Category: That’s the word for it

That’s the Word for It: Freegan

This relatively new word is a combination of free and vegan.  A freegan could be vegetarian or vegan or even meegan, meaning he eats meat. He eats food that is freely available to protest against the exploitative food system. This way of life involves eating discarded foods from dumpsters or wherever you get food for free. You can also use the word as an adjective- so you can attend a freegan wedding or receive a freegan package, which basically means food that is being provided to avoid wastage.

Learn more about freeganism here.

That’s the Word for It: Luftmensch

You must have met dreamers with their heads in the clouds and who face trouble with the practical nitty-gritty of living. The Yiddish language has a word for such a person- luftmensch, where luft connotes air and mensch means human being.

Found a quote featuring this word:

“Luftmensch—the impractical individual whose imagination has lifted him beyond the world.”
― Stephen Eric Bronner, Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction

That’s the Word for it: Triskaidekaphobia

This tongue twister was coined by Coriat (1911; Simpson and Weiner 1992). The fear of the number thirteen has led to some strange numerical decisions- many high-rise hotels don’t have a thirteenth floor. The idea of 13 as evil has been associated with the 13 people present during the Last Supper. The fear of Friday the thirteenth is called dubbed paraskevidekatriaphobia.

Here’s an example of how Stephen King explained Triskaidekaphobia without mentioning it:

“There were fourteen steps exactly fourteen. But the top one was smaller, out of proportion, as if it had been added to avoid the evil number.”
― Stephen King, ‘Salem’s Lot

 

That’s the Word For It: Sotto Voce

Sotto voce means to lower the sound of your voice, not out of embarrassment or fear but more for emphasis. it’s a dramatic technique and also used in music and screenplay writing. I especially liked the Wiki reference to Galileo Galilei’s sotto voce utterance “Eppur si muove (And yet [the Earth] moves’.

Some more quotes from literature:

“I still can’t believe,” Michael said, sotto voce, “that you came to the Vampires’ Masquerade Ball dressed as a vampire.”
― Jim Butcher, Grave Peril

“Is it life-threatening?” they asked. They said it slightly sotto voce, but you could hear the thirst for sensation right through it: when people get a chance to come close to death without having it touch them personally, they never miss the opportunity.”
― Herman Koch, The Dinner

 

That’s the Word for It: Salvo

The word salvo has more military connotations but you can also use the word figuratively as in the case of opening salvo, which refers to the first in a series of questions or statements used to try to win an argument.

Some instances of this word in literature:

“Agnes shut her eyes, clenched her fists, opened her mouth and screamed.

It started low. Plaster dust drifted down from the ceiling. The prisms on the chandelier chimed gently as they shook.
It rose, passing quickly through the mysterious pitch at fourteen cycles per second where the human spirit begins to feel distinctly uncomfortable about the universe and the place in it of the bowels. Small items around the Opera House vibrated off shelves and smashed on the floor.

The note climbed, rang like a bell, climbed again. In the Pit, all the violin strings snapped, one by one.
As the tone rose, the crystal prisms shook in the chandelier. In the bar, champagne corks fired a salvo. Ice jingled and shattered in its bucket. A line of wine-glasses joined in the chorus, blurred around the rims, and then exploded like hazardous thistledown with attitude.

There were harmonics and echoes that caused strange effects. In the dressing-rooms the No. 3 greasepaint melted. Mirrors cracked, filling the ballet school with a million fractured images.

Dust rose, insects fell. In the stones of the Opera House tiny particles of quartz danced briefly…

Then there was silence, broken by the occasional thud and tinkle.

Nanny grinned.

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘now the opera’s over.”

― Terry Pratchett, Maskerade

“It has been calculated that what with salvos, royal and military politeness, courteous exchanges of uproar, signals of etiquette, formalities of roadsteads and citadels, sunrises and sunsets, saluted every day by all fortresses and all ships of war, openings and closings of ports, etc., the civilized world, discharged all over the earth, in the course of four and twenty hours, one hundred and fifty thousand useless shots. At six francs a shot, that comes to nine hundred thousand francs a day, three hundred millions a year, which vanish in smoke. This is a mere details. All this time the poor were dying of hunger.”

― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

That’s the Word for It: Excursus

The literary term excursus has to do with a more neutral sort of digression. An idea is expanded upon mostly in the appendix or the footnotes. Maybe the subject discussed will be of interest to only certain readers and maybe the information will benefit those readers who are more interested in back story. If you are familiar with Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, you will find that the novel makes extensive references to whaling, a kind of excursus in its own right,

Some instances of the word in literature:

“You are sure that I would not be well advised to make certain excisions and eliminations? You do not think it would be a good thing to cut, to prune? I might, for example, delete the rather exhaustive excursus into the family life of the early Assyrians?”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Inimitable Jeeves

“But there is another class of assassinations, which has prevailed from an early period of the seventeenth century, that really does surprise me; I mean the assassination of philosophers. For, gentlemen, it is a fact, that every philosopher of eminence for the two last centuries has either been murdered, or, at the least, been very near it; insomuch, that if a man calls himself a philosopher, and never had his life attempted, rest assured there is nothing in him; and against Locke’s philosophy in particular, I think it an unanswerable objection (if we needed any), that, although he carried his throat about with him in this world for seventy-two years, no man ever condescended to cut it. As these cases of philosophers are not much known, and are generally good and well composed in their circumstances, I shall here read an excursus on that subject, chiefly by way of showing my own learning.”
― Thomas de Quincey

 

 

That’s the Word For It: Skeuomorph

A skeuomorph is a derivative object that retains nonfunctional design attributes from the original.  This means that the design features of a contemporary product is modeled on objects that the user is already familiar with. Take for instance a software calendar that looks like a desk calendar or a calculator app modeled on a real calculator.This simplifies things for the user but now designers are moving away from this trend.

I was hoping to find this word in some sci-fi literature but came across more definitions:

“Skeuomorphic is the technical term for incorporating old, familiar ideas into new technologies, even though they no longer play a functional role. Skeuomorphic designs are often comfortable for traditionalists, and indeed the history of technology shows that new technologies and materials often slavishly imitate the old for no apparent reason except that is what people know how to do. Early”
― Donald A. Norman, The Design of Everyday Things

“A multitude of design trends has come and passed over the years, often conditioned by external technology innovations, such as the birth of social media or the first iPhone. From the 90’s guest counters and solitary guestbooks to skeuomorphism, from flat design to parallax scrolling, the core of any good website has always been and will always be the user experience.”
― Simone Puorto

That’s the Word For It: Fugacious

The word fugacious deals with emotions and interestingly also to the idea of withering leaves in botany.  Fugacious derives from the Latin verb fugere or flee.  Some derivative words include fugitive, refuge, and subterfuge.

A beautiful word to use in literature:

“Love is a fugacious word. Rounded and comfortable, it lifts the tongue and fills the back of the throat, before slipping beyond reach as the sound is exhaled from the mouth. Yet the word eludes meaning. Love teeters on the edge of the unknown beyond which it becomes almost impossible to speak. It moves us beyond words. We speak about love when we define our longing and desire and yet we fall into silence when we attempt to speak about it in the present.”
― Jonathan Rutherford, I Am No Longer Myself Without You: An Anatomy of Love

 

That’s the Word For it: Garniture

Garniture is a fancy word for accessory and deals with embellishments and decoration. In vogue from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, a garniture is a collection (usually odd-numbered) of matching, unidentical, decorative objects displayed together usually on the mantel shelf of a chimneypiece. Usually, these are made of metal, ormolu, with gilded wood stands, porcelain, etc

It’s where the word garnish comes from as well.

This is an archaic word and seldom found in literature:

“She was made to sparkle, to be bright with outside garniture, — to shine and glitter, and be rich in apparel. The only doubt might be whether paste diamonds might not better suit her character.”
― Anthony Trollope, Complete Works of Anthony Trollope

“Above the fireplace: a scene of a cow jumping over the moon, in an elaborate gilt frame. On the mantle below, we see a clock…, flanked by garniture sturdy enough to be a murder weapon out of Agatha Christie.” — Rumaan Alam, Slate, 23 Aug. 2016

 

That’s the Word For it: Fecundity

Fecundity has to do with fertility not just literally but in a figurative sense as well. So it could refer to a lush valley and equally so to the rich vocabulary in a story. Biologically speaking, fecundity refers to the potential of having offspring as opposed to fertility which refers to having offspring itself.

Some instances of the word in literature:

“Along with the mystical wonderment and sense of ecological responsibility that comes with the recognition of connectedness, more disturbing images come to mind. When applied to economics, connectedness seems to take the form of chain stores, multinational corporations, and international trade treaties which wipe out local enterprise and indigenous culture. When I think of it in the realm of religion, I envision smug missionaries who have done such a good job of convincing native people everywhere that their World-Maker is the same as God, and by this shoddy sleight of hand have been steadily impoverishing the world of the great fecundity and complex localism of belief systems that capture truths outside the Western canon. And I wonder—if everything’s connected, does that mean that everything can be manipulated and controlled centrally by those who know how to pull strings at strategic places?”
― Malcolm Margolin

“Mrs Ramsay, who had been sitting loosely, folding her son in her arm, braced herself, and, half turning, seemed to raise herself with an effort, and at once to pour erect into the air a rain of energy, a column of spray, looking at the same time animated and alive as if all her energies were being fused into force, burning and illuminating (quietly though she sat, taking up her stocking again), and into this delicious fecundity, this fountain and spray of life, the fatal sterility of the male plunged itself, like a beak of brass, barren and bare. He wanted sympathy. He was a failure, he said. Mrs Ramsay flashed her needles. Mr Ramsay repeated, never taking his eyes from her face, that he was a failure. She blew the words back at him. “Charles Tansley… ” she said. But he must have more than that. It was sympathy he wanted, to be assured of his genius, first of all, and then to be taken within the circle of life, warmed and soothed, to have his senses restored to him, his barrenness made furtile, and all the rooms of the house made full of life—the drawing-room; behind the drawing-room the kitchen; above the kitchen the bedrooms; and beyond them the nurseries; they must be furnished, they must be filled with life.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse