I admit it, I'm a word geek...

 

I thought I'd start this year off with an interrobang. 

These poor, much-forgotten punctuation marks are probably wondering "What the hell?!" and "Why aren't we invited to the writing group?!"

I can't even find a cheat code in order to use it properly on my keyboard. So sad.

As long as we are talking about (useless?!) resolutions --if we even were-- why not crusade to bring back forgotten or benched words? I'm a huge fan of whelmed. And I want to see gruntled brought back into common usage, if only because it sounds pretty much like the opposite of what it means. And then there's those contronyms. Cleave. Ravel. Bound. 

And those shortened words that become words like pros and cons. And acronyms that become words like radar and snafu. And those portmanteau words (more properly called morphemes) like frenemies-- so much to think about!

I admit it, I'm a total word geek. I love looking into a good dictionary and tracing words back to their roots and determining when they first appeared in writing in English. The Oxford English Dictionary is a treasure trove of word genealogies, Yes, I know it's etymology, but there is a subtle difference I'm working with here. Genealogy, as applied to humans, traces back to a common ancestor. Etymology traces where words come from and the changes throughout written usage and history. 

For my mental wanderings, genealogy works better, as I like to think of which First Human applied sound to object, and their rendition stuck. Onomatopoetic words (bang, crash, barf-- the "Batman words") are fairly easy to figure out where they come from. Others, not so much. Even to consider the little words, the articles like the. Le, el, etc. -- every language that I can think of has these gender-indicating words attached. Why words in general have any indication of gender, I have no idea. That's fodder for another mental wandering (wondering?!) on another day. We are so careful to know people's pronouns, and to not assume gender, but language itself is loaded that way. Hm...

I wonder if the ellipsis hates the name "dotdotdot"--

Take care, and enjoy the day!
C



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