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words and images

🇺🇦✏️✒️📚📔🌜dreamer 🌕 thinker 🌕 aspirant📱📷🚴‍♀️🏕🍄🌻

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Tag Archives: words

Snippets from life

words and images Posted on May 2, 2009 by dlschirfJanuary 4, 2019

Capitalists in the making

College female 1: . . . a concept for class. That’s how Jamba Juice was created.
College female 2: Oh, wow.

When reviewers need editors

This is a book that every single parent needs to read.

Book review

[That’s single as in every parent, not as in every unmarried parent.]

Something old, something new

DUDE, WE WERE ON FIRE!

Chicago History Museum headline

Poetry in transit

My love for you is like a shiny heart-shaped metaphor about the sea.

Metra sign

Phone sex?

Take it off vibrate. I don’t pay for that.

Women speaking into her mobile phone

Capitalism redux

We have swine flu masks! We have Hallmark cards for Mom!

Electronic sign at Walgreens

College doesn’t equal smart

Some students purge or starve so they can binge drink.

RedEye

For when video games can’t keep them entertained

Offered by the Illinois Tollway at oases: The popular Captain Tollway coloring book

Whatever happened to “Billy” and “Susie”?

Willow! Montana!

Dad calling his children

When your marriage is as comfy as an old shoe

Elderly couple at the bus stop discussing the man’s choice of gym shoes:

Woman: Is there any reason you made that weird decision?
Man: If it aggravates you, that’s reason enough.

Taking the high road to higher education with no pit stops

Dedicated to the enlightenment of the human spirit
NO PUBLIC RESTROOMS

Window sign at Roosevelt University

Capitalist dreams, part III

If I major in econ. and work on Wall Street, I could be your sugar mama!

College student on mobile phone in elevator
Posted in Blog, Quotations | Tagged behavior, humor, life, quotation, words | 2 Replies

Words are all we have

words and images Posted on December 5, 2004 by dlschirfJanuary 4, 2019

Online, kids and computer aficionados are inventing a new language. For example, the now-old term “newbie” has been transformed into “n00b.” Of course, it is an ancient practice for kids to develop their own code to evade their parents’ comprehension, to bond with their peers, and to express their coolness.

The other day at a Web content management conference for business communicators, one of the speakers used the term “prog.” It took a few seconds for my mind to process this as, “You’ll need a program to do this.” Even middle-aged professionals are using the new geek shorthand and jargon, as though it is commonly understood — even if it isn’t.

As Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil noted in The Story of English, language evolves constantly, and every group has contributed to its richness. You cannot imagine American English without its Spanish, French, Italian, German, Native American, Yiddish, and other components. Now the online world has added more. Merriam-Webster, the online dictionary editors rely on, reports that “blog,” short for Web log, has been the most looked-up word in 2004. No one has online journals or diaries; they have blogs.

Recently, I have been thinking about how words have lost their power because they have been disconnected from their original meaning, context, or symbolism. If I say “glade” to you, you’re as likely to think of an air freshener as a clearing in the forest — and you probably haven’t really thought about what the brand name is intended to evoke. If I mention “Ajax,” you’d probably think first of the cleaning product before remembering that Ajax was a Greek hero of the Trojan War. Dawn, tide, joy, crest — all simple words so associated with brands and so little used in everyday conversation that their power to evoke an image or a meaning has been diluted. When was the last time you described the dawn to a friend? Talked about the tides? Shared your joy in so many words? Admired a cardinal’s crest? (Or thought about why the bird is called a cardinal?) Do you know the origin of any of these words?

I’m reading a history textbook, The Mainstream of Civilization to 1715 by Stanley Chodorow, MacGregor Knox, Conrad Schirokauer, Joseph R. Strayer, and Hans W. Gatzke. The authors mention Vandals — and they don’t mean mischievous teenagers drawing graffiti with markers. When you visit a museum, do you contemplate the origin of the word? It’s from the Greek Muses, the goddesses who inspire such arts as poetry and music. Politics comes from the Greek polis, or city-state. Indeed, if you look at the origins of many of our most common words, you’ll discover the richness of their origins and the way that language has evolved during the thousands of years of written history — and even how some words have not changed much in the course of time.

Pick your favourite words and explore their etymology. You’ll not only restore their original meaning and symbolism, but you’ll also learn about history (such as Vandals), natural history, the arts, and more. And you’ll find out that Latin is not such a dead language after all. It lives on in the very word computer.

Posted in Blog, Language | Tagged words | Leave a reply

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