Category: Writing Prompt Thursday

Writing Prompt Thursday

The Penny, the Dollar, and the Pound

Hyacinth Grey

I’m having some book covers created by David Collins of DC Cover Creations, and I pay in British pounds. I started thinking about the names of various currencies, and what they mean.

The penny. Well, pennies are old, and I don’t mean just sort of old. The word has a Proto-Germanic origin and there are a few hypotheses as to the original meaning. One is “pledge,” and another is “cloth” (cloth was used to pay for things.)

The dollar. Whereas pennies are ancient, the word “dollar” is attested from around 1500. It entered English via Dutch, but is ultimately from German “Sankt Joachimsthaler,” which was a coin minted in St. Joachim’s Valley. (It’s now in the Czech Republic and called Jáchimov.)

The pound. The weight and currency meanings are related, which doesn’t surprise me. So much of something is worth so much, and having a fixed weight makes sense. What did take me somewhat aback was the origin of the verb. I had assumed it was related to weight, to strike with a heavy weight, but no. It’s from a word meaning to pulverize or break to pieces.

As for the book covers, I’m looking forward to sharing them with you soon.

Advertisements
Literary Analysis, Writing Prompt Thursday

Lousy

Hyacinth Grey

It’s interesting how the meaning of words changes over time, but even more so that we don’t often think about the words we use, and where they come from. A remarkably good (or bad) example of this is the word “lousy.”

The dictionary definition, or at least the first one, is “remarkably bad,” “poor quality,” “dirty,” and “mean.” We say things like, “His writing is lousy,” or “She’s a lousy photographer.”

Now, consider the second definition: “Infested with lice.” So why don’t we say “licey?” One louse is rarely encountered or talked about, and yet, over a thousand years ago, the adjective was derived from a singular noun.

The original meaning of something very dirty and infested with lice has changed to the fairly tame put down “lousy” is today. I doubt most people even think of lice when they hear or use it. I only noticed the connection when I was rereading the Little House on the Prairie books, and somebody uses it, along with “lazy,” to describe a teacher. Something in my brain clicked. Lousy. Louse. Lice. Makes perfect sense.

To conclude this post, I’d like to share two poems by Robert Burns:
To a Louse
and
To a Mouse
. While I certainly do not approve of his saying that the louse should leave the lady alone and go bother some poor people (what a lousy thing to say!), I do enjoy Burns’s language and poetic style. I also admire how he shows compassion for the mouse whose home he’s destroyed.

Writing Prompt Thursday

Sober

Hyacinth Grey

It’s almost Friday, so I’m thinking about the opposite of sober.

I had no idea where the word “sober” came from, so I looked it up; it’s pretty much Latin for not drunk (“without intoxication.”) Well great! I like to learn something I didn’t already know when I research words for these posts. Maybe I should do that digging for info while drunk.
The sober reality is that it isn’t the weekend yet, so to lighten the mood a little, I did read further, and managed to get confirmation of what I thought the word meant. Serious. Dull. Not passionate. In a word: boring. It gets even darker with words such as subdued, solemn, and grave. Moderate and realistic are all well and good, but it’s possible to have too much of a good thing.

I need to get away from this smothering sobriety, so tomorrow, I’m going to get intoxiacted, drunk, pissed, enibriated, I mean, enebreated, oh rats, it’s enibreated, oh darn it, I don’t know. Who actually says that, anyway?
“Inebriated,” the dictionary said. (Did I ask? Well, to tell the truth, yes, I did look it up so I could end the quarrel my brain was having with itself.)
Interesting: there are a zillion slang terms for drunk, but sober stands alone.

Writing Prompt Thursday

New Words

Hyacinth Grey

Lately, I’ve been seeing the word “clickbait.” Is it something I was supposed to bite down on? Since I do a writing prompt on Thursday, “clickbait” will be the word I use.

I usually like new words, but sometimes it takes me a while to get used to them. Other times, I never do. For example, I’ve known the word “webinar” for years. It’s a logical blend of “web” and “seminar,” but I just can’t bring myself to like it.

The word “blog” is a blend of “web” and “log,” but I don’t mind it at all, and I’m also quite comfortable with its twin, “vlog.” I do have to wonder though, is a picture blog called a “plog?” I just looked it up, and according to Wiktionary, it was a real word in Old English, meaning “the measure of land that can be ploughed in one day.” Very cool, but nothing at all like a web log consisting entirely of pictures! I guess I’ll call that a photo blog, which I think I have heard before. Let’s not call it a “flog;” that would be too much like beating ourselves up.

In about 2002, the word “selfie” was born. I don’t plan to post any on here, but I do like the word. What I like even better is what Apple did a year or so ago: they took the words “slo-mo” and “selfie,” and turned the whole thing into a “slofie!” I remember I was reading live on MacRumors, and they said something like, “Slofie, yes, really.”

I was thinking of the word we use meaning to make up new words: “coin.” According to Wiktionary, it does have to do with money, and is an extension of the literal meaning of making coins. At first, I couldn’t think what words had to do with money, but they do; they’re the currency of information, just like cash is the stuff of getting bread and butter.

Now for that newly-minted word, “clickbait.” Before I bite into it, I’d better look it up and make sure I know exactly what I’m getting my teeth into.

Yuck! It tasted like a noun, the insulation on wires, a verb, and a poor-quality website with lots of ads all baked together at 350 F and put in the fridge for fourteen minutes. Gross.

I do kind of like the word, but the concept sucks. Give me a webinar any day, just call it something else, like an online seminar.

Writing Prompt Thursday

Volume

Hyacinth Grey

When looking for a prompt for today’s post, I just picked the first word that popped into my head, which was, “volume.”

How much coffee or tea does your cup hold? How loud do you like your music?

I like words with multiple meanings. One of the novels I’m working on is about a guy who breeds cats. So there are the litterboxes, litters of kittens, and then there’s the kind of litter used to carry somebody, but I’d better stop before I give anything else away. I can tell you one more thing; I’m definitely titling that book “Litter!”

Wounded Bride is the first of a series, but it’s part of a larger story. I have most of the series mapped out and know pretty much what happens from beginning to end. You can read Wounded Bride by itself, but unlike with some other series, you probably won’t want to start with one of the other books. Each volume is a chapter, and each chapter within them is a kind of subchapter.

Recently, I bought a book of Chaucer’s works. In a way, you could say that he wrote one book, because all of what he penned can be bought as one. Even if everything doesn’t seem intertwined, it is, because he wrote every word.

All of English literature is tied together, because writers read each other’s works. It doesn’t stop there, because some read French literature, and French writers read each other’s works, and some read English literature. Over time, more volumes are added to the sea of literary works, and although there are never enough years to for each of us to drink every delicious drop of it, all those pages are bound together in a complex web of writers and readers, and the sum of all those parts makes one great, big volume.

Writing Prompt Thursday

Focus

Hyacinth Grey

I like using a prompt on Thursdays, so I headed over to Discovery and found
Focus.

One suggestion was to talk about a sound, smell, or other stimulus that makes it easier to focus.

For me, the stimulus has to be internal. I have to feel that interest, that drive, that get-up-and-go to be able to focus on something. If I don’t have that, nothing works. If I can get into the Zone, I can often stay focused for hours on end. The next day, this might happen, but it could easily be for a different project.

To end this bouncing from one project to another, I’m thinking about trying a routine. If I focus on my goals, then maybe I can finish a writing project. If I focus on what I love about the project I need to be working on, then maybe I can find that internal stimulus that will focus me and put me right in the middle of the Zone.