What's in a Word -- A Study

Hands and Feet attributed to François Le Moyne (French, 1688–1737)
currently in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. 

(By-the-bye, if you buy tickets at the Metropolitan's ticket counter, the amount you pay is up to you. They do have suggested prices which seem to me to be most acceptable, but you truly can name your own price.)

An artist uses studies to perfect their drawing skills. Words are a writer's tools. They, too can be used in short pieces as studies.

Shakespeare wrote these words for Juliet to say. Don't you imagine he thought about it, maybe even said them out loud just to see how they sounded. "A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet" meaning that what Romeo was called, a name belonging to a rival family, mattered not at all. Alas, we all know how that worked out.

Then along comes Gertrude Stein who writes "...a rose is a rose is a rose" meaning that the word says that it is a particular flower and that is what she means it is -- a rose. A plain spoken woman, is our Ms. Stein.

But not all roses are roses and had Romeo's name been plain John Brown, it's safe to say that story would have gone another way.

Just as this flower,

Rose of Sharon

 despite its name, is not one of the more than one hundred species of roses. 

It is an hibiscus (hibiscus syriacus to be exact.)

The gentleman rose from his chair as she entered. She wore a long gown. Silk, he thought. The color? Ashes of Roses. He remembered reading that somewhere. In her dark hair, a flower of rubies. Its leaves, tiny emeralds.

"Hello, Rose," he said, extending his hand.

(Which brings to mind another word that can sound very different when read, depending on the situation -- Hello.)

###

From the bottom of the well, "Hello," she called. "Is anybody up there?"

###

He held the phone to his ear. "Hello?"

"Hello," she said. "I'm sorry."

###

She opened the basement door and peered into the gloom, "Hello? Is anybody down there?"

(At which we all yell at the screen, "HELLO! DON'T GO DOWN THERE.")

Monkeydo -- Nonfiction

Image from emery.edu

"Did you sleep well?" my husband asked.

"I did," I said. "After I put the cat out of the bedroom."

"You got us a bad cat," he said as he fished around under the cook stove for cat toys. Finding none, he wadded up a bit of aluminum foil and proceeded to play kick ball with Kočka. And fetch! Who ever heard of a cat playing fetch?

But that's not what I come here to talk about. (A corruption of a line from Arlo Guthrie's slightly more than 18 minute long song Alice's Restaurant. If you haven't heard it since you were a rebellious teen in the 60's click on the link, lean back, inhale, and enjoy. If you've never heard it, then you should. And if you think you don't have eighteen plus free minutes, you definitely should.)

What I did come here to talk about is words.

At 6:14 this a.m. my phone sounded, waking me to let me know I'd gotten a new email. Apparently I had been working on a writing problem while I slept, because I awoke with a much needed monkeydo. (You probably have the same bemused expression my husband had when I used that word to explain how successfully I'd slept. And by-the-bye, bemused pronounced bih-myoozd, is an adjective meaning bewildered or confused. It has nothing to do with the word amuse unless, of course you see it in a blog post exploring words as a means of entertainment.)

When you write, you need believable reasons for characters to say or do what the plot needs them to. That's a monkeydo. Or if you need them to be in a particular place or situation, getting them there is a monkeydo. Else you have a deus ex machina.

I don't know where the term monkeydo comes from, but I don't think I coined it myself. Which brings me to terminologicalinexactitudinarian. That's my favorite word. I googled it to use in this post. And Oh my god! this is what I found

Writers sometimes think about big words... - Claudia Weber Wagner ... 

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=427583950611349&story_fbid...

Writers sometimes think about big words -- and I don't mean terminologicalinexactitudinarian -- today I mean justice. Check out my latest blog post....

That's right. The ONLY thing Google brought up on that word was me. How many times have you googled something and it only brought up one? Much less that one being you. Talk about feeling important! I'm still smiling like the proverbial Cheshire Cat.

Now that wasn't my first reaction. My first reaction was that I must have misspelled it the exact same way I must have misspelled it in the said reference listed by Google. I thought it was a term coined by Winston Churchill, one of my favorite word-coiners. (Terminologicians?) So I connected it to his name and googled again. This time I got "about 4,050 results." Here's one:

terminological inexactitude - definition of terminological inexactitude in ... 

www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/.../terminological-inexactitud...

OxfordDictionaries.com

Definition of terminological inexactitude in English: Share this entry. email cite discuss ... Origin. First used by Winston Churchill in a Commons speech in 1906.

Now I must question my whole understanding of the word. I don't think I made it up, nor did I make up the story wrapped around the coining of the word. I'm sure I heard it somewhere -- The Dick Cavett Show, my humanities class at Central State, one of the Muppets on Sesame Street. And the context sounded so Churchill.

The story was that the politicians in Great Britain's House of Commons are not allowed to call each other 'liars' so . . . . Apparently the part of the story about using that word in Parliament is true. I googled it.

And one more thing, which has nothing to do with this post other than I got it when I googled "words images." Isn't the picture at the top of this blog beautiful?

Words Used Wrongly

It's Day W in the 2016 A to Z Blogging Challenge. (Or should I write that "W?" Or 'W?' W?) Anyway, I had trouble coming up with a topic to write about. I finally settled on writing about where I live. (Where I Live. Get it? Except I was going to title the piece "The Wonders of My World.") But I Woke up With a Whole new idea even before the cat Worried me aWake, Which he often does by playing With the picture hanging over my bedside table.

Who knew there Were so many W Words in my life?

Just before I woke I was dreaming. In the dream my friend Lou was writing the word "periodontal" and I was reading over her shoulder. I know. I know. It's rude to read over someone's shoulder.

I remember thinking her hand-writing was not what I expected. It was big and bold. Rounded like a high school girl who's practiced her letters over and over to develop her style. In the waking world, I've never seen her handwriting. Her written communications with me have all been via email.

For some reason, she was dissatisfied with the word and she looked it up in a dictionary. Yes, a hard-bound book. That didn't surprise me. She's a retired librarian and of course she would turn to a book rather than look it up on her phone. Thinking back on it, that was my husband's American Heritage Dictionary. I recognize the tattered dust jacket.

When I woke, I knew my W-Day had to be "Words Used Wrongly." I can use all those photos some other day.

Everyone has pet peeves -- drivers who change lanes without signalling, people who squeeze the toothpaste tube in the middle, husbands who hang clothes willy-nilly. Thinking people hang like shirts with like shirts, pants with pants, suits with suits. And dirty clothes should be dropped into the dirty-clothes basket not beside it. I leave lights on, get up early and don't start the coffee, and don't take the most efficient route to my destination. (You've probably noticed that last one about me.)

Anyway, using words wrongly is altogether too common. Television reporters are most likely to get me to shout the word they should have used. I'm a bit more restrained with friends, acquaintances, and strangers on the train. If I'm not tired or stressed. Or if they haven't just done it one too many times.

Canada Geese! Not Canadian. These geese were hatched right here in Colorado. They've probably never been to Canada.

No one has a "long road to hoe." Think about this. Why on earth would someone hoe a road? What does one do with a hoe? Haven't they ever seen a cotton field? Well, maybe not. But a garden, then? With rows of spinach and green beans and carrots. That's what people may have a long one of to hoe. A row of plants!

Unless I misunderstand and they're saying 'ho, talking about street walkers who actually walk a long street rather than standing on the corner.

And, No! An airplane crash does not make you feel badly unless you were in the crash and now your sense of touch is impaired. Would you feel sadly about a plane crash? No. You'd say you felt sad. Then say you feel bad about the plane crash. Adding -ly doesn't make you sound educated.

Folks, -ly makes a word an adverb. Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. So we can want something really badly. Here, badly modifies want and really modifies badly. Now, you're educated, at least about adverbs.

And the word fewer is NOT the same as less. If a quantity can be counted and one hasn't as many, then he has fewer. Minutes can be counted so fewer is proper. Time cannot be counted so less is proper.

And don't get me started on defensed instead of defended or impacted instead of affected.

I could go on for hours. And you could, too. But I'm hungry so I'm going to go make my breakfast. Or is that fix my breakfast? Prepare my breakfast!

Everything Matters

image from lynnaustin.org

When you write, everything matters.

I just finished – and that’s the wrong word – three pieces to submit to the RoseState Writing Short Course competition. Dead Birds and Broken Bottles for nonfiction. The Girl in the Reeds for short fiction, and Heroes for flash fiction.

What? No poetry? No. No poetry. My poetry days are past and gone, though I did love it. The flash-bang of the one perfect word. The staccato repetition of a sound. The flood of thought or feeling that can immerse you in a line.

But, like Hemmingway, I still labor over the mot juste. The perfect word.

In Heroes the main character Charlotte has forbidden her daughter to go to a sit-in. The child argues, whines, and wheedles. As children are wont to do. At one point I said Charlotte ‘sighed.’ BUT – as I was getting into bed, I realized ‘sighed’ is the wrong word. It gives the impression, the feeling that she is capitulating to the child which is not what I meant at all. She is NOT capitulating. Indeed, she is actively making a choice to JOIN IN, to support, to participate. Rewrite!

I stopped writing The Girl in the Reeds when I got to the end of the story. This is the first murder mystery short story I’ve ever successfully written. There’ve been many short stories, but never a murder mystery short story. Short stories are by their nature, short. And I never thought I could build a puzzle and solve it in so short a space of time.

(Murder on Ceres was originally intended to be a short story but, like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Topsy, it just “grow’d.” Until now it’s well on its way to being Dead and Gone, the second in a series of novels.)

Even so, with The Girl in the Reeds, I quit too soon. But it was truly a ‘short’ story. The action was over, the story told. All were safe and sound, at least from this mystery. But the ending did not satisfy. Like a wonderful meal. You’ve eaten. The food was good. The service, too. The ambiance pleasant. You could linger for hours, but you’ve got a life and you’ve got to go. Now you’re presented with the bill. And a chocolate covered mint.

I’d left out the after dinner mint. Rewrite!

And Dead Birds? It was the title. Originally I just called the piece Tornado. My editor didn’t like it. Too simple. Won’t catch the reader. Needs to be more.

The only thing bigger and scarier than a tornado would be a hurricane. Right? But my piece of nonfiction is about a tornado. So why would I call it Hurricane? Enough said. She, who wields a red pen as though it were a rapier. Nay! A broad sword. She said, “Think about it.” Rewrite!

And speaking of titles – this blog post is titled “Everything Matters.” Even I can plainly see it should be called “Rewrite!”