AWADmail Issue 266
June 17, 2007
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: Florence Bonanno (hyssop7 aol.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--stalworth
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/stalworth.html
At my darling grandfather's funeral, the priest called him a stalwart.
I've loved the word since. To me he was a slender old country Polish
coal miner who grew magnificent roses, giving me one to pin on my dress
or in my hair as a tween. To his friends, he was "sheet-iron Mike", who
although, slim and sinewy was noted for his strength.
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From: John Acuff (acuffsbxr blomand.net)
Subject: Stalworth
I guess the word is still used one stallworth just made the Pro Football
Hall of Fame (John) and another seems headed that way (Danti).
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From: Danielle Meinrath (danielle2820 aol.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--peradventure
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/peradventure.html
The lovely word peradventure has recently been resurrected by the great
Paul McCartney in his 2005 album, 'Chaos and Creation in the Backyard'.
In the song 'English Tea', he sings,
"Do you know the game croquet / Peradventure we might play."
In an interview with Observer Music Monthly, he explained,
"[The song is] about living in England and listening to the way some
English people speak and parodying that. I love it but I also find it
funny. I mean, I say, 'Do you wanna cup of tea, la?' But somebody else
will say, 'Would you care to take tea' or, 'As a rule, we take tea at
three' or whatever. [ . . . ] I went to a grammar school, and had a really
good English teacher, and I love to read Dickens, so I love the English
language. I even worked in the word, 'peradventure' (Sings in snooty
voice) 'Do you know the game croquet/ Peradventure we might play'.
(Laughs) In a way, I was playing Noel Coward. He could sing that straight.
[ . . . ] I'd sort of heard it and it had stuck in some little corner of
my brain. It fell out of my head into the song then afterwards I had to
go to the dictionary, and go, 'Please, let there be a word peradventure!'
And there it was."
Full interview at http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,1571996,00.html
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From: Victor Lund (vlund mahoney-law.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--dehort
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/dehort.html
Dehort brings back memories of classes in classical Greek. After a few
months, one learns that sentences such as "Let's go!" in Greek are formed
with a grammatical construction known as the hortatory subjunctive, meaning,
of or pertaining to exhortation. Not to be confused with the dative of
respect, or future less vivid, or contract verbs, or the optative mood,
or articular infinitives, or the aorist tense, or dialects of Greek such
as Lesbian.
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From: Rex King (rexking bigpond.com)
Subject: Re: A.Word.A.Day--latchet
Refer: http://wordsmith.org/words/latchet.html
Many of your readers who grew up with the King James Bible (1611) will
remember what John the Baptist says about Jesus in Mark 1:7: "There cometh
one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy
to stoop down and unloose." We can go back 85 years earlier to William
Tindale's version where we have: "Whos shue latchett I am not worthy to
stoupe doune and vnlose."
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If you know only one language, you're a prisoner, stuck in the tyranny of
that one language. -Andrew Cohen, professor of linguistics (1944- )
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