AWADmail Issue 200
March 11, 2006
A Compendium of Feedback on the Words in A.Word.A.Day
and Other Interesting Tidbits about Words and Languages
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From: Nat Mushkin (mikenovemberATearthlink.net)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--schadenfreude
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/clerisy.html
There's the story, lately, of the language maven preaching to his class
about the uniqueness of the word, "shadenfreude", and how our deficient
English has no way of expressing this idea. One student rises and
challenges the professor, claiming that we certainly do: "Reality TV!"
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From: Frank Brown (frank.brownATworldspan.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--clerisy
When I was in high school it was part of the language syllabus that part
of your language teaching would include chemistry and physics in whatever
language you were taking. I was taking German. I discovered that when
dealing with a piece of laboratory equipment, the German word for the
piece of equipment translated as the description of the item turned into
one word. So for one experiment a thin strip of copper foil was submerged
in acid and in the diagram it was labeled something like
"thinstripofcopperfoil" only in German. This made for some very long
captions on the diagrams.
I thought it was funny that a language would do that.
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From: William Garabrant (williamATgarabrant.de)
Subject: German sesquipedalians
Hello from Kulmbach, Oberfranken (Upper Franconia, in northern Bavaria, near
the Czech border, where it's STILL snowing).
First a hearty thank you for the AWAD newsletter. I've been a fan for about
six years already.
I'm a New Yorker who for the past ten years has been living in Germany.
It's taken me a long time to come to grips with the German language and
especially with the "zusammengesetztewörter" (together-set-words), or
"Sesquipedalians" as you call them. Actually, it's more like sesquipedalians
without spaces or punctuation. The most fascinating aspect of these
linguistic gems isn't that they exist at all but rather their dynamic
character. Germans routinely create new words on the fly, it's a built-in
feature of the language and, in my theory, one of the basic ingredients in
the creative, philosophical German character. There could never have been a
Goethe without the German language for him to twist around and have fun
with. German allows us to put any number of seemingly and heretofore
unrelated objects into something new and, sometimes, profound, sometimes
humorous, sometimes both, but always interesting. We can do the same in
English, of course, but then we have to watch our punctuation and we water
down the effect with superfluous little words (prepositions, etc.).
Auf Wiederschreiben!
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From: Janet Machol (janet.macholATnoaa.gov)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--zeitgeber
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/zeitgeber.html
According to this recent research from Harvard, the internal clock actually
has a period very close to 24 hours.
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/07.15/bioclock24.html
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From: Vizor-Herrera (avizorATcwpanama.net)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--zeitgeber
Just think of the moon and how it controls the tides every 25 hours - we're
evolved fish after all!
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From: Peter Scandrett (peter.scandrettATunitedgroupltd.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--zeitgeber
Regarding the 25 hour circadian rhythm, I have noticed that I can fly west
from Sydney to London and, after arriving at 6:30am London time, I can then
work all day, reasonably bright and chirpy. But the lights go out early in
the evening. It's like having had a very late night. However, after the
return trip home, it takes me 2 weeks to recover. I don't know why. Maybe
it's the 25 hour rhythm. Do others find travelling west easier to handle
than travelling east?
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From: Luke Solomon (s21154491ATtuks.co.za)
Subject: Zeitgeber
Zeitgeber is a word that I use often, as a Masters student whose thesis is
on discovering circadian rhythms in gene expression. My nickname in the lab
is 'Chronoboy', although I prefer 'Captain Kirk-adian'.
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From: Dr. Ulrike Müller-Kaspar (dieATtextwerkstatt.at)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--gegenschein
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/gegenschein.html
I had not known the scientific meaning of Gegenschein before, thank you!
Johann Wolfgang Goethe used the word Gegenschein in the description of
his birth horoscope in the sense of "opposition": "Nur der Mond, der
soeben voll ward, übte die Kraft seines Gegenscheins umso mehr, als
zugleich seine Planetenstunde eingetreten war. Er widersetzte sich daher
meiner Geburt" the full moon being in opposition to the sun delayed
Goethe's birth until this aspect was over. (in the very beginning of
Dichtung und Wahrheit).
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From: Art Haykin (theartATwebtv.net)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--weltschmerz
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/weltschmerz.html
Today's word, weltschmerz, seems in keeping with the Simon quotation about our
information overload. We are relentlessly battered with it, and it can leave
us in confusion and pain.
Remember that scene in "Moscow on the Hudson", where the newly defected
Russian (played by Robin Williams) was walking down the aisle of a typical
American supermarket for the first time? He became overwhelmed by the sheer
number of different coffees alone and he became dizzy and disoriented, and
they had to call an ambulance. My guess is that about 95% of the data that
is perpetrated upon us daily is utterly useless, redundant, often false, and
needlessly alarming.
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From: William Garabrant (williamATgarabrant.de)
Subject: German word - Geisterfahrer
A German friend once asked me for the English word for "Geisterfahrer",
a commonly used compound noun. I told him I didn't know of any, but if
necessary, I would call it, "A person driving on the wrong side of the
road." He insisted that there must be an English word for it and got out the
Langenscheidt's (a translation dictionary). Sure enough, the translation for
"Geisterfahrer" was, "A person driving on the wrong side of the road".
Literally, it means, "Ghost Driver".
Even though Germans will insist that you have to be completely stupid to do
so, the highway system here makes it physically easy to drive up the exit
ramps. It's common to hear warnings of Geisterfahrer during the traffic
reports on the radio.
Danke!
............................................................................
Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective
hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight
place. -William Strunk and E.B. White, authors of The Elements of Style
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