I have always enjoyed folklore, and as a writer for the past 20 years I've used my share of words, so I don't know why it took so long to realize that I had accumulated a lot of stories about words. Word lore. I get a kick out of the streams of words that appear during conversations, each with its own history -- an insanely creative flow of bits and pieces accumulated over centuries. On the flipside, I'm a bit concerned when I talk to other writers who have no idea of what they're tapping into. I guess if you're writing technical documents, your main focus is accuracy, but my poet half won't let me stop there. I think there is a lot to be gained by understanding the words we use, or, a lot to be lost by forgetting their meanings and history.
Few things are as important to a culture as their language. Words can last for ages, words are part of our identity, and we can discover historical hints hidden in our word lore. Even more, every job has its own vocabulary (jargon), its own subculture. When you listen to someone speak, the words they use say more about them that you might realize -- we process most of this instinctively, and it's a fascinating topic. There are language experts and forensic analysts who can tap this hidden world to great advantage.
If all that is too deep, a good word story makes an interesting conversation piece.
This series will focus on "stories behind the words." I'm not looking for dry etymologies. I'm more interested in the creative ways that words sneak into our language, a.k.a. the "human factor," and the little bits of the past that linger. I will try to be as accurate as I can, but please realize that there is still much debate on some of these items. I hope you will find it as interesting as I do. I don't expect to have time to manage long comment-wars over individual items.
As for the new of this blog, I didn't really expect "WordLore" to be available. Neither was "WordFix" ... but I was listening to "The Fixx" at the time, and "WordFixx" just happened. Funny moment.
About me: I've had over 450 stories & poems published since 1986, including works in Analog, Space & Time, and about 100 other places. I've always enjoyed words. I started college as a Linguistics major (studying German, French, Spanish, Latin, Middle English and Sanskrit), but switched to Mathematics/Physics. I skipped Computer Science entirely, but ended up writing software and websites for a living anyway. That's the short version.
My writing home page is [ here ].
Some of my common sources:
Few things are as important to a culture as their language. Words can last for ages, words are part of our identity, and we can discover historical hints hidden in our word lore. Even more, every job has its own vocabulary (jargon), its own subculture. When you listen to someone speak, the words they use say more about them that you might realize -- we process most of this instinctively, and it's a fascinating topic. There are language experts and forensic analysts who can tap this hidden world to great advantage.
If all that is too deep, a good word story makes an interesting conversation piece.
This series will focus on "stories behind the words." I'm not looking for dry etymologies. I'm more interested in the creative ways that words sneak into our language, a.k.a. the "human factor," and the little bits of the past that linger. I will try to be as accurate as I can, but please realize that there is still much debate on some of these items. I hope you will find it as interesting as I do. I don't expect to have time to manage long comment-wars over individual items.
As for the new of this blog, I didn't really expect "WordLore" to be available. Neither was "WordFix" ... but I was listening to "The Fixx" at the time, and "WordFixx" just happened. Funny moment.
About me: I've had over 450 stories & poems published since 1986, including works in Analog, Space & Time, and about 100 other places. I've always enjoyed words. I started college as a Linguistics major (studying German, French, Spanish, Latin, Middle English and Sanskrit), but switched to Mathematics/Physics. I skipped Computer Science entirely, but ended up writing software and websites for a living anyway. That's the short version.
My writing home page is [ here ].
Some of my common sources:
- DC = dictionary.com
- EO = etymonline.com
- FD = thefreedictionary.com
- WO = Word Origins, by Anatoly Lieberman.
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