Let's play with words

On a Saturday evening years ago, a neighbor who lived on my floor sent me these 25 playful puns (HERE), which I want to share again:

1.  Dad, are we pyromaniacs?  Yes, we arson.

2.  What do you call a pig with laryngitis?  Disgruntled.

3.  Writing my name in cursive is my signature move.

4.  Why do bees stay in their hives during winter?  Swarm.

5.  If you're bad at haggling, you'll end up paying the price.

6.  Just so everyone's clear, I'm going to put my glasses on.

7.  A commander walks into a bar and orders everyone around.

8.  I lost my job as a stage designer.  I left without making a scene.

9.  Never buy flowers from a monk.  Only you can prevent florist friars.

10.  How much did the pirate pay to get his ears pierced?  A buccaneer.

11.  I once worked at a cheap pizza shop to get by.  I kneaded the dough.

12.  My friends and I have named our band "Duvet."  It's a cover band.

13.  I lost my girlfriend's audiobook, and now I'll never hear the end of it.

14.  Why is "dark" spelled with a k and not c?  Because you can't see in the dark.

15.  Why is it unwise to share your secrets with a clock?  Well, time will tell.

16.  When I told my contractor I didn't want carpeted steps, he gave me a blank stare.

17.  Bono and The Edge walk into a Dublin bar and the bartender says, "Oh no, not U2 again."

18.  Prison is just one word to you, but for some people, it's a whole sentence.

19.  Scientists got together to study the effects of alcohol on a person's walk, and the result was staggering.

20.  I'm trying to organize a hide and seek tournament, but good players are really hard to find.

21.  I got over my addiction to chocolate, marshmallows, and nuts.  I won't lie, it was a rocky road.

22.  What do you say to comfort a friend who's struggling with grammar?  There, their, they're.

23.  I went to the toy store and asked the assistant where the Schwarzenegger dolls are, and he replied, "Aisle B, back."

24.  What did the surgeon say to the patient who insisted on closing up their own incision?  Suture self.

25.  I've started telling everyone about the benefits of eating dried grapes.  It's all about raisin awareness.

Week in Review

• Two things were on my TWOsday agenda, HERE.
• My book beginning on Friday was about making the world a happier place, HERE.

Hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz,

we bloggers gather at separate computers in different time

zones — to share what we have been doing during the week.

Musing about a couple of words

Someone left this comment on one of my posts recently:

"That first line grab my attrition.  The summary of the book has me intrigue."

My first thought was that the person is not a native English speaker (no past tense for either verb).  My second thought was that "attrition" and "intrigue" are interesting word choices that would NOT be used by someone who knows very little English.  Later, I also wondered if AI (artificial intelligence) had something to do with the comment.  Here are those two words defined:

attrition / əˈtriSHən / noun = Attrition is the gradual reduction or wearing away of something, commonly referring to workforce reduction (by employees leaving or being fired), loss of participants in research, or weakening of an enemy through constant pressure in warfare (war of attrition).  It happens due to various factors like retirement, poor management, lack of advancement (in business), or simply friction and erosion (in nature).

  

intrigue / verb / inˈtriɡ = As a verb, intrigue means to arouse someone's curiosity or interest in something, to captivate someone's attention or make them want to know more.

*Note:  I'm sure the person who commented meant "attention" for the first word I listed above, as in this second definition, so the first line had grabbed his or her attention.

A tittle or two for today

tit·tle /ˈtid(ə)l / noun = a tiny amount or part of something.  The dot over the lowercase "i" and the lowercase "j" is called a tittle.  It may be a blend of "tiny" and "little."

Thinking about words, as usual

Brioche (bree-aash) is a light sweet pastry or bun.  For lunch today, I plan to order an Avocado Panini.  Our Cafe's menu describes that as "avocado, munster cheese, onion and tomato on freshly baked ciabatta bread."  Wiktionary says "ciabatta" is a broad, flat, white Italian bread.  One day I asked if I could have it on brioche instead, and now prefer it that way.  The illustrations I found show brioche (above) and ciabatta (below).

Compared to brioche, I think ciabatta bread is hard, especially those corners.  That's why I order the softer buns now.  I used to throw away the corners of the ciabatta bread.

Dream thoughts

As I woke up this morning, even before opening my eyes, I realized that I was repeating, "who, what, when, where, why, and how."  Yes, in this order, slightly different from the illustration I found online.  It was like a mantra.  I just lay there, without rolling over or anything, repeating it in my head:  "Who, what, when, where, why, and how."  Like a song.  And no, my sing-songy words did NOT have a question mark at the end.  Simply "who, what, when, where, why, and how."  Well, I knew I was a word person, but a dream about half a dozen words repeated over and over?  That's a new one for me, the wordsmith.

Musing about a local cemetery

Movers and Shakers, Scalawags and Suffragettes: Tales from Bellefontaine Cemetery ~ by Carol Ferring Shepley, 2008, history (Missouri), 384 pages

The history of Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis is told through the stories of those who are buried there.  The book is organized into sections:

1. Movers and Shakers
2. Scalawags and Nortorious Women
3. Suffragettes
4. Fur Traders
5. Civil War Patriots
6. Captains of Industry
7. Professionals
8. Titans of Transportation
9. Artists and Architects
10. Men of Sports
11. Phulanthropists
12. Cemetery Lore
13. Art and Architecture of Note

Besides being a history of a significant place, this book is a guidebook to St. Louis and its notable residents.  Because so many of St. Louis’s leading citizens (such as William Clark, James Buchanan Eads, Susan Blow, and Adolphus Busch) are buried in Bellefontaine, the book is a tale of the city.

Like lightning

Lightning sailboats are 19-feet long.  I was having lunch with a friend and the conversation somehow got around to my former boat.  My friend doesn't like the water, so she wouldn't go out with me even if I still had that boat.  But our lunch-time chatter became a search on this blog to see if I'd ever written about it.  We named our sailboat Blue Streak.  Can you guess why?  Well, yes, lightning, but also because we talked a blue streak before deciding to get it.

I used to launch that boat into the waters of Lake Chickamauga, which was formed by Chickamauga Dam across the Tennessee River.  We sailed in and out of Privateer Yacht Club, back in the day.  I went out on the water with family, not to race other boats, but this was the best picture I could find online.

Though I'm sitting here in my easy chair with my computer on my lap, I can still feel the breeze blowing through my hair and the wind tipping the boat with its power.  Passengers (uhm, crew) have to lean off the other side to help keep the boat upright.  "Hey, kids, hold on tight!  Wheeee!"

I learned about furling (and unfurling) sails, how to sail into the wind, and how to tow that big boat behind my station wagon.  Because we were on a major waterway, we also had to constantly watch out for bigger boats, like barges heading towards the lock at the dam.  We especially had to watch for speedboats racing each other, often unaware that a sailboat cannot dart out of their way.

"Don't rock the boat" comes to mind, as those racing speedboats would leave a wake that actually did rock our boat.  It also "knocked the wind out of our sails."  Are you familiar with those nautical-sounding terms?

• If you rock the boat, you do or say something that will upset people or cause problems.
• If you knock the wind out of someone's sails, you cause that person to lose confidence in what they were saying or doing.

Road, rode, rowed

I was reading Greg Freeman: A Gentleman, A Gentle Man (2003, newspaper columns by Greg Freeman, 191 pages).  On pages 132-134, he wrote about Trevelyn Zander, a man who began a coast-to-coast trip in 1999 — on a lawn tractor.  He pulled a small trailer that said, "Help mow down prostate cancer with research and education."

Trevelyn had been diagnosed with prostate cancer a couple of years earlier, had his prostate removed, and wanted to raise money for research and education.  That's the photo of him I found with his obituary; he died in November 2022 at the age of 95.  He lived over two decades more.

So why am I sharing that particular story?  Because donors who gave $500 would get a T-shirt saying, "I know a guy who road a lawn tractor coast to coast."  Read that quote again, if you missed the homophone.

Word of the Day

homophone /ˈhoʊməfoʊn / noun = a word that sounds the same as another word but has a different meaning and/or spelling.  Examples:  "Flour" and "flower" are homophones because they are pronounced the same, but you can’t bake a cake using daffodils.  Other examples are write and right, meet and meat, peace and piece, bare and bear.

You have to listen to the context to know which word someone means if homophones are spoken aloud.  If they say they like your jeans (genes?), they’re probably talking about your pants and not your height and eye color, but you would have to figure it out from the situation.

Credit:  "Homophone."  Dictionary, Vocabulary.com.  Accessed 13 Feb. 2024.

Back to the fellow on the lawn tractor.  Yes, he "rode" a lawn tractor, but he did it on the "road."  You know how I love playing with words, and I immediately thought of a third word that sounds the same:  "rowed."  I have no idea what kind of lawn tractor the man had, but there's an example of a more recent one at the top.  Should I also show you a boat being "rowed"?  Okay, here's a man rowing a dinghy:

As a wordsmith who loves words, I think I'd love to read this book

The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary ~ by Sarah Ogilvie, 2023, words, 384 pages

The Oxford English Dictionary is one of the greatest achievements humans have made.  Yet, curiously, its creators are almost never considered.  Who were the people behind this unprecedented book?  As Sarah Ogilvie reveals, they include three murderers, a collector of pornography, the daughter of Karl Marx, a president of Yale, a radical suffragette, a vicar who was later found dead in the cupboard of his chapel, an inventor of the first American subway, a female anti-slavery activist in Philadelphia . . . and thousands of others.

Of deep transgenerational and broad appeal, a thrilling literary detective story that, for the first time, unravels the mystery of the endlessly fascinating contributors the world over who, for over seventy years, helped to codify the way we read and write and speak.  It was the greatest crowdsourcing endeavor in human history, the Wikipedia of its time.  It's a celebration of words, language, and people, whose eccentricities and obsessions, triumphs, and failures enriched the English language.

Update on 9/21/23:  Thanks, Helen (see comment below).  I was not aware of the book by Simon Winchester on this subject.  He's an excellent writer.  Here's more information about his book.

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary~ by Simon Winchester, 1998, words, 256 pages

The Professor and the Madman (a New York Times Notable Book) is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary — and literary history.

The making of the OED was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken.  As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray, was stunned to discover that one man, Dr. W. C. Minor, had submitted more than ten thousand.  But their surprise would pale in comparison to what they were about to discover when the committee insisted on honoring him:  Dr. Minor, an American Civil War veteran, was also an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.

William Safire wrote that the book was masterfully researched and eloquently written, "the linguistic detective story of the decade" (New York Times Magazine).  This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews and recommended reading.

I love words

ex·u·ber·ant / iɡˈzo͞ob(ə)rənt, eɡˈzo͞ob(ə)rənt / adjective = filled with or characterized by a lively energy and excitement.  Example: "The exuberant crowds welcomed him."

ex·or·bi·tant / iɡˈzôrbətnt, eɡˈzôrbətnt / adjective = unreasonably high (when speaking of a price or amount charged).  Example:  "I didn't go to that concert because of the exorbitant price of tickets."

(You may wonder why I'm featuring these words together.  I recently overheard someone say to another person at her table, "And the cost was not exuberant."  I knew what she meant, and probably her listener did, too.  But it made me smile and gave me a couple of words to share on the blog today.)

Musing about words

This exchange is from Tumblr:

• How long does someone have to be dead before it's considered archeology instead of grave robbing?
• As an archeologist, I find this a very awkward question.

When I looked for something to illustrate this exchange, this 914-page book was one of the first things that came up.  Although I have no intentions of reading (or buying) this huge book, I just had to use this "forbidden" image.  😃  Hey, it's better than a photo of a cemetery!

Someone else posted this exchange from Reddit; in other words, they read it on Reddit:

• What are your views on atheism?
• It's a non-prophet organization.

Monday Musing, like The Thinker

Words and ideas

Looking at those letters, I noticed the word "TROVE" starting with the two fingers and thought, "What do I have a trove of?"

Word of the Day

trove / noun = a store of valuable or delightful things.  Example:  I have a trove of good books!

But back to our original full word:  introvert.  Let's think about that word a bit today.

Yesterday, I was talking with someone who said she is also an introvert.  It doesn't mean we don't like people; it means we need alone time to re-charge our batteries.  Have you ever taken the Myer-Briggs test?  It shows that I'm an INTJ.

t

What about books?  This is a BOOK blog, after all.

I saw The Stranger by Albert Camus in the Crown Center library yesterday, so I checked it out to read again.  It was first published in France in 1942, and I first read it decades ago.  I'll tell you more about it in the coming days.  This b&w photo shows the author — Albert Camus.

Another book I re-read recently gave me lots to think about:  Writing as a Second Language by Donald Davis.  Here are passages that made me stop and think:

1. We say, "The book was better than the movie" because we already made our own movie as we read along. ... Put another way, a story is a picture I have in my head that I would like for you to have in your head" (p. 64).
2. The author says that "listeners are like magnets that pull our stories from us" (p. 103).
3. Here's one of the writing prompts he shared:  "If you could build one new room onto your house, what kind of room would it be and what would you put there?

Another book I pondered was a library board book:  Baby Loves Quantum Physics! by Ruth Spiro, which says on three pages:

1. Maybe Cat is asleep.  Shhh...
2. Maybe Cat is awake.  meow!
3. In quantum physics, until Baby looks in the box, Cat is both asleep and awake.

One of my friends said, "You read toddler books now?"  Maybe I am in my second childhood now.

Thinking about a couple of books I've found during my move

Seizing the Apple: A Feminist Spirituality of Personal Growth ~ by Denise Lardner Carmody, 1984, feminism, viii + 184 pages

By creatively employing the insights of feminist psychologists, novelists, and what she calls the new transcendentalist school of Lonergan, Voegelin, and Rahner, the author (1935-2023) offers us a distinctly feminist spirituality — one that's characterized by self-transcendence or personal growth.  The model she uses is that of a helix or upward spiral, and the goal is to establish harmony between the demands of freedom on the one side — the freedom to push ahead, stretch one's horizons, seize the apple — and the call to loving holism, caring, making connections on the other side.  Moving from theory to practice in the last part of the book, the author applies her model to four zones of personal life:  prayer, work, family life, and politics.

Word of the Day #1

ho·lism / noun = the theory that parts of a whole are in intimate interconnection, such that they cannot exist independently of the whole, or cannot be understood without reference to the whole, which is thus regarded as greater than the sum of its parts.  Holism is often applied to mental states, language, and ecology.  Example:  "Carmody's goal was to establish harmony between the demands of freedom (on one side) and loving holism, caring, and making connections (on the other side)."

Working but Poor: America's Contradiction ~ by Sar A. Levitan and Isaac Shapiro, 1987, political science / economics, ix + 142 pages

The American ethos equates work with material progress, but nine million Americans labor in poverty.  Two million of them work at year-round, full-time jobs.  "In a nation as affluent as the United States," the authors say, "the persistence of the working poor challenges the fairness of the rules governing the distribution of economic rewards."

I unearthed a stack of books I got in the 1980s; I have never read either of these.  I bought the upper one like new and paid only $2.00 for it on sale in 1986.  The original Cokesbury price was $10.95, but today this paperback would cost me $17.61 online.

The lower one was brand new and still in shrink wrap, but a half-torn-off price sticker was taped to the front.  That may means I bought it on sale, but maybe not.  Since I never opened it, it's still a "new" book decades later!

Word of the Day #2

shrink-wrap / verb = package (an article) by enclosing it in clinging transparent plastic film that shrinks tightly on to it.  Example:  "The Johns Hopkins University Press carefully shrink-wrapped this book."

Dog puzzle toy

I have a friend whose dog barks whenever she leaves the apartment and sometimes even when she's there.  I read that puzzle toys can keep a dog occupied and prevent them from barking.  The idea is to give them something to do so they'll stop barking.  Can anyone confirm this works?  If so, I'll share the information with my friend.

This puzzle I found online dispenses food treats when the dog nuzzles those round white things until a door opens to reveal treats the dog can eat.  Is this the right kind of puzzle?

Word of the Day

nuz·zle / verb = to rub or gently push against something with nose and mouth.  Example:  "The dog nuzzles those movable things until a door reveals treats."

Duvet days

The main difference between a duvet and a comforter is that a comforter is just one piece of bedding while a duvet requires two separate pieces — an insert and cover.  A comforter is usually quilted with the filling evenly distributed, while a duvet has an insert that works as the fill.  Wait, you are thinking, what's this got to do with books?  After all, this is a book blog.

I read in Amy Azzarito's 2020 book The Elements of a Home (subtitled:  Curious Histories behind Everyday Household Objects, from Pillows to Forks) that some employers in the United Kingdom offer their staff  "duvet days" (p. 112).  That's like mental health days or personal days in the United States.  Letting folks skip work occasionally to stay in bed sounds good to me, though it wasn't a thing when I was still working.  I wondered about the difference between a duvet and a comforter and found the top illustration HERE.)  I'm being wordy, as usual, but now we know.

Thinking about gratitude

When life seems negative, I realize I need to start thinking positively.  One way I've discovered to change my attitude is to start thinking of things that I'm grateful for.

(1)  I'm grateful that it is now okay to use the preposition "for" at the end of a sentence.

So I think I'll list a few things for which I am grateful.  (See?  I can also write a sentence the way my teachers taught me.)

(2)  I'm grateful for teachers.

(3)  I'm also grateful that some things change, like how we use words.

(4)  I'm grateful for my friends, even those I've never met (in person, anyway).

Have you read what I have at the bottom of my right sidebar?  "You might be a book blogger if you've never met some of your closest friends."  For example, I've never met Helen of Helen's Book Blog, but I know her and her family, in a way.  Are you one of my book blogger friends?

Ghosts, anyone?

The Saturday Night Ghost Club ~ by Craig Davidson, 2019, fiction, 224 pages

This is a coming-of-age story about a group of misfit kids who spend an unforgettable summer investigating local ghost stories and urban legends.  Growing up in 1980s Niagara Falls — a seedy but magical, slightly haunted place — Jake Baker spends most of his time with his uncle Calvin, a kind but eccentric enthusiast of occult artifacts and conspiracy theories.  The summer Jake turns twelve, he befriends a pair of siblings new to town, and so Calvin decides to initiate them all into the "Saturday Night Ghost Club."

But as the summer goes on, what began as a seemingly light-hearted project may ultimately uncover more than any of its members had imagined.  This novel poignantly examines the haunting mutability of memory and storytelling, as well as the experiences that form the people we become.

Word of the Day

mutability = mu·ta·bil·i·ty / noun = liability or tendency to change.  Example:  "I'm curious about the mutability of memory and storytelling in that book above."

Thursday Thoughts

What kind of beans do NOT grow in a garden?  Jelly beans!

Maybe I should stop thinking about jelly beans!

No, no, no!  I'm thinking about WORDS, so I'm a WORDSMITH.

I'm also a BOOKIE of sorts, as you can see here:

A-B-C-D-E-F-G . . . Ha, I realized that I was singing the alphabet song as I typed.  I read this on Buzzfeed:  "Cassettes had side A and side B, therefore it was kind of logical that its successor would be the CD."

Café Conversations ~ I placed my order and put a tented sign on a table announcing "Café Conversations."  Some of my friends actually came over to see what was going on.  Maybe I started a new thing, but how often to meet?  Weekly or monthly or bi-weekly or what?