My Writing – Page 3 – Scripturient

Dictionaries: Concise, Compact, and dacoit

2013-12-23 2022-05-21 Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / My Writing / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

Dacoit: noun; one of a class of criminals in India and Burma who rob and murder in roving gangs. A member of a band of armed robbers in India or Burma. A bandit. Origin: Hindi and Urdu. I love dictionaries. I like opening them up to a random page and just reading, discovering words and uses that I didn’t know. I love finding origins of words and phrases; linguistic connections between past and present. I will happily spend hours reading through Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, or a glossary of Shakespeare’s or Chaucer’s words. I’ll open any dictionary at random and read … click below for more ↓

The Weird World of Plotto

2013-11-27 2013-11-27 Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / Literary pretensions / My Writing / What I'm Reading Now11 Comments

I came across Plotto a few years back – references to it in other works, rather than the actual book. it sounded strange, complex and wildly over-reaching. I couldn’t find one – it was long out of print. It wasn’t until I got my own copy that I realized how really odd, clumsy – and delightful – it is. Plotto was first published in 1928, and not reprinted until recently as far as I can tell, which is why it’s not been readily available to read and comment on. But it has been lurking in the background, a collector’s item. … click below for more ↓

I’m struggling with this…

2013-11-10 2013-11-11 Books & Reviews / Bread & Baking / Food & Drink / My Writing / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

My recent passion for bread and baking has caused a bit of an internal upset. Not the baking thereof, but rather the writing about it. I’m doing a lot of that, recently. Writing (and, yes, baking too). And of course it comes with the attendant research into bread’s history, the combing through websites for recipes and book reviews, the hunt for equipment and the discussions about yeasts, pH balance, sourdough starters, Canadian versus American flours, protein contents, vintage and ancient grains… gawds, I’m having fun. And it is, if you don’t mind some hyperbole, damn tasty fun. It’s both culinary … click below for more ↓

The Fretful Porpentine

2013-11-06 2013-11-06 Arts / Books & Reviews / Culture / Language & Grammar / My WritingLeave a comment

Like quills upon the fretful porpentine. That phrase just makes the modern reader stop and wonder. What, you ask yourself, is a porpentine? And why is it fretful? We never learn, although later interpreters would knowingly tell us a porpentine is a porcupine in today’s argot. Porcupine itself dervices from the Old or Middle French term, “porc espin” or spined pig. Which it isn’t – it’s a rodent. * It’s an old word, encountered earlier as “purpentine” in 1589, but hardly a common word in any spelling after that, at least not in drama.** Shakespeare wrote it as porpentine in 1602. … click below for more ↓

The Circuitous Path from Bulge to Budget

2013-10-28 2013-10-28 Arts / Books & Reviews / Language & Grammar / My Writing / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQO7e_a-gvU] If tinkers may have leave to live, And bear the sow-skin budget, Then my account I well may, give, And in the stocks avouch it. Autolycus in The Winter’s Tale, Act IV, Sc. III, Shakespeare These lines got me thinking about the town’s finances. Sow-skin budget? What does that mean? And how does that relate to the financial plan for the coming year staff is preparing for council’s review? I did some reading (of course…). In Shakespeare’s time, the online etymological dictionary tells us the word budget meant something quite different:* “leather pouch,” from Middle French bougette, diminutive of Old French … click below for more ↓

Words, words, words

2013-10-24 2013-10-24 Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Culture / Internet & Social Media / Language & Grammar / Literary pretensions / My Writing / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Writing before the arrival of the internet*, Bob Blackburn commented on the nature of exchange on then-prevalent BBS (Bulletin Board Systems), words that could as easily be written today about the internet: “…the BBS medium reveals not only a widespread inability to use English as a means of communication but also a widespread ignorance of that inability, and, in consequence, a lack of interest in doing anything about it.” Words that were prescient. As if he could foresee Facebook. Blackburn also wrote that most people thought they spoke and wrote well… “The majority of English-speaking people I’ve come across…think they … click below for more ↓

The (sometimes violent) urge to write

2013-10-01 2013-10-01 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking / Internet & Social Media / Literary pretensions / My Writing4 Comments

As of this writing, I will have published 253 posts since I began this blog at the ending week of December, 2011. Two hundred and fifty three posts in 21 months. Just over one post every two-and-a-half days, on average. Plus 30 or so still in draft mode. Another half-dozen scribbled in word processing notes or notebooks. And that doesn’t include the six years of blog posts – a list of 91 pages – on my previous blog site (still available in archive format, although some formatting issues have developed after some code updates). “Scribble, scribble, scribble,” as Prince William … click below for more ↓

Why Spelling Matters

2013-09-29 2013-09-29 Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Culture / Language & Grammar / My Writing / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

Sometimes I despair when I surf through the social media. Technology has empowered everyone to be able to comment, to post their stories, to share their opinion. Yet it has not enabled their ability to compose a sentence, or to spell the words correctly. It has not made us better grammarians, better spellers. And in my despair, I’m not alone. Others take exception to the general dumbing down and its accelerating spread online. It’s not just the easily-confused homophones like they’re, their and there, board and bored, your and you’re. What’s heartbreaking about those mistakes is that the differences are … click below for more ↓

Of Type and Typography

2013-09-16 2013-09-16 Arts / My Writing / Science & Technology / Social Order & Disorder / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

Humans have remarkable ability that is shared by – as far as we know – no other animal. We can turn abstract images and symbols into meaning. Words are, of course, the prime example, as old as our history. We can turn a word like dog, tree, table or vacation into a broad and deep understanding of what that word means to us. Of course when I write “dog” and you read it, they’re not the same thing. I need to add qualifiers – adjectives, descriptions, anecdotes – for you to come close to appreciating my meaning. Even then, it’s … click below for more ↓

Three Archy poems by Don Marquis

2013-09-07 2013-09-07 Arts / Books & Reviews / Humour & Satire / My Writing / What I'm Reading Now2 Comments

pete the parrot and shakespeare i got acquainted with a parrot named pete recently who is an interesting bird pete says he used to belong to the fellow that ran the mermaid tavern in london then i said you must have known shakespeare know him said pete poor mutt i knew him well he called me pete and i called him bill but why do you say poor mutt well said pete bill was a disappointed man and was always boring his friends about what he might have been and done if he only had a fair break two or … click below for more ↓

Hell 2.3

2013-08-02 2013-08-03 Atheism & Spirituality / Books & Reviews / Faith / Literary pretensions / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

Before I carry on with my exploration of Miriam Van Scott’s Encyclopedia of Hell, I wanted to note that I just got my copy of her other book – the Encyclopedia of Heaven, from Abebooks. It’s dated 1999, so it’s a year later than her book on Hell. Yet it has many related topics – like Goethe’s second Faust. And it has lots of pop culture – like movie references – but nothing post 1999. Miriam, why not consider a revised, updated “Encyclopedia of the Afterlife” to combine everything in one book? Lots has happened since the last editions. I’d … click below for more ↓

Hell 2.2

2013-07-29 2013-07-29 Atheism & Spirituality / Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Culture / Faith / Literary pretensions / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

Might be time to recap my reasons for writing this series. New readers could get confused about the content in the Hell posts, of which this is the fourth. They’re all the result of a convergence of several recent themes and activities in my life; a lot of which have to do with recent reading and research. I started reading several books, more or less simultaneously this summer, some of which I’ve blogged about. One of them is Dante’s Inferno (I’m currently reading Mark Musa’s translation in the Penguin edition, but also have Pinsky’s and a few others). Another is … click below for more ↓

Hell 2.1, a small update

2013-07-27 2013-07-27 Atheism & Spirituality / Books & Reviews / Faith / Literary pretensions / Personal Reminiscences / ReligionLeave a comment

I left you in my exploration of the Encyclopedia of Hell pondering which version of the Faustus story was better: with or without his final redemption. Personally, I prefer without, because it offers greater dramatic opportunities. I also don’t like the notion of redemption: it seems like a “get out of Hell free” card. Christianity is the only religion I know of that offers this particular way out of your bad deeds: accept Jesus as your personal saviour and you’ll get diverted from Hell. So basically you can be evil until your deathbed, not take responsibility for your actions, then … click below for more ↓

Hell 2.0

2013-07-22 2013-07-22 Atheism & Spirituality / Books & Reviews / Faith / Literary pretensions / Religion / Social Order & Disorder / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

I left you last time after finishing the letter D, in Miriam Van Scott’s Encyclopedia of Hell. I’m back in book form to take you through a few more entries in her exploration of the afterlife. But first a couple of additions to your reading material. First on the list is Alice Turner’s 275-page The History of Hell. It’s an illustrated guide to how Westerners have come to think of Hell, It starts with the ancient influences – Egypt, Greece, Rome and Judaism – but its main focus is on the evolving Christian imagination. She has a lot to say … click below for more ↓

Kill the Apostrophe? Rubbish! Keep it!

2013-07-21 2013-07-21 Arts / Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Internet & Social Media / Language & Grammar / Memes; Internet & Social / My WritingLeave a comment

A site has popped up with one of the stupidest ideas about English I’ve read in the past decade or two. It’s called Kill the Apostrophe. Subtle. At first, I thought it was a joke, a spoof. After all, how can one realistically get rid of perhaps the most significant element of punctuation based on the rantings of a website lunatic? And some of the counterpoint sites like Humbleapostrophe seemed created in a sense of camaraderie humour. But no, on further reading, it’s as real as any of the other wingnut sites, from chemtrails to “psychic” readings to UFOs. Most … click below for more ↓