Tag: Vocabulary

‘Just wrap your legs round my velvet rims…’

I chose the title of today’s post with great care. Not only did it give me an excuse to blast out one of my favourite songs but it might attract a legion of hits. If it doesn’t, the title of my next post is going to have to be much raunchier.

The above should also serve to illustrate the purpose of today’s post. This line is one of my favourites because it conjures up a vivid image for me. (Of course, it also appeals to the ‘sauciness’ in me.) It would not be the same image if Mr Springsteen’s lyrics went along the lines of ‘Hop onto the back of my Vesper…’ or ‘Jump up Babe…’ Continue reading “‘Just wrap your legs round my velvet rims…’”

Well Defined? Nevermind.

Is this heaven? No, it’s Nirvana.

Writers. We write. And our tools are words. So, while contemplating this week’s blog post, I had the brilliant idea of writing about words and their definitions, using… words and their definitions. It’s almost perfect. If by “perfect” I mean “utterly confusing and almost entirely pointless.” So, anyway, a couple years ago, The New York Times compiled a list of the 50 words most likely to stump their own readers. Amazingly, “defenestrate” was not among them (if it had been, I would have defined it as “To demonstrate a specialty fencing technique often used to remove the fins of albacore tuna”). Unhelpfully, perhaps, they neglected to include definitions. Which is where I come in. Don’t get me wrong—this being the internet which, like nature, abhors a vacuum—somebody already came along and performed this admirable service, but I’m going to go one better. I will proceed to pick 13 of the 50 words, more or less at random, and provide not one but two definitions, one of which is the correct one and one which I made up out of whole cloth for no other reason than to be extremely annoying. And if you’re just as bored as me (woah, Cobain flash), you can follow along and expose me for the consummate liar I am. And since I’m also most likely stealing this whole idea from a board game or something, I’m a liar and a thief (lookit, another Cobain flash). Continue reading “Well Defined? Nevermind.”