Word Play

English is amongst the wordiest languages. Perhaps the wordiest. It boasts of a million plus words. 80% of which are borrowed from other languages. Contrast it with French, which has some 10,000 words. An average educated english-speaking person has a basket of 20,000 words! Although we use about 2000 words a week. Words fall into categories and patterns. I have attempted to put together a list of word classification which, in practice, are easy to identify with and often used, but their nomenclature is not necessarily so.

1. Antonyms: Opposites
2. Synonyms: Reason why Thesaurus is in business.
3. Buzzword: a popular word relating to a particular activity or subject
   1. Calibrate Expectation | Outside the box | Push the envelope | Sea change | Boil the ocean | Cloud Computing | Integrated Marketing
4. Catchword: a popular word relating to a particular idea, class or quality.
   1. Sexy
5. Demonym: word used to refer to one’s origin or country.
   1. Example Parisian, Indian, Egyptian
6. Derivation: a word that comes from another language
7. False friend: a pair of words that sounds similar in 2 languages but have different meanings.
   1. Actual in English and Aktuell (at present) in German
   2. Stanza in Italian means room
   3. Carte (card, menu) in French and cart in English
   4. Adept (proficient) and Adepte (follower) in French
   5. Affluent (wealthy) and Affluent (tributary of a river) in French.
   6. After in German means anus.
   7. Apologie is praise in French
8. Homograph = Homo (similar) + Graph (writing). Words which are written identically but mean and are often pronounced differently.
   1. Bark: Dog | Tree
   2. Beat: with a stick | Music
   3. Axes: plural of both axis and axe.
   4. Compound: Chemical | Playground
   5. Content: ingredients | satisfied
   6. Now that you have got the hang of it try these: Bat | Bow | Coordinates | Bust | Desert | Digest | Discount | Fine | Lead | Minute | Object | Produce | Putting | Refuse | Row | Second | Subject | Tear | Wind | Wound | Lie | Lead | Close | Bear | Bank | Back | Bar | Capture | Change | Conduct | Console | Contest | Converse | Convert | Defect | Foot | Letter | Light | Live | Match | May | Mind | Park | Rock | Rose | Spirit | Transport | Yard | Wave
9. Homophone = Homo (similar) + Phone (Sound). Word pairs with similar pronunciation but different meanings and spellings.

What I learnt from Stephen King 'On Writing'

Your life experiences shape what you write. Gather more. Reach out, within. Then expand the experience to imagination.





Find your nook; your go to place, for reading and writing. Nothing ostentatious. Nothing distracting. A place which allows your mind to travel to a state of hypnosis.





Reading is a non-negotiable.



 
Write each day, every day.





"It ain't how much you've got, honey, it's how you use it!" Use words that come naturally.

Keep your sentences simple. Put your reader, first.  Be understood.

A list of 100 "what's the word?"

Do you ever get stuck for “that one word” that best describes a nuanced feeling or a thing? Well, I do. This curiosity set me up for some random browsing. What I found, was a bunch of words that were fairly descriptive and interesting. I began categorizing some 100 words; from being prohibitive & amusing on one hand to conversational & slang on another.  From a usability perspective, I am inclined to remember words that are both easier to use and easily understood. The rest are plain trivia.

Words I can live with:

1.      Aglet: that little plastic bit on the end of your shoelace or drawstrings.

2.      Aphthong: alphabets used in spelling a word but not in pronouncing it, essentially silent alphabets in a word: Example: Knife | Knew | Knight | Wednesday; Yes, people ‘d’ is silent J

3.      Akimbo: love standing with your ‘hands on your hips and elbows outwards’? The position is called Akimbo.

4.      Barm: the foam on your beer is barm. Cheers!

5.      Beblubber: the swollen eyes and face due to crying. She looked beblubbered-for crying out loud!

6.      Box-tent: That plastic tripod that comes in your pizza box is a box tent. Not only does it have a name it has a patent too.  

7.      Brannock Device: Useless trivia but did you know that the instrument used to measure your feet at the shoe store had a name?

8.      Claptrap: pretentious empty language or writing. Use of big words which mean nothing, are insincere. If you do end up familiarizing yourself with these words you will surely fall into this trap.

9.      Clinophile: a person who loves beds. Need I say more? Need to go back to my reclining, clinophile position.

10.  Contranym: a word that can be its own antonym. Stumped? So was I. Let me come to your rescue with some examples

a.      Cleave: to sever | to cling

b.      Off: Activated (alarm went off)| Deactivated (turn it off)

c.       Weather: to withstand (she can weather any situation)| to be worn away ( she looked weathered)

Word Trap

Word traps are ever so inviting, swallowing us into gaffes and indiscretion. Some borne of sheer ignorance others of confusion.  The pedagogue instinct in me prompts me to  question, why should I learn alone? Then again, nothing is selfless. Driven by selfish motivation, to have you walk into fewer word traps and in the bargain check me when I do, a list of word traps follows:

1. 100s ≠ hundreds. It is one hundreds.
2. 360 degrees = back to square one. Diametrically opposite is 180 degrees
3. A.D. ≠ After Death. A.D. = Anno Domini - Latin for "in the year of the Lord."
4. B.C.E = Before the Common Era and C.E = Common Era is the new, less sectarian A.D. and B.C.
5. A.M. = Ante Meridiem Latin for "before noon". P.M. = Post Meridiem -"after noon." Hence 12 A.M. L. It is noon. Period.
6. Able to: People are "able to". Things are not "able to".
1. You will be able to read through this document.
2. Crawler will be able to read through this document. Incorrect.
7. Accurate ≠ Precise
1. Accurate measurements reflect true values.
2. Precise: The degree to which an instrument or process will repeat the same value.
8. Actionable  ≠ Doable
1. It is a legal term for something that provides ground for legal action or lawsuit. So please watch text of your next email and MOMs.
9.  Ad nauseam  ≠ ad nauseum and definitely not ad nausea.
1. Ad nauseam is  misspelled to quite a "sickening degree"!
10. Administer not administrate. The latter is just an unnecessary substitute.