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May 30, 2008 |
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Important Words to Remember
FOUND by Laura Coco
in Austin, Texas
I work at a school for English for students all over the world, and I found this list of vocabulary words in the parking lot. I'm embarassed to admit that I don't know some of the words on the list, and I have been speaking English for 21 years.
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We collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework,
to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles -
anything that gives a glimpse into someone
else's life. Anything goes...
» The BBC's Jamillah Knowles mixes it up with the FOUND crew after a show in London (starts 1/3 of the way through)!
» We're hopping on a plane and jetting to Europe for our Fall 2008 Euro Tour!
I will forever sing the praises of my high school year 12 english teacher who made us continue with vocabulary (that is so, like, year 7) every week. She often put together lists of words that were related but not quite synonyms. She gave me a deep and abiding appreciation for language.
Totally off topic - I'm starting to think that Borat got all his best ideas from American Apparel.
man behind the curtain--definitely! lol. and i know MOST of these. MOST. but i've been speaking English for a shorter time than Laura, too.
I know all of these words. I love spelling.. lol
Darcy, i think the man behind the curtain is talking about the ads for American Apparel, not the list of words.
I thought "predispose" meant 'throw out before you use the thing, or pre-cycle [pre-recycle]'
mona lisa--yeah, i know. i just switch topics fact.
If you teach English and don't know these words, maybe you should take the time to look them up rather than being embarrassed (it has two Rs sweetie)
I'm with SANDY on this FIND!!!!
I know all the words on the list, too!!!!
Thank-you, Mrs. Knight!!! (English Teacher
@ Sandy - She didn't say she TAUGHT there. She said she worked there. And embarrassed is a hard word to spell anyway. Lay off.
@Librarian - I don't think that's right.... For example, my family history gives me the predisposition to develop cancer. So I am predisposed to get cancer. Right?
I know all the rest, predispose is the only one I'm a little unclear about...
Reading Too Much, you're right on about "predisposed". I think Librarian is being facetious.
I'm off to 'liason' with an old, school, g/f today, for lunch and shopping!!!
Wish moi luck??!
Bonne Chance!! Good Luck!!
I'll be keeping my eyes peeled, looking for that special FIND.....
YAY!!
Have a wicked weekend everyone!!!!
@Pamplona, Reading, and Sandy ... well, yeah, I also thought that "embarrassed" was derived from the condition of one being 'em-bare-assed, i.e. caught with one's pants down'.
But then what do I know? It literally took me years to get that facetious wasn't spelled "phasecious" or "physi.." or something like that. And, of course, I wouldn't ask anyone. I was sure they'd have thought I was illustrating the word by asking.
I know them all, too! Hey, what level has everyone gotten to on freerice.com?
Thanks for the shout out to the National Spelling Bee, Found-Dudes!!!!!! The Finds today are spot-on.
Pamplona: was Librarian being facetious or was she being sarcastic? I have a terrible time trying to keep those two things straight. (Throw in sardonic and I really start to fumble.)
my score is 42, on freerice.
I forgot what my score was on freerice but I can say that reading is your best remedy for learning new words.
@ Winston ... being as how (as the kids would say) a "remedy" cures one of something, taking it away, are you telling us that reading 'cures us of, takes away, learning new words'?
Maybe that's my problem all these years!
(all typed either sarcastically, ironically, facetiously, sardonically, general lee, or bruce lee)
Ooo! Ooo! I have a list of words, but these are not vocabulary words. They're words I wrote down while I was reading because I didn't know what they meant or I didn't understand them in the context they were used and I looked them up late--they are neat words:
Cybele
reticence
denuded
impious
phygiam
heptarchy
balladry
placidity
codification
venerable
traceries
preceipitately
fungous
imperceptible
Trimalchio
beetling
tumuli
nonce
tartarus
illimitable
So, your competition for today is...
use all these words (correctly of course) in a sentence! -- or failing that, a very short story.
Extra points for geting 'fastidious' and 'gynecomastia' (or whatever it was) in as well.
Oh, and for even more extra points, use them in the order given above!
Ready...
steady...
Wow, Terrie -- repeat competition as above with YOUR list -- even tougher!
Now I'm trying to work out what book you'd been reading with all those words in.
Who doesn't know these words? This finder works at an English school?
I spelled precipitately wrong.
Jonathan, I think it was H.P. Lovecraft, but I can't remember.
I could probably use them in a sentence because I have the definitions. Except for phygiam, I guess I couldn't find that one.
Probably because it's phrygian and I can't write my own handreading.
@Librarian - ROFL about em-bare-assed.... Seriously. I love it.
List in alphabetical order. Did this person flip through the dictionary and randomly choose these words? Any why? To learn? I want to know why.
OK, I lied. Solicitous would belong at the end of the list - unless list-maker was too eager in list making...oh my
You guys are so smart!
@Librarian: I didn't think "remedy" was the best word but I liked it using all the same...like "a remedy for not knowing new words". When you put it like that though...yeah, probably not the best word to use. =)
ohh...I mean a remedy for fixing one who doesn't know how to aquire new words...
@ Terrie
from reference.com:
H.P. Lovecraft's short story 'The Rats in the Walls,' makes reference to Trimalchio, reading, 'There was a vision of a Roman feast like that of Trimalchio, with a horror in a covered platter.'
So I'd guess that's what you were reading, and it sounds like a very weird story.
I also notice that I type too fast and have subsequently put "it" before "using" but you all know what I mean. I hope...alright I'll shutup now.
I dare someone to use all those words in one paragraph.
Sara, Yes! That's what I was reading. Thank you. Oh, yeah, it was weird and a whole lot easier to understand once I looked up those words and read it again. But with Lovecraft, weird kind of goes without saying.
Alright Terrie, here we go!
Cybele...
Alright, nevermind.
47 on freerice, 0 for effort - there's no way I can use all those in a paragraph in order. *loses*
47 on freerice.
i don't even want 50; i want 48... badly! just let me get to 48!
i love vocab!
@Terrie --- I have to say that list is very Lovecraftian... I love him. I think I have learned more vocabulary from Lovecraft than any other author. I'm happy to know of at least one other woman who's read Lovecraft. I can't get any of my friends to even start to read it, much less enjoy it.
i'm proud to say i know every single one of those words.
Of the posted item, I know what all the words mean (and could use them in a sentance). Of Terrie's list I know all but 4 words (which I have since looked up) and could use most of them in a proper sentence.
And now Lovecraft is on my list to read, lol. It just keeps getting longer.
Every Friday, my girlfriend always asked me one question. It was always of a solicitious nature and one I found annoying and undignified. Today's question made me begin to equivicate more than usual. And except for a fortuitous knock on the front door I would have lied my ass off even more. At the door was my girlfriend's ex-boyfriend,a man with impeccable taste and a reputation for messy liaisons, with underage girls. He was so predisposed to Lolitas wearing clothes by American Apparel that it was rumored that he was a secret member of the Morman church. This propensity of his was so reprehensible to most people that he did not go out much and he was banned from most places young girls gathered, malls and High schools being particularly off limits.
I greeted him with a fake smile and asked him if he would like a drink. He replied with a long, boring and mostly incomprehensible story about how he had just found out that his last girlfriend had been a sham, she, apparently had been twenty-five; and he would love a Chivas on the rocks. He continued to say that his only solace was that she had still been a genuine virgin when they had had boisterous sex last week. It was then,disgusted, I walked away and found my girlfriend.
Thank you, Cubby that was very entertaining. (And your solace is untied.)
Made ya look!
@ small bear. that's two paragraphs.
43 on freerice with ESL. that site rocks.
@ Librarian, love reading your comments
@ Terrie, woo hoo! Love your list, yes, Lovecraft is very weird. But who cares!
@ Smallbear: APPLAUSE! Who cares if it's two paragraphs, your the only one who tried.
Small Bear, WAY TO GO!!
(it wasn't even boring to read)
(*I knew it would be smallbear.*)
I wanna be a member of the morman church. I don't have enuf men in my life these daze.
*Humbly the bear takes a bow*
@Night in gale *lol* "your solace is untied"
*Blushing 'cause I did look.:0
This is one helluva shopping list. I hope they're not planning to find all this at Walmart....
KUDOS to SMALLBEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks, Smallbear! Knew you'd be the one.
Nightingale, you make me larf! xx
One of Henry Miller's books has a quotation, 'to piss warm and drink cold, as Trimalchio says' which I had assumed was a quote from Rabelais or someone but I never did find out.
I've never read Lovecraft.
'Phrygian' refers to an area of Ancient Greece and is also used for a musical scale and a type of headwear. No, I don't know why.
Byron (Childe Harold) has 'She looks a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean' -- describing Venice, I think -- and we were told at school that Cybele was the goddess Venus wearing a crown made out of bricks like the top of a tower (we weren't told why), and she'd be rising from the waves as she does in that Botticelli painting 'The Birth of Venus'.
Strange what useless info one has sloshing around in one's brain.
Trimalchio, a surprisingly impious man for a priest, decided to make a pilgrimage to the Phrygian Cybele at Tarsus from his home in the heptarchy of Essex. The voyage seemed long and illimitable on the windless, placid sea. To pass time, Trimalchio practiced his balladry, but the codified rules on board ship stifled his imagination. Almost imperceptibly, he
was slowly denuded of his hope and ardor at ever seeing the
shrine of the Great Mother Goddess. Then, one day, a storm broke out and the ship foundered! Trimalchio found himself ashore on a foreign land in the middle of the storm. He spied an open tumulus and headed towards it for cover. At the entrance, Trimalchio stopped, reticent at entering. He frowned his beetle brows in concern. To make sure that nothing was awaiting him below in the seemingly Tartarus-like cave, he precipitated a stone down the fungus-covered shaft. Nothing stirred, and, so, he entered. Once inside, Trimalchio saw the most amazing treasure...A statue of Cybele covered in a tracery of gold and silver cloth. A wave of piety overcame him. For the nonce, he decided to stay and explore this new feeling...
well, they weren't in order, and some words have been modified to fit the story...but I tried.
The most famous statue in Spain is in Madrid. It's a statue of La Cibeles, Cybele to you. She is in a chariot drawn by lions and there are mermen with tridents behind her. I don't know anything about that brick-tower-hat thing, Jonathan. In Madrid she's wearing her own hair. Sort of. Statue hair. Would that be "statutory hair"?
Sorry, I'm tired. Burrow bound.
I've been gone for weeeeks and no one even missed me.
Oh yes we did, Orinoco my wombular friend.
Where ya been?
There's a lot about Cybele in my Lempriere's Classical Dictionary -- she was a Phrygian goddess, sometimes depicted as pregnant and with keys in her hand and a tower on her head. Nothing about her being Venus though. Maybe my English tacher was wrong about Byron (or I remembered it wrong).
Indy, you're a genius.
Bravo, Indy! You have succeeded where I have failed. The Indies shall inherit the earth.
@Jonathan--I am going to try to take you up on the above challenge, but only for the Found list, not with Terrie is so very's! I did know all of the words on the Found List, but I didn't know some of them on Terrie's and I'm too lazy to look them up. I would have thought YOU would have completed the challenge by now, but maybe you're waiting to lower the boom after the rest of us peons have tried it! I'll have to ruminate on this awhile......I don't think I can do it one sentence, though. Smallbear and Indy did very well!
@Jonathan--OK, here we go. I used them all in order, and I think I kept it to 5 sentences (pending any errors that might get pointed out)
Bob was generally solicitous towards people who stared at him, since he was able to equivocate his man-boobs with his large frame and his obesity. It was fortuitous that he was an impeccable dresser when it came to his moobs, ably disguising them during a liason with a woman. You see, his whole family was predisposed towards large-chestedness, so it was lucky that his mother had a propensity for big breasts on men. However, his father found it reprehensible that his son had to perpetuate a sham in order to find solace in a woman's arms. Bob, however, felt determined to be fastidious in hiding his gynecomastia--at least no one called him "bitch tits".
Do I still get the extra points for using the words from the day before? :)
awww, shucks. Thanks.
@mlm...love it~!
Phrygia was a kingdom in the interior of Anatolia (modern day Turkey) in ca. 8-7th century BC. Its capital, Gordion was the seat of King Midas, of Greek myth fame. Cybele originated in Turkey, but was later adopted by the Greeks. She was a Great Mother goddess associated with fertility. In later years, her male followers were known to go into an ecstatic state and ritually castrate themselves (ouch!). Here is a picture of a famous early statue of Cybele in her Anatolian incarnation:
http://tinyurl.com/5tpnzw
I'm with Sandy, too! Thankfully Laura only works at the schools (I'm taking that to mean she isn't acutally a teacher!??!). Which ones did she NOT know?
Thanks, Indy! I have a question about the freerice.com for anyone. Does that thing go on forever? It was endless! My best score was a 43, but I was as low as 40 at one point. Do you just keep going until it's over, or does it ever end?
You guys are totally awesome. And far more creative and motivated that I. I'm not worthy...party on.
And you know, my inability to make a post without a typo in it is starting to embarrass me a little.
Terrie, me too (I mean *my* inability). No excuse now I have a new super-big monitor!!
mlm, well done you. Not sure about your use of 'equivocate' though?
I don't think I'll compete -- you guys are too clever for me and I have a headache already!
Indy, I hadn't realised Phrygia is in Turkey, not Greece -- thanks. Amazing stuff about Cybele.
'Ouch' indeed! Trying not to think about that one. OUCH!! Can't quite see what use self-castration would be to a goddess of fertility?
I have a book I've been trying to read since 1964 and never got to the end of, underlining the words I didn't know and never getting around to looking them up. Some of them I still don't know ('epistemological' for a start, and 'protasis' and 'apodosis').
@mlm in Texas
Freerice.com is continuous. There is no end. The site is updated regualarly, so there are fresh words. Personally, I never want it to end.
@Corey-Thanks for the info! It was a lot of fun, but after an hour, my brain hurt and my butt was asleep from this crappy desk chair.
@Jonathan--I wasn't too sure about my usage of equivocate, either. I know in my head what it means, but I looked it up anyway (if that makes sense). In my very OLD dictionary, one of the definitions said "to call by the same name". So, I used it as if Bob was calling his man-boobs and his obesity one in the same. Kinda' iffy, I know, but I was just trying to please the master who coined the phrase, "You shall not burgle my vulva!" :)
I only know impeccable, but I'm a Dutch high school student so that's not a surprise.
(being dutch seems to be my excuse of the day btw, I've used it like a 100 times today)
@ Jonathan...quite right! I'm not quite sure why the male followers of a fertility goddess would castrate themselves. Although, it may have to do with the later association of the cult of Cybele to her son Attis, who was castrated, died, and then resurrected by his mother. Kinda like the story of Isis (from Egypt) who gathered all the pieces of her husband Osiris (including his penis, which had been swallowed by a fish) together and resurrected him too. It's supposed that these stories are meant to explain the dying of the natural world (in winter) and its resurrection in spring. The female goddess in all her fertility causes Nature to be reborn every year.
Well....enough pontification for the nonce...
Oh, I cant resist...50 on freerice. Yay!
mlm, indeed 'equivocate' ought to mean that, but I didn't know it did -- so I guess you win! I'd look it up in my big Oxford Dictionary but it's the reduced-size one (8 pages to a page) so I'd need a magnifying glass and my eyes hurt already.
Never thought of myself as a master needing to be pleased. Perhaps I should work on that one!
Eline, all Dutch girls are impeccable. Must be something to do with those caps they wear ;-)
Oh, now I'm reminded of the joke about the Czech diplomat who didn't have any children -- he was trying to explain to an English person at an official reception and said 'the problem is that my wife is inconceivable' -- and one of his colleagues interrupted 'No, he means she is is impregnable' -- and another colleague said 'No, she is unbearable'...
Apologies to any Czechs reading this (but I think they made up the joke).
If I ever have another child (which I won't), but if I ever do, I'm going to name the child Cybele.
I had never been to freerice.com until today. It is wonderful! I was at 44 until I messed up on "anemophilous." Well, I am not a botanist!
I really love learning words. Growing up, my father always had us try to beat him at "It Pays to Increase Your Wordpower" in Readers' Digest. I don't think I ever did beat his score.
I make lists of words to look up when I am reading, too. My freshman year in college, I had a such a list. I looked them up, then included each of them (from a Poe story, I forget which one) in a letter home. I consider that fun. I also consider myself a dork! But I am okay with that.
Having lost the Freudian slip she had been wearing, Cybele, with a certain reticence at her denuded state, found herself at the mercy of the impious Phrygian heptarchy. Soon, however, lulled by the soft sounds of ancient Phrygian balladry, she lapsed into a state of placidity, exercising her nascent OCD with the codification of the venerable traceries of the fan-vaulting overhead in her (anachronistic) Gothic temple. But she was roused precipitately from her contemplations by the appalling discovery of greenish fungous growths on the walls, and an almost imperceptible smell of wee. Yes, Trimalchio had been drinking cold and pissing warm again! She would have to have words with him. What's more, his beetling man-boobs were beginning to render his gynecomasteia a source of disapproving murmurs among the more fastidious members of the Phrygian nobility. On a woman such as herself, such outgrowths would have resembled no more than pleasantly rounded tumuli, and would not excite comment (except that she knew that in some representations of herself Cybele was depicted with numerous breasts, like Diana of the Ephesians). Oh well, the man was just a...what was the word? She would cease wasting her thoughts on him for the nonce. Would that, with a rattle of her keys and a nod of her mural crown, she could consign him to Tartarus and its illimitable sulphurous depths!
Aw. Thanks, Jonathan. Very good story. Heehee, beetling man boobs cracks me up.
I KNEW IT!! I knew Jonathan could incorporate BOTH lists into a wonderful story! Bow down to the master! But, where's "equivocate"? :)
PS: I found out I did use it incorrectly when my mother pointed out that the definition I was looking at was an explanation of what the Latin root word for equivocate meant. You, my good sir, are the winner!
Propensity is an excellent word. I try to use it as often as I can.
Oh mlm, thank you for being solicitous, but I didn't try to incorporate the original (Found) list. Le us not equivocate: my use of some of those words was merely fortuitous! Though my range of vocabulary is hardly impeccable, there is evidently some kind of occult liaison between my natural choice of words and those on other people's word-lists, which may predispose me to use them unwittingly, even suggesting a propensity for such words which it would be reprehensible to claim any credit for, since such a claim of linguistic superiority would be a sham, and I would gain little solace from thinking that others believed it to be true.
So there!
I think I might cry....
Salesmen are solicitous
Lawyers tend to equivocate
Lottery winners are fortuitous
My girlfriend has impeccable taste in men
We are planning a liaison
My upbringing makes me predisposed towards debauchery
I have a propensity for debauchery that most people find reprehensible
Relationships are a sham where no solace can be found
@Jason--Does your girlfriend, who has impeccable taste in men, know how you feel about relationships and that you are predisposed towards debauchery? :)