word).” The origin of the word is partly French – the word bailie refers to the official who was ordered to supervise an area.

Not this kind of bailiff…

In France, this area was called a bailliage but the English never liked to steal a word outright, they always made a few changes. When they adopted the use of the word bailie, they added the word wik to the end. Wik in middle English meant village (it’s also the root word for a town name like Greenwich – literally ‘green village’) so bailiwick became the area or village that fell under the supervision of the bailie. Surprisingly, there are still a few official bailiwicks left in the United Kingdom today – the islands of Jersey and Guernsey are legally bailiwicks.

With only two bailiwicks of the traditional sense left, it is the new meaning that has me using this word whenever I can. The modern definition of bailiwick is a person’s “specific sphere of interest, or area of expertise”. So, really, writing, and more specifically, grammar is my bailiwick. What’s yours?

Bailiwick – (bai·li·wick ) Noun

i) A person’s specific sphere of interest or area of expertise.

ii) The area in which a bailiff has jurisdiction.

June 10, 2015
#WordWednesday

#WordWednesday

Okay, So I know that #WordlessWednesday is a thing, but I’m a writer by trade and I love using the perfect word for the situation so I’m going to try to do some #WordWednesday posts where I talk about a word and how it is used and / or misused. Maybe it will be a regular thing or maybe it will happen once a month. I’m not sure – but I love words and I love learning more about my favourite words.

Some of the words, I’ll choose because of the way they sound, others because I like the usage, others because I’ve stumbled across them and either had to look them up or work out the meaning for myself. This one I think I first learned while perusing (another fun word), Wordsmith.com ’s Word of the Day archives a few years ago.

Today’s #WordWednesday word is perendinate

Okay, so I’m a total Latin geek – I took it in high school and in university simply because I love learning new words and Latin is a great basis for that – and any word that makes me think back to those Latin root words is going to make my day. I remembered when we learned that in Latin, cras means tomorrow. Suddenly the word procrastinate made a lot more sense – it literally means to put off until tomorrow. Which is all well and good, but what if you want to put something off until the day AFTER tomorrow? Surely there’s no English word for that right? Except there is! You guessed it, that word that means to put something off until the day after tomorrow is perendinate. The Latin root of this word is obviously dies or day. From there we get perendie which means “on the day after tomorrow” and ta-da – to perendinate is the action (verb form) of this, which means to put something off until the day after tomorrow.

What’s on your to-do list?

So, to butcher an old proverb, never procrastinate when you could perendinate instead.

Perendinate – (puh-REN-di-nayt) Verb. To put off until the day after tomorrow.

There you go. Now use it wisely and impress your friends and family.

June 3, 2015