'Staycation' is an ugly word. I don't care for it. I used it a bit last summer, but I didn't feel good about using it. It's new, it's a bit of a gimmick, and it caught on. Caught on so much in fact that it is now annoyingly among those entering the Oxford English Dictionary.
But as the new words arrive, old ones go, fading from usage and plummeting into obscurity. It makes me feel acrasial* and that's why Save the Words is such a boon.
Save the Words points out that 90% of communication - that's all comunication in the English language - takes place using only 7,000 words. To put that into context, there are at least 250,000 distinct words in current usage plus around another 50,000 obsolete ones. We should use more words!
You can adopt a word and save it from obscurity. It might be an old word, a wise word, a hard-working word, but one that is no longer loved and wanted. What's your word...?
Best wishes,
Claire
(Publisher, Yearbooks)
* showing a bad disposition, not in a good mood
Ideate a macrocosm were locution was amaranthine. Envision if thy decisiveness approbate s a locus of interminable time.So I enunciate to all annotationists ingurgitate thy thesaurus and confabulate eterne the vernacular of blatherskite.
Regards Richard
Claire,
It is a shame, isn’t it. The smarter we’re getting, the less it seems we’re verbally communicating. I read once, in a typical household a person speaks on average about 50 words a day. I wonder, does a regression in vocabulary equal a decrease in cognitive function? Does it mean we’re actually getting less intelligent? Or does learning newer knowledge replace archaic memory in equal measure, leaving an equilibrium of intelligence where we are neither smarter nor dumber with each passing year than the one before?
Actually, I have a pair of pet words: Mimesis & Noesis.
Mimesis- representation of human action in art.
Noesis- the process of human cognition.
With every frame of his being, David’s mimesis of decision radiated the endowing noesis in Michelangelo’s mind, thus vivified by his craftful hands.
Xean
11/12/2010
PS- Claire, twigged means to become aware, from the Irish Gaelic tuigim, meaning I understand. Coincidence, I guess, but I happen to be researching Gaeilge, Kernewek and Cymraeg languages for a future book.
Harriet, I find I start using management phrases as a joke, and then catch myself using them for real by mistake!
Hi Rose, thanks for commenting! You make really interesting points. There are also some simple words I like, which may not be beautiful, but do, I think, add colour. I noticed a friend used the word 'twig' - as in 'have they twigged yet?' - and I keep meaning to look up where that usage comes from. It's the sort of thing that must be tricky for someone if English is their second language though.