Abrahamic, air rage, amuse-bouche, annus horribilis, brain freeze, bushmeat, Chinglish, cojones, hinky, false memory... all waiting to be used.
“He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."
( H.L. Mencken writing about US President Warren G. Harding)
Wow, that is an amazing speech-and I never heard of it before.
Fwiw, despite the jibes about Harding above, Mencken would have agreed strongly with that speech-he was an anti-New Deal conservative, but also believed in promoting black education and entrepreneurship, and indeed befriended and promoted the work of, many black authors and journalists.
The thing that stands out to me most about this speech, is the higher level of sophistication and literacy being entrusted to public consumption. The dumbing-down of America has a lot to do with our society's inability to communicate, or to think its way out of complex situations. It is as if the Powers That Were decided the average American shouldn't be literate, but instead should strap on the feed-bag of whatever propaganda the elites had pre-selected and pre-digested for them.
If I recall correctly, James Loewen (R.I.P.) wrote about this issue in his mid-90's work Lies My Teacher Told Me, specifically regarding that the level of sophistication/literacy in popular journalism was in free-fall. Although, I also recall his book repeating some of the popular "lies", including the one about Harding being inducted into the KKK on the White House lawn. I don't have my copy handy, so I could be mistaken, but so it goes.
Oh yeah, Wilson was a real piece of work. I think Princeton U. finally removed his name from their buildings. I would not be at all surprised if he was Klan scum.
Mencken is a brilliant writer but I often wonder if he ever looked in the mirror. He was a bastard and an arrogant son of a bitch.
I write knowing who and what I am. I don't think my autism has anything to with it. My parents taught me to look at my own faults before enjoying the foibles of others.
Too many Americans love HL Menken and think DeSantis, Trump and Reagan were wits not imbeciles.
I am reminded of one of my favourite poems written by one of my favourite poets.
he wrote on seeing a louse on a Lady's bonnet in church
This is my favourite reading but you may prefer the English Translation to the original Scottish
In the last line I tried too and to and they both work well but don't share a common meaning. Sometimes two and two don't make four. English is not an easy language to understand but thankfully Americans speak New English or as I learned it sixty years ago Newspeak and they don't like to read it is too much like work.
Wasn’t Noah Webster sentenced to death in absentia in England for adulterating the English language? Although I’ve lived in this country for many years I remain stubbornly English and continue to take great delight in the differences in usage and, in particular, slang usage. Many years ago I was sitting in a bar in Boston with some of my rugby club teammates and started telling a story to them. My opening line was, “so I was sitting there with a fag in my mouth”. Got a number of confused looks from my American teammates.
I am 75 and have lived all over English speaking north America. Time is a major factor as North America has urbanized and TV has destroyed many urban and local rural dialects.. I am 5 and a half hours drive north of Boston. It useed to be common in Quebec to see people with fags in their mouths but now you must go into a closet to put a fag in your mouth but in Quebec there is no such thing as gender, race or religion but alas we don't speak English so the joke doesn't go well in Quebec where we speak our own special languages and we have a whole department for policing language.
So much of English comes from the French and for those of who speak more than one language we can observe word origins. We have tongue police.
In Quebec it is permissible to put a fag in your mouth as long as you don't set her on fire. That is a joke that went off in my head. In 2023 where I live cigarettes have a gender people not so much.
In Quebec it is illegal to put gender race or religion on a birth certificate because we citizens are free to decide if those appellations. In Quebec we do grow wines but appellations are non controlle we are free to call ourselves what we choose to call ourselves. I am a me.
I have a whole government to service my special needs it is called the Department of Autistic affairs because in Quebec autism is real there is no such thing as "normal." We are free to be who we are not what we are. In Quebec we go in to closets to pray so our children do not need to go into closets to make love.
In Johnson's Dictionary I am a Hebrew Rabbin and the wisest of the wise but at seventy five I can still look in the mirror and smile and laugh at human hubris.
In Quebec we must go into closets to pray so our children don't need to go into closets to make love.
In Quebec we don't allow religious zealots on the bench and you have a zealot majority on your Supreme Court.
Do you want to buy a church?
Ours are for sale and they are historical relics. Our churches need people to take care of them and preserve them. OMG in Sherbrooke is a fine restaurant and the library in Magog was once a busy cathedral.
I used to visit Montreal back in the 1980s for the Montreal Irish rugby festival, not sure I would want to do that today. I watch Canadian PM questions time occasionally and there does seem to be some hope in that the opposition leader seems to be less of a fascist than Trudeau. Other than that, pretty much everything I see from Trudeau and state governments seems to be designed to suppress any contrary opinions. The latest example is the bill which demands that on line content must be Canadian or some such nonsense. Of course the legislation doesn’t define what that means but does provide for the establishment of a censorship board appointed by the government and with a complete lack of transparency. I suspect it’s gonna get worse before it gets any better but the same can easily be said about my homeland and my adopted country.
In Canada the one thing that unites us is Ukraine. Our far right and far left prefer Zelenskiy to Biden. We are all looking at Zelenskiy to lead us to the promised land. I am totally in love with Zelensky. The first time I saw him he was playing the piano on youtube and I didn't know his name. I said Diogenes has returned now all we need is Alexander the Great.
I don't care much for conservatives I don't understand their insistence on their right to be insane but even Boris embraces Zelensky and he is definitely a follower of Doctor Samuel Johnson. Talking about old school and Newspeak.
Here are George Soros and our ethical philosopher and chief our Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland talking Ukraine in 2015 at the Institute for New Economic thinking in 2015 talking about the Future of Europe This is what liberalism or wokeism is all about. Of course America is sore afraid of Soros.
Samuel Johnson was an arrogant son of a bitch and a bastard and he helped write the constitution . He wrote the dictionary. He was a conservative philosopher and an 18th century HL Mencken.
His biography is still considered the ultimate biography but his Taxation no Tyranny is fascism before fascism became a word.
On top of the pyramid sits the English middle class because it is the will of God.
Before I forget remembering that Americans don't know history. The Toleration Act and the Reign of William Mary turned the Empire into a parliamentary democracy. The monarchy lost all of its powers the parliaments were the source of all power.
1645- Englands Birth Right Justified; 1649 - An Agreement Of The People; 1688 - Bill Of Rights Act; 1707 - Act Of Union. Many of these agreements and constitutional arguments owe their genesis to the Levellers and “free born” John Lilburne. They are the basis of English constitutional law and strongly inform the US constitution and the Bill of Rights. Although they are still the law of the land they have been ignored by successive Conservative governments in favour of the suppression of free speech and the censorship of any outlet or individual which dares to challenge the official narrative. People are routinely imprisoned in Britain for expressing their opinion, potential trouble makers are preemptively detained without warrant or charge as leading members of the Republic organisation were on the night prior to the coronation, independent journalists are detained for hours so that digital devices can be “scraped” one again without warrant or charges, a protester is arrested and detained for having a sign with nothing written on it. All of this is illegal but then Britain is going down the same road to fascism which Canada has already travelled. Our media completely ignores protests against authoritarian governments all across Western Europe. Meanwhile Hungary is the only Western government which actually asked its people for their opinions on sanctioning Russia and supplying arms to Ukraine. The Hungarian people gave a resounding no to both.
America is a nation of Roundheads and Cavaliers. A good friend whom I trust talks to his brother in Vienna and their mother passed away recently in Budapest and I am told that Orban is 110% fascist but Hungary is Hungary and the University of Central Europe fled Budapest.
We never discuss the most important book in the English Language in 1776. Paradise Lost by the Unitarian John Milton. Isn't this divide the same old query?
Is it better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.
Samuel Johnson the great literary critic hated Milton. Johnson was a conservative fascist. Burke was a Whig, Franklin was scoundrel and Voltaire was a Frenchman and Boswell was a Scott.
After the genocide in Ireland it was the Tories that begath both liberals and conservatives. America has two Whig parties and no liberals or conservatives.
Jon Stewart I believe was the first to call McConnell the “turtle” bc he moved so slow on upgrading health care for first responders and McConnells face screams turtle .. Jon has since gone on to intersect a turtle with a bat to joke about the origins of COVID in Wuhan...He likes saying turtle.
Matt’s style of writing is what lured me in many years ago. It was actually a sports piece, something about which I know or care little! Surely a testament to his talent.
“Teachers often say it’s a no-no to make readers look something up, but I got an extra laugh pausing to learn Humbert was comparing Lolita’s lounging mother to a seal.” -This is the gut laugh joy I get from Mencken.
I love everything you write: pragmatic yet with flair. I’ve come to writing for my actual job later in my life - and it’s tech writing (yawn). But as I look to improve at work, your writing tips are getting filed alongside my favorite mentor’s. Thanks for this. Please keep them coming.
There's something to be said for tech writing. In my limited experience, I have mostly seen it done poorly.
It's a challenge to get complicated ideas across. You want to keep it lean (Matt's rule #1), but there can be many important details to convey. And if you can somehow keep the boringness down without being cute, that's the ultimate.
---
I'm a retired accountant and have written many long financial reports and procedure manuals over my career.
I would occasionally take an hour or two over a weekend to write some short fiction, just to spread my wings (waiting for Matt's guidance on cliches). It was refreshing.
Good to know what you are doing! I was a science grant program manager for many years, and one of my difficult tasks was taking writing by a scientist about a new discovery and converting the information to a form that management could understand.
Oh I agree especially about reading the work of other great writers. It’s surprising how much vocabulary and style sinks in subconsciously and reemerges later. I sometimes think I collect words the way that others collect baseball cards. (Platypus has always been one of my favorites.) I’ve recently started studying the etymology of words. Thank you for the effort you put into your craft and sharing what you’ve learned. While I can admit that text messages serve a useful purpose, if I was reduced to reading nothing but texts and tweets filled with acronyms and devoid of punctuation, my appetite for delicious words in a well-crafted sentence would starve to death.
Can't wait to dive in to the list. I'm in agreement. It's frabjous to look up new words. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a slubberdegullion. Okay, that's going a bit too far. 😂 Recently learned my sister is a pluviophile. Well, I knew she was, but I didn't know what it was called. Thanks, Matt!
Well, I'd never use lickspittle; smellfungus; snollygoster; ninnyhammer; mumpsimus; milksop; mollycoddle; hobbledehoy; pettyfogger to address anyone in a Matt's Thread and for sure not someone whose sister is a pluviophile.
Speaking of which, how one could resist remembering Umberto Eco and his "tetrapyloctomy" or the art of splitting a hair four ways? His "mechanical avunculogratulation," for example, is a set of instructions on how to build machines for greeting uncles.
But what would wordsmiths be without a mathematician? Charles Babbage's letter to Alfred Tennyson:
"Sir:
In your otherwise beautiful poem “The Vision of Sin” there is a verse which reads – “Every moment dies a man, Every moment one is born.” It must be manifest that if this were true, the population of the world would be at a standstill. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of that of death.
I would suggest that in the next edition of your poem you have it read – “Every moment dies a man, Every moment 1 1/16 is born.” The actual figure is so long I cannot get it onto a line, but I believe the figure 1 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry.
As an individual of limited means and modest constitution, I would never dare to criticize or engage in idle talk, meaningless chatter, or nonsensical babble with someone as refined and sophisticated as Wyllamizer TootToot.
Out of all the words to use in this world, I can think of none fitting to top your response. Well written, sir! But I will pour out feelings.. Poor mathematicians. To miss out on meaning because... Math... 😔
I was pretty happy with myself when, on another blog, I described California as being at the bottom of the hole, digging for China like a badger. Upon reconsideration, I should have said "rabid badger." Oh well, next time.
This is great. I've also enjoyed just making words up. Sometimes it's obvious what they mean in context, and they can be far more fun and colorful than any existing word.
Like "xenophobiated".
It may be a post on this is coming up, as it's a common practice for those who like language.
Yep, as Paul himself said in Romans 4:17. . . . “ and calleth those things which be not as though they were.” Every word ever used somebody made up from nothing.
Abrahamic, air rage, amuse-bouche, annus horribilis, brain freeze, bushmeat, Chinglish, cojones, hinky, false memory... all waiting to be used.
“He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."
( H.L. Mencken writing about US President Warren G. Harding)
But Harding's substance was magnificent!
His address in Birmingham, Alabama, on October 26, 1921, is considered one of the ~25 most important Presidential addresses of all time.
If you haven't read this speech, it is here:
https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/warren-g-harding-address-at-birmingham-speech-text/
His major point starts in paragraph 12 and continues through the rest of the speech.
It is truly remarkable that President Harding made this speech in the very center of the deep south.
Wow, that is an amazing speech-and I never heard of it before.
Fwiw, despite the jibes about Harding above, Mencken would have agreed strongly with that speech-he was an anti-New Deal conservative, but also believed in promoting black education and entrepreneurship, and indeed befriended and promoted the work of, many black authors and journalists.
Thank you for adding this information.
Thank you for this recommendation and link.
The thing that stands out to me most about this speech, is the higher level of sophistication and literacy being entrusted to public consumption. The dumbing-down of America has a lot to do with our society's inability to communicate, or to think its way out of complex situations. It is as if the Powers That Were decided the average American shouldn't be literate, but instead should strap on the feed-bag of whatever propaganda the elites had pre-selected and pre-digested for them.
If I recall correctly, James Loewen (R.I.P.) wrote about this issue in his mid-90's work Lies My Teacher Told Me, specifically regarding that the level of sophistication/literacy in popular journalism was in free-fall. Although, I also recall his book repeating some of the popular "lies", including the one about Harding being inducted into the KKK on the White House lawn. I don't have my copy handy, so I could be mistaken, but so it goes.
Thank you for some very good points.
Woodrow Wilson was the KKK supporter. Indeed he revived it so it reached 4 million members in the 1920s.
Oh yeah, Wilson was a real piece of work. I think Princeton U. finally removed his name from their buildings. I would not be at all surprised if he was Klan scum.
excellent! 🙏🏽
why do you say that? meanwhile he would have had my vote
That is truly wonderful!
Love this
Priceless!
If you don’t love HL Mencken after reading both about him and prescient samples of his work, you probably aren’t much fun to be around.
Harding did come up with "Normalcy" though 😂
I mean not entirely, but he popularized it.
God, "Return to Normalcy" would be a great 2024 slogan.
I'd rather anything but that.
Mencken is a national treasure as a writer and observer of We the People. He's also funny as hell without being jokey, a rare talent.
Mencken is a brilliant writer but I often wonder if he ever looked in the mirror. He was a bastard and an arrogant son of a bitch.
I write knowing who and what I am. I don't think my autism has anything to with it. My parents taught me to look at my own faults before enjoying the foibles of others.
Too many Americans love HL Menken and think DeSantis, Trump and Reagan were wits not imbeciles.
I am reminded of one of my favourite poems written by one of my favourite poets.
he wrote on seeing a louse on a Lady's bonnet in church
This is my favourite reading but you may prefer the English Translation to the original Scottish
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsC-Aumx4dk
Oh, to see ourselves as others see us
Too many Americans understand Burns and are ashamed of the label. I know America its people are the world.
In the last line I tried too and to and they both work well but don't share a common meaning. Sometimes two and two don't make four. English is not an easy language to understand but thankfully Americans speak New English or as I learned it sixty years ago Newspeak and they don't like to read it is too much like work.
Wasn’t Noah Webster sentenced to death in absentia in England for adulterating the English language? Although I’ve lived in this country for many years I remain stubbornly English and continue to take great delight in the differences in usage and, in particular, slang usage. Many years ago I was sitting in a bar in Boston with some of my rugby club teammates and started telling a story to them. My opening line was, “so I was sitting there with a fag in my mouth”. Got a number of confused looks from my American teammates.
I am 75 and have lived all over English speaking north America. Time is a major factor as North America has urbanized and TV has destroyed many urban and local rural dialects.. I am 5 and a half hours drive north of Boston. It useed to be common in Quebec to see people with fags in their mouths but now you must go into a closet to put a fag in your mouth but in Quebec there is no such thing as gender, race or religion but alas we don't speak English so the joke doesn't go well in Quebec where we speak our own special languages and we have a whole department for policing language.
So much of English comes from the French and for those of who speak more than one language we can observe word origins. We have tongue police.
In Quebec it is permissible to put a fag in your mouth as long as you don't set her on fire. That is a joke that went off in my head. In 2023 where I live cigarettes have a gender people not so much.
In Quebec it is illegal to put gender race or religion on a birth certificate because we citizens are free to decide if those appellations. In Quebec we do grow wines but appellations are non controlle we are free to call ourselves what we choose to call ourselves. I am a me.
I have a whole government to service my special needs it is called the Department of Autistic affairs because in Quebec autism is real there is no such thing as "normal." We are free to be who we are not what we are. In Quebec we go in to closets to pray so our children do not need to go into closets to make love.
In Johnson's Dictionary I am a Hebrew Rabbin and the wisest of the wise but at seventy five I can still look in the mirror and smile and laugh at human hubris.
In Quebec we must go into closets to pray so our children don't need to go into closets to make love.
In Quebec we don't allow religious zealots on the bench and you have a zealot majority on your Supreme Court.
Do you want to buy a church?
Ours are for sale and they are historical relics. Our churches need people to take care of them and preserve them. OMG in Sherbrooke is a fine restaurant and the library in Magog was once a busy cathedral.
I used to visit Montreal back in the 1980s for the Montreal Irish rugby festival, not sure I would want to do that today. I watch Canadian PM questions time occasionally and there does seem to be some hope in that the opposition leader seems to be less of a fascist than Trudeau. Other than that, pretty much everything I see from Trudeau and state governments seems to be designed to suppress any contrary opinions. The latest example is the bill which demands that on line content must be Canadian or some such nonsense. Of course the legislation doesn’t define what that means but does provide for the establishment of a censorship board appointed by the government and with a complete lack of transparency. I suspect it’s gonna get worse before it gets any better but the same can easily be said about my homeland and my adopted country.
In Canada the one thing that unites us is Ukraine. Our far right and far left prefer Zelenskiy to Biden. We are all looking at Zelenskiy to lead us to the promised land. I am totally in love with Zelensky. The first time I saw him he was playing the piano on youtube and I didn't know his name. I said Diogenes has returned now all we need is Alexander the Great.
I don't care much for conservatives I don't understand their insistence on their right to be insane but even Boris embraces Zelensky and he is definitely a follower of Doctor Samuel Johnson. Talking about old school and Newspeak.
Here are George Soros and our ethical philosopher and chief our Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland talking Ukraine in 2015 at the Institute for New Economic thinking in 2015 talking about the Future of Europe This is what liberalism or wokeism is all about. Of course America is sore afraid of Soros.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdUaEE7mr2w
In Quebec the Patron Saint was John the Baptist whose head was served on a silver platter.
Samuel Johnson was an arrogant son of a bitch and a bastard and he helped write the constitution . He wrote the dictionary. He was a conservative philosopher and an 18th century HL Mencken.
His biography is still considered the ultimate biography but his Taxation no Tyranny is fascism before fascism became a word.
On top of the pyramid sits the English middle class because it is the will of God.
Before I forget remembering that Americans don't know history. The Toleration Act and the Reign of William Mary turned the Empire into a parliamentary democracy. The monarchy lost all of its powers the parliaments were the source of all power.
https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/act-of-toleration-1689/
I thought Virginia's understandings most agreeable to everybody from far left to far right.
I am Jewish and autistic . How conformist is that? I know that Noah is great literature but not history.
We read the same book every year and every year its meaning becomes more and more meaningful. It is poetry not prose.
1645- Englands Birth Right Justified; 1649 - An Agreement Of The People; 1688 - Bill Of Rights Act; 1707 - Act Of Union. Many of these agreements and constitutional arguments owe their genesis to the Levellers and “free born” John Lilburne. They are the basis of English constitutional law and strongly inform the US constitution and the Bill of Rights. Although they are still the law of the land they have been ignored by successive Conservative governments in favour of the suppression of free speech and the censorship of any outlet or individual which dares to challenge the official narrative. People are routinely imprisoned in Britain for expressing their opinion, potential trouble makers are preemptively detained without warrant or charge as leading members of the Republic organisation were on the night prior to the coronation, independent journalists are detained for hours so that digital devices can be “scraped” one again without warrant or charges, a protester is arrested and detained for having a sign with nothing written on it. All of this is illegal but then Britain is going down the same road to fascism which Canada has already travelled. Our media completely ignores protests against authoritarian governments all across Western Europe. Meanwhile Hungary is the only Western government which actually asked its people for their opinions on sanctioning Russia and supplying arms to Ukraine. The Hungarian people gave a resounding no to both.
America is a nation of Roundheads and Cavaliers. A good friend whom I trust talks to his brother in Vienna and their mother passed away recently in Budapest and I am told that Orban is 110% fascist but Hungary is Hungary and the University of Central Europe fled Budapest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_European_University
We never discuss the most important book in the English Language in 1776. Paradise Lost by the Unitarian John Milton. Isn't this divide the same old query?
Is it better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.
Samuel Johnson the great literary critic hated Milton. Johnson was a conservative fascist. Burke was a Whig, Franklin was scoundrel and Voltaire was a Frenchman and Boswell was a Scott.
After the genocide in Ireland it was the Tories that begath both liberals and conservatives. America has two Whig parties and no liberals or conservatives.
wow. (giggle)
I think that essay is called "Gamalielese".
Harding : Master of bloviation. No wonder he was so popular.
O Matt... is the fellow in this video you?
you better watch this after that librarian crack
https://youtu.be/4GDT6oVCdCE?t=33
That’s hilarious!
As I commented on it, shades of Edgar Allen Poe. The Cask of Amontillado with a pseudo-seduction in glasses!
That YouTube is a must view!
It is a librarian dream. (I am a librarian).
Somehow I remembered you were a librarian from a different post. The gum under the desk was definitely a Matt move don’t ya think? Lol
I do. Also he alluded to filing cards so that made me know to post that video.
This is brilliant, Matt at his best. This needs to be a book.
Or at least a sortable spreadsheet with the seven duplicate entries removed:
https://mitchbarrie.net/files/stats_and_articles/Animal_Adjectives_List.xls
Agreed! A book!
I could help here because I read and read.
When I go into a Bookshop I look for my favorite Authors. IF they are not there I walk out.
I am quite capable of finding books on websites.
Patrick White: read him.
The Tree of Man
Yes.
Voss
Where is Rule #1?
I'm sorry. I took it for What not Where. https://www.racket.news/p/a-brief-note-on-writing/comments
Trash most of your writing. Why, because its trash I guess or finding confluence?
Testudine, would that be Mitch McConnell?
“Testudine” is too nice for McConnell. I think lacertine is best.
True enough
Lizards are too nice for DC
My first thought: https://youtu.be/YtKcE31UsSk
That makes sense lol
McConnell the turtle or McConnell the tortoise?
Jon Stewart I believe was the first to call McConnell the “turtle” bc he moved so slow on upgrading health care for first responders and McConnells face screams turtle .. Jon has since gone on to intersect a turtle with a bat to joke about the origins of COVID in Wuhan...He likes saying turtle.
Thank you. A nice break from stories of Stasi and Gestapo.
It doesn’t surprise me that people who read Matt love interesting words. Looking up a few words isn’t a burden for those who appreciate good writing.
Matt’s style of writing is what lured me in many years ago. It was actually a sports piece, something about which I know or care little! Surely a testament to his talent.
In my browser, if I double-click on a word, it offers to search for the meaning, so even the burden is small.
“Teachers often say it’s a no-no to make readers look something up, but I got an extra laugh pausing to learn Humbert was comparing Lolita’s lounging mother to a seal.” -This is the gut laugh joy I get from Mencken.
I love everything you write: pragmatic yet with flair. I’ve come to writing for my actual job later in my life - and it’s tech writing (yawn). But as I look to improve at work, your writing tips are getting filed alongside my favorite mentor’s. Thanks for this. Please keep them coming.
There's something to be said for tech writing. In my limited experience, I have mostly seen it done poorly.
It's a challenge to get complicated ideas across. You want to keep it lean (Matt's rule #1), but there can be many important details to convey. And if you can somehow keep the boringness down without being cute, that's the ultimate.
---
I'm a retired accountant and have written many long financial reports and procedure manuals over my career.
I would occasionally take an hour or two over a weekend to write some short fiction, just to spread my wings (waiting for Matt's guidance on cliches). It was refreshing.
Good to know what you are doing! I was a science grant program manager for many years, and one of my difficult tasks was taking writing by a scientist about a new discovery and converting the information to a form that management could understand.
Oh I agree especially about reading the work of other great writers. It’s surprising how much vocabulary and style sinks in subconsciously and reemerges later. I sometimes think I collect words the way that others collect baseball cards. (Platypus has always been one of my favorites.) I’ve recently started studying the etymology of words. Thank you for the effort you put into your craft and sharing what you’ve learned. While I can admit that text messages serve a useful purpose, if I was reduced to reading nothing but texts and tweets filled with acronyms and devoid of punctuation, my appetite for delicious words in a well-crafted sentence would starve to death.
Can't wait to dive in to the list. I'm in agreement. It's frabjous to look up new words. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a slubberdegullion. Okay, that's going a bit too far. 😂 Recently learned my sister is a pluviophile. Well, I knew she was, but I didn't know what it was called. Thanks, Matt!
Well, I'd never use lickspittle; smellfungus; snollygoster; ninnyhammer; mumpsimus; milksop; mollycoddle; hobbledehoy; pettyfogger to address anyone in a Matt's Thread and for sure not someone whose sister is a pluviophile.
Speaking of which, how one could resist remembering Umberto Eco and his "tetrapyloctomy" or the art of splitting a hair four ways? His "mechanical avunculogratulation," for example, is a set of instructions on how to build machines for greeting uncles.
But what would wordsmiths be without a mathematician? Charles Babbage's letter to Alfred Tennyson:
"Sir:
In your otherwise beautiful poem “The Vision of Sin” there is a verse which reads – “Every moment dies a man, Every moment one is born.” It must be manifest that if this were true, the population of the world would be at a standstill. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of that of death.
I would suggest that in the next edition of your poem you have it read – “Every moment dies a man, Every moment 1 1/16 is born.” The actual figure is so long I cannot get it onto a line, but I believe the figure 1 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry.
I am, Sir, yours, etc.,
Charles Babbage"
Also, thank you for not calling me all those beautiful insults.
As an individual of limited means and modest constitution, I would never dare to criticize or engage in idle talk, meaningless chatter, or nonsensical babble with someone as refined and sophisticated as Wyllamizer TootToot.
😂 🤣 🤣 (not literally rofl, but literally lol)
Out of all the words to use in this world, I can think of none fitting to top your response. Well written, sir! But I will pour out feelings.. Poor mathematicians. To miss out on meaning because... Math... 😔
😂 (My husband is one.)
That’s a new word for me. One dictionary couldn’t identify pluviophile. To me it’s a wonderful world because I love rain.
Many a song has been written about rain. Deservedly so.
Frabjous, I almost thought u made that up..that’s a fun one!
It was in a movie about a spelling bee.
What should the people do once they realize their Constitutional Republic has fallen prey to vulturine institutions?
Be scared as heck..since the alternative is dastardly..vote differently
I was pretty happy with myself when, on another blog, I described California as being at the bottom of the hole, digging for China like a badger. Upon reconsideration, I should have said "rabid badger." Oh well, next time.
I think you might reach Pakistan/India where there are probably no badgers!
People in Michigan and Wisconsin know there is no such thing as a rabid badger. Badgers are born rabid just like wolverines.
Badger and wolverine already say rabid; that is their metaphysics.
The animal list is also a great source of words for scrabble!
That is great sir, appreciate good wordsmiths!
My reading skills are limited to a tape measure or a wiring diagram.
Myself am a dumbass when it comes to words.
Some of my favorites are uh... umm, oh , ah ha, ok, yep .
Me is a word butcher... LoL
This is great. I've also enjoyed just making words up. Sometimes it's obvious what they mean in context, and they can be far more fun and colorful than any existing word.
Like "xenophobiated".
It may be a post on this is coming up, as it's a common practice for those who like language.
like Fictionary
Yep, as Paul himself said in Romans 4:17. . . . “ and calleth those things which be not as though they were.” Every word ever used somebody made up from nothing.
Mexicans can be very polite.
They can also be foul-mouthed, very foul-mouthed.
I'd give some examples but children might be reading this.
I could trot out some good Texas insults: Dumber than a box of rocks. My favorite: Get away from me you f------ weirdo.
I also like Mexican insults.
My Spanish is very limited, so I won't give any examples. I just listen, learn, and laugh.
Spanish is the best cursing language in the world.
HAHA!