confessionofignorance.blogspot.com
Confessions of ignorance: tweet tweet
http://confessionofignorance.blogspot.com/2015/04/tweet-tweet.html
Correcting my limitless lack of knowledge, one post at a time. Tuesday, April 28, 2015. Although I really have nothing against Twitter as an idea or an entity, I can't help but feel it a bit unfortunate that when news sources are conveying information from the the authorities they are reduced to saying "The Baltimore Police tweet." Call me old school, or just old, but it does seem to lack a certain gravitas. Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom). Do You Write Under Your Own Name? PAUL D. BRAZILL. The Prince...
confessionofignorance.blogspot.com
Confessions of ignorance: spate
http://confessionofignorance.blogspot.com/2015/05/spate.html
Correcting my limitless lack of knowledge, one post at a time. Friday, May 22, 2015. Recently there have been a spate of, well, spates coming across my path. I know what it means, of course. It means, "quite a few," or, as I seem to visualize it, "a downpour of", possibly because of the frequent use of spate in reference to rain. But what was a spate originally? This I do not know. The Feugh in spate, apparently. Or "flood", the Dutch spuiten,. To flow or spout", and of course our own English word spout.
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Confessions of ignorance: transparency
http://confessionofignorance.blogspot.com/2015/04/transparency.html
Correcting my limitless lack of knowledge, one post at a time. Thursday, April 23, 2015. From the Coca Cola filmstrip, "Black Treasures." (1969). I don't know about you, but whenever I hear the word "transparency" used in a business setting, I think that someone's trying to hide something. Maybe not consciously and maybe not even in the present moment, but sooner or later, there is going to be some backsliding going on. Transparency comes from the Medieval Latin transparere. Six times as popular in the b...
confessionofignorance.blogspot.com
Confessions of ignorance: marplot
http://confessionofignorance.blogspot.com/2015/05/marplot.html
Correcting my limitless lack of knowledge, one post at a time. Saturday, May 2, 2015. Maybe it's just because I'm making my way through a book of critical essays on Tristram Shandy. But I've come across this word which I'm not familiar with. Marplot. Still, it doesn't seem a rarefied academic sort of word, and maybe everyone would have known and understood it in an earlier era. And Our Mutual Friend. Here's the Little Women. Or a burden.". And here's the one from David Copperfield. Must have traveled....
confessionofignorance.blogspot.com
Confessions of ignorance: February 2015
http://confessionofignorance.blogspot.com/2015_02_01_archive.html
Correcting my limitless lack of knowledge, one post at a time. Friday, February 27, 2015. I dreamed I saw Anita Hill last night.Darshan, part two. I am trying to remember just what my awareness was at the time of Hill's testimony during the hearings on whether Clarence Thomas should be chosen for the Supreme Court. I know I was. For this friend and others, Hill's testimony was a pivotal moment in their lives, because it meant that people began talking to each other about it and about their own experience...
confessionofignorance.blogspot.com
Confessions of ignorance: shampoo
http://confessionofignorance.blogspot.com/2015/04/shampoo.html
Correcting my limitless lack of knowledge, one post at a time. Wednesday, April 29, 2015. However vaguely, this guess proved correct. Shampoo is one of those quintessential American words like dungarees. That actually come from India. The Online Etymology Dictionary tells us that it's first print appearance in English was in 1732. It came via Anglo-Indian from the Sanskrit word champu. The imperative of champna. Champie" by Vivek Patankar. According to their ad, this is not pronounced as the French would.
confessionofignorance.blogspot.com
Confessions of ignorance: October 2014
http://confessionofignorance.blogspot.com/2014_10_01_archive.html
Correcting my limitless lack of knowledge, one post at a time. Sunday, October 26, 2014. Do you already know what this is? Because I didn't. I was watching The Rachel Maddow Show the other night when it came up. She mentioned the word somewhat casually, as though we would have at least a basic understanding of its meaning, but frankly, it wasn't familiar. Luckily, she then explained it in more detail. Here's the segment. Basically, the autoclave is a kind of pressure cooker. Remember those? The Maddow sh...
confessionofignorance.blogspot.com
Confessions of ignorance: December 2014
http://confessionofignorance.blogspot.com/2014_12_01_archive.html
Correcting my limitless lack of knowledge, one post at a time. Monday, December 29, 2014. Yes, indeed. The word was godsibb. In Old English, and meant something like a sponsor or godparent, -sibb. Being related to our "sibling", as it expressed kinship or relationship and had to do with happiness, friendship, love and peace. Pretty great, in other words. Time went on, and by the time Middle English took it up (as gossib. In Memphis, Tennessee. Yep, that's women for you. Links to this post. Wednesday, Dec...
confessionofignorance.blogspot.com
Confessions of ignorance: September 2014
http://confessionofignorance.blogspot.com/2014_09_01_archive.html
Correcting my limitless lack of knowledge, one post at a time. Friday, September 26, 2014. Sindhi Ghazal by Habib Sajid. Believe it or not, I was planning on writing about this word at some point. Admittedly, it has been on the back burner for awhile now, and so might not ever have happened. The occasion for my own interest was a conversation I had a few months back with local poet Len Anderson who publishes Hummingbird Press and helps head up the local poetry scene at Poetry Santa Cruz. By KC Kanda, the...
confessionofignorance.blogspot.com
Confessions of ignorance: November 2014
http://confessionofignorance.blogspot.com/2014_11_01_archive.html
Correcting my limitless lack of knowledge, one post at a time. Tuesday, November 25, 2014. Do you know about nematodes? I'd heard the word, I suppose. But it's quite strange that I know so little about what this website. The discussion immediately turned to destructive nematodes, as some of them are parasitic. But in this case our speaker was talking about beneficial nematodes, which aid in breaking things down and benefiting the soil. Links to this post. Friday, November 21, 2014. One instance of ignora...
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